Rebuilding Science in a Magic World

While I've been wrapped up in my own projects, there has been quite a few developments within the city.  Zeb's been busy with new construction, and he's already gotten about one-fifth of the population moved into new housing outside of the city center.  We've also had a few more goblins evolve.  A few of the fishergoblins have become hobgoblins, one of the construction goblins that we've had for some time became a lesser earth demon, and we had one goblin who has been doing a lot of hauling jobs turn into the same gorilla like demon that Kaga turned into. 

There was a little bit of a commotion about him taking jobs at city hall as a result of his improved ability, so I stepped in to say that if he can haul twice as much as anyone else, then he can be paid twice as much.  Since he can single handedly pull a cart, which is normally a two person job, I think that's fair.  He's obviously also likely to be useful for other projects where his immense strength is useful, and will probably get special pay for those as well.

The market also seems more stable now, and it isn't uncommon to see goblins doing some form of apprenticeship or basic labor in employment of any of the craftsgoblins, fishergoblins, or Karsh.  Which is exactly where I wanted things to go when I implemented currency.  There are still goblins who only work as much as they need to survive, but it's better than the distribution of labor we had before, where large swaths of the population didn't work at all.

I myself am just doing random tasks to pass the time until it comes time to sheer the bargas so I can attempt felt making, which is one of the last steps before we can make paper at scale.  We won't get much felt this cycle, given that we don't have many bargas, but the calves were born recently, so our herds are slowly growing.  We'll probably keep all the females and two of the males, and the rest of the males we'll butcher when they are fully grown.

Ultimately, I'm thinking about talking to Zeb about the idea of building a basic school building.  Unlike humans, demons mature quickly and goblins seem to pick up skills pretty fast when they're younger.  So a normal school won't work.  Instead, I'm thinking it should be something like a job academy.  Right now we have optional apprenticeships, which let some goblins observe different jobs.  As the number of jobs grows, and we keep learning about new traits, magics, and evolutions, I feel like it would be beneficial to educate the new goblins on all these options, so they not only know what they can do, but how they can achieve those goals.

The set we know the most about is lesser earth demons, mostly because I've documented a lot of it as I was going through prestiges, but also from empirical results based on all the goblins in the construction crew.  I also have a decent idea of what it takes to become a hobgoblin, a troll, and a demon gorilla, although those aren't quite as set in stone.  So I'd like to educate fresh goblins on what sort of jobs and tasks they can do to reach those heights while simultaneously having them report back when they prestige or evolve.  That way we can collect more extensive data on what sort of activities lead to different abilities.  Maybe I'll have to implement some kind of information bounty where we pay them to report when these things happen.

All this culminates in needing someone who can write and read, which means I'll be waiting for some time for the goblins who are learning dwarvish to return.  I myself will probably need to learn dwarvish as well, considering how much we're integrating it into our society.  What I'll probably do is run this academy for a time while I learn dwarvish.  It'll probably be something where we run it for a few days a month to get all the new goblins from that month up to speed, and then set certain days for reporting, so it won't be a full time job, at least initially.

I checked in with Zeb and then Zaka for permission to build an academy in the village, and was given permission.  It'll still probably be next year before we start summoning new goblins again, so I'm not in a rush to finish the building.  I'm planning on having it be a simple three room building.  One room will be large to function as something of a lecture hall where information can be taught.  Another will be an office connected to this room, with it's own external door where people can come in to report information related to their prestiges or evolutions.  The final room will connect to both of the other rooms, will lack windows, and ultimately will act as an intermediate storage location for all the reported information gathered about prestiging and evolution.

Overall, it's actually a fairly simple building, and I'm already about half-way done with it after a week of work.  Of course, once the building itself is done, there are a lot of different furniture pieces that I want to make for the space.  I'd like filing cabinets, desks, shelves, and chairs, and all those will take time to make.  I'd also like to tinker with a dehumidifier design for the room using quicklime, once the other furniture is in place.

After another two weeks, all the construction except the quicklime dehumidifier has been completed.  It's a little finicky, since the quicklime gives off heat as it absorbs moisture, and it reacts to form slaked lime, which has a higher volume.  The idea I've come up with is essentially a box with slits in it that will house trays with quicklime that are about an inch and a half deep, and only half filled with quicklime, which can be replaced and regenerated as needed.  One thing I wish is that this room could have windows made of glass.  Right now, the doors need to be open to let in limited amounts of light, which causes the desiccant to get used up more quickly.

I've thought about glass a few times, but we have an issue with that here.  These islands are volcanic, and don't have a ready supply of quartz.  The beaches here therefore aren't actually silica sand at all, but instead are crushed shells, which means in a pinch we could use it to make more lime, but also means we don't have a good source of silica to make glass with.  It wouldn't be impossible, as plenty of volcanic rocks are rich in silicon dioxide, and could be used to make glass, but we'd have to process them.  We also lack soda ash, a necessary ingredient to glass making, especially when dealing with rougher starting materials.

Soda ash is a little difficult to get in our current situation, but not impossible.  Hypothetically, there might be ocean plant life that is a good source of it.  Likewise, some of the plants on the island here might be a decent source of it.  It could be produced chemically, but without electricity and vast amounts of energy, that's not particularly viable.  So if we want glass, we'll need to do some research into ocean plant life as the best bet.

It had been a while since I did work at the artificial tide pools, although this time I'm not working on them directly.  I've spend the last six days carving out a stairwell on the far side of the bay that drops down to the sea rather than into the bay.  Given the tidal changes here, I'm not sure exactly what sort of plants I'll find, but today should be the day I find some.  Once we're at the lowest tide, I'm going to start searching for plants.  There are some mossy plants that grow on the rocks just below the high tide mark, but they're so small that I doubt I could get much soda ash at all from them, even if they were rich with it, plus they're somewhat hard to remove, making it a bit of a waste of time.

I've brought a spear with me on this expedition, due to my concerns with larger sea life.  I've seen at least one large sea creature trapped in our tide pools before, and I'd rather not run into it or something worse without a weapon.  I'm a bit out of my depth in the ocean as well.  I sink.  I noticed this before in the baths, but it hasn't ever come up as a concern until now.  On the plus side, I don't sink by much, so I can swim up if I need to.

Once I submerged myself in the ocean water, initially, my eyes stung and everything was quite blurry.  After a minute or so though, my eyes got used to it, and I was able to see underwater.  So I took one final breath of air and looked about.  There sure was a lot to take in.  The water was actually quite pristine, so I could see some distance. There were a few schools of fish swimming about, of which I recognized all of them from our various meals.  There were also a few kinds of sea plants growing.

One type looked quite promising, the majority of the mass of the plant floated just below the water surface, with large leaves centered about a small float sac.  The rest of the plant trailed down like a vine to the seafloor with small leaves forming small rings going downward.  At the bottom, the vine coiled haphazardly for each plant.  One vine would provide a substantial amount of mass, so I gathered one and returned to the coast to place it in my basket before returning underwater.

There was also what seemed to be sea grass growing for a few dozen yards or so along the descent into the deeper ocean.  It didn't grow very tall, and each individual plant was quite small, but I gathered some of it as well, and placed it in my basket alongside the floating vine plant.

The final kind of plant like creature I left alone.  It formed a mesh across a section of the rocks in an area underneath some of the floating vine plants.  It wasn't green, and inside it's mesh, I could see a fish that was partially decayed and covered in many tiny roots.  It may not even be a plant, it could be some other form of life, and quite frankly, I don't know if it scavenges, or if it killed that fish, so I left it alone.

With the two species gathered, I returned with my basket to attempt to recover soda ash from the plants.