NOVEL SIMPLE [Vol.4] Ch.6 Innovation
The first two weeks of using the currency were exceptionally bad, but by the third week, problems become less frequent. There was a lot of fighting that broke out during the first two weeks when disagreements about prices would occur, and the majority of those were about the prices of fish. I shouldn't be surprised, but I was a little shocked none-the-less when all out brawls would occur when fishergoblins would undercut each other, or when the fishergoblins who sold fish the cheapest ran out while other goblins still wanted their fish.
I even got scolded by Zaka for causing so much strife, and I had to talk him down from annulling the currency usage. I'm thankful that incidents slowed down during the third week, otherwise we might have stopped using money. I'm just thankful that we haven't had any outright robbery occur, although there is a decent chance that will start happening soon. Basically, even the goblins who haven't worked haven't run out of money yet, but some are getting close. At that point, I'm expecting at least a few attempts at some form of thievery.
We've had plenty of job offers out, and have been adjusting our prices according to the going rate for food. Right now, food seems to have settled at about two of the smallest coins for a day's worth of basic meals. As such, we're currently offering five small coins for a day's worth of basic labor, whether that is hauling stone or digging dirt.
A few goblins have been proactive about taking those jobs, as the jobs started out paying more than they currently do because the food prices were high at the start while the fishergoblins were figuring out their prices. I'm hoping that more will take them as their funds start to dry up.
It took all three weeks for me to build the open air marketplace downstream of the village. Right now, it sits outside the city walls, but eventually we'll want to build a second circle of walls, at which point, it will be enclosed. I'm hesitant to build more buildings inside the first circle of walls unless they're vital to the city's survival, because they'll probably need deconstructed in the future to make way for official government buildings. Since the marketplace will need extra room to expand in the future as well, I figured it was best to build it here.
The market itself is quite simple. It's just permanent stands that have some shelves for display alongside the road, with other loops of roads in concentric circles, with more of the stands as you go outward. Between stands, I've put short fences of stone, to denote each lot, and keep people walking where they should. Since we now have some degree of excess stands, I'm going to move back to working on the road construction project until I'm needed again in the village.
It only took a day of working on the tunnel to realize why so few goblins were willing to take the manual labor work for the road. I hadn't realized because I haven't been working on this project for almost three months now, but the road to the tunnel and it's canal alongside it, have reached the tunnel already. The tunnel construction was still left for me, but the construction crew has been climbing over the valley edge, going back down, and following the next set of path that Zeb has marked. Which means that all the stone has to be hauled a significant distance to build road.
I've thus made a few changes to the work priorities for the time being. First, no more work will be done on the next section of road until this tunnel is complete. I'll have a few jobs available for manual labor to help me with the tunnel, and I'll also have one of the stone shaping goblins help me. Last month, another of the goblins got access to stone shaping, and I'm planning on sending a few more goblins to go manually cut stone in the reservoir in a few months when the water level drops to near empty.
Zeb will be in charge of adding another layer to the artificial tide pool traps in the mean time. The two other stone shaping goblins can either work for him, do other work if someone is willing to pay them, or just rest if they so choose. We pay a pretty decent wage for the stone shaping goblins at eight small coins a day, so I'm hoping that convinces them to keep working for us, otherwise I might need to increase their wages.
Progress on the tunnel has been moving at a pretty good pace with the extra help. We're eight days in on construction of the tunnel since I changed our priorities, and we've made it about six-hundred feet of the estimated 2000 total feet that this tunnel will need to span. I've actually found a pretty good use for the stone shaping goblin, which means he's being utilized quite well. I was initially worried due to his slower speed of stone shaping and inferior mana capacity that he'd barely be useful, so it's quite the pleasant surprise for both him and me.
What I've done is used stone shaping to drill a small line where the horizontal wells will eventually be located. The stone from that was simply shaped into balls and allowed to roll out of the path slowly. After using my full mana capacity to drill the line on one side, I'd go back to the village and recharge my mana at the bathhouse while the goblin would cut the proper tunnel using the line as a guide. The tunnel is too small for other goblins to come in and haul stone out behind him, so he has to cut the blocks himself and haul them to the tunnel entrance, but considering I'd have to be doing that instead of him normally, it means he's basically as effective as I would be at the task.
Since he's working on that, it frees me up to cut and shape the proper tunnel, where I can have the goblins haul the stone out while I just cut the path. Every so often I use tectonic sense to make sure I'm following the guide cuts I made for the wells on either side too. The streams coming out of those wells have increased to about the same rate as the stream running through the village during the dry summers, so it's actually providing a decent amount of water. Over time, that rate should drop until it reaches a new steady state, but without doing extensive groundwater studies, it's difficult to know how long until that happens.
Incidence rates of conflict have dropped in the village again, but we had our first incidence of attempted theft. Zaka had to preside over the disagreement between two goblins, where one claimed that the other stole coins from his room in an apartment building, and there seemed to be confusion as to whether that was true or not. Two witnesses came forward and said that they saw the accused thief going into the other goblin's room while he wasn't inside, and Zaka deemed that good enough to consider him guilty.
Zaka deemed it a pretty serious crime, tantamount to betrayal, and initially sentenced him to be exiled from the village the next day. When I came back, I talked him down from that to making the criminal spend 10 days in the small jail cell, and do 20 days of forced labor for exactly his meal costs and no extra money. I definitely don't want a den of criminals cropping up somewhere on the island, so exile is a no go. For now, the village is small enough that we don't really need to deal with much of a proper legal system, and Zaka functions in the role of a judge as the village chief.
There has also been a trendy new item that has appeared in the market. Coin cords. Tied off on one end so that coins can't fall off, and designed to be worn, the rope maker has started to make an obscene amount of money, and has already exchanged currency for two of the highest value coins. They're selling the cords at five small coins each, and they've been selling out of their wares every day in the market. I've given them a little bit of advice as I've watched their success. I warned them that eventually, everyone in town will have enough cords for themselves, and they'll only occasionally need replacements, so they should be sure to save some of their money for when that happens.
The other craftsgoblins have definitely taken note, and I've seen a few of them tinkering away when I walk through the area. It's been a while since I've seen as many of them as fired up as they are right now, which makes me glad I introduced the currency. I had been a little regretful, given how much turmoil it caused in the last few weeks, but if it's already bearing fruit, I'm excited to see where it goes from here.
Speaking of innovations, I've noticed a few of the fishergoblins have started to develop different methods to differentiate themselves from each other. One of the goblins is always at the artificial tidepool as soon as the water level is safe to use even the highest layer according to Zeb, and he only harvests the tastiest fish. He then spends much longer of his time in the market, selling them at a higher price than most of the other goblins. Where as there is another goblin who's actually taken to hiring some help himself. He gets to the tidepools later, and harvests just about everything that is left, even the fish that isn't that appetizing. He has his help haul it back to his stand, where it's sold dirt cheap in bulk. There are some who have taken to harvesting only the non-fish like creatures, and others who only get particular kinds of fish, and each has customers who prefer to go to them. Overall, I'm really starting to appreciate the heavy lifting that a little bit of competition has caused for both motivation and innovation among the goblins.