Rebuilding Science in a Magic World

Today, Zaka should arrive.  Other soaked liquid tests weren't as successful as the initial one.  Non-bark wood behaved similarly to the bark wood, if a little less viscous.  Other plants didn't seem to produce any meaningful results or interesting effects.  So, for today, we've got some of the boiled bark water set up so that Zaka can experience that as well.

A little later in the afternoon, Zaka and one other goblin arrive.  This time they didn't bring any extra meat with them.  According to Zaka, they didn't have excess meat this time, so they didn't bring any.  Not a big deal, but we've gotten a little used to having free meat up here, so its going to be a little weird going back to a completely vegetable diet for a little while.  Not long after he arrives, we show him and the other goblin down to the crystal tank, and show him briefly how to use it.  I myself am interested in just how much mana this crystal stores.  I haven't tried fully draining it, having spent my time testing other aspects of the intermediary liquids instead.

So, today will be a bit of an introductory test of the full storage capacity.  I have Zaka submerge his whole arm in the tank, and warn him not to actually touch the crystal inside.  Afterwards, he can start casting.  I also have since put a small propeller in the tank with some axles and gears to let us just turn a crank to keep the inside of the tank somewhat turbulent.  Zeb will be in charge of turning that while I keep count of the fireballs.

Zaka gets through his first 15 fireballs in less than ten seconds.  Then the pace slows down to a fireball every few seconds.  Which is to be expected, since the regen rate isn't nearly as fast as actually touching a crystal, but it's still faster than surface passive regen.  We keep going though, and the seconds turn to minutes.  As the minutes drag on, it has gotten noticeably warm in the cave.  We've long since passed 300 fireballs so far, and the resulting heat has spread throughout the area.

After what feels like forever, the crystal has finally depleted.  419 Fireballs.  That is significantly more fireballs than last time.  Its so warm in the area now that we all quickly agree to head back up to the surface right away.  Zaka is impressed by our ability to find a way around the previous issue of injuring ourselves with the crystal, although he's slightly disappointed by the non-instantaneous recharging he enjoyed with previous crystals.  

I suppose, in theory, if you submerged yourself in a well circulated bath with the crystal submerged nearby, you could probably get some pretty fast regen.  Of course, you'd still have to return to the location of the bath, but it would probably beat waiting a long time to recharge a large amount of mana.

After a short rest, Zaka and the other goblin head back down the mountain, carrying more lightstone again.  Next time we see each other, Zeb and I will be returning to the village for the winter.

We let the crystal recharge overnight, and today, we're giving it a repeat test of yesterday's full draining.  This time, I'll be calculating the actual mana value of the crystal based on my own mana usage.  Given the slower rate, there isn't a reason for me to just use earth spike, so instead, I'll be using mana to do various stone-shaping tasks.  We've brought down plenty of buckets of material for making lightstone, as well as the metal ore to break down.  If I happen to finish all of it before we run the crystal out, then I'll use earth spike to drain the rest out.

Yesterday's test resulted in lots of lightstone and crushed ore.  I did end up using earth spike to drain quite a bit of mana as well.  The total mana the crystal held was 20,215.  Which puts it at more than 16 times the capacity of a crystal half the height.  Which seems to indicate that the crystal's mana storage increases with the fourth power of its height.  Since volume increases with the third power relative to height, there must be an extra factor involved in just how much mana a crystal can store.  This crystal is a little over two feet tall.  The next crystal size I wanted to check is three feet, after seeing if this one can survive making it's way to the surface.  Of course, I'd still need to put it into a container, so if it breaks down, we don't lose all the material, and moving it while in a container means I'll need to finish the rail and cart system in the cave.  Given all of that, I need to get finished with the projects I have that are waiting.

It's been just over two weeks of work, and the cart system is now finished up, complete with carts that use wooden block brakes.  They aren't perfect, but it gives the whole system extra resistance to at least not runaway on the way down into the cave.  The hard part is pushing the cart up from the cave.  I'm not certain this will be useful for anyone without stone shaping, since when I get tired while pushing, I can use stone shape to completely stop the cart.  At the very least, they should be useful for me.

For the mountain, there is a better solution that isn't possible in the cave.  The cave has too many twists and turns, so we're limited to actually pushing.  On the mountain though, we can make long straightaways such that winch systems could be set up with thick rope.  Then even heavy carts could be winched up by anyone, and likewise lowered.  I'm glad I'm thinking about this now, rather than after we build more of the stairway down the mountain.  This way, we can keep it in mind, and plan the path more deliberately to keep the slope shallow.

While I'd like to see if the crystal survives the surface now, I still need to wait until the end of the month to check the efficacy of the aged boiled bark water.  So, instead, I'll be finishing the terrace area outside for collecting water, along with the drainage from the nearby area.  With any extra time, I'd also like to start to plan out the path down the mountain, so any future stair work is productive.  We'll start with a landing near the cave entrance so that carts can easily be loaded and unloaded there.  Which means our existing stair work is probably wasted, since it was following the old path that the goblins took up and down the mountain, which from my own experience is already too steep to run carts alongside.

Another 10 days, and I've got the outside finished up to collect water for future use as needed.  All that excess stone has been piled up for now, since we have yet to start planning out the new path down the mountain.  However, we're at the point right now where I'm ready to test the aged bark water.

As luck would have it, if there is a difference in its performance after a month, it's too small for me to notice without a precise clock.  Which is a nice boon.  It'd be unfortunate if it required new batches all the time.

After we clean this up, we'll start putting things away for winter.  Then with the remaining time, we can start trying to plot a new path down the mountain, although I doubt we'll make it that far in the remaining four days before we head back down to the goblin village ourselves.

Well, we've done quite a bit of pathfinding.  We try to keep roughly to the existing path, since we know that leads back down, but we've had to come up with a lot of alternative routes.  Thankfully, if you want to reduce the slope along a mountainside, if you can just travel more laterally, that will reduce the vertical distance travelled.  Since we're already planning on building stairs, what this is actually going to entail is cutting some of the mountainside out to make a flat path.  Then, by zig-zagging along the mountain, we actually can keep to the original path to some degree.  Then we can actually cut secondary stairs that have a higher slope up a more direct path between the zig-zagging cart path in places where it is possible to do so.

This whole thing is a huge endeavor though.  We've started putting stone stakes into the ground at ends of zig-zags, so we can mark the future path, even if we can't see one from the other due to plants in the way.  We've only marked the path down to about a third of the way down now.  The hope is that this is below the snow line, so that we can keep working on this over the winter.  I myself will be quite busy with building the dam, but while I'm waiting for my mana to regenerate, I'm hoping to keep the project going.

While I drive a stake into the mountainside, I hear some rustling from a little ways away.  I cautiously approach, and run into Zaka and one other goblin.  He's a little surprised to run into me this far down, and since Zeb is up at the top of the mountain, we're not able to easily communicate, but I draw a crude picture on a stone tablet to approximately show him we're trying to mark a new path down the mountain.

After we meet back up with Zeb, Zeb explains what we're working on in more detail before we gather our things, close our doors and windows up, and pack ourselves with as much lightstone as we can before starting the return path down to the village.