Rebuilding Science in a Magic World

The next day, I decided to stop in and talk with Konkur to see if he had any information on the rock samples I delivered to him.  I had initially planned for it to be a short stop, as I didn't expect that much information before I went to the lab to see what sort of tests Tiberius was planning on conducting.  Instead, I ended up having a long discussion.  The gist of the situation is that the rock that the tunnel ran into is generally associated with hydrothermal veins of ore.  At least, that tends to be the case back in the dwarven country.

The issue is finding the veins, if they exist at all.  For the most part, they form in vertical spires, where high pressure water forced it's way through the rock carrying dissolved minerals.  Occasionally those spires will break rock horizontally, and form deposits in that direction as well, but it's much less frequent.  So I basically spent a decent amount of time discussing whether it was worth having his team dig the exploratory tunnel further, which would allow either him or myself to use our different detection abilities to try to find any potential ore deposits.

We both agreed that it would be a good use for his small team, which had been expanding the tunnel I built part of the way up the mountain, though that hadn't yielded any results yet.  One of the issues with mining in the cave is its distance to the city.  Ultimately, our discussion centered around how his team would operate up there.  The distance is too great for it to be reasonable for them to go there and return every day.  The cave buildings at the entrance that I built include a number of guest rooms, which I volunteered they could use for some time.

When I'm up there with a few goblins, I usually bring a bit of preserved fish, then go harvest spuds and lion root to supplement the rest of our diet.  I'm not sure that this would be viable for a larger group to operate long term, however.  So after some discussion, we decided that a six-four schedule would be best.  They'd spend six days up the mountain, bringing all the food they'd need with them, then be back for four days.  The four days include the few hours of travel both up and down the mountain though, so it's closer to a seven-three when you factor in the travel time.

We've agreed that they can consider today day one of their four days in the city, so they'll be heading up the mountain after that.  I've also agreed to travel up with them for their first cycle on the mountain, where I plan on helping them expand some of the facilities to make things more comfortable for them in the long term, while showing them around the area, since I'm most familiar with it.  I'm glad I oversized the water collection pool on the terrace all those years ago now, since it seems like it's going to get some use.

In the meantime before they go, I'm going to spend a bit of time observing what Tiberius is up to.  Despite everything, I'm still somewhat worried about giving him access to a 3 foot tall crystal.  I know first hand that they can give quite the burn if you're low on mana and decide to manipulate them.  A 3 foot crystal is small enough that I don't think I need to be concerned with a dangerous mana burst if it breaks at least.

I observed some interesting tests going on from Tiberius over the three days I watched him.  The way things were set up in the lab, the crystal sat in a chamber, partially submerged in water.  The submerged portion was then connected through a few pipes full of water to small baths surrounding the crystal.  The water in the bottom half was then sealed to prevent it from mixing with anything poured into the top half of the container, which would directly contact the crystal.

He performed a few different tests while I was there.  One of the tests involved pouring blood into the top half of the crystal container, to see what affect the excess mana would have.  Interestingly, about half the samples of blood did something perceivable.  One crackled with electricity, causing us to duck as electrical energy arced along its surface for a number of minutes.  Another violently splashed itself, hurling bits of blood about.  The cleanup from that test was a real pain.  Others had subtle results like partial congealing or bubbling.  The whole time Tiberius was taking notes in what I assume is the human language he speaks.

On the third day, before we went to the lab, he had me help haul some large fish on the way there.  Once in the lab, he went about dissecting the fish, and then submerging different parts into the water baths which were connected to the crystal.  I only saw a few results, but it seems like some specialty organs do exist in some of the fish which reacted when submerged in the mana rich water.  Ultimately, I feel safe leaving him to study this for a while.  There are plenty more experiments that can be run along this mindset, and there are plenty of fish that he hasn't caught and run tests on which will extend the testing time drastically.

Over the course of the six days that I was on the mountain with Konkur's team, I ended up building multiple new facilities for them.  Ultimately, the rooms that I had made previously were very small, and though goblins in the past have put up with them, I've also been here every time they were used in the past.  So I set about digging a new mining barracks.  The rooms are a little bigger, and there is a central kitchen and storage space, reminiscent of the apartment buildings in the city.

There are also more rooms than there are people here currently.  Though it's presumptuous to assume we will hit some kind of ore, if we do, I don't want to have to scramble to making housing for more goblins.  They also didn't find any ore deposits so far, but I'm not surprised, they haven't actually made that much progress tunneling.

I forget sometimes just how much faster I tunnel with improved stone shaping compared to regular goblins.  Though they are going faster than they would otherwise thanks to the crystals in the cavern.  I'm honestly hoping that the stone shaping goblins on the team get mana affinity thanks to how much they're interacting with the mana crystals.

One thing that we hadn't anticipated, mostly because I've just been storing it in the cave storage area, is the amount of rock that could be shipped down the mountain to be used on other construction projects.  After discussing with Konkur, we're going to add shipping rock down the mountain as part of the return trip day.  It'll likely end up taking all day, rather than only part of it, but it should be manageable.

An unfortunate quality of the new kind of rock we've brought back is that is fractures easily.  This property is probably why it more easily develops hydrothermal ore veins, but also means it's actually not very useful for us for solid construction.  One use that it does have, however, is filling the inner section of the jetty as we build it.  I still want to encase it with a more durable rock, but we can fill the bulk of the mass with this rock, and I don't expect much issue.

The downside for us is that we have to haul all that rock from the uphill part of the city, where the rail ends, to the jetty.  It's not that big of a problem, but it's more work than the mine exploration crew can do in their three days in the city.  So I've put a few jobs up in city hall to haul the stone to the artificial tide pool area, and hopefully they'll have hauled all of it by the next time they haul stone down the mountain.

I've personally spent these three days checking in on Tiberius.  He's tested a few more fishes, but our lack of a shared language has been a barrier to sharing information.  I could tell, at least, that there didn't seem to be any major breakthroughs.  He's done some interesting tests by mixing different fishes' blood, and submerged organs from some of the fishes in their blood while exposed to the crystal.  He's seen some interesting results from that. 

He gave me a demonstration from the fish that had the electric blood.  By submerging an organ from it's head in the blood with the crystal, he could direct the static discharge forward from a particular section of the organ.  I had to scold him on safety protocols though, as his hands had minor burns where electric jolts had burned them.  I'd expect him to at least wear leather gloves when doing something like that, if not use tongs.  I'm really starting to think I need to find a goblin with some good common sense to work as his lab assistant slash safety reminder.