Rebuilding Science in a Magic World

Another three weeks, and we're closing in on the top of the dam, at 34 feet tall now.  With the snow melt coming down the mountain the past few days, the water level in the reservoir has been steadily emptying out at the 5 foot valve.  The first valve didn't quite let enough out to keep up with the melt, but the second valve is keeping up.  If I closed the top valve, the bottom valve would keep up eventually once the depth gets only a few feet higher, but right now, I'd like to not worry about the levels at all in the dam until the top is finished.

I also finished a large covered area to store all of the bark and stripped logs.  I've been spending my downtime cutting those stripped logs into reasonable shapes and sizes to make it easier to use and store.  There is still a lot of tree trunks to process despite my work though.  I only process between one and three trees a day in my downtime depending on their size, so I haven't gotten through all that much actually compared to the pile of over one hundred I started with.  That's fine though, since, more than anything, it's just something to do that doesn't use mana.

I'm hoping that I finish the dam before the next eclipse.  Then I'll just have to tell Zaka to keep an eye on it and let me know how things are going with it when he visits.  The biggest concern is either of the valves clogging with debris.  So far, that hasn't been an issue, but it's one of those things that isn't an issue until it is.

Twenty-two days, and I've finished the dam.  Getting to the forty feet was pretty quick, but the last two weeks and some change were spent building the spillway so that the dam doesn't randomly overflow and cause damage when that happens.  Almost half the wood has been split or cut into manageable logs now as well.  I've got six days left now before Zeb and I plan on going up the mountain again.  In that time, I'd like to build at least one workshop for one of the goblins.

I don't have quite enough time to teach the goblin how to make leather from hide, since it is a long process.  I'll save his workshop and teaching for next winter, and I'll make the basket weaver a shop if they want it this time.

When I asked if they wanted their own workshop, they seemed interested, although they were more interested in having special tools made for them.  As a consequence, their workshop is actually pretty plain, with just lots of open space for storing materials and finished products.  The time I saved on making the building has been spent making them a few tools that they requested.  Although most of the tools weren't direct requests, instead they told us what they wanted a tool to do, and we had to come up with a tool.

The handful of tools we came up with were shears of a few sizes, a few small poles for pushing material, and some poles with an open hole at the end to push material through.  That, and two sizes of standing bowls for them to work around.  I'm sure they'll need more tools at some point, but for now, this is what they have.  It reminds me of when we gave Kaga some basic tools, then came back and ended up making him some more specialized tools.  I hope that when we return, they have requests for lots of specialty tools, because it means their work is improving.

In exchange for making all this for them, I presented them the idea for a basket backpack that I wanted made.  I told them to send them up with Zaka when they're done, and to make an extra one for him as well in addition to the two for Zeb and I.

All this work brought us to one day before we return up the mountain, so I'm going to spend the one extra day looking into fishing as a resource.  I haven't seen any fish in the stream, but the stream itself is pretty small most of the year, and higher up it's very rough terrain, and it runs directly into the ocean.  I haven't checked the ocean for salinity yet, but I presume it has some degree of salt in it, as any standing body of water and active volcanism would likely dissolve salts over time.

This is easy enough to check though, so tomorrow, I'll go do just that.

I was ready for a lot of things when I came to check the ocean today, but not this.  I returned to the place I first saw the ocean stretching out along the beach when Zaka first went hunting with me.  I'm a few miles from the village right now.  Before, the beach was a few dozen feet long, and seemed to curve in a semi-circle, like a natural bay area, with rocky hills extending down on either side.  Further indicating the goblin village is inside a natural valley.

What I see now though, is that the water is hundreds of feet out.  The beach steepens, and turns into a rockier basin running out into the ocean as a much thinner patch of water.  Alarm bells are going off in my head.  Is it a tsunami?

I turn and run back to the village as quickly as I can.  I find Zeb as fast as I can, we have to get Zaka to evacuate the villagers.

We quickly find him, and explain the situation, but he just gives a hearty laugh.

"The big water does that every day.  It goes up and down great distances.  I've seen that area completely emptied down to the rock many times."  He says,  "When the moon is overhead, the water is high."

I mean, okay.  Lets think about this for a minute.  The moon here is much bigger, or closer, or both which probably drives the tides much stronger than they would on earth.  I suppose that explains why they don't go fishing though.  You could easily find yourself caught at sea without an easy way to return, plus any riptides would probably be very strong.

Well, knowing that it isn't a tsunami about to rip through the area means I can go back and observe the area a little more.  I make my way back out to the clearing to look into the area more.

One interesting feature is the stream from the village.  It runs down the beach, then the rocks, and finally into what is now a fairly small strip of water running out into the ocean over fifty feet down from my location.  The whole area maintains its U-shape of a bay as it reduces down to the small area that the water drains out from.

Alright, well that means that storm surges from any future hurricanes are unlikely to be a threat unless it's pretty close to high tide already.  I do still wonder if there are fish though, or at least some sea creatures that could be caught and eaten.  I have a small idea of something to potentially be useful for this already, but without knowing anything about the ocean here, it's useless to consider.

One thing that probably isn't useless though is to trek around the edge of the bay and start cutting stairs down the rocky edge towards the bottom.  I won't make it all the way down today, but considering I'll just be waiting for the tides to start to come back in anyway, I may as well be doing something.

After quite a few hours, I've made it about twenty feet, while being extra careful to make the stairs have a railing embedded in the rock, and a second very thick wall with another railing.  I would hate to slip and fall, considering the distance and rocks here.  The reason I'm halting here is that the tide has reached the level I'm at now.  I don't notice anything too dangerous about the water itself.  I decide to sit on the bottom step and submerge my feet into the water.  When I do, I notice a very slight, but noticeable feeling, and when I check my mana, it seems like it is recharging very slightly faster than normal.

Well, I did figure out that water itself does work as a mana conduit, albeit a weak one, so I suppose I shouldn't be that surprised that it's giving me some recharging.  Now, I've already estimated that mana is coming from either one or both of the suns in the sky, because mana regeneration heavily drops during eclipses, so I'm guessing the water is absorbing excess mana, and then I'm benefiting from that source right now.

Another quick test, or rather, a taste test, and sure enough, the ocean is salty here.  I noticed occasional shells scattered on the beach and in the rocks while I was looking about, so at the very least some sea creatures make shells.  I decide to pull my feet out of the water, and just observe the water in this area for a while.  I'm mainly keeping a lookout for any sea life.

After a little over an hour, I've seen three creatures.  The first, a small-ish eel like creature swimming along.  It was only about a foot long, and maybe an inch wide or a little less.  The second, is an interesting shape, a horizontally oriented fish shape.  Almost like a flounder or a ray of some kind, but thicker.  It was about three feet long, and a foot wide.  The third one looked like a bit like a large shrimp mixed with a squid, and it is sticking out from a long cone shell.  The shell itself was a little shorter than a foot long, and the creature sticking out from it reached another half foot out.  The shell at its widest was only a few inches.

Overall, it seems like there is life in the ocean, the real question from what I've seen, is if any of it is even edible.  Well, first you'd have to catch it.  A problem for the future, not for now.