Tyranomaster

[Vol.4] Ch.15 Windmill Part 1

Now that I'm back in town, I've checked over the new crops we're growing.  While there are a few minor problems, it seems like the goblins are doing a good job of managing the fields.  The first rotation of Reka are almost ready to harvest, which I hope will improve Karsh's family's mood.

Karsh himself seems pretty happy making high-quality metal ingots.  In another week or two, he'll probably be done processing all the ore, and I want to get him working on the next proje...

[Vol.4] Ch.14 Low-Tech Solutions

Sure enough, once I told Karsh that the mountain was clear enough for mining ore, he insisted that I go mine some.  He wasn't actually pushy about it, instead offering me money to go mine as soon as possible.  I turned his money down.  I myself have a lot of projects I'd like him to work on soon, so getting him plenty of metal to work on those projects with means our goals are aligned for now.  Plus, I'm sort of the central bank, money isn't actually valuable to me.  ...

[Vol.4] Ch.20 Written Word

For immigrant applications, there were a few, but none were appealing, even with the lowered standards for Karsh's sake.  It seemed like this time it was mostly individuals with questionable pasts whom I would rather not allow into our fledgling nation.  As for training goblins in written dwarvish, she said it's not that common of an ability to write in their language.  Many can read the basics and maybe even write their own name, but outside of that, it's uncommon unless you'r...

[Vol.4] Ch.13 New Blacksmithing Area

The first few days after Karsh and his family had moved into the village were very difficult for them.  It's not a big surprise, but considering they didn't speak the language, nor did they know anyone here, they were isolated.  Beyond that, they were surrounded by demons without a single dwarf to talk to outside of their family.  Honestly, I was feeling pretty bad for them.

Thankfully, Karsh didn't let that deter him from doing work.  I myself was busy working on th...

[Vol.4] Ch.19 Handing Off Work

As it would happen, neither Karsh nor his family can write in dwarvish.  Karsh can read some basic things and sign his name, and the same goes for his wife, but it's not nearly enough to deal with record keeping.  Which means that if I don't find anyone by the end of this winter, I'm going to either have to choose one of the other options for a written language, or give up on keeping records for a year, and neither of those options sound particularly good.

Outside of that, I'v...

[Vol.4] Ch.12 Rocky Start

"We'll take the one outside the walls."  Shasta translates for Karsh.

Considering the amount of animation I'd seen between them during that conversation, I honestly expected the response to be 'We'll take neither, we're leaving'.  I wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth though, so I hurried us onto the next topic.  I produced a piece of parchment and a piece of charcoal shaved down to make it useful for writing.  I divided the parchment into two parts with a c...

[Vol.4] Ch.18 Bureaucracy

Myself and the mining crew spent three weeks up on the mountain mining.  We shipped down a significant amount of ore, and ran into one edge of this ore deposit.  We haven't run out yet, but in theory it could run out at any time now, which means that we might end up wanting to make an exploratory mine part of the way up the mountain below the snow level to try to find new valuable deposits of things like ore.  If we do that, I don't have to worry about workers intruding on my m...

[Vol.4] Ch.11 Migrant(s)

After two weeks, Shasta returned with the filled out paperwork.  In that time, I've been teaching a goblin how to take care of our new livestock.  For now, we'll be paying him to take care of them, but eventually, he shouldn't need paid.  I've been told that in summer, you can sheer their wool off once, so that is one potentially use for them.  Once we get a bit of a larger herd, we can also harvest them for meat.  They only breed once a year though, so that'll be a s...

12 Days of Christmas

Hey everyone!  So, I stopped posting 3 chapters a week back when the busy season at my work normally starts.  Well, good news for you all, it wasn't as busy of a season this year.  (Although I have gotten sick 3 times now in the past few months, which has made writing difficult.  So I apologize for any upcoming grammar errors in advance, almost half the upcoming chapters were written while I had a fever.)

You might be asking, well, why is this good news?  Well, ...

[Vol.4] Ch.17 Moving Costs

Progress on expanding the village has been going relatively smooth.  It's been 23 days since we started all the construction, and we've gained two more stone shaping goblins in that time.  One is helping me, and the other is going to make the reservoir more orderly before winter, which is slowly approaching.  The sewers and roads aren't quite done yet, but they're getting close to finished.  Bridges still need to be put in, and then a new outer wall will have to be constru...

[Vol.4] Ch.10 Kembora

When I got back to the village, I started making a building near one of the areas we recently cleared.  It's basically just a barn, but made of stone.  I'm leaving the inside empty for now, since I don't know much else about the animals we're getting.  I'll probably need to fence them in as well, but if they're like the animals high on the mountain, then they won't be able to be kept in by normal sized fences.

I luckily finished up the barn in the morning of the ninth day...

[Vol.4] Ch.16 Windmill Part 2

We spent another twenty days getting the dome to rotate thanks to a small fan installed on part of the dome.  There were a lot of small tweaks and changes we had to do to make it work effectively, but I'm glad the whole thing works now.  It's also been about long enough now that I expect the road construction crew will be finishing up.  Once they do, I want to have them add another layer to the artificial tide pool.  I've also set a few goblins up with rock breaking jobs i...

[Vol.4] Ch.9 Overheating

While I relaxed in the bathhouse, I contemplated Thermal Hands, and realized I probably need to do more experiments before I can come up with use cases for it.  I've only tested a coin so far.  What happens if I use wood, or a much larger piece of metal?  I should probably do more experiments to determine the extent of this new magic's effects.  I think I'll also want to raise my level back up to a higher value, if only for personal safety reasons.

If the merchant co...

[Vol.4] Ch.15 Windmill Part 1

Now that I'm back in town, I've checked over the new crops we're growing.  While there are a few minor problems, it seems like the goblins are doing a good job of managing the fields.  The first rotation of Reka are almost ready to harvest, which I hope will improve Karsh's family's mood.

Karsh himself seems pretty happy making high-quality metal ingots.  In another week or two, he'll probably be done processing all the ore, and I want to get him working on the next proje...

[Vol.4] Ch.8 Thermal Hands

I spent 33 days making metal ingots.  When it comes to making the metal itself, I'm no match for Katarko.  I don't actually have much practical skill with smelting and handling metal, and have been mostly working from theory.  It's clear from just looking at them that my ingots aren't quite as good as his.  That's fine though, my intent isn't to necessarily make the highest quality ingots I can, although it would be nice.  No, my intent is to get a new trait or magic ...

[Vol.4] Ch.14 Low-Tech Solutions

Sure enough, once I told Karsh that the mountain was clear enough for mining ore, he insisted that I go mine some.  He wasn't actually pushy about it, instead offering me money to go mine as soon as possible.  I turned his money down.  I myself have a lot of projects I'd like him to work on soon, so getting him plenty of metal to work on those projects with means our goals are aligned for now.  Plus, I'm sort of the central bank, money isn't actually valuable to me.  ...

[Vol.4] Ch.7 Strategic Work

We finally broke through to the other valley after another twenty days of work.  The tunnel is a little over a third of a mile in length, and elevates by almost ninety feet over the length of the whole tunnel.  The horizontal wells were actually the biggest slowdown by the end of construction because of the amount of running water.  The reservoir level has finally reached a low enough level to resume some amount of quarrying again, which should help provide the road constructio...

[Vol.4] Ch.13 New Blacksmithing Area

The first few days after Karsh and his family had moved into the village were very difficult for them.  It's not a big surprise, but considering they didn't speak the language, nor did they know anyone here, they were isolated.  Beyond that, they were surrounded by demons without a single dwarf to talk to outside of their family.  Honestly, I was feeling pretty bad for them.

Thankfully, Karsh didn't let that deter him from doing work.  I myself was busy working on th...

[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 chea...

[Vol.4] Ch.12 Rocky Start

"We'll take the one outside the walls."  Shasta translates for Karsh.

Considering the amount of animation I'd seen between them during that conversation, I honestly expected the response to be 'We'll take neither, we're leaving'.  I wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth though, so I hurried us onto the next topic.  I produced a piece of parchment and a piece of charcoal shaved down to make it useful for writing.  I divided the parchment into two parts with a c...

[Vol.4] Ch.5 Freshly Minted

I continued digging the tunnel for another twelve days until the snow on the mountain started to melt again.  It seems like the merchant is not going to make it back this year.  It seems that the safest time to travel between here and the mainland is winter, so now that the season is changing, I'm expecting he won't make it back until next year.  Hopefully by that point I can have the village bought into the idea of using currency, and I won't be the only one with trade request...

[Vol.4] Ch.11 Migrant(s)

After two weeks, Shasta returned with the filled out paperwork.  In that time, I've been teaching a goblin how to take care of our new livestock.  For now, we'll be paying him to take care of them, but eventually, he shouldn't need paid.  I've been told that in summer, you can sheer their wool off once, so that is one potentially use for them.  Once we get a bit of a larger herd, we can also harvest them for meat.  They only breed once a year though, so that'll be a s...

[Vol.4] Ch.4 Economics

I got to work on the tunnel section of the new road, while the goblins were left to build the road itself, and cut the trees in the way.  After a week, a noticeable issue started to arise.  Despite the population of the village, we seemed to have a labor shortage, which didn't make much sense considering just how many goblins I'd see lazing around not working on anything.  I decided to take a day to investigate the cause of the lack of work ethic among the goblins who weren't w...

[Vol.4] Ch.10 Kembora

When I got back to the village, I started making a building near one of the areas we recently cleared.  It's basically just a barn, but made of stone.  I'm leaving the inside empty for now, since I don't know much else about the animals we're getting.  I'll probably need to fence them in as well, but if they're like the animals high on the mountain, then they won't be able to be kept in by normal sized fences.

I luckily finished up the barn in the morning of the ninth day...

[Vol.4] Ch.3 More Infrastructure

As the dwarves set out the next day, the merchant said he'd hoped to return yet this winter with our goods if he can, but that we shouldn't hold our breath in case he has difficulty trading for all the materials we wanted.  After he said that, I asked him to consider procuring parchment for us for next year, in case he can't return before then.  We'll likely need a lot of it for handling formal documentation between the dwarf kingdom and here, so getting a source of it now seems lik...

[Vol.4] Ch.9 Overheating

While I relaxed in the bathhouse, I contemplated Thermal Hands, and realized I probably need to do more experiments before I can come up with use cases for it.  I've only tested a coin so far.  What happens if I use wood, or a much larger piece of metal?  I should probably do more experiments to determine the extent of this new magic's effects.  I think I'll also want to raise my level back up to a higher value, if only for personal safety reasons.

If the merchant co...

[Vol.4] Ch.2 Trade Negotiations

After working for another twenty days, I finished the jail cell, and just in time too.  Later in the day, the dwarven envoy arrived.  I figured it would be just a handful of dwarves who arrived, but to my surprise, it was actually about thirty individuals, including the dwarf I negotiated with before and Shasta.  They didn't just come to collect the crystal either.  They arrived with various gifts of their own.  Alcohol and metal tools made up the majority of their gi...

[Vol.4] Ch.8 Thermal Hands

I spent 33 days making metal ingots.  When it comes to making the metal itself, I'm no match for Katarko.  I don't actually have much practical skill with smelting and handling metal, and have been mostly working from theory.  It's clear from just looking at them that my ingots aren't quite as good as his.  That's fine though, my intent isn't to necessarily make the highest quality ingots I can, although it would be nice.  No, my intent is to get a new trait or magic ...

[Vol.4] Ch.1 Return to the Village

The year, or at least the months without snow, passed by pretty uneventfully, although it did have its moments of surprise.  The first surprise was that within the first two months, both of the goblins that Zeb and I had sent to the reservoir to manually cut stone got stone shaping.  Given that success, it was decided that once the level in the reservoir returned to normal, three more goblins would be sent to cut stone to further expand the construction workforce.

In the next ...

[Vol.4] Ch.7 Strategic Work

We finally broke through to the other valley after another twenty days of work.  The tunnel is a little over a third of a mile in length, and elevates by almost ninety feet over the length of the whole tunnel.  The horizontal wells were actually the biggest slowdown by the end of construction because of the amount of running water.  The reservoir level has finally reached a low enough level to resume some amount of quarrying again, which should help provide the road constructio...