Rebuilding Science in a Magic World

The trip back to our island took just as long as the trip away did.  I didn't notice anything particularly interesting about our other islands on the way back that I didn't already note before, unfortunately.  I did, however, get the opportunity to talk with Shasta about some of the previous questions I had.

The first question was, 'What was the whole deal with the drink at the end of the opening banquet?'.  She went into a long winded explanation about dwarven traditions, that I forgot most of, but I do remember the gist of it.  It's something of a folk tale, though many think it really happened.  Some time in the past, a powerful dwarf invited three political equals to a banquet, to discuss matters of government.  The other dwarves, while politically powerful weren't nearly as militarily oriented as the first dwarf.  Shortly after the banquet ended, the first dwarf slew the others, and claimed their territory as his own.

That dwarf continued to hold significant political sway, despite his misdeeds, due to the vital nature of the territory and military he controlled.  So, whenever he would attend any other banquets, the other dwarves would force him to drink a draught which also drained his mana, so he would be at a disadvantage if he attempted to fight directly.  Over time, that adapted to everyone drinking some of the draught at a banquet before a meeting, to show that there wasn't intended hostilities.

I suppose, in a world with magic, simply leaving a weapon at the door wouldn't actually prevent you from being incredibly dangerous on your own, so in a way, this is something akin to disarming yourself for a political talk.  I thought it was neat in its own right, but it didn't actually drain that much of my mana, so I suppose the action is somewhat symbolic now.  Though I was weaker after having drank it than not, so maybe it's only meant to weaken you enough that other guardsmen could interfere?

Though it does make me wonder if that implies that when Kao has come to meet with us in the past, and that tradition wasn't followed, if violence was still on the table... I suppose it probably was on the table, though I can't rule out that it's a tradition that dwarves only follow amongst themselves, and not with outsiders.  It could also be that he simply didn't consider our talks to ever be on the level of equals.

The second question I had for Shasta was, 'Why did the other warlords seem surprised that Goppok Kanaga won the auction?'.  She gave me a number of factors that likely all contributed to the surprise of the other warlords.  First, the fact I already learned, he's relatively young, and has only been managing his region for a little over a year.  Second, the region he manages is fairly isolated, poor, underdeveloped, and sparsely populated, partially because it's largely situated deep in a mountain range, but also due to it's more agrarian traditions, despite the poor environment for growing plants.  

For any of the other warlords, the amount he bid would be reasonable to procure on short notice, but it was shocking to see that he could accrue enough wealth to afford that on such short notice, let alone that he'd be willing to spend that kind of money on this object.  The amount he spent would be enough to fund the construction of a decent road through his territory, according to Shasta.  So most of the warlords are left wondering why he'd spend that kind of money on the crystal when it could easily be spent on other projects that would have better impact.

Although that answered the question as to why the other warlords were surprised, it left me with even more questions that I can't get the answer to.  Though his coin is good either way, so I'm not one to complain.  Kao did have someone check all the coins that were brought along by the participants before the auction began, so I'm not worried about fraud at least.  Well, maybe in the future I'll learn what Goppok's motivations were.

After the almost two month trip to Kao's island, I had a bit of news to catch up on.  First, and sadly, I missed Konkur and his family leaving the island.  They left with the merchant to return to the mainland.  Though just before he left, the vein they were mining did hit pyrite.  I'll consider that quite the good going away gift.  In an ideal world, we wouldn't need to use pyrite as an iron source, but we'll make use of what we have.

He also left notes about a few of the other minerals that we might run into, now that we've found pyrite.  Things like sphalerite, galena, and more gypsum are to be expected in the area.  Although the gypsum would be a bit of a disappointment, I'd gladly take sphalerite and galena, which could give us zinc and lead respectively.  Lead would be valuable for producing sulfuric acid and batteries, and zinc has a handful of uses, including making batteries, making brass, or being used as a sacrificial anode to help prevent corrosion.

Unfortunately, processing pyrite to make decent quality iron is a real hassle, and Konkur didn't have any notes related to it, probably because it's such a poor ore to process that they've had better sources, and don't practice refining it.  The main problem with it is removing enough of the sulfur that the resulting iron product isn't incredibly brittle.

So, we'll have to do some experimenting to even produce a viable output product.  We also need to be somewhat careful with the production, as it will release a lot of volatile sulfur compounds, which could be poisonous to breathe in.  I'm thinking that once we get a process figured out, if we have enough ore, we should build the facility on the craggy part of the island that we don't currently go to.  It's generally downwind from the city, and should be far enough removed that the pollution drifts out to sea, rather than falling back down on our island.  In small concentrations, sulfur is vital to life, so I'm not concerned that we'll be killing off sea life as a result of our small operation.  If anything, we'll be fertilizing the sea plants.

After I finished going through Konkur's notes he left for me, I checked in on Tiberius's research.  His weapon utilizing the blood from electric fish, and the spine shooting organ from the other fish has gone through quite a few revisions, but it seems he's also tabled it for the time being.  The current design for the weapon reminds me a bit of a shotgun, where the barrel can be tilted down, though instead of putting the shell into the barrel, you would load a spike into an organ in the handpiece, then re-slide the barrel over it.

The big issues with that weapon are that you need a source of mana to activate it, which means you either need to be underground where you can use a crystal which is small enough to carry, or the wielder needs a way to infuse mana into the weapon.  The second major drawback is that the spike shooting organ goes bad after a few days, meaning you basically need a fresh organ for it to be valuable.

If it weren't for the second drawback, I'd actually think that the weapon could be useful as a defensive weapon for us.  We could dig a deep bunker underground, and as a last resort, we could hide there, and use these weapons with embedded smaller crystals to defend the bunker.  If the organ goes bad that quickly though, there isn't much of a use for it, as the enemy would just need to wait a few days for the weapons to stop working.

A thought did cross my mind that if Zaka's blood didn't boil due to his fireball ability, the troll regeneration might actually help preserve biological items from decaying.  Unfortunately, his blood does boil, so we'd need another troll to evolve if we wanted to try that, and I can't say I like that I'm even thinking about that.  I didn't mention it to Tiberius, for obvious reasons.  He's currently doing a new series of tests using fish blood.  It seems like he's meticulously recording the behavior of various kinds of blood when exposed to mana, then mixing them, and recording the new behavior.  I'm not sure how long that'll go for, but it could potentially produce some interesting results.

While some of the sea life has obvious magical properties that utilize mana, others aren't quite as obvious, but I doubt that they're just not using it.  It's not impossible, but with a source of energy readily available, I'd expect life to evolve to use it.  The trees use mana defensively to help harden themselves here, and using water infused with their bark hardens in kind, which helped us produce our leather armor which could survive a powerful hit from metal.  I would imagine many prey fish probably also use mana in some ways, though I doubt many will be very useful to us.

Content, I left Tiberius more funds to continue his research.  Thanks to the mining crew clearing the road up the mountain in winter, it's possible for me to start making the new crystal right away, rather than waiting for spring time.  Though before that, I want to figure out where the temporary bathhouse crystal is going to be moved to.  I don't want to leave it near the ocean during springtime, at least not until we've gotten both valleys protected by a sea wall.