NOVEL NEXT [Vol.5] Ch.36 Aesthetics
I was so caught up in all the work I was doing with smelting our lead, that I hadn't realized why it was so easy for me to requisition a construction team to help me for a short while. They had finished building the sea wall in our valley. It's quite the impressive view the first time you see it, but I've heard from more than one goblin that they miss the old view of the ocean. The goblins that work in both of the mills, the salt evaporation ponds, and a few of the fields no longer have a direct view of the ocean while they work.
The population really has been growing in the past few years, and we passed 2,000 residents quite a while ago. We're probably reaching the point where artwork is going to start to become necessary. Well, necessary is a strong word, but it will help morale. Until recently, you could easily look around and see nature surrounding you wherever you were on the island. In the decades since I've been making changes to things, we've pushed the wilderness further and further back. On one hand, that's made everything much safer and more stable. On the other hand, it's not very pleasing to look at most of it.
Most of the construction in the city is flat stone lacking features or details. When you spend your whole day surrounded by that, it probably wears on the psyche. I still spend plenty of time off in the edges of our civilization, slowly converting that wilderness into more of the drab stone structures, which is where art comes in. It'd probably be for the best to start exploring artwork as a way to spice things up, and make everything less uniform in appearance.
I'll talk it over with Zeb, but in an ideal scenario, we'd recruit directly from the construction teams to start sprucing up our building designs and make them less uniform. Some of the dwarven dwellings are like that, with faux brick exteriors. Perhaps sprucing up the architecture with Greco-Roman style pillar designs would be more appealing to the eyes? Honestly, just about anything is probably more appealing than the near-soviet style brutalist architecture we have now. It'd probably help with our image as well. Nothing says terrifying savages quite like brutalism, even if it was a consequence of functionality and ease of production.
I'd also like to get the other valley's sea wall up. It sort of conflicts with what I just said about brutalist architecture, but protection from weather disasters should come first. We can always pretty it up afterwards. Plus, it shouldn't be long now before Zeb designates a new construction crew. Every year he's been gaining a few stone-shaping goblins, and the current teams are about at the level where he'll probably pull some from each team and form a new one. I'm not going to micromanage how he runs things though, however he decides to run things is his choice.
It'll be another busy year ahead of me as well. Not only would I like to finish the lead production area, but I also need to make the large crystal for this next winter's auction. Time permitting, I'd like to get the pyrite refining figured out, and get the zinc furnace built. I now also have the handful of heat producing crystals to start analyzing when I get the chance. I've also realized that long term, we'll need locations for storing the remaining tailings from our metal production. The tailings from these sulfide ores are probably quite toxic, and contain lead and arsenic in large amounts, so ideally, I'd dig a very deep vault where they can be safely stored.
I talked with Zeb about introducing architectural design to our buildings, and remodeling the older ones. He was surprisingly reluctant to the idea. His reasoning was quite sound though, we're already pulling some of our available construction labor to building the sea wall, and if we pull even more of it to start doing architectural work the production rate of new dwellings will be significantly reduced. They currently add about one new living space a day on average, which means that Zaka usually spends about an hour each day summoning imps to keep up.
Zeb gave a pretty interesting analysis beyond that as well. From when a goblin first evolves, it takes a minimum of two years for them to start being productive in any particular field that relies on magic. Even then, it usually takes them another two years to really start becoming proficient in their chosen field, and from there they become more productive over time beyond that. So, while unskilled labor becomes available quickly, the skilled labor lags behind. If we reduce our growth rate, it'll have compounding effects on production down the road, based on that lost labor. We don't really need more unskilled labor right now, but we can always use demons that have more prestiges or evolution under their belt. Which means we need to keep summoning new demons as quickly as possible, so they can mature, level, and evolve over time.
After hearing Zeb's reasoning, I was inclined to agree. It can be delayed somewhat. However, I did convince him that once he gets more laborers, rather than forcing Zaka to spend even more time each day on summoning, we should consider improving the existing infrastructure to be more aesthetic. While he was still reluctant, I explained that I'd been hearing complaints from some of the goblins who work near the sea, alongside my own reasoning which included what I'd seen on Kao's island. He then agreed to hold a meeting with the construction teams when it came time to form a new team, to see who might be interested in that kind of work, but made no promises as to whether he would form a team regardless of interest.
That new team would still be under his jurisdiction if it's formed, but they'd focus on remodeling older buildings. That led into a discussion about updating new building designs, but ultimately, that came to a standstill. If it slows down production, Zeb's against it. Well, I'll take a win where I can. Partial implementation is better than no implementation. Over time, we'll get a larger construction force, and then it shouldn't be an issue anymore.
I debated with myself as to whether I should immediately begin work on growing the crystal for next year, or finish the lead refining process. Ultimately, I decided to start growing the crystal. Once spring comes, I'll pause growing the crystal to resume working on lead refining. I plan on moving the temporary bathhouse crystal back to the lab area again during spring, so it'll make construction in the roasting area easier.
Though, working on the crystal in winter is a bit of a pain, since the mining crew has to clear the snow on the roads periodically. As a result, in the two months we've been working, I've only finished about half the work needed on the crystal, which is a bit slower than I'd normally like. It's mostly due to travel delays for the goblins making their way up the mountain to assist me in work. In the extra downtime, I've been mining out more and more of the known crystal deposit, and building up a stockpile.
Once the deposits are mined out completely, I'll have a good estimate of how many years I have to find a new source of the crystals, or to figure out what raw materials are actually going into the crystals to artificially manufacture them instead. As an estimate of what's remaining though, I've got at least two auctions after this upcoming one before the current supply runs out, which works out to about nine years.
For the first two months of spring, I worked to finish the lead smelting, which actually was pretty easy. Between having the crystal close by the lab area, and the fact I'd gotten quite used to building and designing furnaces, the two last stages of the lead refining process were a breeze to make. I even added in an additional furnace for smelting the finished lead product, so it could be poured into casts easily, and made a cast for the lead shells that will be replacements for our current artillery shells.
The first furnace was very similar to the one in the city, except it is powered by a small windmill rather than a waterwheel, and it has a chimney to help reduce toxic fumes, since it's working with lead. This furnace is for reducing the lead oxide from the fish bone ash back into liquid lead and other metals.
The second furnace is actually more like a cooking oven, fueled with wood, with a shallow sloped surface and a hopper. You feed crushed up lead metal into the hopper on top, and as a solid, it rests on the sloped surface. The heat is relatively low, so the lead easily melts, and leaves behind other metal impurities on the slope. Every so often, you have to remove the buildup of the leftover metals on the slope, but it does a good job of producing quite pure lead.
From Konkur's notes, it seems that the leftover metal still contains a pretty high amount of lead, alloyed with whatever other impurities didn't melt or burn away. Down the road, it might be possible to extract more metals from the leftovers, using either chemical or electric processes, so I personally want to keep these leftovers separate from other tailings.