This spring brought with it a bad storm that raged for three days. Our valleys experienced some minor flooding, but were relatively unharmed thanks to the sea walls. The harbor, on the other side of the island, experienced some damage and the ships needed some repairs, but nothing as bad as what had been experienced in previous years.
Not long after the storm had passed, we got a request for aid from Kao's island via the Elven bird delivery system. Their harbor and ships were heavily damaged, and with a lack of wood on their island, recovery on their own will be impossible. They do most of their fishing from their ships, so this likely severely hampers their ability to feed themselves. However, it's not like we can just travel by ship, we've seen the leviathans as well.
Our response was, "While we understand the situation is rough, as you've probably guessed, all our crystals also broke, meaning the waters between us and your island are dangerous to travel in large boats. As ordered by your king, trade between us is also forbidden. The best we can offer is refugee status on our island where at least food will not be a concern. Though making the trip is dangerous, we may be able to send some long rowboats, which may be small enough as to avoid attracting attention of the leviathans lurking in the depths. Even that would need to wait until summer. Any refugees will also need to work and earn their keep. It is undetermined how long it may be before we make a large enough crystal to restore connection to the mainland, but the minimum time is a few years."
For the kind of boats we plan to send, which are based off of Zaka's memory of how he got to this island in the first place, there won't be any room for a steam engine, which would be far too bulky. We didn't have to wait very long for a response, "Food expected to last until mid-summer with moderate rationing. Send rescue as soon as possible. 76 individuals in need of rescue."
We did discuss briefly whether we should even send aid, given the new diplomatic status between our nations, however, we're also trying to fight the stereotype of demons, and assisting those in need will be good for our image. Plus, despite the current diplomatic status, we aren't actually on bad terms with many individuals from Kao's group, so maintaining those relationships in the positive might at least keep our nations at peace.
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During the rest of spring, we made multiple of the long rowboats for rescuing the stranded dwarves. Each rowboat can hold a total of 20 people, alongside enough food and water for the trip both ways. I call them long rowboats, but they're closer to a viking longship. They're wide enough for two people to sit side by side, with the seats doubling as storage for food, and the front and back cones having barrels for water.
We made eight of these ships, since they need to be half-manned to functionally operate and maneuver, leaving ten slots per boat for the refugees. I'll have to join in the trip to help navigate our group to the dwarven island. I expect it'll take about twice as long as it did with our powered ship, so reaching the dwarven island will take between eight and ten days, depending on if we stop on the other islands along the way to rest.
Once we return, I want to harvest more of the mana poison plants to install the other two crystals to start growing our population, and allow Tiberius to resume using mana exposure for his research.
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I underestimated how hard the journey would be to reach the dwarven island using oars. It was a grueling effort, and we stopped at each island on the way just to rest and recover. When we arrived at Kao's island, it was clear why they needed assistance. While they had seemingly repaired some of the damage to the fort, it seems like a landslide had occurred along one flank of the fort, and their piers were all completely missing.
Stolen novel; please report.
The landscape around the lowlands of the island also looked a little different from my memory of them, but it had been a while, so that might have been my imagination. The dwarves, while not completely starving, where clearly malnourished, which meant they weren't going to be very useful for the return trip.
Shasta was among the dwarves, and I recognized a few others from the times I had come here for auctions. Ultimately, the return trip took just as long, making the full round trip take 23 days. The dwarves brought a handful of items with them, but given the size of our ships, they couldn't bring much, only their most valuable possessions. Thankfully, during the summer months, storms are infrequent, and we only had one storm arrive, which we saw coming, and we camped for an extra day in the fort on our second island to wait it out.
Once we were back, we gave the dwarves ten days to rest and recover before we put them to work. Shasta was put in charge of teaching multiple goblins how to read and write in dwarvish, starting with the ones who make records who've been working until now with only the most basic understandings.
Quite a few of the dwarves have some skill in construction and mining, and while their ability to make buildings the way we prefer them made is lacking, their ability to cut blocks from stone is much more mana effective than using stone shaping to accomplish the same goal. So a handful were added to each construction team, with more being added to the mining teams than to those building new buildings. Their ability to cut blocks also made them excellent assists for the goblins manually breaking rocks in the reservoir, since it was fairly inexpensive for them to make irregular surfaces into smooth surfaces by cutting blocks out of them.
There were a few administrative dwarves that we needed to find uses for. Both a quartermaster and foreman were put under Zeb to help with managing the resources being extracted from the mine and the reservoir, and distributing them to their work areas. We initially thought about having the quartermaster assist in our military endeavors, but given he could end up being a military asset for the dwarves in a future war against us, we decided that was unwise, even if we thought it unlikely to happen.
Lastly, they had two blacksmiths, four cooks, and a tavernkeeper. The blacksmiths were easy enough to integrate into our existing smithies, and the tavernkeeper was able to be put to use doing his job as he did before, keeping the mood of the dwarves up by providing entertainment within our inn. The cooks took the longest to determine how we would utilize them, but ultimately, they were set to provide the meals for all the refugees who didn't want to make their own meals, which turned out to be most of them. They operated as a military base for the most part, so having dedicated cooks was part of their normal routine.
As compared to their island, they actually have a bit more diverse of a diet here, since we actually grow quite a few dwarven crops, and even have our own baker. I took a month with a few goblins to go get the last two medium crystals, and when we returned, spirits were quite high among the refugees, and I received numerous reports that despite the increase in amount of labor they were doing as compared to their island, the better conditions more than made up for it.
When we prepared the mana poison liquid to bring the crystals down, we found that a majority of the seeds we planted for the poison plants had sprouted, though many hadn't fully matured yet. That was enough evidence for me, however, that we should probably plan out some terraces along the road higher up the mountain to grow the plants en masse. Though managing the terraces that far from the city would be quite the arduous task, so it will probably need to wait until we actually have a large demand for the plants to justify it.
All the previous messages had been paid for in advance, but we sent a message to Kao at our own expense this time, letting him know that all 76 of the dwarves had been brought to our island and were safe. Since we can't actively trade with anyone on the mainland due to the threat of leviathans, we didn't actually need to pay anything immediately to Elora, but what we owed was put in a ledger to be collected upon when trade was actively available again.
How much we could reasonably owe was apparently left up to Elora to judge. Given how we're slowly building up a stockpile of salt, we currently don't even need to dip into our dwarven coin stockpile to make payment for this message. Though we might actually want to use the coins over the salt. If the elves will accept the dwarven coin, then it's more useful in that manner, considering we can't trade with the dwarves directly anymore.