Rebuilding Science in a Magic World

I've been hard at work for the last four weeks growing an even larger crystal in the new apparatus.  I'd say I'm about a third of the way to getting it to four feet tall.  Zeb doing other work alongside this process has been a big help as well.  In the evenings when I finish with my set of crystal stuff for the day, I've been cutting stone from an exploratory tunnel we're mining out from in the cavern.  It's already about 50 yards long, and at a slight decline in the mountain.  The stone from this has been a little bit of a pain to haul out to the front of the cave, but we've been managing.  

The path down the mountain is now about 100 feet long.  I did some napkin math from when we laid out the path, and the total linear length of the path is about 30 thousand feet.  Which means he's barely making a dent in the project himself working on it.  It'd take him almost fifty years to complete the work himself.  I don't plan on making him complete the work himself obviously though.  Right now he's making progress.  There will be sections where that progress speeds up, and others where it might slow down too.

Once the dam is fully complete, I'd like to transition to working on the path myself over the winter alongside building some buildings for the goblins in the town.  All that is months away now though.  Tomorrow, Zaka will be back again, so I want to have things cleaned up around here somewhat, so I'll be closing off the work tunnels, and hauling any loose stone out today, and then I'll help Zeb with the path for any remainder of the time.

Well, Zaka's visit was full of surprises.  He was using the backpack that was made for him when he visited, which he hauled up plenty of meat for us inside of.  Apparently he considered it payment for the backpack, since we had it made for him.  He had two other goblins accompanying him on this trip, and then he decided to summon imps again.  I was pretty glad that I decided to close off the inside tunnels the day before, so that I wouldn't have to hurry about doing that.

After he summoned imps and returned to the surface, he asked us about the piles of rocks outside the cave.  Since the pace of the path construction is much slower than the rate we've been cutting stone from inside the cave, there's been a buildup of stone, which has formed quite the pile.  When we told him what it was for, he offered to help us haul some of it down to where it's going to be used for work, which I was thankful for, and accepted his offer.  While he was busy summoning I'd already been spending most of the day working on the path alongside Zeb, so it was very appreciated.

As a result, I also got a firsthand look at just how strong Zaka is.  I had presumed that he was stronger than the average goblin by quite a lot since he was a hobgoblin, but I was surprised that he was easily hauling ten times the weight without breaking a sweat.  After a few hours of hauling, the sun was setting, so we called it quits on work for the day, and honestly, the help Zaka and the two goblins gave is probably going to save us quite a bit of work.

When he left with three new goblins the next day, he told us he'd bring some extra goblins to haul more stone on the next visit.  Apparently he considers the path up here to be a pretty worthwhile cause. Which, considering how often he traverses it, makes sense.

Another month of crystal growing, and I should get it to four feet tall before the end of next month.  Zeb made extra progress this month on the path, getting to 175 feet in total done now.  Zaka's returning tomorrow with extra labor to help hauling stone for the path, so I'm looking forward to having the extra help on that.  

Well, I don't know what I was expecting, but all this wasn't it.  Besides Zaka, there were three other goblins, and one monster.  That Monster is apparently Kaga.  He evolved.  The goblins have some demon word for what he is, but I'm just calling him a Demon Gorilla.  He doesn't have any magic apparently, but he's really strong.  Which, given his muscle mass, isn't surprising.  I mean, he looks like a nightmare version of a gorilla mixed with a man.

That said, he was incredibly helpful today.  I'm not sure exactly what Zaka did to have him come help, but I'm glad he was here.  They stuck around for an extra day working on the path.  Zeb directed work on the surface, with him and the other goblins digging out down to bedrock while Zaka hauled stone on the surface down to periodic spots along the path.  Kaga worked with me bringing more stone up to the surface from in the cavern, which actually was me cutting new stone out of the exploratory tunnel, and then Kaga running two carts full of stone all the way to the surface by himself.  I mean, each cart weighed easily over a ton, and seeing him push the carts up the tunnel and then up the cavern was an incredible sight.  He'd be back pretty quickly and I'd have two new carts ready.  I was even more shocked when he kept that pace up all day.

The exploratory tunnel ended up with a landing after an additional 50 yards, and then turns 150 degrees and continued for another fifty yards by the time we were done working.  The reason for the turn is we've hit a layer of the lightstone rich stone that I'd found before.  I wouldn't mind continuing down into that later, but I didn't really want the stone for the stairs suddenly changing their color, and I'm not certain if I'll find anything valuable in that layer of stone.  Preliminary tectonic sense in the existing tunnel tells me that there are crystal bubbles about, so I'll go back an open those up later when we don't have all this extra labor for just hauling stone for the path.

After a day and a half of hard labor, they set out back to the village.  Before they go, I let Zaka know that when he's back next time, I'll have a new crystal to test, so he has expectations for what his next visit will involve.

Five days before Zaka returns, and the crystal is ready.  I have Zeb help me load it into a cart and we push it up to the charging room level.  There, I start assembling a special tank for it to rest in.  Given its size, we're going to just keep it in the tank while we can.  I'm also concerned about moving it once it's charged.  The previous crystal made us feel a little warm, and overcharged our mana.  I'm concerned one of this size might actually cause serious harm if we directly touch it, even when we're fully charged.

This reminds me of stories of early nuclear work, where people died of cancer or radiation sickness at some point in their lives afterwards.  I'm just hoping we don't get some form of magic cancer from this, which in retrospect, I should have probably considered more heavily before starting this whole project.  One thing I am certain of, is if I was missing mana and directly touched this crystal when it was charged, I'd die.  Even if it was just a little mana, I'm fairly certain this would kill me, so we're going to need to be very careful while handling this once it's charged.

Well, the crystal doesn't seem to be fully charged yet, and Zaka is supposed to arrive tomorrow.  I think we'll just operate without it fully charged while we show him it tomorrow.  This does make me hopeful that it might be able to survive on the surface.  That'll be the next test after Zaka leaves.

The test with Zaka was... not good.  We loaded the tank up with the four times concentrated wood water, like we had with the other crystal, and when he used his fireball, the crystal arced through the water, and zapped him.  According to Zaka, it wasn't that painful, but I could have maybe anticipated that being an issue if I thought about it a little more.  We drained the fluid out, and replaced it with the unconcentrated wood water, and Zaka volunteered to keep going, so I let him.

Despite not being fully charged, the crystal sustained him casting for many hours.  I'm honestly not entirely sure how much mana it holds, but at this point, its a lot.  I already have pretty good data on how mana capacity of crystals seems to scale with the fourth power of their height, so I could get an approximation for its capacity already.  What I'm interested in now is any emergent properties, like arcing through the water, or the ability to not break down on the surface.  

Tomorrow, I'll drain any mana from it again, and we'll move it to the surface chamber to see if it breaks or not.