I told the refugee dwarves about the plan to send them back at the very start of spring. I also told them we'd do our best to support them in their endeavor to return home, but we'd leave the choice to them for their method of transport. I also presented them with two other options, if they were interested.
First, wait six or seven years, and return to the dwarven continent at that point. Second, become a citizen here and stay on the island. While I doubted any would take me up on that offer, I figured it'd be worth presenting, given how many years they've been here working and contributing to our success. I also told them that I wanted each individual to make their decision to either leave, wait, or join us by the end of the month so we could have an accurate count of how many people were going to need to fit on whatever transport they choose.
Obviously, many of the dwarves were ecstatic to finally be able to return home. Also interestingly, a few of our regular residents, like Karsh, said they wanted to send their now grown children back to the dwarven continent to learn and make a life for themselves there, rather than here. I'd agreed to that previously, so I was alright with it, as long as they were comfortable with the risks involved. There was, after all, no promises that everything would go according to plan, and that travel may not actually be safe.
While I waited for them to ultimately mull over their decisions, I went back to supervise and assist with constructing the remaining pylons on our cableway, while also trying to complete the mana crystal growth apparatus at night.
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At the start of the month, I got the final counts for all the dwarves. As I expected, the majority of them wanted to go back to the mainland. In fact, we're sending back more total dwarves than there are refugees. We have six dwarves who used to be children who are now grown who are heading back with the refugees. We have five dwarves who are staying here, well, really there are four, and then also Shasta who is staying until the last of the refugees leave.
Those four all plan on returning to the mainland later, but after talking with Shasta, they're afraid that it won't actually be a safe journey. Apparently they were quite skittish when they were told they were going to be stationed on Kao's island as well. In fact, there were others like them, but most of them could be talked into returning, it was just these four who held out. Shasta told me that normally, they'd just be forced to comply and go back with the rest, but given how the last group's journey went, it was decided that they could stay until the next opportunity.
Somewhat interestingly, there was at least one other dwarf who apparently had similar concerns, but they were a higher level individual, and they decided internally that they were too important to be left here, meaning we'll essentially be left with four grunts and Shasta. I'm sure that'll slow down on our construction quite a bit. We do, after all, have dozens of dwarves that have been helping with some of our projects, with most of them being assigned to the tunnel project.
I expect it'll start slowing down well before they actually leave as well, since they've decided they want to make a proper ship to leave on, rather than just longboats. I'd told them we'd help them, and after a bit of discussion with Zeb and Zaka, we settled on only charging half as much for their ship construction as we would normally charge for all the goods and labor. They're welcome to use their own labor, obviously, but if they need ours for anything, it'll still cost some amount of money. I've also shown them a place on a map where they can cut trees to use for wood on the other side of the island that would ultimately be beneficial to us as well if they cut them down.
Given the political situation between the dwarves and us, I also stated that they wouldn't be able to take our money with them. They can trade it in for dwarven currency at a discounted exchange rate in our favor, or they can take trade goods with them that we've been stockpiling at full price. We have an excess of salt and paper that has been building up that I'd like to get rid of, after all. In the very unlikely event that they somehow manage to actually buy all our trade goods and still have leftover money, then they can get dwarven currency at full price.
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Similar to last time, I'll be sending them with a chest for Kao with enough dwarven coin for sending a message back to us describing their journey and any current happenings in the world. Their trip will probably use up the rest of our waterproofing supplies, but given our reduced need for it, I think that's fine as long as they actually pay for them. They've worked hard, and while I don't know exactly how much wealth they've stored up, they tend to party and eat a lot so I really don't know exactly what to expect.
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I ended up working on the pylons for the remainder of spring, and finished the 12-foot mana crystal growth apparatus. With the crystal apparatus done, I'm no longer on a crunch for time for that. The cableway isn't quite done yet at least the pylons got finished, but having it finished isn't a requirement to get the crystal down from the cave, and in fact, I think I'm going to avoid bringing it down the cableway, just for safety reasons. The only things left to build before the cableway is ready to test are the bullwheel, tensioner, and the two stations, and to then string the cable between them. In between the seasons, I checked in on how everything has been going with the dwarves.
As it turns out, they did, in fact, have quite a bit of money saved up. Ultimately, they'll almost certainly have enough money saved to fill their ship with trade goods, and after talking with Shasta, I agreed that as long as their ship is reasonably sized, then the remainder of their money could be exchanged at full price after they stock up on paper first. I did some snooping and found that while they did party quite a bit, a lot of it was in their gambling hall which, as I think about it, they ran, meaning they kept the wealth from it, along with any wealth that they probably won off of demons who were using the facility.
That's actually going to end up being a nightmare to maintain once they're gone. On the other hand, if we just let the gambling hall go unmanaged or into disarray, it's hard to say what the demons who've developed an addiction to it will do. Some will probably get better, but others might get violent, that's also ignoring the fact that a large amount of our dwarven citizens could occasionally be seen there, though I'm not sure how much of that was just due to having a large amount of new dwarves to talk to.
If I get the cableway up and going before winter, I'm going to start testing it by hauling down a lot of the spent crystal slag from before. Then, given the situation we find ourselves in with the dwarves leaving, I think I'll detour to doing a little bit of testing with better methods for imp summoning.
I've been thinking for a little while now about the nature of summoning imps, as well as the situations I found myself in when I was an imp. Now, there are some differences, because I seem to be an aberration when it came to my imp form. All the other demons I talk to only have vague memories of emotions and hunger from when they were imps. Almost all of them were only an imp for a day or so, which probably contributes to that.
I've got a few tests I'd like to conduct on the matter such as summoning them in isolation with a plentiful supply of food, or, if possible, in an area with a mana infused pool of water. Ultimately, there are dozens of tests that could be conducted to see how the imps react, and whether it could improve our efficiency at turning imps into productive members of society. Currently, we only really get about 1 goblin out of about 6 or 7 summons, though they do end up a goblin pretty quickly.
Meanwhile, I didn't become a lesser earth demon for an entire year, and that was only after having killed one of our giant lizards. There is probably a balance to be struck related to that, and it'll probably be quite the long experiment as a result. We really don't need thousands of imps sitting around eating food for a year or two before becoming productive members of our society, which is what would happen if they all just waited to evolve until they were forced to do so and we summoned at our maximum rate.