I spent two days digging out a storage room for the crystal plates to be stored, and then went back to continue construction on the stirling engine facility. After handling all the plates, I had a pretty good idea of what size sand casts we'd need for making everything, so I had a good idea of the amount of floor space we'd need for most of the work.

That said, I still spent another 18 days building the facility, minus any of the machines or smelting furnaces. Though I also did build out storage next to the facility where the completed engines can be kept until needed. They'll be stored without the heating elements, for obvious reasons. I decided they should also be stored without hydrogen in them. The heat powered engines won't be using hydrogen anyway, so I can at least focus on finishing this facility before moving on to that one.

Unfortunately, I got word as I worked that the goblin who had gotten sick from exposure to the silver fluorite had perished. He had seemed to be recovering for a while, but then he started to lose weight, and couldn't keep it on. If I was a betting man, either one of his organs was fried, or he developed cancer from exposure. In any case, I've installed a small obelisk in the lab area, and etched his name in as a reminder of those who lost their lives in this pursuit of progress.

As I finished building out the frame of the building, I was informed that the dwarves that plan on returning to the mainland want to leave right after the eclipse that marks the beginning of winter. Meaning in about a month, they'll be setting out. I checked in with Zaka, and we've already gotten boats prepared for them, along with adequately preserved food and barrels for water. Since there is a decent chance they won't make it to the mainland, I've talked it over with Zaka, and we're going to throw a feast for them on the day before they leave as an additional thanks for the work they've done.

I've still been eating our plain grilled salted fish for years, but recently, the food markets have been filled with fried foods, which seem to be one of the many things the influx of dwarves brought to our island. After they built their gambling den, it seems they started adding even more things to our society, such as the aforementioned fried food. Intrigued, I did some more digging into the details of what exactly they've contributed, and found that besides a handful of foods and gambling, some of the demons have taken a liking to collecting novelty coins commemorating events.

There aren't many different coins right now, as there are only a few events that they've commemorated in the time since they started making them, but some of the demons seemed excited to buy a coin commemorating the next year. Which brings us to another addition, calendar years. I'd been using the dwarven monthly calendar, but we hadn't really had a great reason to keep track of the years openly. Internally, we had a year count on documents, but it was kept as "years since we started counting". Now, however, many of the demons are keeping track in terms of the dwarven year. The current dwarven year in their calendar is 7,709.

That number seemed quite high, which led me to take even more time asking questions as to how their calendar is at such a high year. I had two guesses going into it. First, they're just on a very old calendar, which means their year count is basically the total count since they invented the calendar. Second, they've calculated the year out based on some historical event from before recorded history.

Both guesses were incorrect. This is their third calendar, actually. The first calendar when appropriately adjusted to the current one, spanned 3,132 years. The first calendar was actually only a monthly calendar, and on the dwarven continent, most of the seasons are fairly similar to each other. Not identical, but similar enough they didn't find much use in keeping track of the actual year. After they started trading with humans, they came to their second calendar, which accounted for years, and was generally a good calendar. It ran for 973 years, until the dwarven continent was unified under their governmental system. At which point, their current calendar started counting.

So, all in all, their calendars go back 11,814 years. As I dug in on the subject, it does seem as though there are many questionable exchanges of what family holds central power on the dwarven continent. Every so often, either through assassination, lack of heirs, or war, the central authority changes hands, though the new authority has always claimed their rightful heritage.

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Almost twelve-thousand years of calendar keeping, yet despite magic, they're still in the equivalent of the early renaissance era. I asked around for a little bit of information on the development of new technologies, and while there are occasional advances and some interesting to me discoveries, I think I'm starting to get a better picture as to why they're lagging behind.

There seem to be a few reasons. First, resource allocation. Thanks to magic, individuals can be incredibly powerful, but they require more resources to train and keep appeased as a result. This seems to have led almost all nations to developing some form of caste system with a heightened warrior class, lacking in general discipline, thanks to their heightened individual strengths. This leaves less resources for technological discovery and investment, as well as less drive for it. If you need stronger weapons, there is a tried-and-true method of investing resources into warriors who will overwhelm your enemies.

Second, stale repeated combat. Every so often, they have a demon invasion. While each invasion arrives at a new place, and is somewhat unique, they're rarely technologically different. So, ultimately, their response strategies became more and more focused on their ongoing primary threat. Their response was to keep powerful individuals trained and ready to respond wherever they might be needed. Any particular individual weapon might be found to be ineffective against a particular type of demon, so investing in any type beyond what already works effectively is overkill.

Why invest in long range artillery when your primary opponent is a surprise attack? Why develop firearms when powerful individuals can already survive much larger powerful attacks? I've seen first hand how much physical damage Zaka can survive as a troll. Basically, there isn't a steady path forward for development.

Third, disease as I know it is practically non-existent. They talk about leveling sickness, I've seen firsthand what mana overdose does, I've firsthand seen radiation sickness, and I've overheard a conversation about something called wasting disease, but all three seem to be caused by the magical equivalent of vitamin deficiencies. Without disease to suddenly upset the stable systems, the only thing that occasionally causes disruption is the demon invasions. Plus, I have firsthand knowledge that the elves are also guiding societies to keep things stable, whether they realize what they are doing, or not.

As I've said though, some inventions are surprising. They've made centrifuges, and from what I can tell, the dwarven steel seems to indicate some very interesting alloying procedures. So, it seems, in areas where there is still reason to grow, there have been advancements. Their agricultural and land management knowledge is actually far better than mine. They were the ones who gave me the idea for rock dams, and they've also shown the farmers how to utilize the fields better, implementing special crop rotations, with hybrid planting of two crops at the same time.

On earth, a lot of the technological driving force has been war, famine, and pestilence. Their wars are stale, famine is rare, and pestilence is practically unheard of. So their society seems to have stagnated at the level where they've solved their wars for the most part. This is all speculation, though I was surprised by how deep the rabbit hole went after wondering why the year on their calendar was as old as it was.

I'm really starting to think that my physiology is affecting how curious I am about things, as well as how driven I am. Myself, and honestly every other demon, seem to be capable of doing mundane repetitive tasks endlessly.

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By the time the feast and send-off occurred, I finished building many of the devices in the stirling engine factory. In fact, the only devices left to make were actually the stirling engine power sources to drive the other devices. I learned a little from the design of the fluorite processing area, and designed the building with heat exhausts in mind for the various stirling engines meant to power the factory.

In the time since I started building this facility, they've grown two more 36-inch heat crystals, and nine more 12-inch crystals. Tiberius's safety testing of the existing crystals has started showing some more results. I'm a little disappointed in some of his research, but I'm not surprised by it. He's always been very weapons focused, so much of his testing has involved narrowing down exposure limits using ground birds of different sizes.

However, he did do other tests using the existing crystal types. He borrowed a plate of the heat crystal, and other than dehydration, the ground bird seemed fine, even after long exposure. In fact, the only other crystal that had any noticeable effect on the ground bird was the zinc crystal, which seemed to induce a mild sunburn if exposed to a large number of the crystals for a very long period of time.

Which probably means that the zinc is creating ultraviolet light, which is then causing fluorescence in the crystal, creating the visible light that we see from the crystal. I told him to try the test again, but this time put some regular glass between the bird and the crystal. If it is ultraviolet light, then the glass should filter it out, and we could start making magical lighting using the zinc crystals.