Rebuilding Science in a Magic World

I want to place a total of twenty ballistae on the walls around the village.  For each, I'll need around 400 cubic feet of stone to improve the wall near it.  Initially I thought I'd just make the expanded wall section solid, but after thinking about it for a bit, I think making the semi-circular expansion both larger and hollow with a stairway down inside will be the better option.  That way ammo and spare parts can be stored directly underneath the ballistae themselves.

As for getting that 8000 total cubic feet of stone, I said I had an idea.  I want to carve another tunnel.  This time, the tunnel is going to be headed up the mountain, rather than down.  The purpose?  A second escape route.  I mentioned that heading up the mountain is probably the safer bet if we had to flee the village, and that's exactly what I want to make a way to do.  The tunnel is planned to be about 4 feet wide by 6 and a half feet tall.  Which means it'll run only about 300 feet by the time I have enough stone for the wall sections.  We'll probably have to go a bit further as well though, since more stone will also be needed for the new apartment buildings.  I don't want the tunnel to end there though.  I'd like if it could go much further before surfacing, so for now, it'll just be a dead end.

Overall though, I don't actually expect the construction to take too long.  I should be able to cut quite a bit of stone in a day, and with some goblins helping haul everything to the construction sites, I suspect that my own travel time to and from the bathhouse to recharge mana will actually be one of the biggest time consumers on the project.

I was surprised by how fast we actually completed these additions to the walls of the village.  A mere ten days is all it took.  Of course, that isn't including the ballistae.  Right now the carpenter is actually still working on the second trebuchet, so it'll actually be quite a while before any of the ballistae are made.  Although I myself am quite interested in building them, things have been quiet, and most of the village has gotten quite complacent again.  Ultimately, I want to know if there actually is a threat lurking somewhere on the island.

My demon language has come along somewhat in the last few months, which obviously has come in handy for construction, as I haven't needed Zeb to translate everything for me.  It's also helped me build rapport with the goblins, which was something that I hadn't really considered as a cause for the strife between the goblins and myself before.  To help build that rapport even more and for safety reasons, I want to bring three or four goblins with me on my short exploration mission.

By leaving Zeb in the village, the new apartments can also get more construction done, plus I can trust him to keep an eye on the prisoner situation.  Speaking of the prisoners, they've become much more depressed in the jail cell lately.  Is it the five stages of grief, or something along those lines?  Sure seems like it.  I mean, I guess they're in a pretty bad situation.  If they cooperated, they wouldn't be in there though.  They've chosen this path for themselves to some degree, but the opportunity for them to come around and cooperate is still on the table, if they'll accept it.

By tomorrow I plan on having the goblins selected and beginning our exploration trip.

Today we carefully did the first stage of the exploration trip.  Which simply involved slowly using the road to return up to my cave home.  After we checked that it was safe, and that no one was hiding inside somewhere, we stayed the night.  We took about twice as long to actually reach the cave house as normal because we were trying to remain stealthy on our way up.  This left us with an entire half a day to spend at the cave house.  The goblins were content to just relax, so I let them.  I myself decided to take the opportunity to weed as much of the terraces as I could, and then harvested some spuds for us to eat for dinner.

The intent for the next few days is to use the cave house as a base of operations.  Since we're quite high up, there are occasional clearings which make seeing large swaths of the island possible.  Our goal is to find these clearings, and use them to at least get a cursory look at any changes to the island.

We went to the first clearing today.  This was one that I've known about for a long time, but I haven't come back to in years.  It's the area where I first found the slightly sweet flowers that I've used for seasoning on occasion.  Ultimately, if you head up through the difficult rocky terrain for a bit, you end up above the tree line by a few dozen feet, and get a good view of the island from there.

In fact, while up here, I was able to see the main goblin village.  Although hard to tell, I think I also spotted the second goblin village.  It isn't nearly as pronounced though, and I couldn't spot any buildings, just the fact there seemed to be an area with fewer trees.  The main village has been clear cut in such a large area that I can clearly make out the rectangular city walls along with little dots inside it, which are the buildings.

Other than that though, I didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

In five additional days, we found two more clearings, and both didn't reveal anything out of the ordinary.  With that in mind, tomorrow the plan is to climb to the peak.  I know for certain that we can at least see every side of the island from there, although the view is from so high up that it doesn't tend to reveal much information.

Our trip up towards the peak today was far more fruitful than I imagined it would be.  First, we found not one, but two abandoned eagle nests.  Both were built in large rocky areas using large branches and trees as the base.  One of the nests also contained an exceptionally large number of bones that were goblin sized.  The other one also had a few bones, although not nearly as many as the first.

After that, when we reached the peak and walked around the rim of the mountain, I spotted something that was different from the last time I was up here.  On the far side of the island, opposite the valleys where the goblins live, things looked a bit different.  That area already didn't have nearly as thick of forests as the goblin side.  Now however, there is a large section near the coast where it looks like trees had been cut down and a makeshift fort was made with palisades.

To make it all the way down there would probably take a full day, maybe more.  After a discussion with the goblins, we've decided to start our trek down to investigate.  We should be able to make it to the fort a few hours before nightfall.  That should give us adequate time to scout from a distance to see if we spot anything.

We made our way down the mountain today towards the fort.  From a reasonably safe distance we kept watch.  No one entered, no one left.  By nightfall, no fires were set either.  We've retreated up the mountain a short distance to sleep for the night, tomorrow we'll observe for a few more hours, and if it looks clear, we'll attempt to enter the fort and see what is inside.

The fort ended up being abandoned, but it did leave us with some valuable clues.  While there were a few buildings inside, they were mostly makeshift structures made entirely of wood.  Two of the six had already collapsed, and there were very few items left inside.  The only things that were left were pieces of furniture that had clearly been made from the nearby trees that were also used to make the palisades. A quick count of makeshift beds gives an approximate headcount of 30 people.

A small path had also been cut between the fort and the ocean.  While there is evidence that small boats had been perched in the sand higher up the beach, any evidence of larger boats have been lost to the tides.

I recall from the first time I climbed to the mountain peak that the view of this beach stretched quite a distance with sand, but right now it seems fairly short.  This is just a hypothesis, but I think that this beach actually reaches a decent distance out under the drastic tides that this island experiences.

Whoever had been here has clearly packed up and left.  I'm tempted to burn the fort to the ground and lay traps everywhere, as an obstacle to any future landing parties, but if there is still a chance of peace talks, then I probably should refrain.  With this valuable new information, we decided it was time to return to the village.