Rebuilding Science in a Magic World

I decided to bring up the idea of the fishing jetty to Zeb as a large construction project for them to consider making.  It should also be able to coincide with the need for access to the float vine that grows out from the island.  This project on its own will require significant amounts of stone, as the underwater slope moving out to sea is by no means shallow.  That's probably good though, as the population has started growing, we've actually been having issues keeping all of them employed.  This project should keep a significant number of laborers busy hauling stone from excavation locations for some time.

As for where the excavated stone can come from, we've got four good locations for getting a significant amount of stone.  First, I'd like to have a second tunnel dug to the neighboring valley down by the artificial tide pool bay.  For now the tunnel wouldn't have much benefit, but in the future it would give us further access to the next valley over for development, which we'll probably need within a few years time anyway, so getting it down now saves us the effort later when we would need it done.

The second location is another tunnel, this time closer to our city, going to the second valley, ultimately exiting not far from the destroyed village of the exiled goblins.  With three large tunnels connecting the two valleys, that should really allow both valleys to function together well without having too long of travel times between locations.

The third location is the tried and true reservoir excavation project.  Over the years, the reservoir has been expanded further and further, but that's been a boon overall.  If we continue to expand it, it should continue to help smooth out our water flow rates between seasons, and further help manage our water demands.

The fourth location, should it be necessary, is to continue digging the escape tunnels from under the city.  The reason this is the last on the list is just due to the difficulty and speed at which stone would be excavated compared to the other locations.  Due to the size and length of the tunnel, the hauling of stone from the tunnel would be significantly slower than the other options, but it might be potentially worth it to resume this excavation in case an emergency situation arises again.

After two days of deliberation, Zeb agreed to assign one of the construction teams to start work on the fishing jetty.  As part of the project though, I have to go and clear the float vine that is growing where the jetty is going to be constructed, so that it isn't wasted.  Considering I want the jetty to stretch out about 1500 feet into the ocean, there will be a lot of float vines to cut down.  I will need a lot of them for glass making though, so it's more of an inconvenience than a problem.

The second construction team will also work on the project, albeit indirectly.  Since we plan on getting two new tunnels dug to the next valley, they'll work on building roads to the two tunnel locations, to aid in stone hauling.  One goblin from each team will also be dedicated to digging the escape tunnel as well, which should start providing stone for the road constructions.  Since more trees will be cut in the road digging process, the goblins that are manually breaking stone in the reservoir will be brought along to help elevate them to stone shaping goblins.  Zeb thinks that once there are about four more stone shaping goblins, he'll form a third construction team and reorganize the existing teams.

According to him, a few of the goblins are probably close to becoming lesser earth demons.  That itself at least provides them with larger mana pools, which should improve their productivity.  It also seems to grant access to improved stone shaping, which would drastically improve their construction speed.  As it stands, a goblin with stone shaping is about half as productive as a lesser earth demon, which itself is a quarter as productive as a lesser earth demon with improved stone shaping.

I worked at harvesting the float vines for twelve days, until I had to stop because the nearest float vines were too far underwater for me to properly harvest.  That, and I had a bit of a frightening sighting of a very large fish while I was headed out to harvest more float vines.  Most of the fish I've seen here have had horizontal tails, and while this one was also horizontal, unlike the others it was bifurcated.  That, and it was almost twice as long as I am tall, with an exceptionally large mouth.

On one hand, I'm glad, because it means that the fishing jetty will almost certainly actually give us a new source of levels.  On the other hand, it obviously makes this whole ocean-related endeavor way more dangerous than I had previously expected.  I've taken the opportunity to warn Zeb about the potential threats during construction, just in case.

I've also started the process of turning the float vines into soda ash.  I've actually gained a couple of levels from harvesting the float vines as well, which has been a nice bonus.  It isn't quite as much as I'd get from an equal amount of trees, but it's more than many plants give, so they're probably many years old based on my working hypothesis for how levels work.

<MYTHIC LESSER EARTH DEMON>
Level: 43
HP: 2319/2319
MP: 1308/1308
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation, Improved Dexterity, Heat Resistance
Magic: Improved Stone Shaping, Tectonic Sense, Improved Earth Spike, Thermal Hands

The construction crew started building out the jetty right after I stopped harvesting the float vines, and after ten days, they'd made quite the progress.  The location that I decided to have it built is just next to where our stream now exits to the ocean.  Previously, we'd redirected it, so that it would no longer drain into the artificial tide pools for sanitation reasons.  Following that logic, I figured it would be good to also put the jetty between where the tide pools and new stream exit meet the ocean.  We'll just want to put an indicator that fishing shouldn't be done directly on that side of the jetty for a few hundred feet for the same sanitation reasons.

They're piling the chunks of rock into the water, and while they do, the stone shaping goblins are taking turns diving under the water and fusing the various piled stones together in decently sized contact areas.  They've also started building the highest walkway, so that they can more easily haul more stones further out to continue building with.  They've already gotten about sixty feet built, although their pace is slowing down as the depth of the water continues to increase further from the shore.

They've also built a stairwell down to the ocean floor on both the left and right hand side at their current length, which should make harvesting more float vine easier.  So I'll probably resume harvesting it soon, as the jetty is quickly catching up to where I cut it down to before.

While they were building the jetty, I was working with the leatherworking goblin on the next steps in the leather production as well as starting to tinker with a design for fishing rods.  The jetty should be functional even before it reaches it's maximum distance.  I have even more evidence of that thanks to having seen that massive fish within the float vine fields somewhat close to shore.

In the remaining twenty-three days until what would be next set of academy classes I carefully cut more of the float vine fields down that were in the way of the jetty, worked on the leather process, helped with some of the felt designs, and made it further in designing a fishing rod.  Boggs hasn't returned since I've seen him last, so I haven't been able to introduce him to our now over one hundred foot long jetty.  It'll probably take some time for the fishing to actually be good from the jetty though, since it's new, and the fish are probably quite wary of the new construction.

The construction crew also finished the tunnel down by the bay, which anyone can now walk through to reach the other valley, along with where it meets the ocean.  This tunnel also had some water leaking from it, although it's a lot less water than the first tunnel had.  I suspect that distance to ocean probably plays some role in how much water the rock holds, although that is nothing more than a guess.

The new roads to both this tunnel, and the location for the next tunnel are complete, so I don't expect there to be much of a slow down for jetty construction, although I do suspect that there will be many more goblins doing hauling jobs now that the distance that the rock has to travel is much higher.

We won't actually be having the academy classes this cycle, as there haven't been new goblins summoned.  Both construction crews were busy with other projects, so no housing was made.  The construction department added two new members, which wasn't quite enough to warrant the creation of the third crew yet as well.  I'm thinking about recruiting some of the goblins that we want to get stone shaping to help cut down some of the float vine to get them to the point of prestige.  That should also give me valuable insight into just how effective regular goblins would be at harvesting the float vines, since long term, others would be in charge of it rather than me.