Negotiating with Elora to get our debt reduced was only partially successful, and it was very stressful. She made it clear that what I was doing was treading a very fine line between negotiating and threatening. I responded that what they had done was treading a fine line between helping and extortion. The back and forth continued behind closed doors until it was agreed that we'd only have to pay half of the cost previously agreed upon, meaning a quarter of the total cost.
Thankfully, we also should be able to pay it back in the form of paper, though we'll have to make almost an entire ton of paper as payment. Considering it took us quite some time before we actually restarted paper production, we'll be paying some now from our reserves, and then the rest next year, when our production should be fully back on line.
I've started changing gears away from rebuilding the city, as most of that has been completed. I've been working with Zaka some to help facilitate using Lucian for some of the governmental roles that none of us want to do. That has been it's own problem though, as Lucian currently doesn't speak either the demon language, nor the dwarven one. As a result, he's been forced to work alongside Elora who speaks both human and dwarven, and has been getting much better at the demon language in the last few months.
I also have to deal with Tiberius who seemed heavily disappointed with the condition of our city. I can only guess that he believed we were some kind of metropolis with technologies beyond his imagination. Though the fact we can grow giant crystals seems to have intrigued him enough that he stopped causing a fuss when I finally showed him the bathhouse. For good measure, he's being escorted everywhere he goes, to make sure that he doesn't do anything rash. He seems like the type that would break the crystal just to see what happens.
Since we found a sulfur deposit on the island, I'm very keen on attempting to find more ore deposits. Volcanic sulfur deposits are usually a decent indicator for lead, silver, and copper. We've already found native copper, but copper sulfide, lead sulfide, and silver sulfide are easy ores to refine to get their respective metals. Lead is especially of interest, because we could make lead acid batteries, as well as using some of the lead for ammunition.
After conversing with Lucian some, although paper is a nice export, more countries are willing to trade in metal, and it tends to be more stable as a commodity so he recommended expending some more effort in attempting to discover new metal deposits. So I've asked Konkur if he'd take charge of a small workforce to find more mineral deposits on the island. I'm pulling two stone shaping goblins off the construction force and setting up a recurring job for four goblins to help this group with exploratory mining. If they find anything of value, we'll probably make a separate dedicated mining force at that point.
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After ten days, Tiberius came to me with a few questions, and also wanted to do an experiment. I was a little frustrated because it was the middle of the night, and I was in my semi-conscious state cutting stone from an area that will become the basement of an apartment building. So I fully woke up so I could answer his questions.
The first question he asked was what animal's blood we used in place of rathgore blood for our blood powered steam cannons. I felt like a bit of a monster when I said that we had used Zaka's blood for our magic steam cannons. This didn't seem to bother Tiberius at all, which disturbed me somewhat. When I asked how they gathered the rathgore blood for their cannons, he said they captured them alive, then exsanguinated them to collect all their blood. He didn't seem the least bit concerned what that practice might do to the rathgore population as a whole either. I made a mental note that under no circumstances is Tiberius allowed to have any free authority on the island, because he's likely to cause some unrecoverable problem if left to his own devices.
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His second question was how I made the crystal. I refused to answer him under the premise of it being a national secret. He immediately followed up by asking if I could make more if he had any ideas for experiments. I was hesitant, but told him that I could if I determined the experiment worthy of it. That prospect led him to telling me about an experiment idea he wanted to try, which I immediately shot down.
He wanted to take one of these large crystals and shatter it. Despite telling him what I experienced when I broke a medium sized crystal, he insisted on wanting to trying to break a large crystal. I promptly told him that I would not participate in that, nor provide him with a crystal to attempt it with. A moderate sized crystal could potentially be arranged as a compromise, but that would be the most I was willing to do, and he'd have to wait a significant amount of time for that, as making the crystals takes a significant amount of effort and time.
After having that idea shot down, he had a second experimental idea which I was less resistant to, though it did disturb me somewhat after remembering that I myself did blood testing. He wanted to collect blood from all the different magic-using life on the island. To which I told him that I wouldn't let him buy blood off the goblins. He was welcome to collect blood from any of the sea life though, if he wanted to test it. Considering we know of a few kinds of fish that are somewhat dangerous thanks to magic, I told him that he could work with the fishergoblins on that, though his best odds are going to be at catching them off the incomplete jetty. I also told him that while he can start with blood, I suspect that for some of the fishes, it might not actually be that blood is the best source of magic.
My reasoning for this are my own hands. More specifically, thermal hands. It's isolated to only my hands, and I suspect that there is something physiological that is the drive for that. Ultimately, I offered to give him a hand by using tectonic sense to drive mana into whatever he wanted. To which he asked if he could dunk the organs in the bathhouse water to infuse them with mana instead.
Thinking back on it, that's not actually that bad of an idea, though I don't want the bathhouse to be ruined. I myself first figured out about all of this thanks to trying to find a decent conductor for mana years ago when I first was working with the giant crystals. So, I told Tiberius that I'd compromise with him. I'd help him set up a research lab a little ways away from the city, and then we can attempt to get him some crystals to work with there.
I don't feel great about having him outside the city where it will be harder to keep an eye on him, but as long as we have someone checking in every day, it should be fine. Ultimately, it's probably safer for the rest of the city to have him further away as well, despite the risks. I recalled when I first brought a giant crystal down to the city and caused all the giant lizards on the island to siege the village, and decided that it's best to have some distance between new experiments and the general populace.
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I spent six days working on lab space before the merchant finally returned to our island. It had been two years, but they brought our trade goods that we had requested previously. That said, a lot has changed, and although we had many things we wanted to trade for, we were lacking in trade goods of our own to send this time, so we ended up not getting many trade requests made. I hope next year, despite what we'll have to send to the elves, we'll have a surplus that we can trade with.
The lab itself is actually going to take some time to build. Due to the nature of smaller crystals, I'm digging a deep underground chamber to hopefully allow medium sized crystals to exist within it, though transporting them to this location will require some problem solving, though it should be doable.
After I get the underground chamber built, I plan on having a decently large facility above ground as well, though most of it will be empty for now. That will leave plenty of room for various experimental setups if I have any of my own experiments I want to run. Though Tiberius will be using the lab for now, I plan on using it myself, along with having any future dangerous experiments ran here too.