As our population has continued to grow, the economy has grown to match it in the city. Most of that growth has just been in the form of more people working in the same industries. When I built out additional blacksmithing locations years ago, there were a handful of individuals working at each location. Now it seems that teams share the space, with some getting up early, and others working late, keeping the forges running for a longer period of time, with more apprentices running about handling small tasks.
I haven't taken a direct account for what everyone has been doing lately, but having a larger economy is convenient at times like these where I need to hire goblins to take on a new role. So, after a quick discussion with some of the blacksmiths, I took a few apprentices from them to start handling the fluorite processing facility. Tiberius hasn't had the time to do research into what quantities of iron impurities are ideal for making heat, so I've decided on using the same ratio as we used to make the first samples underground. Even if it's not the most efficient amount, its quite a bit more efficient than using the natural fluorite, so it's definitely worth it, and it's fairly easy to change those quantities later when we know better.
Ultimately, I took four days getting them trained up and working as a team to make the fluorite glass doped with iron. I also made a small amount of copper glass with the intent of growing a 12" crystal of it to increase our hydrogen production. Unfortunately, I'm our only source of fluorite until I either get a new cryogenics facility going, or spring rolls around, so I'm going to have to spend quite a bit of time mining, or else things are going to stay idle. We have enough fluorite on hand that I think we can try to grow a 36-inch crystal, so I'll help that get set up before I go to do more mining.
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Eight days into my mining excursion for more fluorite, and I had to stop. Not because it was too hot or unbearable for me, however. After I hauled a load back, I was informed that there was a problem with one of the goblins who was helping Tiberius. The goblin has fallen very ill. Many of the symptoms seem to mimic what I know as the flu, but disease here seems to be practically non-existent, so everyone is rightly very concerned. He's been sick like this for a few days, and after getting a look at him, it definitely would be what I'd expect radiation poisoning to look like. His skin is scabbing over in a few small places, and I noticed loose hair scattered around his bed.
Tiberius had continued doing more experiments with grown crystals in the lab space after I left, and this seems to be the result. I'd known, and be warned that this could happen, but I'd gotten so excited at the potential upsides, and likely discovery of the source of heat and hydrogen fluorite that I'd let myself jump ahead and skip some safety planning. What we should have done, for both the initial tests, and for any test of unknown fluorite effects, would be to put a caged ground bird in the room for a few hours while exposing the crystals to mana, then remove the mana, and watch the health of the bird.
If we're lucky, this goblin will recover, though it'll be a long journey. If he survives, lets hope that even cancer can be cured by evolving, otherwise he's in for a short life.
The test that caused this was again a multi-crystal test, which honestly, we should do away with that as well, and stick to one type at a time. There were Zinc doped crystals, Lead doped crystals, and Silver doped crystals. Of those, the Zinc crystals glowed an eerie orange color, despite being an off-green color, and the other two crystals didn't have a measurable effect in our primitive tests.
They want to blame the zinc crystal for this. It easily could be the culprit. I know some crystals are fluorescent, and likely, given the similarity to the word fluorite, I suspect that most fluorite crystals are fluorescent. If the crystal was releasing gamma rays, x-rays, or even ultraviolet light, it could cause radiation damage while also causing the crystal to glow.
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However, that doesn't necessarily have to be the case. One of the other crystals could be the culprit, and they simply aren't fluorescing. I'll have some cages stocked with ground birds, and we'll do some animal testing to begin doing further testing on this matter.
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I took two days getting the ground birds together for the experiments. The two other goblins who were hired to work on the process have refused to help, and I don't blame them. Tiberius seems to be the only one who is still willing to throw his life on the line to do further research on this matter. Though, considering he's been working in the small room growing crystals, which also happens to be where the crystals for testing are kept without any symptoms developing, likely means that he's been receiving some low level dosage of radiation. To help combat that, I also made a small lead cabinet for storing the testing crystals in. That should do a decent job of shielding some of the potential radiation moving forward.
In any account, over the course of three days, we carefully proceeded with three tests. For each test, a ground bird in a cage was put in the testing chamber along with a few crystals of a single doped type, and one bird was kept separate, but caged, as a control. Then, as we left each area, the subsequent valves were opened to allow mana into the testing chamber. Mana was left flowing for two hours, then we closed the first valve. Then we waited an hour, and closed the second valve. After another hour, we closed the last valve. Then, we waited three more hours before finally going into the test chamber to retrieve the ground bird. The crystals remained in the test chamber for another six hours before being retrieved.
Each ground bird's cage was labeled and the birds were monitored for any health problems. Somewhat surprisingly, it appeared as though the silver doped crystal, the last crystal we tested, was the culprit of the radiation poisoning. After five days of monitoring, the ground bird that was exposed to the silver doped crystal had died, while the other two were relatively fine. The three living birds all showed some signs of stress, but considering the lead and zinc birds showed the same signs as the control bird, I suspect that, at the very least, those crystals are fairly mundane in their overall effects.
I do want to do more testing before that is determined for certain. The goblin who is battling radiation sickness had far less exposure than the ground bird, only getting about 15 minutes worth of time around the crystal, but he's still fighting and not really recovering, which is very concerning.
That, of course, has made the goblins even more unwilling to work in the lab. Well, as long as the health and safety tests are done on ground birds consistently first, Tiberius will probably be able to manage without any help. Seeing the goblin struggling with radiation poisoning definitely explains the lack of fluorite on the market though. We're working with singular impurities in the lab. Natural fluorite, even the fluorite that we've been mining, isn't normally particular about the impurities within it.
Our natural fluorite is mostly hematite, or at least, that's what our experimental evidence seems to show. I wouldn't be surprised if it has small amounts of other elements in it as well, however. Depending on the quantities involved, you could end up finding a natural heat colored fluorite, like we have, but it has enough silver that after a week of exposure, you end up very ill from radiation. Silver is only the first material we've found with a detrimental effect like this, who knows how many others there might be.
The upshot of all of this, however, is that if further testing shows that pure Zinc is actually harmless, we'll have access to magical lighting technologies, which itself can be very helpful in many situations. We have a lot of warehouses and other buildings that have basements that could use with basic lighting. Our main streets could also have lighting installed on them. The mines will be tricky, because deep underground, there isn't much natural mana, but you could devise a rechargeable lamp by pairing the fluorite with a mana crystal, which would be much safer than using torches for light.