The spring season this year was marked by above average rain, though no major storms. The first village was completed at the beginning of summer. This one was built near the tunnel to the other valley along the main road. With where the village is located, only around a quarter of the fields that the village will be in charge of are actually completed, so the village will initially be in charge of clearing their forests for more farmland, and eventually the hill will have terraces built.
By the end of summer, the second valley's sea wall was completed, which freed up another construction team to work on other projects. With the extra labor, the second village was completed by the end of summer, alongside the expanded tunnel to the deposit under the mountain. This village has even fewer completed fields, but it does include the dedicated forest area for tree growing, so they still have plenty of work to do.
With those construction projects completed, I took some time to teach one of the construction teams how to continue digging the tunnel using the tools to make sure everything was sloping at the right rate. With so many other projects finished, Zeb moved construction teams around, expanding the city's growth rate. With our planned work complete early, I've decided to spend a little while observing the mine and the deposit.
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Only three days into researching the mine, and we experienced a major catastrophe. In the early morning I felt an extremely powerful mana shock wave. Almost all of our crystals exploded. Every single one on the surface, the one in the lab where Tiberius does research, and the ones in the mine's charging area. Fifteen individuals perished immediately. We performed an autopsy on a few of them, and it seems like they were cooked internally, all of them were in the immediate vicinity of a large crystal when it exploded. If this had happened a few hours later in the day, it's likely we'd be dealing with significantly more deaths.
Beyond the death though, nearly fifty individuals suffered severe injuries, likely suffering from internal organ damage, and a few hundred suffered minor fever for a day or so. I called an emergency meeting, bringing in some dwarves, humans, and Elora to try to get to the bottom of the situation.
Elora, and two of the older humans, had some more information. We're experiencing something called a "Mana Surge". Normally, they're actually considered a blessing and a sign of good fortune. They're normally of varying strength, and this one is middle of the pack in that regard. They last for a few hours, and frequently occur in groups in short succession over the course of a few days, sometimes recurring throughout the month. They occur irregularly, and the last one was about thirty years ago, though that one was a bit smaller than this one.
Even without the mana crystals, my mana is regenerating at about five times the normal rate. They're considered blessings because they usually signal good crop yields, healthier livestock, and better individual health. There also has never been a demon invasion in the three years following a mana surge in recorded history. Mana surges are also always recorded across all three of the mainland continents around the same time, so in all likelihood, all the crystals we shipped to the mainland have also exploded.
Unfortunately for us, that excess mana has completely overloaded all our surface crystals. Given that our crystals exploded, I followed up with Elora about ParTor, the dwarven artifact crystal in their capitol. While her knowledge on the matter is somewhat limited, she said that there isn't any record of the dwarves doing anything special in regards to ParTor, and it's survived significantly more powerful mana surges in the past.
The loss of life was bad, but we've got an even bigger problem looming over us now. Most of our crystal material was on the surface or in the charging rooms in the mine or the mountain. While I haven't checked the mountain yet, I assume the charging room there is completely emptied too, the only crystal material we probably have left is what material was left after having grown all these crystals down in the crystal lab.
Which also means that we're probably isolated from the mainland. Without any surface crystals, the leviathans are likely to become a threat for ships during winter. We could probably make a single crystal large enough to be installed on the surface using all our remaining crystal materials, but even if that's the case, if another mana surge occurs, it'll shatter too. Our initial strategy will be to recover from the damage that the mana surge caused to lives and infrastructure. Most of our construction and mining is going to slow considerably, and I doubt we'll experience any boon from the surge, if anything, our crop yields might fall without all the crystals installed in our waterways.
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Four days later, Elora received multiple messages via the Elven birds. First was news that the dwarven civil war ended. ParTor was unharmed by the mana surge, but our crystals, which had been fueling the rebellion, exploded. Both had been installed in critical forts at the two main passes through the rough mountainous terrain of the northern part of the dwarven continent. Without the crystals, the two forts fell quickly under the onslaught of the larger southern faction. After that, the northern rebellion surrendered.
The second message was a decree that was to be relayed to us from The Dwarven King. Henceforth, trade from the dwarves to our island is banned. Any agreements or other pacts are also nullified. That was somewhat unexpected news, given how he'd previously had little say in what the warlords were up to.
The third message, from Kao, answered some of those questions. After the northern rebellion surrendered, for unification purposes, the blame was put on Goppok Kanaga and us for providing his rebellion with the crystals. Given that our crystals ultimately failed, that was given as proof of The King's right to rule, and that we, like other demons, were just there to cause problems. While not everyone bought in to that reasoning, given the circumstances, most of the remaining warlords agreed to that stance. Kao's crystals have also exploded, and Shasta, and the other dwarves on that island are stranded.
Which leaves us with a whole host of problems. Given everything that happened, it might not be wise to install any new surface crystals. As much as I'd like to keep our production speeds up, right now the ocean is a nice defensive barrier between the rest of the world, and ourselves. I'll need to discuss further with Zeb and Zaka about our plans moving forward.
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I saw my first leviathan, followed shortly by my second leviathan. A second wave of mana surge came the day after Elora got all those messages, and during it, I saw what seemed like a giant eel be literally cut in half by an even larger monstrous fish with a beak. It looked like it was miles from the shoreline, but they had to have been hundreds of feet in size.
Shortly after seeing that, the discussion about our future as a nation began. It began with just Zeb and Zaka. While there were many small details that would need ironed out, we've decided to not install any extra surface crystals for a few years at the minimum, though we have decided to bring down three medium crystals in a few months. One for the mine slash tunnel, one to be put under the castle in the middle of the city, and one for the lab space. We're hoping that they don't remove our protection by the sea, while still allowing us to perform some of our work at a faster pace.
The one in the tunnel will give us more metal resources to build defensive structures with, while also allowing us to expand the tunnel to potentially find more crystals to replace those that broke. Based on what Shasta had said when I first met her, I suspect that if I grow a crystal large enough to rival ParTor in size, it should be stable even through any mana surges, and that can be installed for longer term use.
The one under the castle will let Zaka and the construction teams in town continue to expand our population at a reasonably fast pace, while the one in the lab will allow Tiberius, and potentially myself, to research more magical technology which could prove vital in military situations. Tiberius's research has shown that certain concentrated powders last longer than others, and the environmental conditions do matter. He's started working on direct applications for some of the powders now, so it seemed wise to continue letting him research.
After that, we brought in Karsh as a representative for the dwarves to discuss matters with them, and fill them in on the situation. Basically, they're all stuck here, and we don't have a way to fix that. I mean, we technically could, but it'd be too costly and risky for us to build a single large crystal again. While most of the dwarves won't have much issue with it, he was a little worried about his children's future, and voiced that it will be the biggest concern for the other dwarves as well. Many of them had expected they'd eventually be able to send their children back to the dwarven continent with a merchant, and that is no longer an option. While we couldn't promise when, we did say that we expected that in some years we expect that we'll reestablish travel.