Rebuilding Science in a Magic World

The return trip up the mountain felt different than it had all the times I'd made it in the past.  The sights were the same, and the path was familiar, but the emotions I felt along the way were sadness and regret.  This is partially self-imposed, to remind me to be more careful.  It might not just be myself that gets hurt if I do something reckless.

As such, I won't be growing any more large crystals for the foreseeable future.  I have a few projects that should be more mundane that I can work on to keep developing new useful objects.  I've got a lot of the unknown metal ore ready to smelt, the path down the mountain is only about half-way done, and I would like to properly grow spuds up here.

Given how much meat I was being given before, both Zeb and I were neglecting the spud terraces, but I can't say that we'll have a steady food supply from here on out, so adding that to our repertoire is a good idea.  For now, we have plenty of smoked meat from all the excess from the lizard siege, but we'll need a steady food source moving forward.

It's been a day since Zeb and I returned to the mountain home, which is once again my only home.  We got everything re-opened without any issues, and so we've decided on our course of action for the next few weeks.  It's actually still a bit chilly up here on the mountain, although the snow has at least melted.  Normally, we return up here a few weeks from now, after there has been more time for it to warm up.  As such, there is very little plant life growing right now.

For the next few weeks, we'll make sure that the spud terraces are kept in good condition, and get them organized appropriately to ensure that spud plants grow well.  One thing I'd like up here is a smokehouse of our own.  Food on a drying rack isn't nearly as good as smoked meats, and the smoked meat keeps longer.  I can't say I'll go hunting a lot, but I'd like to at least have the option up here, if the opportunity arises.  As such, I won't make it particularly large either.  I plan on carving it out of the mountain, like I did for Zeb's house.  I'll connect the hallway from Zeb's house to it, so it has access from both inside and outside the cave complex.

It took five days to carve out the new smokehouse area up here.  I sometimes forget how much faster I can work up here with access to the crystals to recharge my mana.  Which was the whole reason I attempted to make the giant crystal for the village in the first place.  With the smokehouse done so early, Zeb and I started to brainstorm projects to work on.

One option is to smelt all that mystery metal ore we've crushed up.  It's quite labor intensive though, and unless we can find a good flux agent, I don't know that it's useful in it's current form.  Maybe when the goblin envoy arrives, we can ask for some seashells to be brought up next month, and attempt to use them as a flux agent, although I'm hesitant to ask for anything right away.  It'd probably be better to wait a little while before I ask for anything to be brought up to me.

A second option is to work on the path up the mountain.  Finishing that would at least make the trip easier for the goblin envoys that come visit, and might help repair my image among at least a few of the goblins.

The third project has some potential, but is a project that rivals the reservoir in the village in scale.  The idea is to build a new reservoir up here, well above the cave entrance, with the purpose of using it to harness free mechanical energy from rain and snow.  By digging out a large reservoir a few hundred feet up the mountain, we could pipe the water down all that vertical distance before having it spin a turbine blade, utilizing all the gravitational potential energy.  The difference between this and the reservoir in the village is that there isn't a continuous stream up here, so all the water would be collected from snow melt and rain.

A fourth idea that I didn't discuss with Zeb, but one I'm interested in, is leaving the cave for a while, and exploring.  Since Zeb isn't as skilled in combat, this is something that I'd be doing alone.  I wouldn't be doing this right away either, but potentially after we finish one of the other ideas I'd consider it.  After all, I've only really been in my small local area here.  I've explored a little years ago, but I really would like to have a better lay of the land here.  It's only a few thousand feet to the summit of the mountain from here as far as I can tell, so that itself would only take a day or so to make the round trip.

Zeb and I decided to work on the path between the goblin village and here.  We've been working on it for the past eleven days now.  It'll make the goblin's trip up here better, and it's something the goblins are already alright with me working on.  The other two projects are new to the goblins, so we decided it would be best to keep from potentially feeding any political motivations of the goblins opposed to new projects.  As for the idea of exploring, I haven't brought it up yet with Zeb.  I also want to let the goblin envoys know, so that if I'm missing, they aren't suddenly concerned.

The goblin envoys arrive tomorrow, and I'm actually thinking about at least going up to explore the peak first.  As I've been working on the path, I've found myself craving the change of pace, and to do something new.  As such, tonight, I'll bring it up with Zeb, and tomorrow I'll let the envoys know that's what I plan on doing.  I doubt anyone will care about it, considering it's not that far.  However, after that, I'll plan out what I want to explore moving forward based on what I can see from the peak.

The path itself is coming along well.  I estimated last year that it'd take another year of work to complete, and I'm shortening my estimate now to about six months.  I've got two reasons I'm shortening my estimate.  The first is that both myself and Zeb have better mana capacities than I was expecting when I made the estimate, largely due to the events of the lizard siege.  The second reason is that I wasn't planning on working on it full time before.  I was planning for only working on it in off time, and while I had no other projects to work on.

The goblin envoys didn't seem to care if I went up the mountain to see the summit.  Zeb said he wants to come along, and I almost said no, but I figure for a day trip, it'll be fine.  We also got news that the goblins are still working on the path from their side as well, so I'm shortening the estimate to between four and five months, depending on how effectively their side works.  I'm sure it'll be nice for those travelling up the mountain to not have to trudge through forests to make it up here.  In some ways, it makes me feel a bit less like I'm exiled, and more like I'm just living outside city limits.

I'm not sure when exactly we'll go up to the summit of the mountain.  I'm trying to wait for a cloudless day, so that I have as much of a view as possible.  Until then, we'll just keep working on the path up.  We've been felling more trees along the path as well, and at this point, they're getting too far to haul all up in one go, so they've started to pile up.  When I'm waiting for my mana to recharge, I'll either haul some wood back up the mountain to use crystals to recharge, or process the trees to make logs that I can haul along the path.  Once the entire path is done, it should only take a few days to haul all the remaining wood either up or down, since we'll be able to use carts to move it from one section to the next, until it reaches its destination. 

Until that point though, I want the wood to be covered, so it doesn't rot from rain.  As such, I'm considering building an intermediate depot along the path, where materials could be stored.  I'm not sure if it'll get much use outside of this particular situation, but since I'd rather not waste a bunch of wood now, so I'm going to start on it at the next stop in the path.