Rebuilding Science in a Magic World

The last three days have been spent digging out the other major points of interest from the survey.  Namely the two layer changes that I identified before.  The large one near the entrance revealed a less dense stone which seemed to be composed of a larger percentage of lightstone that I was working with before.  Initially I wasn't sure if it was lightstone or just a similar color, but after doing some manual separation, and doing some basic tests like density and hardness, it seems to just be lightstone.  Of course there are other minerals mixed in as well that I did some basic tests on.

The other minerals that aren't lightstone in the mix sadly didn't seem to have any better properties than the lightstone itself for any of the purposes I currently have.  The only bit that was of interest of the minerals mixed in that stone was some reddish-brown toned stone, although it was softer than lightstone, but the color could at least be used to expand the color of things I make with stone.  There is a decent chance of that happening as well, since I'll probably be using this stone to make lightstone from now on.

The second layer change that I inspected was less immediately useful, but I suspect it might be valuable.  The layer seems composed of a very dark, fine-grained rock.  The bit that I picked up in the survey actually seems to continue for a while, and I just barely picked up a bulge in the layer with tectonic sense before.  The rock itself is softer than lightstone, but what makes it unique is its density.  It's very dense.  So dense that I suspect it might be very metal rich.  Now what metal it's rich in, I can't tell.  I'd need an entire smeltery to figure that out.  While it could be useful, it could also be a dud.  I've put it on a list of things to look into in the future, but for now I won't work on it.

As for right now, I'm actually getting close to breaching the largest bubble I detected from the survey.  The one that overlapped three of the survey points that has crystals in it.  I'm only a foot or so from breaching the bubble itself now, and I'm being careful as I work to give myself plenty of room in case of any emergency.  The small bubbles I've run into before haven't been an issue, but you never know.

As I get even closer to breaking into the bubble, suddenly, a bit of the rock between the bubble and me cracks, and starts hissing.  My initial fear is that there is gas leaking from it.  Before I leave I want to at least see how much pressure there is, so I move my hand in front of the crack.  I'm surprised by the fact that I don't feel any gasses moving.  I move my hand on top of the crack, and can feel a slight suction force.  I guess there isn't escaping gas then, but instead there is a vacuum in the bubble.  I open the hole more to help the bubble be filled with air.

After a bit, the air stops filling into the large bubble.  I open the hole large enough to fit into the bubble.  The bubble itself is quite massive.  I picked it up on three different survey points, so I knew it would be big, but it's nearly 30 feet in diameter, and all along the edges, crystals are embedded in the walls.  While most of them are small, some closer to the bottom are actually decently sized, including one that is probably 20% larger than the largest I've seen so far.  All things considered, it was a somewhat fruitful endeavor excavating this bubble.  I grab the extra large crystal, and leave the bubble and head back to my house, dropping the crystal off in the charging room.  Given the crystal that I found in that bubble, I think I'll look through the other crystal bubbles from the survey as well.

Well, the other 28 bubbles with crystals took ten days to dig into, and while many had vacuums of varying degrees, it seems like the smaller the bubble, the less the vacuum.  The size of the bubble also seemed to limit the crystal sizes as well, as none of the other bubbles had any giant crystals in them, which made it a bit of a disappointment.  I did get some medium sized ones, and there are tons of small and tiny crystals in them, but I left them in place.  Tomorrow, Zaka is going to return, so I've been busy cleaning up the cavern for most of today in preparation.  I'll also need to finish making some lightstone bricks to send back with Zaka and the goblins.

Zaka's visit went by fairly fast, and he left with three new goblins.  It seems like the village is doing fine, although apparently one of the new goblins was killed by a lizard again, so Zaka is a little frustrated by that.  He's apparently debating going out with the hunters to try to deal with any nearby lizards he can find.  I can't really blame him when the lizards keep killing goblins like they have been since I've known them.  I wish him the best of luck as he leaves, and send them off, each carrying a lightstone brick to bring back to the village.

As for projects to work on, I've decided that I will build a furnace up here.  Since I have copper anyway, it'll help with shaping that, and I can also try to find out if that rock is actually a viable metal ore or not.  Of course, first Zeb and I will be dealing with the dead imps.  I also need to expand the new storage area to hold more wood, extra stone, and ores.

I'll also need to make a charcoal kiln to convert the wood into charcoal, which will be necessary to actually heat a forge to high enough temperatures to melt metals down.  All these constructions will actually take quite a while, and while I'm at it, I'll need more wood, so I'll start the process of cutting down some trees.  I'll probably let Zeb cut some of them down as well so he can gain some levels.

The charcoal kiln didn't take long to make.  If my memory serves me, it should work, otherwise I'll need to make some adjustments.  A charcoal kiln is basically made by burning wood in an oxygen poor environment, so you just start the wood burning, then close off all the oxygen, and wait for the process to end.  Thanks to stone shaping, the construction didn't actually take all that long for it, only two days.  It's fairly large, with the inside being slightly taller than me, so I can easily pile the wood up inside it.  It has a hole at the top, and a few holes along the side.  I've made plugs that can be used to close the side holes, as well as a larger plug for the top hole, and a set of stairs up to the top hole.  Unfortunately, I don't have quite enough wood yet without completely depleting my stores of wood, so it'll be a little while before I can start a batch in it.  Plus, it has still been raining a lot, so I'll need to let the wood dry out in the cave for a little while before I can use it anyway.

It's been another six days, and I've fashioned a crude forge to use for basic metal heating and testing in an area just beside my house built into the mountainside.  The forge isn't actually that large, since it's manpower operated.  The feature I'm most proud of for it is a crank and gear operated impeller to drive extra air into the forge to drive the fire temperature up.  Some basic testing without any fire though led to some modifications of the design, and the inclusion of a flywheel as part of the design.  In practice, keeping a constant stream of air with just a crank was quite hard, so the flywheel helps to make the airflow more steady, albeit making it harder to initially get up to speed.

I'm still a ways from getting the storage area expanded to the level I want it at however.  I've been neglecting working on it in favor of these more interesting projects, but now I really do need to get it finished, so I'll be focusing on that next.  A big part of the problem with expanding the storage area is getting rid of the extra stone produced.  I'm thinking that I might actually start building that stairway down the mountain back to the goblin village as a way to get rid of the excess stone.  It won't make it very far, but it's better than adding to the rubble pile that I already have.