Rebuilding Science in a Magic World

Later that day, I sat down with the merchant to handle our trade requests.  First, we traded some excess salt and fish, followed by the amount of ingots necessary to pay for another year of tutelage for the goblins learning to write in dwarvish.  Then I let Karsh and his family again make certain requests for goods from their homeland.  Now that they're quite settled in, I think I should probably talk with them about what their plans are for their children.  Do they intend to send them back to their homeland when they get old enough to work, or would they rather work here?  I'd be more than willing to provide a workspace for them if any of them takes interest in anything.

After Karsh's family's requests were made, I added in more waterproofing materials, an order for whatever material they use for fermentation for making alcohol, and a request for another 6 bargas, one of which is to be a breeding male.  Hopefully, with that number, plus what we breed, we should be able to limit ourselves to only requesting one or two male bargas each year moving forward, and that's just to keep genetic diversity within the herds.

Speaking of which, the second generation of bargas have nearly matured, by this summer it should be time to butcher the males and re-sort the females.  Which means we'll get to make our first pass at leather from bargas, and that's also the time when you normally sheer their wool, so we'll get another big batch of wool to work with for processing.  It'll be nice to improve the quality of the clothes in the village through those methods.  After seeing Elora wearing her high quality clothing, I've realized that the fact that we wear ramshackle clothing probably leaves a bad impression on dignitaries, let alone anyone who might want to immigrate.

I still need to talk with Shasta about any immigrant applications for this year, but first, I want to hear from the merchant about rumors or attitudes on the continent about us.  The same three categories seem to be popular, although the ratio of them occurring and a bit of their nature has changed somewhat.

There still seem to be quite a few people who consider us to be some hostile force, but the rumors of us building up force to invade seem to have died down.  It's just conjecture, but my guess is that after a year with us not actually invading, people's concerns are slowly waning.  It's unlikely they'll immediately change their overall feelings, but the level of concern should continue reducing as long as we don't actually do anything violent.

The rumors about us living on a paradise have shifted somewhat.  It's no longer considered that everything here is great in those rumors, instead, it's just that we're sitting on a huge mineral and crystal deposit.  It sounds like rumors have spread that we were the ones who provided the crystal similar to ParTor that now sits within the coastal mountains of the dwarven country.  Since they installed that, we haven't had any new eagles arrive, so sending one there seems to have been the right choice.  Of course, I can't discount that the rumors becoming more realistic might be why Rathland has taken notice of us.  Well, that and the metal we've been shipping out are likely instigating factors.

The final category, that we're backwards savages, seems to be relatively unchanged, although the number who seem to believe that have diminished somewhat.  Likely due to the fact we're trading goods that require some amount of skill to use or make.  It's hard to call someone backwards savages when they've been shipping you high quality metal, or when they're clearly ordering waterproofing materials for construction.

I thanked the merchant for the information, and told him I'd have a gift of paper for him tomorrow prepared in the same way as Shasta's paper.  Considering how full the day has been, I figured I'd handle the immigration work with Shasta tomorrow, rather than dealing with that today.  Instead, I'll get the airtight paper crates prepared from stone for her and the merchant.

Considering these are stone crates, I should probably size them smaller than I initially thought.  It will mean more crates, but weight wise, it'll be more manageable given our low quality carts.  I know I wanted to wait and see if that goblin could improve the cart design on his own, but I think it might be worth encouraging him to improve it and let him ask me questions if he has any. 

There are a number of improvements which would make large scaling hauling more efficient, which I'm sure the construction group would appreciate.  We're on an island with a finite amount of land and food, so we really do need to work smarter not harder, even if we aren't anywhere near the actual maximum population we can handle.

In the morning, I handled immigration questions with Shasta in the few hours before everyone set out.  There were a few humans who's backgrounds looked fine, but with how Rathland is behaving, I'm worried about potential spies or saboteurs sneaking on, so I declined the humans.  Plus, they've got a separate language, so it would require another whole difficult integration process.  At least with new dwarves, I know that Karsh's family can communicate with them, so they wouldn't be completely isolated.

Speaking of dwarves, we do have a few immigrants that I've decided to accept the immigration requests of.  The first is a young man and his wife.  His name is Arat Kunkak, and he grew up as a rancher of bargas.  He's eloped with his wife, Maka, who was an apprentice baker.  Apparently, his father was one of the people our merchant acquired bargas from, so he should recognize some of them, and the merchant did verify he met him before.  Neither of their parents approved of their relationship, so they eloped, and given he had heard of us, thought he might be able to move where their parents wouldn't be able to stop them.  If it was just him, I'd probably decline, but I've wanted to get baking going so them as a package is worth bringing in.

The second that I've approved is actually a unique case where I've decided to accept them despite them not immigrating permanently.  Kao Ostark vouched for their sincerity though, so I figured I shouldn't just snub them.  His name is Konkur Begik, and he's a mineralogy researcher.  He intends to move here with his family for between three and ten years to do research on the mineralogy of the island.  He's apparently already spent a year doing some work on Kao's island, but would prefer to work on our island due to the minerals he knows are present here.  All the information will be available to us first, but he would like to share his findings when he returns to the Capitol after his stint here.

He intends to be fully cooperative, and is bringing his family with him as evidence of that, and he's apparently been working with Shasta and the two goblins I sent to try to learn the demon language.  His wife, Canta, works as his assistant in his research, and he has two young kids.  I'd be worried about potential issues with data related to our country getting out at some point in the future, but given we're already trading high quality metal out of the country, his knowledge is probably more useful than detrimental.  We might have more minerals that I don't actually know about which could be useful. 

Plus, I'd like to have someone who's got a desire for research to start recording data and information so we can be making more effective moves.  For instance, he might have better methods for selecting mining locations, so I don't need to be the one digging random mines trying to find new resources.

A third individual I've decided to accept is a bit of an oddball according to Shasta.  He's a single male dwarf of middle age named Boggs Pakof, and he's apparently both a chef and a fisherdwarf.  It seems he's been moving from village to village looking for the best fishing locations and flavors.  I almost rejected his application on the premise that he'd probably move away after a year or two, but seeing how dwarves fish might be beneficial.  Plus he's a chef, so we might learn some techniques for preparing fish from him. which could improve things here even after he leaves. 

I'll just have to be a little more strict with him about what we'll be providing him with for housing if he doesn't intend to stay for a long time.  Karsh's family already paid back their debt for their house thanks to his labor, but considering we already have a surplus of fishergoblins here, it'll be harder for him to pay us back.  That is, unless he can show us a new fishing technique that we could utilize to expand our fishing operations from beyond the artificial tidepool.

There were still a few other applicants that were rejected, but they were surplus labor or of dubious background that I didn't want to invite to our island.  With that taken care of, Shasta, the merchant, Elora, and the Baron of Compfur set off along the road to return to Kao's island, where they'll go their separate ways from there.  I wish I'd gotten more time to ask Elora questions about the world, but if they eventually do send someone to live among us, then I can ask them.