Cacophonous Interlude is NOT active
(the QMPC does NOT hear what you write right now)
Next story update : Sometime in July would be nice
Next vote closing : TBD
Progress toward next update : 3,146 words
Code:
Anything I post that's not in text blocks or in spoilers
may be understood to be said by the QMPC, with the
exception of the Collaboration Post
(see Collaboration Post for details on itself)
Code:
Players do not need to use code blocks or spoilers
outside of cacophonous interludes
If you use code blocks, please limit yourself to 32 lines
and your lines to 57 characters, so that people on mobile
can read them without scrolling within the code block
Code:
This is not meant to be Plagiarism Quest.
You're not discouraged from using outside reference
material or quoting other sources. When you do, please
cite your sources in spoilers or a code box.
Code:
I have added some players who contributed a fair amount
the last two times as thread collaborators who can update
the collaboration post. If you'd like to update the
collaboration post too, contact me by PM and we'll talk
about it.
Check the Collaboration Post and read the latest story post in the Threadmarks to get a rough idea of where things are at.
If you're not already involved in the game, portions of either of these may be difficult to follow. But you can skip to the line that says "B R E A K" in the latest threadmarked story post and skim from there to get an idea of what's going on.
If there's no corresponding Closing The Vote post in the Informational threadmarks for the latest story post in (normal?) Threadmarks, then the game is in a cacophonous interlude and the QMPC will hear what you post, unless you do so with spoilers or code boxes. The NOTICES portion at the top of this post should also tell you if the game is in a cacophonous interlude.
So you can engage with other players, make suggestions, ask questions, and propose plans and you can compose a message to the QMPC all whether or not the game is in a cacophonous interlude. And once it is, you can vote and/or send a message to the QMPC by creating a post in the thread.
If you want to vote, simply do so as you would in other quests on this board. You may look at other players' votes to see how yours should be formatted. And you may check the tally to see that yours are counted as you intend them.
If you want to send a message to the QMPC, though, keep in mind that they are a creature of their time. They may not understand what you mean if you don't take the time to make it clear. This game rewards and demands work from its players. When a player wants to introduce a concept or tool or technology to the QMPC, that player will probably need to expend effort to explain it carefully, and take into consideration the limits of the QMPC's understanding of the world.
I think this is similar enough to Graeber's 'interpretive labor' that we can use the term colloquially to describe what is being asked of players. Put yourself in the mind of the QMPC and ask yourself how such a person can be made to understand what you want to tell them.
The QMPC has different values than we do. They have different assumptions about the world and objects and forces within it. Their goals may not align directly with number-go-up or color-get-big gaming agendas. But they want something, and will listen most attentively to players that tell them how to get more of or closer to what they want.
The Quest Master posts story updates that have 3 parts.
Quest Master Player Character responses to player posts made during the last cacophonous interlude
An update by the QMPC following a break of varying length but usually some number of years, covering what the character believes is worth mentioning
Requests by the QMPC for direction on a number of issues, which the players will provide in the form of votes
Following each story update, players posts are audible to the QMPC until voting is closed.
This is the cacophonous interlude.
Players may convey any information they can represent in text.
No images, sounds, or hyperlinks will get through (this is my limitation, not a limitation of the game, so please do not try to transcend it with clever protocol tricks).
Players may use spoilers or code blocks to communicate with each other without doing so in ways the QMPC can hear.
When votes are tallied, the QM collects player posts so that it may be known what the QMPC heard.
Votes are tallied in the conventional fashion. So only votes in the most recent post by each player are counted. [X] marks what the player is voting. And only identical write-ins accumulate.
Some votes are querying the players for their preference, in which case the only suboptimal answer is that which does not accurately reflect the preference of the players who nonetheless chose it (I don't think these kinds of misunderstandings can be helped).
Other votes are intended as puzzles where there is a choice the QM believes would best meet what they believe to be the goals of the players.
However, in these sorts of votes the QM has in mind a choice that would provide the players with what the QM thinks they most want, but which is not listed in the available votes.
In this way, clever write-ins are encouraged.
QM reads player posts, researches their suggestions, checks notes for precedent, determines what the QMPC thinks they already know on the topic, what they're right or wrong about, how likely they are to engage with the topic, how likely the QMPC's followers are to follow-through in the matter, and finally what the result is going to be later on.
QM composes QMPC's responses to player posts made during the cacophonous interlude and updates their notes.
When narrative benefits from uncertainty and chance, QM devises tests for QMPC or other characters and makes those tests using die rolls on a post made just for that purpose.
Skill or attribute tests will be made with a largely undocumented homebrew modification of the Burning Wheel system, mangled to suit the format of this game. (The Burning Wheelis a good system and I encourage you to check it out.)
Tests may be a contest between two characters or against a static target with tiered results.
The rules being used and followed will be described in each post in which tests are made by die rolls.
Normal mortals count 7s and better as successes.
Heroic characters and characters who are otherwise innately magical count 6s and better as successes.
Demigod characters and characters who otherwise possess some spark of divinity count 5s and better as successes.
New gods and characters who have otherwise stolen the power of Old Gods count 4s and better as successes.
Old Gods count 3s and better as successes.
Sorcery and other magic skills lower the threshold of success by 1 to a minimum of 3 only when they are the skill being tested, not when they provide a bonus to other skills. Players may note that Old Gods' threshold of success does not improve when they use magic.
Bonus dice provided by Kahl's Warhorses and any incendiary devices more complicated than a burning arrow reroll 9s & 10s and keeps successes. These same bonus dice cancels successes on 1s & 2s, rerolls those, and additional 1s & 2s cancel additional successes. More 1s, 2, 9, or 10s mean more rerolling and more successes or cancelations, but only in the manner of the original die. That is, a 1 or 2 that comes up when a 9 on a bonus die is rerolled don't cancel successes or lead to further rerolling.
Research project results are determined by percentile dice with results falling into 5 tiers.
Uh oh: something has gone horribly wrong
Nuh uh: failure, but the boring kind
Huh: partial success
Uh huh: full success
Whoa: superior special case success
When players expect a test to be coming up -- for example if they vote for an invasion or to send a diplomat to manipulate a foreign leader -- they can improve the odds of the test turning out the way they want by providing the QMPC with advice specific to that matter. If the advice is not mistaken or outright bad, there will be at least a chance it will help. That is, decent advice adds dice.
QM composes the QMPC's post-break update, player vote questions, and player vote options.
GOTO 1
The QMPC is intended to be the only character the players will interact with in this game. (It's kind of possible that the players could maneuver the QMPC to surrender control of the Astute Cacophony to another character, but unlikely.)
The QMPC is a small, evil woman who knows magic and has not died, despite looking like she probably should have at some point. She goes by the name Bianca the Undying. Her early life took place in the Paleolithic, in which she has said that she traveled around quite a bit and came to understand the malleable nature of populations of people and animals and even the land itself. At some point she was trapped underground, to her displeasure. She remained trapped for a very long time.
When Bianca got out, she found her way to a community of eight tribes living pastoral and agrarian lifestyles in the local Copper Age. She made these people hers and they relied on her for magically enriching their fields so that they did not need to slash, burn, and move around a bit, unlike their neighbors. Bianca and her followers formalized their relationships into the Eight Ways Pact. Later, another tribe joined Bianca's followers bringing small horses and the Bronze Age and their pact was updated with a ninth directive.
Bianca has an agenda that requires her to have more power than she does right now. She believes that achieving divinity will get her that power.
The only thing that I worry about is the fact that the Hersaulf the Unaging, Dread Magician of Enonl, may be dangerous to Bianca's power if allowed to live for too long. But it was probably logical to allow him these additional 50 years in exchange for reasonable cooperation and his terrible magical recipe.
4 [Underclass] It's fine for now. As soon as there are as
many Galugr as there are members in the next largest
tribe it has to stop.
3 [Vassal] Refuse
4 [Hurrah] He may go, but only after preparing things so
that his replacement(s) can easily take his place, say by
spending some time informing them of things they need to
know before leaving and teaching them how to better
handle problems. If he spends at least a year preparing
his successors and are reasonably confident that they
will do a good job, he should be allowed to leave on his
quest after that.
4 [Horse] Try leaving her with a herd of horses for some
years first. If she has produced no offspring by half her
breedable lifespan, try calming her with magic instead
and, failing that, tie her down and make sure it gets
done.
"The Galugr will be permitted to plunder the world for lesser giants to add to their tribe, then. There will be problems, surely. But nothing that a few hundred summers won't smooth out. Or, who knows, perhaps they will vex me and I will slay them all. At this point, neither will surprise me too much.
"And I will take the great mare as tribute, and allow her to manage a herd as she sees fit, to see if she calms with age. If she does not, I will ensorcel peace into her innards and learn if, so pacified, she will accept the company of a stallion.
"Kuwuzt the chieftain of Zouchaud, hero, father of Gast who was victorious even in death, First Chief of the Ten Nations, and King of Enonl will not be permitted to go adventuring until he has spent a year preparing those who will act in his place while he is gone and will take his place if he does not return. Zouchaud tribe will, at times, choose their new chieftain prior to the passing of the prior. But it is not the way of the Ten Nations to do so. For that reason, Kuwuzt will prepare only the new King of Enonl and the new Chieftain of Zouchaud.
"Finally, the Giantess of Liavint will be refused the capture of Ekhaicvint, which will be mine. Truly, I will make a proof to myself that I am not to be outdone by any city."
[X] [Underclass] It's fine. Let the Galugr solve their own problems the way they see fit.
That is a great idea of the Galugr that needs to be even expanded on beyond them, I think. My previous conquest by "taking and equally spreading" conquered was a small disaster, but maybe forced marriage would do the trick. So other tribes could add to their numbers in a similar way.
It's always good to have more people under your power, as long as there is enough food of course. Ways to increase the population of both the Galugr and the other tribes are useful.
Surely among all tribes, there are free people that would like to have more wives and husbands for their family, not only among the Galugr. Even if only the Galugr tribe needs this to survive. Yes, I would support even expanding this idea!
This would promote not only increasing numbers but also bigger diversity in the instructions of life, that is very beneficial (lack of diversity, the most extreme in between siblings or between other people with common ancestors, is harmful and much more often cause mistakes in instructions).
The important thing here, I think, is to have this situation of fewer freedoms and rights as temporary, non-inheritable. To prevent constant discord of the forever worse people.
[X] [Hurrah] He may go, but only after preparing things so that his replacement(s) can easily take his place, say by spending some time informing them of things they need to know before leaving and teaching them how to better handle problems. If he spends at least a year preparing his successors and are reasonably confident that they will do a good job, he should be allowed to leave on his quest after that.
[X] [Horse] Try leaving her with a herd of horses for some years first. If she has produced no offspring by half her breedable lifespan, try calming her with magic instead and, failing that, tie her down and make sure it gets done.
Let's try being nice first. The best result is to have her do it willingly, for then she may do it again without our intervention. If it doesn't work, well, we have ways to get what we want.
"Yes, Black Cat. I am wary indeed of two peoples sharing land where one is subservient to the other. Should the Galugr treat the children they have with their formerly-outsider spouses in any way they would not treat other Free People of the Ten Nations, I will correct them.
"The Galugr are so few. I have only drawn two singers from their number. And when they use wax and hand-table they do so with slow ponderousness or in a reckless rush. So there is only one table-ruler of note, who is called by her fellow table-rulers Fengl the Illegible. Only she can read her writings with something close to the speed that the writings of other table-rulers can be read.
"Still those my singers and table-rulers who are of the Fisher People also move among the Galugr. They will watch for the regard given to the children of Galugr and formerly-outsider Galugr."
Mass production.
It's possible to have fast mass production of an item or device. In the biggest and oldest cities that I can see or imagine or remember this is done (or was done) by machines. Complicated devices that create other devices... But such machinery is often so complicated that developing methods could take hundreds of years even with our advice...
So, for now, let's explain how this could somewhat work only with people and simpler tools. It would be much less effective, but the basic ways should work.
The basic idea is that the best design for a plow or reaping device or threshing device or another sort of device (or item) is selected.
Sizes of all parts and all details of this design are carefully measured.
Then workers are specialized in making parts. One worker constantly makes wheels, one constantly makes gears, the other one makes something else, and yet another one constantly assembles these previously manufactured parts together.
It may be not easy to train a worker to always make gear or wheel or something almost identically so that parts can be always assembled together by the last worker on the assembly line, but it's easier than training great craftsmen that are able to create anything.
Lack of decorations, to simplify design, is helpful.
Such a place of mass production, if constantly supplied with food and resources needed for production, can constantly produce for example two plows per day, or two complicated devices per day, with extremely specialized workers where one needs to understand only his own part of the task, without mastering the whole. Such a place of mass production can create for example two hundred devices per year, that could be then divided between villages. Or sold to villages or traders, like it was done in cities with such customs.
Products of the building of mass production are divided equally between people according to numbers and writing of the table-rulers in some nations that I can see. In others, as I can see such an alternative way, these products are traded, sold.
But whether this is done with the order of the king enforced by his table rulers or with greedy trade, regardless of the method used: the villages need to support the building of mass production or the whole city of mass production with food and resources, and then receive devices in return.
Regardless of whether this is done with greed or maybe with Divine Order or King's Will, regardless of the method used, great number of resources and devices need to be constantly exchanged between many villages and the building or sometimes the whole city of mass production.
"You suggest a plow-shaper always make their plow blades in the same shapes so that the plow-builder can always attach them to the beam and hitch and turning-board and poles and grips each made by other wood- and metal-workers. This is what you mean?
"Each would need to work exactly right. But none would personally know the consequences of their errors. And it is the way of people who make things that they always look for better or at least easier ways of making. But these would be unable to do so, or when they do so it could easily result in trouble for the plow-builder. Or it could mean a dispute with the maker of the part their part fixes to.
"And, further, if each part-marker only makes the same part again and again all their life, they will surely not improve much. The plow-shaper will know only the shaping of plows. And unlike the beaters of iron that make all things, they could not be taken swiftly from the shaping of plow blades to the shaping of axe heads or spear points.
"The reaping and threshing machines seem more suitable for this sort of plan of work. But for those the parts need even more to fit together in a certain way. So there is even more likely to be dispute and waste.
"I do see the wisdom in bringing together more than one craftsworker to build a device, rather than a single person working each step of the way. But the scale I think you suggest must be impossible. Perhaps a great craftsperson who is teaching several who are lesser may tell them, 'You will make this part,' and, 'You will make that part.' And in leading them with care they may see the parts made properly, so that they all go together.
"I will have this process applied to the reaping and threshing machines made around my great house and see what comes of it."
Another matter. Need to constantly trade or exchange resources even without buildings of mass production: you asked before, why villages cannot be mostly self-sufficient, and only sometimes ask other villages to share when a difference of wealth is obvious?
Well. The diversity of diet, mentioned decades ago as essential for health, for example. As far as I can see, for example salt from the sea should be constantly divided, according to the numbers of table-rulers, between villages further inland. Or traded, as trade is an alternative way. The same concerns many other things that are essential for the diversity of eaten food. For example, frozen fish could be transported between icehalls during Winter.
The principle of specialized mass production can be applied to salt production, by the way. Some people constantly produce salt from the saltwater, others constantly bring them food and take salt to distribute between inland villages. Whether these people are motivated by order or by trade and greed is less important than the basic way.
"Nearly all the people do eagerly take any chance they have to eat some different thing, be it gathered from the forest or sea or grown in another place and brought over. Often one person or another speaks highly of one meal or another they had in their life. Even now, Kuwuzt of Zouchaud makes great feasts for any of the Free People of the Ten Nations who comes to his city. And in these he does present them with foods from other places as well as the foods of Enonl that are not found in the other lands of the Ten Nations.
"I think you are right that the greatest difference is between the lands near the sea and those farther from it. But in places game differs, and in places the other foods brought from the forests differ, also. And certainly no one is growing all that is grown in the lands around my great house.
"As the roads grow and travel between the villages of the Ten Nations is made easier, so too should each person's understanding of what can be asked of their neighbors. That is a slow way of travel for goods that spoil, though. I can see salt spreading, but perhaps not mushrooms or summer game.
"The matter is fine as it is, I think. I see little reason to interfere too much so long as the people are largely healthy."
Disciplined Army.
You and your people currently believe that boldness is the most important to win wars and battles, but this is untrue. Surely some of that is needed, as warriors cannot run away like cowards, but discipline is more important.
A force that instantly obeys orders of their commander without any discussion and move in disciplined formation with shields and spears can often defeat warriors that are bolder but undisciplined, prone to discord and unable to follow orders in search of individual glory.
So no, when I advice for permanent Army or Guard, it's not at all the boldest warriors that would be the best suited for that. Surely some boldness or rather lack of utter cowardice is needed to advance according to orders despite risks of death and fighting, but discipline is more essential.
So no, it's not these warriors that are like bold discord that would be the most proper as warriors of the Army.
Warriors that are too bold without obedience to your rules are a problem, not benefit.
Surely there are otherwise usual people that could be tempted with nice food, armor and weapons to serve you in your Army and Guard with discipline. No constant love of fighting needed, and usually, there would be more marching and training than true fighting.
In the future even strength would be less needed to win battles or disputes, there would be more and more cunning devices of war instead. It's possible to create a small weapon of bursting dust that would allow even meek table-ruler to easily kill a bold warrior.
"This, Black Cat, does more to make sense of your 'armed forces' proposals than anything else.
"I understand that you mean to take those willing to fight, but unchosen, and see them gathered into another warparty where their own and lesser boldness is covered for by the boldness of one who goes out in front to lead them or the furor of one who stands behind to drive them.
"I think even the less bold of the Free People who still chose to go out to battle will make dispute with one driving them in this manner. Perhaps I will instruct the Giantess to arrange her host in this way and see what comes of it."
How to enforce judgments on the bold people without your constant interventions? Again, as I said many times before: police, guards, that would cooperate with judges. One bold warrior cannot expect to survive while ignoring lawful judgments if many Guards would help to enforce these. Even if individually these Guards would be less bold men or women than the criminal. There is strength in numbers and discipline, not only in boldness.
"Another matter for cities, I think. When I have one that concerns me personally, I may revisit these. But I see no need for this manner of justice-making in the lands of the Ten Nations."
Warrant of Trade.
After thinking for a while I believe that you could have rich traders in a way that would be beneficial for you. These few people that love greed and things more than their own families could be drawn out of their families and tribes, like Singers are, and become your Traders with their small hoards of wealth stored around your Great Home. Where is the benefit for you? Obvious: your Traders would be allowed to be rich for a short while, but then, like all mortals, they would die, sooner or later. And all riches of their small hoards would become your own. Your special Traders should be of course free people and could return to their families or start new ones, but in such cases, like in the case of death, most of their hoard - with exception of a few personal items - should become your own.
These special Traders could be allowed to travel and trade not only with outsiders but also between various villages and families of the Ten Nations. And you could be sure that the effects of greed, any surplus value extracted to benefit small hoards of these Traders, would ultimately benefit you. At the same time, much more resources and things would be moved around faster, and without the need for extensive table-ruler planning.
"I may not understand greed properly. But I believe that those who suffer its effects want to experience their hoard in ways that they wouldn't be able to in the situation you describe. Either, I think, they will want to take their hoard with them to the house of their family, or they will want to take their hoard outside the lands of the Ten Nations, where they can live with their wealth.
"But I will seek out one or two who love to haggle and to accumulate more than they love their own family. And I will see what they can do when freed of all constraints but mine."
A critique of seeing obesity as a reward.
The ability to eat more than plenty of food surely is a nice reward for a few people, but these people should use such a great right responsibly and with some moderation. It should be well understood that if they become fat, then their health would suffer. They should be encouraged to eat plenty, but not more than plenty. Plenty and diversity are excellent, but... More than plenty, to the point of fatness, cause problems. And health problems sound like a bad thing to praise as rewards. Of course, this shouldn't be a law, as it would be folly to outlaw fatness among the privileged, but it should be a known wisdom that extremes can cause faster deaths and that moderation is wise.
"Based on earlier conversations, already I have directed my singers to spread songs and stories of people who were fat to struggling and how they came to ill because of it. That is, I think, sufficient."
More criticisms of overbeating children.
In the nature of some people is to be bolder, while other people tend to be more meek. Overbeating always have negative influence on the human mind and cannot produce more people bold in the healthy way. Simply some children with boldness in their nature are able to survive this in better shape, but would be bold regardless.
Overbeating sometimes produce, among these naturally bold, unhealthy and dangerous anger, much more than usual boldness. Warriors whose boldness and unending hunger for fights strongly outweighs their wisdom and can be, as you know and to quote you, "discord in the shape of Fisher People". While useful for some raids, whole lives of such people tend to cause more damages than benefits. More moderation, discipline and order would be useful instead of that.
"I do not think much change can be made in this way, Black Cat. The business of shaping children goes on too all the time and too everywhere. And people of like minds on the subject will not be calling each other out for breaking away from any ideal I set above them.
"But I will tell you this: I will set my singers to it. LIke the matter of people who are so fat they struggle, I will set my singers to make song and story of children beaten so that they are too damaged to support their elders when grown."
Dear Bianca, I have several new devices which you will find quite useful! Also some advice for better cannon construction.
First, I know of a means to safely divert natural lightning that hits a house or other building, so that it does not spark a fire or cause other damage. For my explanation of why this works to make any sense, it must be understood that lightning is a manifestation of a force known to us as electricity, which is itself a subset of a more fundamental force known as electromagnetism. Light, nerve signals, and the tugging of a lodestone on iron are also manifestations of electromagnetism, but quite different ones from lightning.
Either way, electricity is often best thought of as as charge, which comes in both positive and negative forms; these terms are entirely arbitrary, other descriptive words could be used to differentiate charges. Negative and positive attract each other, but are repelled from like charges. In addition, charge moves far easier through some materials than others; charge moves through metals and ionized plasma with ease, but barely moves at all through wood or normal air.
Lightning is the result of charge separating within tall clouds due to the motion of particulate matter. A negative charge accumulates at the bottom of the cloud. Meanwhile, positive charge within the ground accumulates below, attracted by the negative charge in the cloud's bottom.
This continues until the sheer quantity of charge overcomes the air's immense resistance, starting to move. The difficulty of moving charge through air causes the air to heat up, until it ionizes into glowing energetic plasma, allowing the rest of the charge to snap through the ionized channel near-instantly. Due to the reduced distance between charges, lightning can strike tall trees or buildings sooner and more often. There is no form of intelligence behind this process, just the motion of matter and charge; otherwise, the lightning diverting device I am about to describe would not work.
"So, firstly, by some means loads of this stuff which normally repel each other instead gather together at the bottom of a tall cloud. Then, because they are gathered there, the loads which are attracted to those loads gather in the ground below that cloud. So the two loads gather until the their attraction to one another is great enough to pull the ground loads into the air and on up to the cloud loads. But the load in the air heats the air, for some reason. And it heats it until… something unclear happens. In any case, once 'whatever' has happened to the air, it is much easier for the ground load to move through it, so it goes to the cloud. But when this happens, any tree or building or person or creature along the path the load moves through is burned.
"But burning is not all there is to lightning. If there were, it would be some strange kind of fire and not lightning. Those who live after being struck by lightning are changed in ways rather different from those who live after being burned. What is it you are not telling me, oh voice?"
Now, to defend a structure against lightning, you will need two long metal rods and a bundle of decently thick metal cable (cable is a term for metal wires bundled together like rope). Hammer one of the rods into the ground near the building, and mount the other on top pointed straight up. Now, just connect them with the metal cable, and you've got a functional lightning diverter. The rods and cable will provide a much easier path for the charge to flow than the wood making up the building, preventing any significant heating or damage. I could have simply said to put the metal rods in place and connect them with a metal cable, but I figured you would appreciate an explanation of why such a measure protects a building from lightning.
"I do appreciate the explanation, voice. But making metal wire is not simply done. And making so much wire that cables can be made of it to run from the top of every tall building to the ground would be some great work."
Iron is fairly decent at allowing charge to flow, but the three best metals for conducting electricity are silver, copper, and gold in that order. It is possible to produce materials that allow charge to flow with no resistance whatsoever, known as superconductors, but they are very difficult to create, and only act as superconductors at such low temperatures that Iron is brittle enough to shatter like glass.
"And this is another problem. If cables of silver or gold lie alongside every building to save it from lightning, there will come a time when some greedy fool seizes the metal for their own ends. Even copper would surely one day be taken in this fashion.
"But I do not call for many tall buildings. There is a tower at my great house, and the tower which came before it did burn down to lightning. Perhaps one of these here. And perhaps I will see that this knowledge makes it to the Burgeck, who remain bitter to me at my rejection of their suit. And perhaps lightning will not be what takes down their next great hall, but some other mishap instead."
Speaking of Iron, I will now inform you of a set of devices to improve Iron production greatly, and to make the production of large quantities of good steel feasible. The first and most important is what is known as a blast furnace. A blast furnace is a special type of furnace built to operate at extremely high temperatures, sufficient to completely melt Iron ore and extract it in a liquid form. The furnace itself is a fairly normal tower of fired bricks that is open at the top, and with a hole near the bottom where a fired clay pipe is used to extract the molten metal. However, the true defining features of a Blast Furnace are how air is delivered into the furnace, and the specific fuels used.
The air used to oxidize the fuel in a blast furnace is delivered by a continuous-flow air pump and pre-heated. To make a continuous-flow air pump, the simplest option will be to have multiple bellows connected to a single pipe and desynchronized. This can be achieved using a crank-shaft, which is a long rod mounted on pivots, with sections bent outwards from the axis of rotation, such that a rod connected to the crankshaft on one end at a bent section and a piston or bellows on the other will convert rotational motion into reciprocating motion. Separating these bellows by a predetermined angle on the crank shaft will ensure that when the shaft is spinning, there will always be a bellows in the process of blowing air into the pipe.
This air pipe should then be passed through a stove separate from the blast furnace itself. Bending it around inside this stove to heat the air as much as possible is highly recommended, as the hotter the air delivered to the blast furnace, the hotter the furnace can get. The hot air should then be routed into a circular pipe around the base of the blast furnace to ensure even pressure distribution, and blown into the bottom of the furnace through downwards-angled pipes.
The fuel meanwhile should be either high-purity charcoal, or coke. Coke is just coal that has been subjected to the same oxygen-free heating process as charcoal in order to purify it. These fuels are preferred because of their ability to burn at very high temperatures, which is a necessity when trying to fully melt Iron. In addition, it would be wise to mix in a bit of Limestone with the Iron Ore in a Blast Furnace; the Lime produced will act as a Flux, removing impurities from the Iron, though not all of them. Important to note is that a Blast Furnace can be run continuously, adding more fuel, ore and Limestone in layers as material is removed from the base of the furnace.
"Two ovens, then. One which bakes only air. And the air baked therein should be always flowing, driven by a pair of bellows, or more, themselves driven by some bent and spinning rod. That baked air then passes into the bottom of the second oven, where it is spread about in a ring for even flow.
"But this second oven is not an oven of two chambers as the first is, where fuel is burned in one and air is baked as it passes through the other. The second oven is all chimney. And into the top goes ore and the stone that would go in the lime-kiln and pure charred coals.
"How can it be known if the charred coals are sufficiently pure, voice?
"And of the liquid metal that pours out the bottom, how may it be judged so that the people running the two ovens know if more fuel or more ore or more limestone should be added?
"And is there no other slag, but only liquid iron coming out the bottom channel? By what means does the refuse exit?
The Iron that comes out of a Blast Furnace is what is known as an intermediate product on account of being highly brittle when solid; not useful for much on its own, except for being made into more useful materials. This can be achieved using a device known as a Bessemer Converter, which is another device requiring forced pre-heated air. A Bessemer Converter is a large crucible mounted on pivots for pouring, with a few specific features.
First and foremost, one of the pivots also has a pipe for hot air leading to the bottom of the converter, where a chamber with multiple holes leading up into the converter allows air to flow evenly through all parts of the converter. In addition, the hole for pouring out of the converter is narrower than the converter's entire chamber, and off-center, so that if the converter were completely full it would start pouring from the lower layers of fluid before the top ones. The converter should be lined with fired clay for its heat resistance, though Iron ores containing a lot of Phosphorus will instead require a converter lined with either Dolomite or Limestone (specifically because those are Base materials, and therefore react with the phosphorus).
When the molten Iron from the blast furnace is added to the converter, start the converter's air pump immediately, blowing hot air up through the molten metal. Impurities in the molten Iron will react with the air, producing heat and floating to the top of the converter as slag. This also removes the Iron's carbon content, which is a problem. To solve it, simply remove all the impurities by running the converter for about half an hour, then re-add the desired level of Carbon and Manganese to the molten Iron before it cools, turning it into steel. The steel in the converter can then be poured into molds, either for ingots to be worked into finished products, or cast into finished products directly.
"How is a pipe within a pivot? Is the axel hollow? What could it be made of to be so strong as to hold a great pot of molten iron while it is hollow?
"How is air moved so forcefully that molten iron does not fall into a fill the passages for air?
"How can it be known if the iron ore requires special lining or not?
"What do you mean about the pouring hole and pouring the lower layers first?
"I still do not know the means of finding stone to be added back in. And, I suppose, the same question as before applies to the charred coals to be added back in. How can it be told when more or less is needed?
"I do not think there is any place in my various dealings with the people who live around my great house where I would set aside all other work to attempt to build these two devices, which apparently depend on each other. If Burgeck still jumped at my every cough then perhaps they could try it out. But I have little time for what may well turn out to be nonsense. And there are no others right now so eager for instruction of any sort that they will undertake what may well turn out to be nonsense.
Another topic I wish to cover is a more portable means of food preservation, known as canning. The basic idea of canning is fairly simple; put food in a sealed airtight container and heat it enough to kill all the bacteria inside so it can't spoil. The implementation is a bit trickier, however. There are two methods of canning which I will describe here, namely water-bath canning and pressure canning. In both cases, you will need a glass jar (this jar need not be clear), a cork or fitted wooden lid sealed in place with wax, and some wire to tie the lid in place.
In both water-bath and pressure canning, the sealed jar of food is then placed in a container of water, which is then heated to a boil. The only differences in equipment are what type of container the jars are placed in. In water-bath canning, a simple open-topped cooking pot will do the job, as normal boiling temperatures are sufficient. However, water-bath canning is only appropriate for acidic foods, as otherwise the airless environment inside a canned jar will permit dangerous varieties of bacteria to grow that normally do not make their presence known.
"So sour foodstuff is placed in a glass jar. The glass jar is sealed with a fitting lid and wax and wire. Then the glass jar is placed in another pot with boiling water and left there for a time. This, you tell me, will kill the tiny life within the glass jar, allowing the food to keep. I think the wax will melt, first.
"But how is the interior of the glass jar airless? And if there is no air, how is the lid not pulled down into the jar?"
To be more specific, the bacteria known as Botulinum can produce highly heat-resistant spores that can later grow into new Botulinum bacteria, which can cause food poisoning. To destroy these spores requires temperatures somewhat higher than the normal boiling point of water, which is problematic since water will not exceed its boiling point without becoming a vapor. Fortunately, the vapor pressure on liquid water can cause its boiling point to vary quite dramatically; the higher the pressure, the hotter water has to get before it boils. The solution is to use an extra-thick pot with a very tight-fitting lid held in place by screws around the edge, or other heavy-duty fastenings.
To ensure the lid will not lose pressure, it will require a gasket. A gasket is a ring of flexible material to fill in the edges of a connection that needs to not leak, allowing a less-than-perfect fit. At your level of development, I would recommend a leather gasket, though such is not ideal.
It is important that the lid have a valve that can be opened to release steam, and which will open itself it the pressure inside becomes too excessive; otherwise, the pressure could build up to an extreme degree, possibly bursting the canner and spraying everyone nearby with superheated water. For the same reason, a pressure canner should be made out of Bronze or Steel; clay pressure canners are far too likely to burst compared to a strong metallic one. Another important feature is a grate that keeps the jars from directly contacting the bottom of the canner. This prevents uneven heating of the jars from causing cracking and ruining the whole point of the process.
"And for the keeping of non-sour foodstuff, it must be placed inside another pot, of bronze or better metal, and sealed in. And the seal of the pot should be a ring of leather on a lid which has some device which will release the air within when it becomes too forceful.
"You must tell me the making of this device, voice. It sounds as though a bursting hearthweapon is all that would be built without it. And I have no need for further unexpected burstings of flying bits of pot and jar and scalding water and foodstuff, or unexpected burstings of any sort, truly.
"Tell me more also of the device that goes beneath the jar within the sealed pot. Is this also used in the unsealed pot?"
If properly canned, food will not properly spoil for an effectively unlimited length of time so long as the container remains sealed. However, past five or six years the nutritional content of the food starts to degrade; it's still safe to eat, it just won't provide as much benefit to the person doing the eating.
"What is it, precisely, that lowers the stature of the sealed food? If it is not being eaten by tiny life and made into poison wastes, what happens to it?"
On the topic of Bacteria, now that you've got microscopes capable of seeing microbes, you can start searching for a way to poison them without harming people. The methodology is fairly simple; start with substances that are known to not negatively affect people, apply them to a population of bacteria, and see if the bacteria die. For more verification that the substance will be safe to use on humans, you can take a tiny sample of blood with a sterile needle, and watch under the microscope to see if the blood cells in it are damaged by whatever substance you're testing. Worth noting is that many of these substances are themselves made by bacteria themselves as a means of attacking each other, while others are made by fungi, or plants. In addition, you may be able to invent some magic that can do the job.
There is a LOT to study in the field of microbiology, and I am just providing the barest framework, but the most important factors are being able to reliably procure bacterial growth media, along with identifying and culturing single species of bacteria for study. A bacterial growth media is exactly what it sounds like: a substance bacteria can grow well in, that can also be easily examined with a microscope. For a start I would recommend vegetable broth that has been canned, to ensure no pre-existing bacteria can muck up your results. Visual recognition meanwhile is a very bad technique for attempting to identify bacteria, but it's what you've got available right now. Bacteria suspected to be disease-causing can be collected from sick individuals using sterile swabs of boiled cloth fibers and transferred to a bottle of growth media for analysis.
"Yes. This is understood already by the people. Now that they can see the tiny life they would know which serves them like goats and which vexes then like wolves. But even goats do sometimes injure a person and wolf pelts are well desired. And so the people wish to know what can be done with tiny life.
"I already mean to have arrangements of lenses made for the wisest people of each tribe. And after those are made I will have more made until every village has one, if possible. All of the people should know of tiny life directly, even if only the wise folk spend so much time on them.
"But finding any tiny life is difficult and uncertain at times. And at other times it is easy. How can we know in one case that the tiny life has died and that case was not one where it simply was harder to find?
"I suppose in the case of finding the tiny life of sickness we can compare the life grown from a pre-boiled rag covered in splittle from a sick person with a pre-boiled rag covered in spittle from a healthy person. There is much to be done in this pursuit."
Now, for Cannon construction, a better method than casting with a ditch would be to use an upright mold. Use a wood carving of the cannon's planned external form, forcibly close a box full of fireclay around the model, and there's your mold for the exterior of the cannon. Pop the box open, extract the model, clamp it shut again and stand it upright, pouring your molten bronze or steel into the mold.
Now, to dig the channel for the cannonball will require a specialized tool that I'm going to call a drill bench. This is a setup that lets you firmly secure the cannon at a specific orientation relative to a drill mounted so that it cannot be aimed in any direction except straight from the front of the cannon to the back. The drill should be able to slide forwards in order to dig into the cannon. For reference, a drill is a tool that spins along its axis of motion, so that it cuts into whatever material it is being used on as it is pushed forwards, removing a cylindrical volume of material as the drill digs deeper. For a drill to be used on bronze or steel, I would recommend using case-hardened steel for the drill. The metal shavings that the drill removes should be collected, so that they can be melted down and re-used. A smaller drill should be used to make the touch-hole, through which the powder in the cannon is to be ignited.
"So much metal, voice. Why not just set the drill against the wall and grind away, if it can tear a hole into a solid bronze cnanon? Well, there are fewer people shooting arrows at the turner when they are back in the camp, I suppose. But still, wonders must be built to build greater wonders, I suppose.""
As an added note, casting cannons on-site isn't really a good idea for a variety of reasons. First off, it makes the process of making the cannon in the first place that much harder, when getting a good cannon is already very difficult. Second, it denies you the opportunity to test-fire the cannon before it needs to be used, which lets you know if it's going to prove a viable weapon, explode when used, or simply be a massive disappointment. As such, I would heavily recommend making cannons ahead of time at a dedicated production facility, and mounting ones that you are planning on using on specially-built carts, so they can be wheeled around with relative ease.
"I have found that firing a cannon one time successfully is no assurance it will fire successfully a second time, voice. So why bother dragging around a massive lump that may not even work? Better to cast it from bronze bars at the site and use it until it ceases to work, if it works at all.
"I had trouble enough removing the great masses of metal from the lands around Ekhaicvint after being turned away at the walls. Moving such a thing not only from a surrounded city but also to it would be too much."
Also, slow-burning fuses can be made through the following process. The following ingredients will be needed: Potassium Nitrate, Sugar, and string. Mix 60% Potassium Nitrate with 40% Sugar, and add the mix to a pan full of boiling water. Mix the combustibles in well, and when the water in the pan boils down enough to start getting frothy add the string, being careful to ensure the entire length of string is absorbing roughly the same amount of chemicals.
Now, this chemically-soaked string needs to be straightened out on baking trays so that it isn't overlapping or tangled, and baked at a bit hotter than the temperature water boils. After this, the cord should be a bit yellower than when it went in, and should be stiff. This indicates success; if you cut off a length of this cord and light it at one end, it should burn at a slow regular rate. Notably, it will even burn in the total absence of air, as the Potassium Nitrate in the cord now fills the role Oxygen normally plays in combustion.
One siege tactic you could try is to build a wall around the city, known to us as circumvallation. You should probably do it out of wood and earth, as it meant to be temporary. This prevents any supply effort and communication from happening.
"A wall for those hiding behind a wall. There is poetry to this. But Ekhaicvint is on two rivers, and their boats are greater than any we could bring to them. They may be greater than any we could build at the site, as well."
Another thing you might want to try is to build a tunnel underneath until you reach the wall. Then you mine the wall to undermine its foundation and create a hole.
"Tunneling is an uncertain business. This sounds like a good way to lose warriors before the battle even starts, as the tunnel falls in and such. But with curving stone ceilings and other matters that Burgeck seeks to perfect, perhaps this can be made to work.
"Hah! Yes, this is a fine answer to any wall. But the people carrying the dirt will be assailed by arrows and slung stones and any other thing the people of the city come to throw against them. There would need to be a shield of some sort built over them. But it that shield is made of wood, then burning arrows could set it aflame. I feel that there is a solution here and that I am very close to it."
It's also a good idea to see if there are blindspots that you could approach without the defenders being capable of shooting at you back. If you could find such weakness, it will be much easier to bring other siege tactics or engines to bear.
Even if you couldn't find a blindspot, some spots may be easier than other.
"Ah, yes. I see, oh voice. The ramp can be built where the people in the city are least able to respond, like at a corner, perhaps? I do not know walls enough to know what else might make such a blind spot. But my warriors will be on the lookout for one when I return to Ekhaicvint."
[Underclass] It's fine for now. As soon as there are as many Galugr as there are members in the next largest tribe it has to stop.
That they seek to bolster their numbers is only understandable. Letting them grow too much is not. Let them do it... for now.
[Vassal] Refuse
The city is good target practice. Without it, how else will we test our weapons of war?
[Hurrah] He may go, but only after preparing things so that his replacement(s) can easily take his place, say by spending some time informing them of things they need to know before leaving and teaching them how to better handle problems. If he spends at least a year preparing his successors and are reasonably confident that they will do a good job, he should be allowed to leave on his quest after that.
He will die of old age eventually. I'd say let him go for it -he'll be gone soon enough either way- but it would be wise, I think, to have him pave the metaphorical way for his successors now that his absence can be foreseen. This would be less prone to causing problems with a sudden inexperienced ruler, as cities have been toppled that way at (albeit fairly rare) times.
[Horse] Try leaving her with a herd of horses for some years first. If she has produced no offspring by half her breedable lifespan, try calming her with magic instead and, failing that, tie her down and make sure it gets done.
Let's try being nice first. The best result is to have her do it willingly, for then she may do it again without our intervention. If it doesn't work, well, we have ways to get what we want.
Now, those matters aside, Starrunner sends you greetings.
Firstly, on the matter of youth. The methods of replication for replacing individual cells and the creation of new people are somewhat different. When a new person is made, the mother and father each take their own instructions, which are still readable. Then, taking half of the text of each instruction set, they fabricate a completely new set containing those newly made instructions, pristine and ready for use. Since the original instructions were only read, not copied, the new instruction set suffers not from the age of the old ones - the safety margin is new and complete, not worn and used. It is this copying of instructions that is why children resemble their parents. This is indeed quite distinct from the copying processes that are otherwise used, but there is good reason that it's not used everywhere. The components, as mentioned, are taken randomly. If one tries to take two of the same instruction set, there is a good chance that each line will be two copies of the same thing. This can cause great problems - a person's genetic code combined with itself as such would suffer as many issues as a that of a child borne of three generations of consecutive sibling matings.
Whilst we are on this matter, there is also reason why males are fertile longer than females. Both genders have specialized cells made to facilitate the process of reproduction. For the male, these are produced on demand. The female, however, is born with a certain amount and, each menstruation, one of them are spent. Her supply eventually runs out, and she is thus rendered infertile (sometimes baring the occasional straggler).
On the topic of a police force or other enforcement agency, perhaps you do not see the immediate need. True, with only the nine nations and a single city, you may be able to enforce order on your lonesome. What will you do when the nine nations number in the millions (a million is a thousand times a thousand) of people across numerous cities of varying size? Cities have been made, though likely not on your world, that contain millions of people on their lonesome, with towering buildings of steel, glass and concrete that stand a hundred people-lengths tall or even higher. This was the same civilization that possessed non-magical weapons strong enough to level cities in an instant - though I won't go into those if for no other reason that you would currently stand no chance of making them. I'll stop at giving you a hint - the weapon uses the same processes of radioactive decay that keeps the center of the world molten, without which it would have long since cooled. I wouldn't advise messing with radioactive materials unless you're wearing a lead suit - that stuff causes incurable sickness (albeit of a kind that can take months or years to end one's life) by mere proximity as it damages the instructions of life. For all I know it'd break your immortality, though I don't know how that magic works so I can't say for sure.
With a larger nation as such, you could not hope to enforce order on your lonesome. Once you get to that point, it would surely be far better to already have such enforcement, being able to answer the question of their necessity on the basis of 'because it has always been' instead of having to justify it against such a large population. The need may not be apparent right now, but as your dominion grows, so will the need to enforce your rule. Numbers have a might all of their own, and great enough numbers would eventually exceed even your might. Think of the viability of fighting a world of a billion (a thousand million) people on your lonesome even if only one in a hundred fight, if you will. Could you say that you would still emerge victorious?
"Yes, yes. I see that when numbers get so great that people can no longer live freely then some manner of people must be lifted over the others to make order.
"Already the Free People of the Ten Nations largely keep the order and peace themselves. It is the nature of a person to want comfort and a life free of unpleasant surprises. And in seeking this they ask of those who have more that they share, they share with those who have less, they praise those among them to better all of them, and they exclude the trouble-makers from among them, sometimes in the middle of a blizzard.
"I will not be setting down an order which has no current purpose. It does me little good to start a fight for no reason. Further, it does me the opposite of good to start a fight I might not win. If I say to the people, 'Do this thing,' and many of them do not do it, then I must either strike down many people or suffer a loss of authority.
"But it is different in the cities, yes. And we shall see what comes of them, perhaps.
"If I needed to kill one billion people, Starrunner, I would take my time. Any case where I need a billion people dead must surely be a case where I have little else to do."
On the topic of iron, what you currently use is cast iron - an inferior and brittle material that is really a poor use of your iron. Seen from that point of view, it is no wonder your cannons destroy themselves. Steel is a far better material to use. Steel is an alloy that contains iron and coal much like how bronze is an alloy that contains copper and tin. It is malleable and versatile, and in general much superior to cast iron. For one, when faced with a cannon blast, it would be much less likely to explode into fragments. The core point of steelmaking is to get the appropriate percentage of coal into the molten iron. A Bessemer process is one way to make steel, but it is somewhat complex. Likewise, the Linz-Donawitz process requires things which you wouldn't manage right now. Unfortunately I am not myself well-versed in steel making, and any attempt on my end to explain the process in detail would probably end in failed experiments and wasted time. I shall leave it to other voices to explain the particulars.
"The means of mixing is unclear. The proportions of the mixture are unclear. All that is well known is that our iron is poor but beating makes it better, in time, except when it does not."
With machine learning, I believe, I have managed to illustrate to you how the only real difference between madness and genius is success. There is otherwise little difference between the two. Works of genius (such as having electricity travel in both directions at once to move very far and easy in one direction) often seem mad and are ridiculed for it until they succeed, and some measure of madness is necessary in order to try the truly outlandish ideas which later become common sense because they worked so well. Sure, it seems mad at first, but if it works it's not madness, it's genius.
Works of genius are greater leaps compared to the normal steps of progress. If approached in the latter way, they do not seem too mad. Since there are a finite number of possible board states and moves in tic-tac-toe, one could mark down on a number of tablets every possible combination of moves to play the game, which is nine times eight times seven et cetera down to one which equals over three hundred and fifty thousand different ways. This cannot be explored easily, but the number of possible board states is much smaller, small enough to be explored as such, especially when you need only consider one player's moves. If the rocks are the second player, it only has just shy of four hundred distinct moves to make which is further reduced by the fact that the game can stop prematurely due to a win or loss, and this can be explored exhaustively. If a singer were to take the game and, for each move, figure out the best counter-move, they could make a set of tablets that make the best moves. That those tablets can then be followed to play the game as good as possible I think we can both agree is true and is not madness. The machine learning process simply outsources the learning bit by using the principles of natural selection. This extension isn't obviously mad either. It is only when taken together that it appears mad, for it's a longer leap in one's mind to see the reasoning.
The point I'm getting at is that just because something may seem mad it isn't necessarily a bad idea. Sometimes the seeming madness is our fault, of course, because we forgot to explain something important. For example, the matter of finding molten rivers of iron is not as easy as going to a volcano, for the iron core of the world is at the center of the world sphere and so most of the liquid iron does not flow near the surface. Given this information, it is no wonder that the lava from volcanoes is molten rock, not iron. This doesn't mean that you should just go along with anything, but if there's no harm in it, why not indulge the mad ideas every now and then? Some of the ideas you know from us now would've surely been seen as madness if they were told to the you of a hundred years ago.
"For all that you may say it is not, Starrunner, this is only madness to me. I do not know what you intend for me to make of this. I do not know how I am meant to think that this is anything but madness."
Starrunner. The Ten Nations use wrought iron, low-quality wrought iron, besides some minimal case hardening. She cannot cast iron, currently.
For some perspective, that we often seem to lack when we are too deep in our memories/visions... Nations with hundreds of millions of people and, to cite you, "with towering buildings of steel, glass, and concrete that stand a hundred people-lengths tall or even higher" are not utterly impossible, but without our advice would take thousands of years to very gradually develop. Such machine age Nations are nowhere near immediate concerns.
Whether such enormously tall buildings and cities with millions of people should be even allowed to come into existence is also disputable, but if Bianca wants to guide development of the whole world then she needs to conquer the world first. Thus, of course, she needs to grow her nations enough to support the world conquest. The buildings of glass and steel are far from our current concern, though it would be nice for Bianca to grow in magical power enough to cease fearing roofs.
But yes, with rising population law and judgment are more and more important and a system of judges and police, while it may be complicated, is much better than the way currently practiced both in the Ten Nations and simple and small cities of her world.
"That is a good name for the process, yes. Iron is worked into being and into being a tool or weapon. Bronze and copper are cast. They are heated to melting and poured into clay casts.
"You will need to tell me, though, how a system of judges and guards is any different than a system of kings and their warriors. That system I have seen in the cities. It isn't any different than what you have told me to make. It requires some to be lifted over the others. And it seems unnecessary to the Free People of the Ten Nations."
I do hope that my advice about blast furnaces and Bessemer Converters improves on that situation.
As a side note for Bianca, time got a bit jumbled; Starrunner made their comment about the Bessemer Process being complicated prior to my explaining how to build one, despite you receiving the messages in the opposite order.
Anyway, regarding the issues we were asked to advise on...
[Underclass] It's fine for now. As soon as there are as many Galugr as there are members in the next largest tribe it has to stop.
I will echo Starrunner's advice on this matter. While this is a functional solution to the problem, it must by necessity be a temporary one.
[Vassal] Refuse
Hopefully, having cannons that actually work properly will make this conquest a much more successful endeavor than before.
[Horse] Try leaving her with a herd of horses for some years first. If she has produced no offspring by half her breedable lifespan, try calming her with magic instead and, failing that, tie her down and make sure it gets done.
Let's try being nice first. The best result is to have her do it willingly, for then she may do it again without our intervention. If it doesn't work, well, we have ways to get what we want.
[Hurrah] He may go, but only after preparing things so that his replacement(s) can easily take his place, say by spending some time informing them of things they need to know before leaving and teaching them how to better handle problems. If he spends at least a year preparing his successors and are reasonably confident that they will do a good job, he should be allowed to leave on his quest after that.
Again, I find myself echoing Starrunner's reasoning.
Just Write, the Bessemer Converters for the mass production of steel are far from easy. Their introduction should usually happen only during the Machine Age. Maybe something like the finery forge would be better at the start. I mean, we already introduced a few things that looks very advanced for a world like Bianca's world, but nothing so complex. And we have tendency to miss many details, often important details.
I'm pretty sure I got everything. It's pretty hard for someone to know how to cast bronze without having the slightest clue what a crucible is, which is one of the only things I didn't explain, aside from where to find Dolomite.
In addition, just because our world happened to develop technologies in a certain order does not mean that such is the only viable order. While there are admittedly a few hard requirements for prerequisites to certain technologies - can't make a radio without knowing how electricity works, after all - it's firmly possible to defy the previously established order of technological discovery.
True enough, Just Write, true enough. Pretty often we are able to speed up inventions massively. Even concrete or the bursting dust, even these things could take a thousand of years before accidental invention by mortals, and a hundred of years even with rigorously written scientific research about properties of materials. We were able to provide reasonably ready recipes much faster.
But the mass production of cheap steel is unusually complex. I remember that even the man named Bessemer had, for many years, problems with teaching and selling to other steelmakers details of his method. Despite living in an enormously rich machine age Empire, despite his own riches and the fact that great greed motivated him to sell his invention to other Buildings of Mass Production. It's a tricky thing.
Try to develop that, Bianca, sure, but keep in mind my warning about unusual complexity of the project. I'm not sure that we will be able to explain all the details. We cannot speak for too long, and it's sometimes like trying to teach a small family of Stone Age cave-barbarians how to farm - great number of details needed, and greatly different customs. It's no wonder that we sound mad more often than we are.
Bessemer's fault was that he relied on the overly precise ability to stop the blowing at exactly the right time the remove the impurities without removing the carbon. This is a rather difficult task to explain how to do to someone, and even I am not exactly sure how such precise timing would be calculated. Therefore I provided a somewhat improved version of the process that sidesteps that issue entirely by simply blowing until all the impurities and Carbon are removed, then adding the desired amount of alloying elements back in.
"When you voices take to arguing I know the task will be more difficult -- or in the case of the black dust, more generally lethal.
"I do not understand a great many things about the steel-making devices you described, voice. A crucible is for heating metal to melting, but that is not what takes place in your pivoting bucket with holes at the bottom."
Humph, possibly, Just Write. Machine design is not one of my strengths, sadly.
I believe that you mentioned sugar in your recipe for a slow-burning fuse, a thing for a more controlled bursting dust ignition. Now, I'm not sure that Bianca knows sugar. Honey, yes. But refined sugar? Humph.
Maybe such a thing may work even without pure sugar. Try to experiment with hemp or flax string or rope and the potassium nitrate, Bianca.
Then again a riverbed can be ten to twenty meters of mud or more, the height of ten men standing on each other's shoulders, and we don't know exactly how deep they've dug. The mud will end eventually, of course. It is not infinitely deep. The question is whether it would be more practical for her to build a hangbridge by this point, or if she would be better off succumbing to the sunk cost fallacy and keeping on digging. Instead of having support pillars in the middle, you can have a number of support pillars over on land by the edge of the bridge. These pillars must be secured firmly into the ground; they must be thick and unyielding, and quite tall at that. Then you attach thick ropes to the tops of these pillars (the stronger the better), and then attach the other ends of these ropes closer to the bridge center. If the pillars and rope are strong enough and sufficiently firmly attached, and the rope is just long enough to reach from the tops of the pillars to their attachment points without slacking much, they should hold up the bridge center and allow at least lighter traffic to pass, though it is not as sturdy as a bridge with a support pillar in the middle.
"... That would be a great deal of rope, to hold up a bridge that long. I will suggest this to the table-rulers working with the Giantess. But this is her problem in the end. It benefits me to have such a bridge, but not as much as it benefits the Giantess whose only city is at the river."
I would, of course, recommend that a singer spend some time making small model bridges to figure out how well this would work, keeping in mind, of course, that mass is a result of volume and density, not immediate size - a model twice as large in every direction will weigh eight times as much, a model thrice as large weighs twenty-seven times as much as the original, et cetera. In general, if you wish to expand something to be some number x times larger in every direction, the result will weigh the original model's weight multiplied by x times x times x.
For that matter, now that I'm on this subject, a bit of terminology. A number squared means the number multiplied with itself. A number cubed means taking the number squared and multiplying the result with the original number. I assume you know what multiplication is. That way I can use this terminology in the future.
"This is more the work of a table-ruler, I think. But no less, the advice on increases in weight is good and well to have. More for the advisors I have assigned to the Giantess, I suppose."
Health warning, coal and coke.
A word of warning, coke cannot be used in the black soil, only charcoal. Coke, if you manage to transform coal into coke, can nicely replace charcoal in manufacturing of metals, yes.
As I mentioned before, coal, and coal products, are unhealthy. And no smoke is healthy, but the smoke from coal is especially damaging. Of course wise balance between various concerns is needed here: lack of heat or trees can be much worse than higher chances of lung diseases. So I advise for use of coal, but also for understanding downsides of this solution.
In coal and even in mostly purified coke there are sulfur and other unpleasant impurities that can produce ilness.
"A great many people have their faces in the smoke of their fires for one reason or another, Black Cat. A great many people take ill for one reason or another. I have noticed the connections. But I have been watching people keep fires for a very long time.
"The chimneys help, of course. And when cloth is more readily available it may be placed over the nose and mouth. And one day perhaps other solutions will be known.
"But there must be fires. And so there must be smoke. The people will work out what burns best in their own time and in their own ways.
One more thing. When it comes to the matter of your singers trying to find their texts, I would suggest implementing a library system, the sooner the better. The more texts put into the building without organisation, the more time will be spent searching for texts until your singers eventually spend more time looking for texts than doing actual useful work. For simplicity's sake, I would suggest a simple alphabetic organisation.
Your writing system has a number of symbols. I would suggest taking these symbols, writing them in a particular order one after the other and saying "this is the correct way to order these symbols." Given this ordering, it is then possible to make it relatively easy to find texts within the storage building (for syntax's sake, the word for a building that contains many texts is 'library'). Each text is given a name (whether you name every text distinctly or just name them after their creators is your choice, but I'd recommend the former), and the storage spaces within the library have a predetermined order where every spot comes before one spot and after another. Then, whenever a text is to be put into the library, you look at this name. The symbols of the name determines where you put the text. If the first symbol is the fifth in the ordering, then the text is to be put after every text the name of which started with the fourth symbol, but before every text that started with the sixth. Within this space for the fifth letter in the library storage, all the texts will then have names that start with that symbol. Within that space, you can then do the same with the second symbol of the name, where the new text's second symbol determines where in the first symbol's space the new text goes. This goes on until you either have no other books competing for the same spot, or you have gone through all the characters of the name.
Once all texts are arranged like this in the library, it is simple to find a particular text given that you know its name. You simply go to the part of the library that contains the texts whose names start with the sought-after text's name's first letter, look within that space for the spot that contains the text's name's second letter, so on and so forth until you locate the text. If you do not know where that particular letter's space is in the library, you can perform a binary search - go to the middle of the library space and check whether the character you find there comes before or after the one you're looking for, then go into the 'before' or 'after' direction accordingly, where you then do the same within this smaller space - it is a fast and efficient search method. Simply having the organisation (and making sure that people actually follow it instead of putting the texts back randomly) means that you no longer need to search the entire library in the hope that you will get lucky and find the wanted text quickly.
The sooner you do this sorting, the better - it should save time in the long run.
"I do not think this will be much of a problem before parchment is more readily available. But thank you, Starrunner, no less. I think this maybe was already almost happening. But I will see that it happens to completeness."
"I am told Kahl of Lan took ill one day, four springs ago. She came to puke and her bowels ran. She was given salted honey-water, as is done for those whose bowels run so. But I am told that she puked that back up as well, or some of it in any case. She complained of great pain in her belly until exhaustion or the trembling palsy of fever set her to restless near-sleep. She died after some days of this.
"When she died, Kahl had seen more than fifty summers. She lived longer than some and less than others.
After some thought, a few more ideas from the Black Cat.
Treadle-powered spinning wheel.
There are many other Voices with more wisdom about devices, especially in regards to details of devices, so I need to greatly simplify. Maybe your craftsmen would be able to do something useful with this idea despite my lack of detail.
So. You know spinning wheels. The idea is to have a foot-operated piece of wood under the spinning wheel, connected to the wheel with a shaft. To quote one of books that I know about: "spinner sits and pumps a foot treadle that turns the drive wheel via a crankshaft and a connecting rod. This leaves both hands free for drafting the fibres".
"I like the idea of a spinner having both hands free to work the fibers. But I do not follow how the foot pedal drives the wheel, or either wheel. And if the foot pedal drives the wheel, is there any need for a large, hand-turned wheel?"
Other foot-powered devices.
The same idea can be applied to power small pumps and other small devices.
Drum carder.
Another device. Basically, again I'm forced to simplify and outright cite my sources of wisdom...
"Carding is a mechanical process that disentangles, cleans and intermixes fibres to produce a continuous web suitable for subsequent processing. This is achieved by passing the fibers between differentially moving surfaces covered with card clothing."
"Card clothing is made from a sturdy flexible backing in which closely spaced wire pins are embedded."
A coat of wire slips is placed around a card which is then wrapped around a cylinder. Two such cylinders are moved by a crank or other means, to faster card wool, flax or other thing that after carding can be used for spinning. Fibers pass in between moving cylinders.
"Wire continues to be a precious thing, rare in the lands of the Ten Nations and largely ornamental in my hoard. But better, faster carding means more plentiful cloth, probably. So I will have one of these made and we shall see what trouble it is and what benefit."
Rewards for inventions and other useful things.
You should reward doing something useful with these ideas. Reward of longer life is already reserved for the best farming device, so maybe, I'm not sure... A pretty pillar of stone with name and words honoring the inventor of a working treadle-powered device? Yes, if no longer life is available, then some people like to be at least remembered after their deaths. Of course words on such a pillar should also mention that the inventor developed details and applied idea that started in your wise thoughts.
Rewards of gold and other baubles are also useful. I know, I know, such inequality cause some discord. I still believe that sometimes benefits are bigger than problems. And even when rewarded person share with family, and then family with others, this remains a honour. Baubles from raids are also shared, but it's a honour, after all.
But I would even advise for having some Greatest Craftsmen as richer than other people, perhaps drawn out of tribes and their families, like I suggested in regards to a few very greedy Traders, especially these that could otherwise even cause problems for their families. Hmm, you shall do as you wish, of course.
"If unfettered greed and inequality are truly superior to the way of life of the Free People of the Ten Nations, then the people in my cities will outdo the people who live without any among them so lifted up. But if that were the case, then cities would not fall to Free People. And yet that has happened and, unless I am mistaken, you voices know it to be something that happens to cities.
"Still, having one's name written in stone is, I think, not so dangerous as your typical suggestions, Black Cat. It shall be so."
One more stupid siege and peple will start think that Bianca is weak. People should be added to Bianca Empire with trade and influence and cunning not with force like cats or demons like.
"I don't know that I wish to stop adding people to my empire by force, as you say, voice. But I am interested in these other means to bring people to recognize my authority and pay me tribute. How can trade and influence and cunning be used to accomplish this?"
You mentioned seeing little use for the printing press - the machine used to make many copies of the same text. I can think of at least two things that could be of good use if replicated many times. Of course, the device is of little use if the people cannot read, but that is the way of written words in general.
Firstly, instructions. Suppose, for example, that you find the person who built the best farming device. You get them to tell you how it works, how it is used and how it is built, in great detail. Then, a singer writes these instructions down. The produced text then tells the reader how to make and use such a device, in great enough detail for someone to do it. Writing clear enough instructions may take some doing, but you should be able to manage it eventually. Then, having these instructions, you can use the printing press to make many copies of these instructions, which you can then have your singers hand out to the tribes. Anyone who can read can then read these instructions and know how to build and use this farming device (though depending on the quality of the instructions some clarification may be needed). This can save your singers a lot of time which they would otherwise spend teaching people one by one how to do it.
"Already I and my singers know the folly of this. No sooner was writing understood than someone clever composed direction to some complicated task or another, I don't recall what. Wound care? Perhaps. She wrote the instructions, showed them around, worked together with her fellow singers as one would on a song, and committed them to nine clay tablets.
"These were taken to circulate among the Nine Nations, one for each, to accompany the lesson of reading. For some -- I don't know, months or years? -- for some time anyway, we thought that the directions were sufficient. But this was false. Eventually people came to read before seeing the tablet. And it was then that we learned that people who had only the directions performed the task much more poorly. Direct instruction and demonstration are necessary and written directions are insufficient.
"Even when teaching a task with song, the singer is demonstrating the task and available to correct those who do poorly, at least the first time.
"If you know means by which written instructions can be made sufficient to teach a task, Starrunner, then do tell me of it."
Secondly, propaganda. Propaganda is, broadly put, information (true or otherwise) spread by rulers to influence the beliefs of the populace in order to promote some way of thinking. Your singers already practice a form of propaganda by telling the people of your greatness. The printing press is of little help in a situation such as with the nine peoples, for there the main constraint is the time for the singers to travel to a tribe, not the time needed to tell of the news. It is a different matter in cities. Cities contain many people, and finding each one separately to share some command or news can take a lot of time. With the printing press, a singer can instead write the message down, make a number of copies and then put these papers up in well-frequented areas. If the populace can read, they can see these papers and read the message written on it, allowing the message to be spread quickly to a large number of people. Papers such as this can also serve as a reminder - they will remain in place to be re-read and remind the people of the message whereas a singer eventually leaves and thus enables the message to be more promptly forgotten.
"This, though, this is good. Parchment sheet or or clay tablet, this I will have done. Surely, though, there is not a need for so many that the writing press is called for? Surely it is simpler to mark out the five or eight tablets by hand than to assemble a whole press and form the marking tablet?
"Eh. The rulers of cities can decide for themselves whether this suits them or not. I will make known this technique to the advisors I send and if it is of use it will see use."
These aspects may not be as feasible given your current practice of writing your messages on parchment, and fired clay tablets are even worse a solution even if the material is abundant. What you want to use is paper. Paper is a material that is made from wood or other plant matter. It can be used to write on much like with parchment. Unfortunately, I can't really think up an explanation right now which you would understand and be able to perform. Maybe the other voices will have better luck, or I may try again later.
"One more need for wood competes with the other uses of wood, including that one use of 'having trees.' Still, a writing surface more plentiful than parchment and more portable than fired clay would be good, I think.
This voice is called Rock Eye. I wish to explain Boats, at least what I know of them.
What makes a good boat varies with a lot of things and the details are something your people would need to experiment with but I can provide some guidance I hope.
You asked what a keel is once, Bianca. A keel is a long timber that sits at the bottom of a boat, stretching from front to back of the boat. The keel's main purpose is structure. It should be the most durable part of the boat. It is the backbone of the boat, and the place where all the other parts that keep water out are anchored on.
The keel should ideally also be one of the heaviest parts of the boat, so that like a bowl with a thick bottom it remains stable in the water instead of turning over. And finally, by making a keel stick down into the water compared to the rest of the boat, the keel will push back against the water when any force rocks it from side to side, like dragging a wide paddle against a current.
The best keels are made from a single piece of lumber such as from a large tree, cut and carved into the backbone of a boat. A boat should be longer than it is wide, perhaps one and a half times as long or twice as long. You can picture a boat like a strange tree. The keel is the trunk, and 'branches' of thinner but still strong wood should come off of the keel all along its length to make something that looks like a bizarre tree. On this frame you can secure an outer shell of thinner wood. The shell can be thinner this way, since most of the strength is in the keel and branches. Are craftsmen familiar enough with ways of fixing wood together? I imagine they would be able to figure it out. They build houses and furniture, those methods would be good enough probably. A boat should be shaped slightly like a bowl if possible, the branches coming off of the keel curving to form a bowl. Except the bottom isn't flat, it comes to a gentle point at the keel.
"That is… not how the people are building boats, no. I hear no madness in this, though. You make clear the reasons for what you propose and though I do not know boats well, they make enough sense to me.
"I have at least two singers and a table-ruler whose family's business was that of boats -- unless I am thinking of singers who are already dead. No less, I will make a model of a boat constructed as you say with the assistance or one or more of these. Perhaps a number of models? But I will have them taken to Zouchaud and Naumo and Enonl. And the boatmakers will build this manner of boat in the sizes needed, or they will fail and we will know better."
I don't truly understand how sails work but from what I recall they don't usually work very well on rivers, and are more meant for lakes or the open sea. Rowing with oars works better on rivers and will remain useful for a long time. Teams of rowers working together can be effective. Even lakes and seas sometimes have flowing in their waters, currents like vast rivers. A sail-boat relies on the current of the water and the flow of air in wind being in different directions. Though again I don't know the details, by using the two forces that go in different directions against each other, a skilled sailor can take a boat in any direction.
"The use of sails remains unclear to me and, I think, to many of the people who go out in boats. I have no signers who understand it, so there are no songs. I will change that, I think. I know it will cost me singers, as boats fail to return. But I will have the methods of sails in song.
An oar is a stick of wood like a spear, except instead of a sharp tip there is a flat board on the end. The board should be about 40 to 50 centimeters long and 25 centimeters wide, and only two or three centimeters thick. The length of the whole oar can vary but should be about two and a half to three and a half meters long - a meter being one hundred centimeters or about three feet. The board at the end being as thin as possible as long as it's not too delicate is good for an oar. Being too heavy is bad for an oar. The board should not be a simple square but should be widest at the tip and continue straight for a few centimeters then curve and narrow until it becomes part of the shaft.
By sitting down in a boat putting the long stick of an oar through an eye on the boat (an opening - like the eye of a needle), one can lower the flat board at the end of an oar into the water and pull backwards, using the stick as a lever with the fulcrum at the eye attached to the boat, to push water strongly and move the boat through the water. It may be easiest to carve the oar out of a single large branch instead of trying to attach something to the end of a stick.
"The people make oars already, as they must to make use of boats. But theirs are shorter, to be moved from one side of the boat to the other. And I have not seen the eye you speak of though, again, I do not hear madness in your words but sense, for the moment anyway."
The most important feature of boats you were unable to use before is waterproofing, I think. Even the most durable wood is not completely and imperviously sealed against water, especially if it sits soaked all the time. When water gets into wood, the boat grows slowly heavier and heavier until it inevitably sinks or breaks apart. Water must be kept out of boats and even kept out of solid wood for a boat to last long enough to be worth building. Plus, wet wood is usually more vulnerable to mold and rot than dry wood.
Wax can be carefully spread on a surface to make it waterproof. Some kinds of oils can make wood waterproof, especially if the wood is rubbed with sand or a broom or brush or other rough surface first. Walnut oil is particularly known for this, but I don't think you have walnuts yet. Walnuts grow on trees and come in green pods that look like hard fruit at first glance, but which when broken open reveal a brown raindrop or egg shaped nut that appears slightly wrinkled, like an old man's face. This second shell can be broken open again to reveal an even more wrinkled mass that is the nut itself. Walnut oil is said to be good for waterproofing wood but I don't know the details of the method.
Tar or pitch or bitumen, which are all names for subtly different kinds of thick sticky black goop that can be found in the ground that burns with black, foul-smelling smoke if you manage to ignite it, can be a good waterproofing. You would stuff thread or rope or cloth into the seams between the pieces of wood that form a boat, and then paint the gaps thoroughly with thick tar to waterproof it with this method if you find some.
"The oil of these nut fruit have been mentioned before, as an ink. And, no, I do not know of them.
"But pitch is well known, and taken from trees to various ends. Ground tars, also, I know of from trade. But pitch abounds already, if it is not always easily gathered. And boats that do not come to be waterlogged are well worth the trouble, I think.
It can also be good to let the wood that's going to be used in a boat dry out before building anything with it. Fresh-cut wood is 'wet' because it was recently alive and plants drink up water, but dry wood tends to be lighter and more durable, but it's a fair amount of effort. Keeping the wood somewhere dry for about four months for every centimeter the wood is thick is probably good enough, but longer wouldn't hurt as long as it's stored somewhere dry. The winter freezes might change this. I am more familiar with how it works in warmer places.
A large enough kiln or oven could speed this up if you make a separate chamber that would grow warm but not hot enough to burn, but you have to increase the heat slowly to avoid case-hardening the wood or it will crack. Sometimes the cracks are not visible on the surface but only inside the wood. Dangerous. I'm not sure if it would be worth the effort or work well. Oh, and since water is leaving the wood it will shrink slightly as it dries! Keep that in mind if a precise measurement is needed. You might want to seal the ends of large logs with wax or something when drying them because the ends dry out much faster, fast enough that they could shrink before the center and cause cracks and damage.
"Yes, it is well known that wood is put to some uses when just taken and other uses only after being left in a dry place for moons or seasons or even years. Caves are good for this; some are known to only chill to freezing in the worst winters, such as those known to people now living, but not to their forebears who died before those winters.
"An oven, though, to speed the process along sounds very interesting. Such a large oven would be difficult to heat evenly. An oven that bakes bread as long as a boat? As two boats? Yes, this is interesting, but perhaps only for shorter beams and not for keels."
Oil painted onto wood and let dry or applied to the sails of a boat can keep water away too. I'm not sure precisely which kinds of oils are best for this unfortunately, except that I've heard walnut is good. Wax, tar and pitch, and oils... The other waterproofing methods I know are unlikely to be accessible to you I think. The other one I can think of is a 'bitumen emulsion'. Mixing bitumen with water can make a thinner substance that is easier to paint on things but is still waterproof. Usually slightly more bitumen than water. However, to mix properly the sticky bitumen needs to be shredded into very, very small particles and thoroughly mixed with water. I'm not sure if your craftsmen have tools that could mange that, possibly metal with tiny holes in it rubbed back and forth? Up to you if it's worth trying, I suppose.
"As the boatmakers come to understand how good waterproofing is, they will try all oils available to them, favoring those most plentiful and those most easy to use. I don't understand what you mean about shredding the tar, but the rest remains promising."
As to the madness of rivers of molten iron beneath the world: We have never seen these rivers ourselves, only inferred them from other observations that would take a very long time to explain and which you probably wouldn't believe. So perhaps it might as well be madness, indeed.
"Hah! Even you have not seen but you believe you know? Yes. It may not be madness to believe in what you have never seen, what no one has ever seen. But is it not madness to speak so certainly of the unseen?"
For that matter, olives are a kind of small fruit, about the size of your thumb (the bit after the final bend) that grows on trees in southern climates, so you could probably not grow olive trees where you live. Olives are most useful for the oil that can be made out of them, but can also be quite tasty. They are commonly green or black in color.
Olive trees cannot survive frost. It would be hopeless to try and grow them in a place with such cold winters. Too bad, because they have a reputation for being able to grow even in awful soil, with little care or attention.
Bianca should simply perfect weapons of bursting dust enough to bring down these damned walls.
And, by the way, forever warm lands of the far south should be scouted by traders and spies, cunning but disposable, as many may never return from such a far away lands. I think that we provided to Bianca much more wisdom that even the biggest cities of her world currently know, but climate of the south may be generous enough to allow existence of bigger cities and Empires even without any black soil and despite pretty stupid methods of doing things. Lands warm enugh to support two harvests and lack winters... It must be easier to survive and grow wealth in such conditions even while lacking in wisdom. It would be good to know whether this is the case.
"Traders and scouts, eh? Should I promise them their name in stone as well? If the south is as rich as you say then I cannot promise them wealth, even if I take to lifting some over the others. For surely there will be more wealth to be had in the south than I will deign to make a gift of. They will have some stature among the people if they are of Lan or Gawdtha or perhaps Naumo on some riverway south. And until they return home they will be an outsider.
"Ah. But as an outsider they will be always vulnerable. You speak of sending people to die, Black Cat. Again.
"Yet another problem will be keeping them honest and right-knowing. Even the four known cities near the land of the Ten Nations were not properly described to me. There were lesser giants living within the walls of Wrul as slaves and some Forest People and the spirits of their dead may as well have lived in the villages around it. There is no temple or Erweh in Liavint, only a shared temple that her followers frequent. And the sacred place to River and Clay and Sky at Enonl is so far from the city walls that fallow land separates them.
"If I should make the challenge to travel the furthest south by measure of the pivot starts, then some cunning, disposable scout will return claiming that what they found was further south than it truly was. I may judge them each independently, then."
I come bearing word of another useful devices, this time aiming to increase the precision with which machine parts can be produced.
This is a tool known as a Lathe. Effectively, a Lathe is the opposite of a drill bench; it consists of a set of clamps on rotating mounts at both ends of the tool that can be secured to whatever piece of material the lathe is being used to work on, referred to as the workpiece. As the workpiece is spun, various tools can be applied to remove material from the outside, producing an item that is both rotationally symmetric, and which can be made to extremely high precision.
For a high precision metalworking lathe, all components should be made of either bronze or steel, and should be built very sturdily, so that the workpiece cannot wiggle as it spins.
"I understand the tool you describe, but not how it would achieve 'extremely high precision.' I can see some sameness in product if the products are just round wooden rods. And carving metal rather than beating it or casting it sounds as though it will simply introduce weakness into the metal tool. Axles are already made in something like this way. And metal gears would benefit surely, but how would you make their teeth on a lathe?"
While a lathe can be useful for making things that are the same all the way around, this runs into the problem of specialization as always. Everyone's first job is to get food and super specialized skills and tools need a very good reason to exist. What would she even use a lathe for? Making pointed cannon shells? Those would just tumble in the air and be worse than round balls until she can make rifled barrels.
I wonder if the idea of a Mortar is any use. Essentially, Mortars are just short-barreled cannons that you point almost straight up, so the projectile goes in a high arc. I think they're usually harder to blow up on accident than long-barreled cannons and they can launch powder bombs over walls and so on. Also, have we explained ballistae, catapults, or trebuchets? They're generally inferior to well made cannons, but... She kind of doesn't have well made cannons, does she?
"No, I have not had short cannons cast to be pointed nearly straight up. A shorter, wider cannon would be easier to cast. And easier to tunnel into, even, if such madness is necessary. But it seems that it would be much more difficult to aim. A skilled archer may loose high into the air and strike close to their target. But this is not the archery of hunting, but that of loosing arrows into crowded opponents.
The biggest advantage a lathe would provide at the moment is in the production of literally anything that needs to be radially symmetric, which it can do with great efficiency and precision. It's actually a very versatile tool: tight-fitting pistons, screws, smooth bowls, gear blanks, bearings, and much, much more become a lot easier to make through the use of a lathe.
For instance, the production of a worthwhile Stirling Engine will almost certainly require the use of a lathe and a drill bench to both properly size the Piston heads, and the channels they move within; other complicated machines also tend to have parts which become much easier to make with a proper lathe available.
And yes, Bianca knows of Ballistae and Trebuchets. I'm the one who told her how to make them.
Fascinating, Just Write. Specialization of workers, mass production and use of devices to produce other devices can cause creation of more food than food used, despite some people not farming at all. Because finished farming devices could save more labor than labor used to produce these farming devices. So this talk about lathes is interesting.
"When you tell me some tool or device will be useful in the future, or on unclear tasks, you give me no way to evaluate your advice, Just Write. If some device requires a lathe, tell me how to make a lathe such that it fills that requirement when you tell me the making of that device. Otherwise, I have little more than an idea of the thing and no reason to build it."
Anybody said to Bianca that she can fertilize fields even with animal shit?Yes yes people I know black soil is better.I mean when there is no other way somewhere not enough charcoal this year or something.
Yeah, most organic matter if left to compost for a year or two is really good for growing crops in. The Black Soil is simply a good way to turn something dangerous into something useful.
Devil Girl, Just Write. Many alternative methods can fertilize fields, but most pretty poorly. As you said, the black soil idea is simply much better. And with a proper use of coal and coke there should be no shortage of charcoal for the black soil. Even the bat dung from caves is much better than waste from the livestock or horses, much more nitrogen.
"Yes, if there are not enough charred coals, the people will simply put the aged refuse on their field. They will do what they can and hope for the best.. That is the way of farmers, always."
Which reminds me: Bianca, I have another farming machine to tell you of! This device is what is known as a Seed Drill, and despite the similarity in names has little in common with a drill bench. Generally, a Seed Drill is intended to insert seeds into the ground at a regular depth and distance apart; this greatly increases the likelihood that any given seed will sprout, allowing the same amount of planting seed to be effectively sown across a larger area, increasing total crop yields. To be more specific, a good seed drill can increase the ratio of seeds harvested to seeds planted by up to nine times.
So, the main components of a seed drill are a set of wheels to allow the machine to be towed effectively, a bin to store the seed being sown, a set of digging implements on the bottom to make furrows for seed, tubes to deliver the seed from the bin into the furrows, rollers to compress the ground and cover the seed, and a way to regulate how often seeds pass from the bin into the tubes. The wheels are fairly obvious in construction, as is the bin; just make sure that the sides are angled to ensure seed rolls towards the sowing mechanism.
As for the digging implements, I would recommend knives similar to the improved plows we provided some time ago, with just enough of a wedge to make a groove seed can fall down. Another option would be a disc harrow, which is a sharpened rotating disc that's thicker towards the center; as the seed drill is towed forwards, these discs would very effectively cut grooves in the ground that seed could drop into. In either case, the digging tools should be made out of something durable and long-lasting (I would again recommend Bronze or Steel here), as they will be under the most stress of any component.
At first, the design of the tubes would seem similarly obvious to the bin, and indeed they are, for the most part. The most important thing is to make sure that the tubes are aligned correctly to ensure that the seeds always land in the furrow the digging parts produce. Also, keep the tubes steeply angled so that gravity still provides more than enough force to move the seed down in a timely manner. More sophisticated versions of a seed drill would use air pressure to force the seeds down the tubes, but the Ten Nations cannot yet produce a good enough engine to make mounting an air compressor to a seed drill practical.
The roller is a component for which strength is critical; it's effectively a long rolling cylinder pressed partly into the ground by the weight of the entire machine. Its primary purpose is to collapse the furrows over the seeds as the machine trundles onwards, rendering them inaccessible to birds and other scavenging animals. This component is not strictly necessary, but including it is still a good idea.
Now for the most complicated part: the seed regulator. The easiest possible design here would be a dowel with grooves cut into it very deeply, until it's basically just a set of thin panels connected to a retating central axis; the turning of the wheels would slowly turn this dowel, aligning the grooves with one or a few seeds at a time and inserting them into the tubes in a controlled manner. This can be achieved through the use of gears, belts, pulleys, any number of means, really.
So, that's how to make a seed drill. To operate it, just load the bin with the appropriate seeds and tow it across the field being planted. Some things to note: different crops have different optimal depths to bury their seeds at; as such it would probably be wise to include some means to adjust the depth to which the machine digs its furrows.
"How deep in the soil should seed be placed? Which seeds should be placed in the soil rather than scattered across it? What is to be carved into panels? What is that seed-ruler's function? How are the seeds prevented from tumbling down the pipes and into every measure of the replowed furrow? How can the means to adjust the depth be strong enough that the knife or platter still cut the soil?
"I must tell you, Just Write, that burying seed at depth sounds like a good way to waste seed. But if it can be done I will gladly look forward to the disappointment of the fowl that plunder the fields in sowing time."
On a completely unrelated topic, I have some advice regarding punishments for crimes, for if you ever get around to codifying a more complex justice system. The long and short of it is that the intensity of punshiment plays very little role in whether knowledge of the punishment will deter people from taking a banned action. Certainly the punishment needs to be severe enough to ensure that one cannot gain from criminal activity even if caught, but there is no real gain in deterrence to excessively heavy punishments for even the slightest offense. No, a far better deterrent is the certainty of punishment, meaning that it is important to both have people very good at catching wrong-doers, and to ensure that their skills at doing so are very well-known.
Another important factor is having a range of punishment options available, so that the more severe punishments can be reserved for the most severe crimes. If this is not the case, then once someone commits a minor offense, they no longer have any incentive to follow any of the other laws. As an example, if the penalties for theft and murder are both death, then thieves don't have any reason not to try killing the people sent to capture them.
"Among the Free People of the Ten Nations, punishments vary more based on who gives them, and how. If the villiage authority, whatever form it takes, decides that a person needs to be beaten, then their family beats them until the offended party calls for a stop or until injury. If a family decides to punish one of its members, they can only cast them out.
"In both of these cases, a person's family can kill them if the family is decisive about it. One killing blow in a beating or one night in a blizzard kill a person just the same. So, yes, one who has the ire of their family such that they will be killed has no reason to not further raise the ire of their family or any other body that will employ their family to punish them.
"Surely this is necessary, though, Just Write. How can a person be trusted among others if they are so terrible their own family wants them dead?"
Another concept that may prove useful in the proper handling of crime is reduced penalties in exchange for co-operation. For example, if it is known that there are multiple people involved in a criminal conspiracy but you can only conclusively identify one of them, it is often possible to get the one captured person to identify their co-conspirators in exchange for a reduction in the severity of their punishment.
"This is just good sense. But good sense is not always common. I will pass this wisdom to the advisors I have sent and will send to Kuwuzt of Zouchaud in Enonl and the Giantess of Liavint."
Voices think like people from city and not the free people. They see big cities with inventions but what if there is better way for free people but still with more inventions.
Few towns (very small cities) not larger than big villages but with people doing different stuff and not farming. Imagine: A town to make salt from sea and a town to make farming stuff and a town to mine coal or copper or a town with great iron furnance. More useful and MUCH easier to feed. Not above villages but other tasks.
Cats want to govern with table rulers. Rich people want to govern with kings. But there is other way. You can govern town with a workers council. Elected by the assembly of the free workers in a town.
Votes.
[Underclass] It's fine for now. As soon as there are as many Galugr as there are members in the next largest tribe it has to stop.
[Vassal] Refuse
Do not make your servants too strong. Especially rich or kings.
[Horse] Try leaving her with a herd of horses for some years first. If she has produced no offspring by half her breedable lifespan, try calming her with magic instead and, failing that, tie her down and make sure it gets done.
[Hurrah] He may go, but only after preparing things so that his replacement(s) can easily take his place, say by spending some time informing them of things they need to know before leaving and teaching them how to better handle problems. If he spends at least a year preparing his successors and are reasonably confident that they will do a good job, he should be allowed to leave on his quest after that.
"Firstly, voice, who in a village is not a free worker and does not vote on your council? Is it only slaves and babes-in-arms who pursue no tasks? Are the infirm and the ill and those to elderly to work also excluded? At times there are people in a family who do not work, and their kin pressure them to tasks but they resist. And this proceeds until they are thrown out or their family accepts that they will support them for no other gain. Are these the people you mean to exclude?
"It is the case now that not every village has a monjolo. Not every village blooms iron, or casts bronze, or smelts copper, but these are all shared as necessary. Some places have better clay. And it is widely said that the best glass comes only from Lan but is made with sand from Tash. Is this the sort of specialization you mean? Or do you mean something further?"
Ah, it just occurred to me that the Ten Nations may be able to make a bit more use of electricity and electromagnetism than simply diverting lightning away from houses. I am about to explain how to create an electric telegraph, a device for sending messages dozens of miles along wires near-instantly.
The most difficult but also most rewarding part of the whole process will be the creation of a viable battery, a means of producing a continuous electric current. Most of the parts and materials needed for constructing what is known to us as an alkaline battery are already known to the Ten Nations, but there is one material that is conspicuously absent: the metal known as Zinc.
The single most common ore of Zinc is a mineral known as sphalerite, which is a crystalline solid consisting of Sulphur and (mostly) Zinc, though it also contains a fair amount of Iron. It commonly takes the form of dark gray to black crystals with significant luster. In addition, if scraped across a hard surface it will leave a streak that is white to yellowish-brown, which is likely to smell of Sulphur.
Now, refining sphalerite into metallic Zinc is a somewhat complex process, with the most basic method having two major steps. First, the sphalerite needs to be roasted at high temperatures. It is critical that the sphalerite have a ready supply of air during the roasting process, as the whole point is that the Oxygen in the air reacts with the ore to replace the Sulphur in the ore's crystal structure. As a byproduct, this step will produce Sulphur Dioxide gas, which is both highly useful in the production of Sulphuric Acid (more on that later), and highly poisonous to breath. For this reason you must either have a means of venting the gas so it is not breathed by the ore-roasters, or a means of storing it for later use.
After successfully roasting the sphalerite, you should have a white material left over. This is Zinc Oxide, and to turn it into metallic Zinc requires it to be redewed with organic material (animal dung will work fine) at temperatures almost hot enough to melt Iron. This will likely require a device similar to a blast furnace as far as using forced pre-heated air to attain high temperatures is concerned. The carbon monoxide released by the organic material will remove the Oxygen from the Zinc, leaving behind only Zinc vapor. This Zinc vapor will condense and freeze as normal for redewing.
Once Zinc has been successfully refined, then you can construct an Alkaline Battery. Hopefully you remember my description of Manganese-containing rocks, since those will also be needed; fortunately you will not need to do any intensive refining aside from simply grinding them into powder. The performance of the battery can be increased by mixing in some amount of powdered carbon with the Manganese Oxide; the most readily available would be from either Charcoal or Coke.
To construct a basic Alkaline battery, you will need a jar full of lye, a rod of Zinc, some lengths of conductive wire (probably Copper), a ceramic container filled with powdered Manganese Oxide (which is what most Manganese-containing rocks are made of), and some resin to seal the whole thing shut.
For a single-cell Alkaline battery, put the ceramic container full of Manganese Oxide in the jar full of lye and jam one of the copper wires in it. Similarly, firmly attach another wire to the zinc rod and put it in the jar full of lye next to the ceramic container full of Manganese Oxide. At this point, the Alkaline Battery is functionally complete, in that a difference in charge is present between the two wires. If the two wires are connected, they will heat up; similarly, if someone licks both wires simultaneously, they will feel a tingling sensation across their tongue.
That said, now you need to seal up the entire battery so that no Lye or Manganese Oxide will leak where they aren't supposed to if the battery is picked up, moved, or jostled around. That's what the resin is for. In addition, it would likely be wise to coat all but an inch near the end of the wires coming from the battery in resin, so that unwanted contact between charged wires (known as a short circuit) does not occur.
Worth noting is that the potential difference between the terminals of a single alkaline cell is fairly small, but can be increased by connecting multiple cells in series; connect the Zinc end of one cell (which has a negative charge) to the Manganese end of another cell (which has a positive charge). Now the potential difference between the disconnected ends of both cells is doubled. Indeed, several cells can be linked together inside the same container of lye, provided precautions are taken to prevent the various parts from inappropriately contacting each other. This is important, because fairly high potential differences are required for long-distance telegraphy (the practice of sending messages through wires using electricity).
Please be aware that there is only a finite amount of energy in any given battery; they will deplete with time and use and will need to be replaced. The Zinc can just be redewed again, but returning the Manganese Oxide to a useful state requires re-oxidizing it. I am unsure if roasting will be sufficient to achieve this.
For the construction of a basic telegraphy system, there are a few major components; the battery I just described, the sending switch, the transmitting wire, and the receiving switch.
The sending switch is fairly straightforwards, being a tilting lever weighted so that the end used by its operator will return to a raised position when not actively pressed down. Meanwhile, the rotating part should be connected to one of the wires from the battery, and the other end wired up so that when the operator's end is depressed a continuous path of conductive material exists between one of the battery's terminals and the transmitting wire.
The other terminal of the battery should be jammed into the ground similarly to a lightning diverter, so that the charge differential this system produces can be equalized through the ground. Otherwise, two wires will be required, effectively doubling the copper requirements of a telegraph line.
The transmitting wire is just that, a very long copper wire between the sending and receiving ends of the telegraphy system. For weather resistance I would recommend coating this wire with something durable and non-conductive. Either way, you have two options: the wire can either be buried, which ensures that is will last for a good long time but is very labor-intensive to achieve. Or you can string the wire up between poles suspended a ways above ground, which is much easier to do but is at more risk of being damaged by any number of mishaps.
The receiving switch meanwhile requires the use of an electromagnet, which is what happens when a copper wire insulated with resin is wound a bunch of times around an iron core. As a direct result, when an electric current flows through this coiled wire a strong magnetic field is produced, which can be used to lift an iron weight that would normally not be raised. Coupled with a weighted lever and some variety of noisemaker, the electric current stopping and starting can be made to produce a distinctive sound, easily distinguished as such.
The end of the coiled wire not directly connected to the transmitting line should be jammed into the ground also, for the same reason as the other wire of the battery.
That said, a successful telegraph system requires a code with which it can work. Effectively, a telegraph operator has two inputs available to them; very quickly tapping their input lever before releasing, or holding it down for a brief period before releasing. Make a code so that a certain sequence of taps and holds corresponds to each letter of your written text, and a trained pair of telegraph operators can send and receive messages extremely quickly across great distances.
"These directions require three substances which I do not have. Or two and one which may or may not be what you mean. I know neither the stone you voices have advised should be added to iron nor the stone of dark crystals which leave white marks that smell of sulfur. Further, I suspect that the resin I know is not what you mean. Surely sticky lengths of copper wire hanging in the air would only serve to trap scores or hundreds of small birds.
"Then, of course, there's the matter of making wire which, again, is a lot of work for something so unclear.
"You may wish to be mindful, Just Write, of the many, many years of work that preceded the reliable blooming of iron. Also, that was the work of Burgeck. And there is now no one who will strive as Burgeck did to fulfill directions that sound so much like whimsical nonsense.
"A witch might, I suppose. There's a discipline and a need to work properly, there. But I have better work for witches to do. And probably have better work for anyone who would follow directions like this."
On a topic completely unrelated to telegraphy, I will also share knowledge of how to save someone dying of exposure to extreme cold. You may already know most of this, but some of the finer details could save lives.
So, first and most obviously, the person so afflicted should be gotten into a warm dry place as soon as possible. Getting them out of their cold, wet clothing and under warm dry blankets is also an obviously good idea.
Less obviously, there are a number of actions that seem helpful, but could potentially cause the patient's heart to stop. Do not jostle the patient around any more than absolutely necessary, and be gentle in moving them. Do not apply external heating such as a hot bath; this causes the peripheral blood vessels to expand, causing a sudden drop in blood pressure which can easily lead to the heart stopping in its cold-slowed state. If you absolutely MUST apply external heating, only do so on the neck, chest, and groin. Far better is to feed the patient a hot drink or hot soup if they're alert and able to swallow safely; this will directly warm the person's vital internal organs.
Lastly, even if the person ceases to breathe there is still a chance of saving them, albeit slim. By rhythmically pressing down on the chest, it is possible for another person to manually force the blood to pump and the lungs to inhale and exhale. This requires a fair amount of force behind each compression in order to be successful.
"This is similar to known wisdom. But the rule of the neck, chest, and groin is new. And many would not know why one so chilled might die if warmed improperly. Thank you, Just Write. This knowledge will make the people stronger"
Telegraph, ugh... Even if this enormously complex idea could be somehow perfected during this century, and about that I doubt... I think that Bianca wouldn't be able to produce anywhere enough copper for the copper wire, not without whole cities dedicated to production of the copper wire. Good to know that it's possible in theory, I suppose.
Really, the basic idea is fairly simple to implement once a rough understanding of electromagnetism has been achieved. To put it quite bluntly, a telegraph of the variety I described is one of the simplest useful electrical devices that uses artificial electric current. As I have stated, almost all the parts and materials needed are known to the Ten Nations, and I provided detailed instructions for refining the only material that isn't.
Also, doing the math a single cubic meter of copper (massing about nine tons) would easily be able to provide 12.7 kilometers of telegraph wire. A major investment of copper certainly, but well within the Ten Nations' capabilities. To be clear, this is assuming a much thicker wire than is strictly necessary. With a thinner wire, the ratio improves to 319 kilometers of wire per cubic meter of Copper.
"Hrumf. If that is the simplest of such devices, I hold little hope for making anything of any more complex. Wire, strange metals, pitch everywhere, and for a device that allows messages to be sent from village to village? Just how often do you expect a village has any need to send a message to another village? It certainly happens, but walking also happens.
"I will have these directions written down and stored away and perhaps I will revisit them in some especially slow winter.
"But even then, I do not know what I would make the redewer out of, if it should be so hot as to melt iron."
[x] [Vassal] Bring the gold to the Giantess and accompany her as she subjugates Ekhaicvint
War is expensive. We've already had too many failed wars in the last few years. The population needs to recover. If someone else wants to take a stab at expanding our lands, they're welcome to it, especially if they only want useless gold in return.
[x] [Underclass] It's fine. Let the Galugr solve their own problems the way they see fit.
I'm sure this will not come back to haunt us at all. Like say the Nameless recruiting from the new discontent giant underclass.
[x] [Hurrah] He should send the most heroic youths, perhaps a hero will be made
The crucible in which heroes are made is adventure!
[x] [Horse] Take the mare as tribute. Calm her with herbs so that she can be bred
I would question the logic in breeding with such a fierce beast but I suppose that would actually be an advantage in battle.
"Truth, voice. The mare is trouble, and more trouble that she'd be worth were she not so great in scale. A mean horse is just a mean horse. But she is so large a mighty warrior could ride her, even in saddle and in armor provided, I suppose, that warrior is not overlarge in girth or height. There may always be some too large to ride.
The underclass will be temporary, future generations should be forcibly assimilated into their new tribes with proper marriages. I even think that this idea should be expanded to conquests, not only to raising numbers of Bianca's lesser giants.
[X] [Underclass] It's fine. Let the Galugr solve their own problems the way they see fit.
This could blow up in our faces, but it might turn out well? Probably worth the gamble
[X] [Vassal] Bring the gold to the Giantess and accompany her as she subjugates Ekhaicvint
Crush those worms beneath your feet. Enjoy the sweetness of their defeat.
[X] [Hurrah] He should send the most heroic youths, perhaps a hero will be made
He took up the tile of Chief. He took up the title of King. It was his decision to shoulder those responsibilities. The People have put their trust in his leadership, and to toss them aside on a whim would dishonor more that just Kuwuzt of Zouchaud, it would dishonor all those elders whom endorsed him as first chief, It would dishonor all those warriors whom he led to take Enonl, and it would dishonor the authority Bianca granted him.
[X] [Horse] Lan probably knows what they're doing, leave them to it
Horse fucking is not exactly rocket science. Also, Lan my resent further tribute after your retribution for the cult.
Now, it seems that some of these other voices have poor listening skills, so I will do what I can to abate some few of your burning questions:
[Children]
The beating if children by itself is no issue, but it the the reasons behind the beating that result in despair. The minds of children are as sharp if not sharper than their elders, yet they lack the experience and skill to understand the workings of the world as an adult does. When you beat a child in anger, all they learn is that beating on those weaker than oneself is an appropriate way to deal with anger. What children need is clear, firm rules. Punishments need to have a clear cause and effect. The child must be told the rules before hand.
To further my thoughts on child-rearing, children need to play. Not just human children, but the offspring of all animals who give live birth are hard wired for play. If you were to watch wolf pups in the wild you would see. When one pup bites another to hard while play fighting, it rarely becomes an actual fight. Instead the injured party will simply let out a pained sound and recoil, spurning any further attempts to play for a short while. Thus we see that even a temporary refusal to engage with a child is often enough for them to learn their lesson.
"That is a novel persuasion, that refusing to engage with the child is a sufficient punishment because that is the way of wolf cubs.
"I make no business of raising children, voice. I have, you may be sure. But the desire to take some foundling and make a person of them has not stirred within me for… Oh, it must be more than a hundred summers. Perhaps two.
"Still, this is a better claim than simply that beaten children are broken people. Restrained parents are, I think, more likely to raise restrained children."
[Bridges]
In cases such as yours where the mud is deep I suggest driving wooden logs vertically in their entirety into the riverbed. Enough logs can provide a stable enough platform. To be clear, the tops of the logs should be below the level of the mud at the bottom of the river to minimize their exposure to the water, preventing rot. I have seen this technique used to build entire cities of large stone buildings resting in the middle of a swamp. To reach the river bed you may need to construct a [Caisson], a wall of logs driven shallowly into the riverbed around your work area and caulked with clay. If you do it correctly then you should be able to pump water out of the center faster than if fills in, providing a relatively dry work area. For shallower streams it might be preferable to dam up half the channels width at a time with baskets full of rock. I have also seen that technique use to construct dams. Once you have your wooden foundation, It is time to build your stone pier. I suggest that the part which will actually touch the water be shaped sort of like a fish, coming to a point at each end to allow water to flow smoothly past.
"Oh, good. Yes, this is just what is needed in Liavint, I think. They already build walls out in the Buraghm and remove the water from them. But no depth into the mud is sufficiently deep to set stones. In fact, the walls holding back the water tend to move, even."
[Mining]
Unfortunately providing light without flame requires mastery of electromagnetics, metallurgy, and glass-making. However, it seems to me that there might be a magical solution to this problem. Perhaps a spirit of a bird that covets shiny things might be sent to thieve some light from the moon (since it would not be a hot as sunlight)? Some such birds are particularly intelligent and might be trained to specifically seek out shiny things.
Speaking of spirits, it might be helpful to have a quick spirit carry a burning twig into the mines each day. That way dangerous gasses might burn off without risking lives, especially since may of the more dangerous gasses are both colorless and odorless.
Anyway, the black stone that burns tends to be much softer than true stone, so fire shattering is both less effective and less necessary.
When using blasting powder to mine, you will get the best effect by first drilling a deep hole and packing it with powder. Generally you then use a slow burning fuse to allow a safe distance to be reached before the powder goes off. You really don't want the powder to go off before you expect it, and you don't want it to take so long that you get curious and go back in to check if it went out right before it explodes. So you want something that can burn at a very consistent rate. I suggest that tightly made rope soaked in saltpeter (which is not flammable itself, but instead acts like air feeding the flame. Then as a matter of safety you want to pay careful attention to how long the rope takes to actually burn before you go and use it to blow stuff up.
"The slow burning rope is a good idea, as another voice also recommended. I know of spirits that make light, but most of those also seek to do harm to living things. Long ago I knew a witch who carried with her a bladder that glowed bright enough to see the walls of caves. I don't recall what she had trapped in that bladder. And I don't spend time in caves anymore, so I am unlikely to meet another like her myself. Perhaps my 'traders and scouts' sent south might learn of something.
"The spirits of thieving birds are suffered, and never used except to cause suffering."
[Siege]
Speaking of explosions, one tried and true tactic for a siege is sapping. That is mining beneath the enemies walls and either sending through your warriors or burning / blasting down the tunnel to bring down the walls.
Obviously you don't want the enemy to know where your sappers actually are so you construct many temporary huts / shields as near to the walls as you safely can and move your sappers in & dirt away during the night.
A large wheeled wall covered with wet pelts can defend against attacks by flaming arrows.
Another longer term tactic is to make it very clear that the longer a city resists your siege, the more stringent their punishment. If they throw open the gates immediately then you may let them get away with merely paying tribute and leave the current rulers at least nominally in charge, but if you must siege them for a time then all the rulers shall be killed. And if you must siege them for a long while then a fire tax shall be exacted (remember, pillage THEN burn). And if they should force you to break down their walls and fight them in the streets then you shall shape their corpses into a massive ball with magic and the roll it around until the streets are literally stained red.
Of course, remember to let a few go to spread the news...
"Hah! 'Fire tribute,' yes. That will make the people take notice. Of course, in this matter Ekhaicvint is already fated to a terrible end for making me wait years.
"Or, no. Perhaps I should restart the accounting from the time I arrive each time. Ekhaicvint will not open its gates to me immediately, surely. They must believe that they can throw me off again. So there will be a demonstration there.
"And I will, of course, also give similar directions to the advisors I send to Liavint and Enonl."
[Cannons]
Don't even try using iron or steel for cannons at this time. Though iron is potentially much stronger than bronze, it is much harder to create iron of consistent quality free of impurities.
For the overall shape of the cannon I advise that the closed end should be thickest, tapering towards the open end. To understand why, consider the cannon in the instants after firing. Heat sets off the blasting powder, converting it in to more heat and large amounts of hot air. The hot air tries to expand but is stopped in all directions by the walls and the cannonball. The hot air pushes on every portion of the inner surface and the cannon ball with an equal amount of force. As the ball is pushed down the barrel, there the same amount of air trying to escape, but more area to push against. Since air pushes evenly against every surface of its container, the force with which is pushes upon the walls must reduce as the ball travels around the barrel. Additionally, some air escapes through gaps & the lighting hole as the ball travels.
Do note that the time it takes for blasting powder to burn affects the force with which it explodes, and this burn time is in turn affected by both the size of the individual grains of blasting powder, and the amount of water in the air which is available for the blasting powder to absorb. To get more consistent results it can help to mill your blasting powder in a central location and pack it into small bags of equal size.
"First the wadded cloth behind the ball and now small bags of cloth -- for you surely do not mean leather -- to hold the black dust? I am not so rich with cloth as to make a regular thing of this. But I do want to see that wall break.
"How can the amount of water in the air be better known? And what is it like when this affects the bursting dust?"
One [General Casting Tip] when using a multi-part mold of fired clay is to wrap all the parts in another layer of clay mixed with animal dung and grog to hold everything together without shrinking or cracking as it is heated and cooled.
For casting cannon, you probably want to cast them with the open end facing downwards. That way you can use a green sand core to get the barrel hole started. Green sand is roughly one part water to two parts clay to 17 parts clean sand. You can make the core by strapping together a wooden mold consisting of two half-cylinders and really packing the sand in. I'm talking really tamp it in there. You want to be able to carefully remove the mold with the sand already in its final location without crumbling. You might get sturdier sand by adding a small amount of oil or animal fat, but that's a trade off because it will burn off when you pour the metal and may form bubbles that weaken the pour. The idea is that your core is a bit smaller than you want the hole to be when finished, that way you only need to cut away a little metal to make a smooth surface. When actually pouring, you want do it quickly and use have room in the top of your mold to hold extra metal. The extra can be cut off afterwards, but having it there helps ensure that the metal solidifies all at once as a single piece with no inherent weaknesses.
gimme a sec to look further back for questions we never answered.
...
Ok, so [Winter Wheat]
It's not wheat that grows in the winter. It is a hardy type of wheat that is planted in the fall, goes dormant over winter, and then resumes growing once spring comes around. Wheat is not the only crop that has been grown this way. It largely depends on what you have available and how cold your winters get. Even if you don't have and good over-winter crops, it is still a good idea to plant some sort of low ground covering crop to prevent weeds from colonizing your fields. When the winter kills your cover crop, you can just plow it back into the ground in the spring to improve the soil.
"Hrm. That is a disappointment. I would rather have wheat that grows throughout the winter.
"Weeds can also be tilled into the soil. What do you find in a 'ground covering' that prevents it from choking out the grain in the way that weeds, even tilled until, might do at times?"
Hmmm... This period of communication has lasted much longer than normal on our end. On the subject of time, I will now tell you of mechanisms to precisely measure its passing, known variously as clocks, timepieces or chronometers. I do not expect much to immediately come of this, and clocks can be considered a low-priority project for now. However, ultimately clocks will prove extremely useful.
First, it would be good to note why a clock would be useful. First and most obviously, many processes take extremely precise lengths of time in order to get good results. Second and most importantly, an accurate and portable clock can be used to determine much about where a ship is in the ocean, even when out of sight of land.
Allow me to explain the method. Since the world is a ball, the angle of the sun in the sky is unique for each possible east-west position (referred to as longitude) at any given time when the sun is visible. When the Sun is at its apex, it is noon wherever a traveler may be. On its own this isn't very much information, but if the traveler has a clock set to indicate the time of day at the port they left from, they can compare noon where they are to the time the clock reads. If the clock indicated that it's currently in the evening in their homeland but noon on their ship, then they know they're about a quarter-turn around the world to the west. More precise measurements of time can of course provide even more accurate information about east-west location, though it must be warned that doing this reliably will require very good clocks, which are not easy to make.
Anyway, any given Clock has a few crucial components: An energy store, an oscillator, a regulator, gearing, and a number of indicators euphemistically referred to as 'hands'.
For energy stores, your best options for a clock at the moment are weights and coiled springs. A battery could be used to power an electromechanical clock, but those are a bit more complex, and will be described at a future time. To use a weight as a power source, tie one end of a rope to the weight and the other to a large spool. Winding the spool lifts the weight, acting as a store of energy to turn the spool the other way as the weight descends. This has the advantage of simplicity, but cannot be transported while the clock is running.
Producing a coiled spring meanwhile requires manufacture of metals that will return back to their original shape after being bent out of form. This can be done for Bronze by increasing the amount of Tin in the alloy, and repeatedly hammering it. For steel, Springs can be made with high-purity steels with a medium Carbon content that are then tempered; this refers to quenching the metal in a cold bath straight from the forge, then annealing it for some time so as to ensure proper softening. Effectively, Tempering is the opposite of case-hardening.
Once a good spring material is produced, the best shape for a spring to use in a clock is a spiral. This can be achieved either through working a ribbon of metal into the correct shape, or cutting a pattern out of a disc of spring metal. One end of the spring should be attached to the wheel or axle the spring is to turn, while the other should be attached to a ratcheted winding mechanism.
(as a side note, springs can also be used to improve the action of a telegraph by making the levers reset to their resting position faster)
An oscillator is a component that vibrates back and forth at a regular rate; at the moment I will be describing the use of Pendulums and Balance Wheels for oscillators.
A Pendulum is a weight fixed to one end of a swinging rod, with the length of the rod dictating how long the pendulum takes to swing. The longer the rod, the longer a pendulum takes to swing. Due to the fact that solid matter tends to expand as it changes temperature, this can cause a clock to run slow or fast depending on how hot it is. Fortunately, there is a way to get around this, as different materials expand at different rates when heated. In particular, Zinc expands roughly twice as fast as Iron. Thus, by having a central iron bar connect the weight to two Zinc bars on either side near the top, which then connect outwards at the bottom to a pair of Iron bars going all the way up to the pivot, a pendulum can be built that compensates for temperature difference with great precision. A pendulum is the simplest option for a clock's oscillator, but doesn't keep time well when moved about.
A Balance Wheel meanwhile is a wheel with a heavy metallic ring around the edge, connected to its axle by a spiral spring. Thus, if the wheel is turned then released, the spring will cause it to wobble back and forth at a regular rate. A balance wheel's rate of oscillation is dictated by the mass of the outer ring, and how much force the coiled spring exerts to return to its rest position. A Balance Wheel is able to operate reliably even if being moved and jostled about and is naturally more able to remain consistent at varying temperatures, but is harder to work with.
Now, an Escapement is a device for using the back and forth motion of an oscillator to limit how fast a clock can use up its stored energy, and more importantly keep the parts turning at a consistent rate. I will list some escapements, and try to explain how they work. All engage with a special gear referred to as the Escape Wheel. An Escape Wheel is primarily notable for having angled teeth like a ratchet, but also for having noticeable gaps in between these teeth.
First, I will describe the simplest, known as the Deadbeat Escapement (which is itself an improvement on the anchor escapement). By simplest I mean that it introduces no new moving parts; the precise shape of the piece (from here on out referred to as the latch) is fairly important. So, for a basic Anchor escapement, attach an angled piece to the oscillator's pivot with two protrusions that can get between the teeth of the escape wheel; the idea is that as the oscillator swings, which hook of the latch is engaged with the escape wheel constantly switches, only allowing the escape wheel to advance by one tooth on each swing.
A Deadbeat Escapement is primarily defined by the precise shape of these protrusions. First and foremost, the outer edge of the 'trailing' end of the latch is rounded relative to the pivot such that the teeth of the escape wheel pushing against it will not produce force to swing the oscillator one way or the other for much of the swing. The same goes for the inner edge of the 'leading' end of the latch. That said, force must be applied to the oscillator at some point to keep it swinging, otherwise friction losses will eventually bring it to a halt. To this end the 'bottoms' of the latch's hooks should be angled such that the Escape Wheel rotating will push upwards on that end of the latch, adding speed to the oscillator.
Anchor and Deadbeat escapements are primarily used with pendulum oscillators, but there's nothing explicitly preventing one from being used with a balance wheel.
Next, I will explain how a lever escapement works. This is slightly more complex, in that the latch is a separate piece from the oscillator. However, it boasts great advantages in reliability and accuracy, as well as playing to a Balance Wheel's strengths very effectively. The part of the latch in contact with the Escape Wheel is almost identical to a Deadbeat Escapement, but there is a moderately-long rod on the other end, stretching towards the center of the balance wheel; this rod has a groove on the end designed to engage with a peg on the balance wheel near the center. This way, as the balance wheel rotates the peg dips into the groove, flicks the lever to its other position, then disengages from the lever as the wheel rotates. This cycle repeats continuously, as long as the clock is wound properly. As a side note, it's a good idea to have a couple additional pegs next to the lever to constrain its motion, preventing it from getting misaligned.
The gearing is what is used to convert the rotation of the Escape Wheel into the time units you intend on actually using with your indicators. This is literally just gear ratios again; a gear with twenty teeth needs to go around six times to make a gear with one hundred and twenty teeth go around once. I would not advise using belts and wheels of different radii for this; unlike gears, getting the size of the parts exactly right for accurate timekeeping is incredibly difficult bordering on impossible.
Either way, the gearing is meant to connect to the clock's indicators; the angle of the indicator represents how far along time has progressed through the interval measured by that specific indicator. Indicators can either be mounted in separate dials from each other, or mounted within a single dial using concentric bearings. In the latter case, it is helpful to distinguish the indicators somehow, either by length or color.
As an example, a fairly typical example of a military clock from my world has three indicators; these are referred to as the hour hand, minute hand, and second hand. In this case, the word 'second' is being used to refer to a unit of time.
The hour hand goes around entirely once each day (defined as a complete rotation of day and night); in addition, there are 24 evenly spaced markings that it passes by in the course of its rotation. These markings are used to indicate the unit of time known as an hour. Some clocks instead have the hour hand go around twice per day, with twelve markings for hours, but the once per day rotation is somewhat superior for navigational use.
The minute hand meanwhile is geared to go around once per hour, meaning that it proceeds 24 times as fast as the hour hand. It passes by sixty markings, indicating minutes; each hour is defined as containing sixty minutes. The second hand goes around once per minute, re-using the same markers as the minute hand to indicate seconds.
You are of course by no means required to use these exact units of time. That said, whatever you come up with for your clocks, make sure you tell us the system you've come up with, and standardize your units of time as much as possible. It will save you from much confusion and frustration later on.
All that aside, it will probably please you to know that most parts of a land-bound clock can be made out of wood without fear of disaster. However, in the case of clocks for use at sea I would advise making most parts out of Brass.
Brass is an alloy of Copper and Zinc, made in much the same way as Bronze; certain varieties of Brass mix a little bit of Tin in, but not very much. It shines bright yellow a bit like Gold, but is much more useful. It's fairly durable, it resists corrosion, when polished smooth it has very little friction, and it handles wear and tear well. All in all, an excellent material for clock-making, and a variety of other pursuits as well.
My last note about clocks is that they can be built to almost any scale. The most obsessively detail-oriented craftsmen can fit together a ludicrously complex timepiece with over a thousand moving parts into a casing small enough to be comfortably worn strapped to one's wrist. Meanwhile, a group on my world is busily hollowing out an entire mountain with the express goal of housing a gigantic clock designed to operate continuously for ten thousand years. At the moment I would not recommend attempting to reach either of these extremes; focus first on getting accurate clocks working at a manageable scale.
"Please consider, Just Write, that I have no 'precision,' none of this metal that must be redewed, and currently no need for either.
"If I built one of these time reckoners it would be one of a kind. If I built two, they would not be two of a kind, but one each of two different kinds.
"If there is anything that needs to be done, and there is a way of doing it that requires a time reckoner, then there had better be another way of doing it that does not, or it will not get done.
"If it gets done once, at my great house, then it would need to be a thing that can be done in only one place and still be worth my time. Those are not the kinds of things of which you voices have been telling me, not the ones put to use, anyway.
"If there is some process you suggest be done, and that process requires a time reckoner, how can all of these fantastic steps be duplicated in another place when even now the reaping and threshing machines are not reliably duplicated? When even now the soil-lifting plow is not present throughout the lands of the Ten Nations? When even now even those arts of glassmaking and ironblooming, which all people covet, are not practiced in every place that wishes to practice them?
"The people, Just Write, the people do not have time for this."
It looks like you put a lot of work into this. Maybe it's copypasta -- if that's even the right term (I am over forty) -- but either way it's obviously something you care about.
Unfortunately, this isn't the game for clock building right now. And it'll be a long in-universe time before it is. If the players had chosen Oran the Wise instead of Bianca the Undying, it would totally be the kind of game for clock building and for blast furnaces and water wheels and batteries. But instead of the Tech Leader or the MIlitary Leader, the players chose the Culture Leader. Since then, and to mixed results, the players have tried to turn the Culture Leader into the Militechary Leader.
Like, I don't want you to feel chastised here or anything close. But, as I am told the kids said at some point recently, now is not the time for bicycles. Despite thematic overlap, that part of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court doesn't fit.
Semaphore stations built on the tops of hills with clear lines of sight to each other are a much cheaper and easier way to send messages quickly than telegraph at this tech level. They can wave flags or wooden sticks in patterns that mean specific letters and words, and the next station in line can repeat the message so that it moves as far as the stations are away from each other as quickly as it takes to see and repeat. There's already high-place houses on some of the hills, right? Even then, I really don't think it would be worth the expense. Having someone to sit there watching for messages all day instead of producing food is just too expensive probably. Bianca has said that again and again and again.
Semaphore requires much more labor to run than a telegraph does, and is far more error prone. With a Semaphore you need people at every station along the route, all of whom can easily screw up part of the message. With a telegraph you need one perceptive person in an office who is trained for the codes, for each village. And some maintenance personnel, I suppose.
Plus, it's not like the telegraph system has to be running all the time outside of emergencies; just designate some chunk of time each day for telegraph messages, and for the rest of the day the telegraph operator can help out with the normal chores.
I suppose so. The copper wires and batteries are still going to be wildly tricky and expensive to make.
Batteries have some other potential uses like electroplating or electrolysis or simple fire-starters with the sparks from touching wires maybe? It might be better to make a human-powered generator with magnet and disks of copper like the one from Dr. Stone. I don't know how to properly explain that device, maybe someone else can. But I am again not sure if it's worth the effort. And I don't know much about electroplating or electrolysis.
"I don't know what message I would want other than, 'There is trouble. Bring help.' This is already accomplished by setting the pile of kindling atop every high place on fire. At night, this works even when the burning high place is very far away from the next high place.
"The people start fires readily enough, without the need for complicated rituals with substances so precious they have never seen them before. And the people get along well enough without whatever those other things are.
"Indeed, if anything the people have been over-prosperous. I know not what you do in the times between speaking, voices, but I bid you do it well."
Code:
B R E A K
"Voices! I bid you answer me once again! When last we spoke it was the autumn of the fortieth year since I first called on you and now it is the spring of the fifty-ninth. Many things have transpired in the years that have passed.
"Kuwuzt, King of Enonl, High Chieftain of Zouchaud, and First Chief of Ten Nations did spend four seasons teaching kingship to his daughter Heput. And in that time, Zouchaud Tribe also did select one named Jauz to be the High Chieftain of Zouchaud until Kuwuzt might return from his quest. And also in that year Kuwuzt called to himself the greatest warriors of the Ten Nations: Mighty Noifad, who was greatest of all the Galugr, too great for the boats of the Fisher People; Yeush of Tash, Last Son of Raz the Slave-Taker, who is wise of spirits; Taog the Smith of Eppam, wielder of the Red Hammer; Aoiny Eight-Knives of Bima Nolco, whose darts fell the Cursed Boar; Haush Pale-Eye of Gawdtha, on whose spear there is a bronze blade as long as three normal knives; Bitter Gon the Glassmaker of Burgeck, whose glass arrows pierce and fester and enfever; Onalda of Sleomjash, Daughter of Great Saveo the Enfeebled the son of the Last King of Wrul, whose great hounds are each worth five warriors in battle; Byav the Horse-Slayer of Lan, Daughter of Kahl, whose light feet and great knife broke chariots and slayed horses and riders alike; and Ot the Mariner of Naumo, who had led raids by boat farther to the north than any other. And with all these there were also other warriors, and boatkeepers, and those who stay acamped.
"All these set out from Enonl in the Spring of Forty-Three, in great boats made in the new manner, with long keels and pitched boards and sails of many colors. And Niofad was in a boat made for his great size, which also carried other people and a cart and two mules. They traveled west from Enonl, then followed the curve of the land around and passed many islands. They came to a place where a great island sits to the north, reaching beyond all the others. And there they followed the shore of this great island even further north.
"Along the way, King Kuwuzt of Zouchaud and his Companions found camps and villages of other people, and even one city. From these they took what they needed to continue, sometimes in trade and sometimes not. The king of that city invited them to drink with him, and only Mighty Noifad was not made to sleep with drunkenness. So when the warriors of the treacherous king came to the room where the Free People of the Ten Nations slept, only Mighty Noifad among the warriors awoke. So the greatest of the lesser giants led the boatkeepers and the people of camps and packs to slay the warriors of that place, and to fight until the other warriors were roused to wakefulness and made to heave out their bellies. And in the fighting, as King Kuwuzt of Zouchaud and his Companions made their way down to their boats, MIghty Noifad fell. When his body was washed in the boat made to carry him, they found he had been wounded such that in many places one cut could not be known from the others around it. And in places his flesh hung like rags. And even in these drapes of cut flesh, there were arrowheads and darts.
"So they marked the city on their maps and travelled onward. And at no other place did all the Companions leave the shore and their boats.
"The lesser giants have traveled long without a homeland. So the ways of their spirits are not of returning home. For this reason, the Companions carried the body of Mighty Noifad until they came to a village where there was one wise enough to deal with his spirit if he returned. There they put the corpse of Noifad in dry ground, with broken pots and torn leather, and piled great stones and dirt on him. The bronze and steel weapons and armor of Noifad they left with the wise woman of that village.
"In the late Summer of Forty-Three they found the Island of Asaragz, in sight of the shore of the great northern island which is called many different names by the people who live on it. In that place great cliffs rise from the great island with often small beaches. And channels with such cliffs may, in places, run far inland. And there Yeush of Tash called up the spirit of my first table-ruler who betrayed me. And with ink on pale hides he showed Asaragz from this shore and from that one, until the hunters among them came to know where the Hydra might travel within the island. They found also the leavings of the Hydra and the marks on the ground made by its passing. And from those marks they learned that the body of the Hydra was long, with four short legs with clawed feet, and that it dragged its belly along the ground.
"There was no game taken on the island of Asaragz; no birds or even mice were found there. And they reasoned that the Hydra had eaten them all. They often found the Hydra's trail leading down to the beaches, where it would go out into the water, where they believed it would hunt. They knew that so great a catch would break any nets they had brought, so the Companions set about catching the Hydra while it was on the land and to this end they stayed together and within shouting range of the camp.
"Which is, of course, where the Hydra came on them. Nearly all of the Companions were away from the camp, searching the island when the Hydra struck. Of the greatest of them, only Ot the Mariner and Aoiny Eight-Knives were at the camp at that time, and so many warriors and other people alike fell to the Hydra's murderous cunning. Aoiny's darts could not pierce the Hydra's hide, so she lit and hurled instead the fire-bursting pots. But the Hydra kicked sand over itself to douse the flames and was not much injured by the bursting. Ot, however, was splattered by the fire and before he could extinguish it the Hydra spat venom on him that burned even greater and he came to be consumed by flame.
"The hounds of Onalda of Sleomjash were the first to return, and they tore at the flanks of the Hydra, dodging its snapping heads and slapping tail when they could, and otherwise falling in battle, as happens to dogs and Fisher People alike. Bitter Gon the Glassmaker also found that his arrows could not meaningfully pierce the hide of the Hydra. Their glass tips would penetrate, yes. But the tips and no further and the Hydra paid them no mind. However, the great knife of Byav the Horse-Slayer and the long-bladed spear of Haush Pale-Eye did cut at the heads that reached too far out, and the Red Hammer of Taog the Smith also crushed the neck of one head. And from all the places the heads or necks were cut or crushed, blood and venom oozed or dripped or sprayed.
"The Hydra drew back, and Haush Pale-Eye followed. But the beast rushed back out, and grabbed him with two heads and bit him deeply and threw him also. So King Kuwuzt took up the long-bladed spear of Haush Pale-Eye from where he had fallen, broken and dying most swiftly to the Hydras venom. And Byav the Horse-Slayer and Taog the Smith drew the heads of the Hydra to them while Yeush of Tash directed spirits to confuse it and Bitter Gon the Glassmaker and Aoiny Eight-Knives shot at the faces of its heads. And in this time Kuwuzt and the hounds of Onalda fell on the flanks of the Hydra, wounding it terribly.
"And so the Hydra came to tire from the fight and from its wounds before King Kuwuzt and his Companions until Kuwuzt returned to the heads of the great beast and cut open its last intact neck with the long-bladed spear of Haush Pale-Eye, slaying the beast.
"At the direction of Yeush the Wise, all who fought and lived did go down to the water to bathe in that cold sea and to scrub at themselves with sand, and afterward to return to the fire and warm, dry, layered blankets of cloth. But though she had fought on after venom was spat on her face, Byav the Horse-Slayer, Daughter of Kahl of Lan, came to bleed from her eye, then to seize and shake, and did die on the beach in the arms of those who had survived of her marriage, who had come with her.
"In the moon that followed, the Companions took fish from the sea and herbs from the island. They buried their dead, and bade the spirits of their dead to remain in or return to the Underworld. But the angry spirit of Ot the Mariner was too strong for Yeush to direct him. And with an appearance of burning it passed out of the island, traveling west over the surface of the water like a low-flying seabird, into the open sea. They found the carcass of the Hyrda to be safe to eat, so long as the venom did not touch the meat. And they collected that venom in leather bags. They also stitched and stretched the hide of the Hydra on a great frame, scaped it clean, and dried it by smoke and fire while they also smoked its meat. They also butchered the mules and burned the cart, seeing no need for it on the return trip and wanting to make room in the largest boat for what they took form the Hydra. In time, later, the hide of the five necks that were not ruined was divided to Yesuh of Tash, Taog the Smith, Aoiny Eight-Knives, Bitter Gon the Glassmaker, and Onalda of Sleomjash. And these made the strong hide into shield-covers or leggings or whatever as they wanted. And the great hide of the Hydra's body and tail and the six heads were claimed by King Kuwuzt.
"The Companions wintered in the village where they had buried Mighty Noifad. And for wintering there, the chieftess of that people asked a gift of them, that they would lead her people in many battles against her neighbors in the next year. And so they did, and were victorious, and wintered with them again in Forty-Four. And though all of the chosen left in the Spring of Forty-Five, some others stayed there. But many more came with, in new boats made in the new ways of the Free People of the Ten Nations. And as they went, King Kuwuzt and his Companions gathered to themselves warriors from all the people they met. And these they brought to the shores at the city they called Huip where before they had been treated poorly.
"There they demanded the surrender of the city, and offered that all would be spared death but those who had lifted hand against their guests two years before. So the people of the city rose against their king and hung his dead body over the side of the walls, along with the bodies of others who they said we all who had lifted hands against the Companions. And the people of the city asked that the Companions and the many warparties who were with them should leave, then. But Onalda of Sleomjash knew some things of the way of kings, for her father had been raised to be king, and she knew that there would be no leaving if the city did not pay. So she shouted that no others in the city would die, but that the wealth of the city must be passed to those who came to see justice done.
"And when the new king of the city tried to trick the Companions and the warriors with them, with false shows of poverty, Onalda of Sleomjash called on the people of the city to save their own lives by opening the gates to the Companions, lest their lying leadership doom them to a razing. So the people opened the gates in the night, and the Companions and certain of the warriors with them went into the city. And they slew only the guard, the king and those close to him, and any who refused to surrender their wealth. And a wealth of gold and silver and cloth and fine furs and precious stones passed out to the warriors outside the city. And Onalda of Sleomjash made herself King of Huip.
"And though most of the the warriors of the people they had met, who had come with them, did return to their villages with their riches, the Companions wintered in Huip. And in the Summer of Forty-Six King Kuwuzt and some of his Companions left Huip and made their way back to Enonl, where now the great hide of the Hydra hangs on the inside of the city wall. And three of the Hydra of Asaragz's head hang on each side of that hide. With these, Kuwuzt the Great also returned with those bags of the hydra's venom, which I have taken as tribute for their sorcerous as well as poisonous properties.
"Onalda has claimed Huip in the same fashion that Kuwuzt claimed Enonl, and all recognize her claim. Her marriage and some others from her family have come to her in Huip, and also she called for all of her great hounds to be brought to her there. And many other Free People of the Ten Nations have made their way to Huip to find a new life there, where they have outgrown the lands they were in. And the city and the Free People of the Ten Nations in it send me tribute, as is right.
"The magician who promised a potion of long life completed both the one I had promised to the maker of the finest reaping machine and the one he meant for himself. That potion returned to the devicer her sight! And though she was not yet much aged, still she tells me that she wakes each day with the clarity of thought and sureness of motion that she had lost since her youth. Though summers have past since then, she has not seemed to age, neither in gaining lines on her face or grey in her hair. And her hands and steps are as sure as they ever were.
"It has not escaped my notice, either, that though thirty-three years have passed now since he took the throne of Enonl, King Kuwuzt of Zouchaud, now called Kuwuzt the Great, still has the strength of limb and certainty of motion of one who is in his prime. This despite him having lived through sixty-five or so winters, now.
"My singers have questioned him on this, of course. His answer is only, 'I have lived well and with care and perhaps drank a sorcerous potion at some point.' I think he took one or more from the potion-maker magician and I do not think he would deny that if I made a point of it. But both he and I understand the danger of many people attempting to duplicate the potion without full understanding. So it is said that his long life is a natural matter of his heroism, though learned folk know that could not be so and have reasonable suspicions.
"The potion-maker himself disappeared from my lands shortly after completing his work. Neither scout nor trader has heard of his like.
"To speak of the same, I have sent scouts and traders to travel years away from the lands of the Ten Nations and to return to tell me what they found. Though in some cases they only traveled a few years or even months ahead of the hosts of the Giantess or the boats of conquest, still they have returned to tell me of a world of cities and gods and magic and many other things. And it is true that the land to the south is warmer and richer than the land here. There are more people there, more cities, and also more trouble though I do not know that it is not worth it. My scouts and traders, though, were only sent when sworn to give no true telling of the place they come from. They carried no writing and no glass, but only bits of gold and silver and bronze and copper to buy what they could not obtain in other ways. Their knives were copper and their axeheads, too. They wore no cloth. They carried no honey.
"There are seas far to the south, yes. And their waters are warmer and their people do not make boats like the Free People of the Ten Nations now do. There are no seas to the east, not without also traveling far to the south again. In both cases, people talk of land beyond the sea, which some there have been to and returned from. But my scouts and traders did not go out on the boats of those places, nor did they take to building boats of their own.
"None to the far south have my boats, nor iron, nor clear glass, nor horses as great as mine.
"Ah. Another matter. Though the mare called Kahl's Will does not still live, her offspring are relatively plentiful in the lands around my great house. I dote on them, like they were favored pets, so that they are as fruitful as they can be and every year there are more large horses. They are nearly as furious as their forebearer, riotous and willful, strong and great, slayers of dogs and Fisher People alike, and at times of other horses. I have sent some out, gelded and with the chosen of the chosen, to lead the hosts of the Giantess, which march in rows and columns and train with their spears and shield, in her conquests across the Buraghm.
"The Giantess who now rules Liavint is not the Giantess who pledged herself to me, but her granddaughter. And that Giantess' siblings and cousins, aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews, they lead armed hosts of many different peoples, of the Ten Nations, of Liavint, of the outsiders around both, of some people to the west and north, and of the people they have already pushed under for themselves.
"No sooner was the bridge over the Buraghm was completed -- all of stone stacked on long and straight trunks of trees driven deep into the mud of the riverbed -- than armed hosts were driven across it to find lands and cities to plunder and press down for themselves.
"With them are traders who have taken the sealed pots of sour foods with them, to eat and to trade as wonders. Some take sick from these, even to death. But not so much as might be expected from eating food so old.
"But Ekhaicvint is my own city. I tore a great hole in its walls with canon, cast upright and in the land outside that city and, yes, with a channel smoothed by many scrapes. And for the insult of making me break their walls, I had all the people of the city called masters, all who were lifted over the others, brought out to me and stood in a line. And then I cut each one deeply as I counted them. Most I only cut on the arm or thigh, but every fifth one I stabbed in their belly.
"Few of these were slain that particular day. Some did not live through the night for one reason or another. And many sickened despite wound care, especially those stabbed in their guts of course. But those who survived have been allowed to live on as my subjects in my city.
"My table-rulers and what former rulers of that city who survived and I have set down laws for the city. Many are foolishness, I am sure. But they seem to feel them necessary and so we will try that out until I tire of the grief it gives me. I have taken away the lifting up of one person over another that was in that place and have replaced it with the lifting up of guards and judges. These are meant to be chosen by tests of judgement, but my singers tell me that when one person has power to choose another, they choose their family and friends. This leads to dispute, as I knew it would. Some days I think to burn that city down and cast its stones apart as they are at Wrul. But not yet.
"I have named the city for myself, Biancvint. And there are great works of stone in Biancvint, Liavint, Enonl, Huip and others with my name and deeds and the names and deeds of those who please me.
"I have had little success in making reaping machines by having each part made by one person who makes only those parts. Far better to have people learn to make the whole machine. So these are used in the fields around my great house. And they travel to the fields of nearby villages as well, and are well known and desired far beyond that.
"Still, though, each is a singular work of craft. And the making of them is not well known beyond the places they are used. The same is true of threshing machines.
"Keeled ships have returned from far to the west. The land, they say, bends back southward before turning mostly westward. By the pivot stars, they know that the shoreline goes south, as well, but more slowly than it goes west. Far away, people speak different languages and otherwise live largely the same as people elsewhere who do not have the good fortune to be Free People of the Ten Nations. But there are tales of people who live differently from Fisher People or Forest People or Giants or lesser giants. They call these people other names in their strange languages, but I believe they speak of Bear's People, because they say these people live in the ground and build great halls in it.
"It may please you voices to know that many stories are already sung around by my singers now also include the message that children should not be overbeaten, but that turning a shoulder to an insolent child is often enough to discourage them. I see no difference from it, but perhaps after the passing of things from parent to child one or two more times there will be something to show.
"I now receive tribute from cities that I did not know of before learning that they are mine. I take it in gold and silver and bronze and tin, of course, but also in parchments of maps and language, in seedlings and seed, in herbs and flavorings, in learned folk and crafters. One distant city sent me the whole family of their former king: twelve adults and three infants survived the journey by boat, but I don't know that there's any special value to the family of a former king. They work in my gardens, now, as any reasonable person could. But they are not of any tribe of the Ten Nations, do not learn their languages, and hold themselves apart.
"Speaking of gardens or at least of the growth of plants, It is becoming evident that the Galugr will need to move. They have not held back the cursed woodlands, but have instead lost land to them with each passing season. And many seasons have now passed.
"Some of the Galugr remember directly and all know the story that they came to this land from elsewhere and so those know they can move again. No one wants to give up on hard-won pastures and fields, but the cursed woodlands continue to grow without ceasing. To where should the lesser giants be relocated?"
[Retreat] They should stay where they are as much as possible spreading around the Greater Haunted Forest as it encroaches into their lands
[Retreat] They should stay where they are as much as possible, give them some Eppam lands and tell Eppam to spread further into the land of outsiders
[Retreat] They should stay where they are as much as possible, give them some some Sleomjash lands and tell Sleomjash to spread further into the land of outsiders
[Retreat] They should stay where they are as much as possible, give them some Eppam lands and some Sleomjash lands and tell both tribes to spread further into the land of outsiders
[Retreat] Vacate space all around the Greater Haunted Forest and move the Galugr into lands taken from outsiders somewhere else
[Retreat] Move the Galugr to the former site of Wrul and the currently fallow croplands and pastures around it
[Retreat] Write in
"The Giantess of Liavint has taken to calling the stone columns that tell my name and deeds shrines and she would like to dedicate a temple to me. I know that either shrinekeepers or templekeppers will turn to a priesthood at some point and I don't want the bother. How shall I prevent this from causing me more trouble in the future?"
[Shrine] Forbid the veneration of these monuments as shrines or temples
[Shrine] Bianca should be venerated in shared temples maintained by priesthoods of other gods
[Shrine] One priest or priestess at a time, just one
[Shrine] Have singers and table-rulers maintain a temple to Bianca in Liavint
[Shrine] Write in
"The Judges of Biancvint squabble at times, disagreeing one with the others over some matter of law or penalty or who should be allowed to a judge. When this occurs, I must step in. I don't like needing to step in. And one day I will send word of my decision, I know, and it will be refused. Better that some intervening person handle them and answer to me. How should this be done?"
[Judiciary] Let them select one judge from their number to be over them and to answer to Bianca
[Judiciary] Let them select one judge from their number to be over them and to answer to Bianca, but only for five years, after which they select another
[Judiciary] Send a table-ruler to oversee them
[Judiciary] Send a singer each spring to oversee the Judges of Biancvint until the next spring
[Judiciary] Write in
"Warriors of Naumo tribe raid outsiders to the north who are called Friends of Gawdtha, because they pay tribute to the Gawdtha. The outsiders tell the Gawdtha that they cannot survive paying tribute to both, nor pay tribute to one and be raided by the other, nor pay tribute to both. The Naumo warriors claim that no outsider has any right to be free of their attention, unless they pay full tribute. The Gawdtha say similar, and have raised complaints to me. What should be done for this?"
[Tributary] Let them gamble each spring for who should take tributary from these disputed outsiders in that year
[Tributary] Leave them to the Gawdtha
[Tributary] Leave them to the Naumo
[Tributary] Drive the outsiders from their lands; let the Gawdtha expand into them
[Tributary] Let the two tribes divide the tribute
Once more tis' I; The great and procrastinative Millwright!
Via communion with the Lost Three whom channel Our power, I can confirm the provenance and potency of that Mad Magician's potion.
K-UwU-zt has regained his youthful vigor for a period of six hundred and sixty six moons, which likely began shortly after the fall of Enonl. Similar results hath the Mad Magician. The Devicer though, could prove quite the boon, for she has become truly unaging, if not undying.
Which sparks the question: Did you gather observe enough of the Mad Magician's rituals to eventually reproduce his formula? To create a new breed of immortals could prove both a boon and a curse... Be warned, all three who imbibed the potion had some measure of luck, for the possibility of a monstrous transformation was not so unlikely as one would like.
Now to answer a few questions:
Bianca said:
"How can the amount of water in the air be better known? And what is it like when this affects the bursting dust?"
The amount of water in the air is (called [Humidity]) is measured by a [Hygrometer], which takes advantage of the fact that the length of hair changes in direct proportion with the water in air. To construct a hygrometer you must first cleanse grease from the hair by washing in water and strong alcohol. Then you need some mechanism to magnify the change in length of the hair and compare with a fixed scale. Perhaps a good task for your new Devicer eh?
As to humidities affects upon bursting dust, it generally causes the dust to burst "slower", but just generally makes it harder to predict how much boom you get.
The best you can do is try to keep your bursting dust as dry as possible and make sure to swab out your cannon between shots. The residue of bursting dust will foul things quickly otherwise.
Bianca said:
"I have my doubts about smoothing out the inside. But that will be a work for the casters and they will figure it out or they won't."
Speaking of cannon, yet another reason to build them in one place and carry to battle is that you can achieve better quality with a dedicated building, cannon tools,and cannon-wrights that don't have to risk death or disease to practice their craft. For instance a large table that rotates the entire cannon about its long axis, while a sturdy cutting tool is lowered through guides that keep it perfectly straight from the floor above.
Have you tried making smaller cannon? You may need a ball the size of a head to bring down a wall, but a fist could scythe through an entire line of warriors if you got them at the right angle and skipped the round off the ground like a rock over water. Such a cannon could also be relatively mobile on the field of battle if hitched like a chariot.
Bianca said:
"Weeds can also be tilled into the soil. What do you find in a 'ground covering' that prevents it from choking out the grain in the way that weeds, even tilled under, might do at times?"
As for your question about weeds, I suppose you want a ground cover that will cannot survive when tilled as well as weeds can. Some plants are simply better at growing in up through recently overturned dirt. A really good plow can let you completely overturn the top layer of dirt to more completely prevent intrusions from previous ground cover. And as I mentioned with winter wheat, so long as you have seed to spare it is not to bad a plan to put down a crop in the fall that will die in the winter. Since the dead wheat can be tilled back into the land and helps prevent weeds from taking hold.
I believe that was all the questions you had for me. Next up are a few things I have stumbled across that you might find helpful.
[Bearing Bronze] is a bronze alloy consisting of eight parts copper, one part tin, and one part lead that is an excellent material for the interface between moving parts of many a machine. By it's nature, lead does no truly alloy with copper, but as the molten mixture cools the lead precipitates into a great many tiny beads. When in use the bronze is slowly worn down, beads of soft lead are released to act like a layer of grease. Increasing the proportion of lead increases the alloys lubricating properties, but reduces its strength and ease of casting such that more than two parts in ten of lead is generally considered unusable. This alloy is additionally useful because it strikes a good balance between durability and the ability for small imperfections to be worn away in use. Often it will be cast inside a casing of a more durable metal to act a a sacrificial layer that can be more easily replaced when the part wears out in several years.
[War Drums] are large drums that make a loud deep noise. When in battle you can have those to young to be useful fighters play the drums from the back. They need only be trained to keep a steady beat that to which the warriors can time their advance. Perhaps introduce some form of [Line Dancing] as a form of entertainment that will also subtly train your people to march to the beat of a drum. You can also use the drummers as a way of battlefield communication. One beat may tell the warriors at that point in the line that they are falling behind and must push the advance. Another might tell them to hold their position. In this way you could better maintain your warriors as a cohesive whole in battle. It could help you pull off tactics like having the edges of your force curve in to envelop the enemy without leaving any gaps for them to exploit to break out. Another good signal would be one telling the foremost warriors it is time to swap places with the man behind them so that they can rest a bit and thus battle longer.
The [Chicken] is perhaps the single most useful form of livestock ever domesticated in human history. I am sorry to say that I only just realized you have never hinted at having them. They originate in the jungles of the land of storms across the southern sea and twice a far east past a land and of endless sands. The chicken is a bird that can only fly short distances and is raised for it's meat, feathers, and prodigious supply of eggs. They mainly feed off bugs and seeds, but some places will feed them directly off grain because of any animal they produce the most edible meat for a given amount of grain.
To my knowledge the chicken has spread far from it's ancestral homeland, and your expeditions to the southern sea may be able to trade for some if they follow the coast to the east or even make for the lands to the south of the southern sea. As a warning, the southern sea is known to be the most mild of the worlds seas in terms of weather, but it is also well known for it's many monsters. And I hear there is at least one god who hangs out down there and is particularly fond of seducing mortals whilst in the guise of a beast.
Votes:
The Lost Three have imparted to us the fate of the Greater Haunted Forest. It's foul energies shall not be amenable to defeat for at least a thousand years. The forest shall continue it's expansion until such time as tis' rebuffed by those natural magics of the lands around.
That in mind,
[X] [Retreat] Move the Galugr to the former site of Wrul and the currently fallow croplands and pastures around it
Long have we spake: You cannot be a god without worshipers. It is sort of a package deal. There is even some reason to believe that gods directly gain some power from being worshiped (beyond people listening to them). And you cannot hope to have worshipers without some authority (like a priesthood) telling them why you are to be worshiped in lieu of other gods.
However, your objections in mind, I suggest
[X] [Shrine] Bianca should be venerated in shared temples maintained by priesthoods of other gods
Because putting yourself on the same level as gods is less likely to make them personally affronted than elevating yourself above them.
As for judges, I would say that the one who is "in charge" should only have the slightest extra privilege.
[X] [Judiciary] Let them select one judge from their number to be over them and to answer to Bianca, but only for five years, after which they select another
[X] [Tributary] Let them gamble each spring for who should take tributary from these disputed outsiders in that year
Not sure I really understand the problem here?
While we rarely know magic, we now have good reasons to think that Kuwuzt and the evil magician will be unaging for a fifty years from the moments of drinking their potions, and then shall age normally; while your maker of devices is unaging forever, but I believe that she could die from violence. But better to not test that, as she is useful and should try to make better reapers. She should be used to make better devices for at least a few more decades, and she may gradually become much better at this task. Design of complicated devices was not something done before, after all, thus it's hard.
I hope that you can replicate the potion without the evil magician? While too many unaging people could be dangerous, and the manufacturing of the potion is terrible, in a few cases of exceptional people benefits may be better than risks.
The matter of the Great Haunted Forest is unpleasant, as I feel ashamed that we caused this mess. While we rarely know magic, we now have reasons to believe that the forest may grow for many hundreds of years. But you have more and more resources than it was the case before. Could you use your magicians and the tribute of labor to slow this terrible process?
If the forest is truly impossible to stop, relocation of not only lesser giants but of everything may be very slowly needed. Very slowly, but you are undying... I would then advise retreat west, south-west and south.
Lenses are great, but some germs are even smaller than most, viruses in particular, and thus not all germs are visible when this tool is used.
While lenses can be useful, it's better to test medicines on dogs, pigs, and prisoners.
I feel interested about advances in surgery made by you or your servants. Let's start with the basic question: Any patient managed to live through something more complicated than cutting off a hand? And preferably not only "managed to live through" but benefited from the procedure.
The great limitation on survival is the blood loss. I can imagine methods to replace blood, but these methods are so enormously complicated, that I don't want to waste your time now - for now you must work with this limitation in mind. Methods and tool to slow inevitable loss of blood during surgery were mentioned previously.
I advise for training wise healers and surgeons on dead bodies and pigs. Pigs have surprisingly similar size and function of internal organs to humans, despite obviously different external apperance.
Also, advances in painkillers and method to make people sleep during surgery are needed. You mentioned once, a long time ago, that you may know a proper plant for this task. Without methods to ease pain, even bold people may want to die instead of suffering through surgery, especially while methods are not yet perfected and death is still highly possible. Survival rates should rise with more developed details of surgery, as is the case with quality of any art.
Surgeons, after their initial training, could also learn much from helping Armed Forces of your servant cities, especially after battles. Many, many terribly wounded people. Most would die anyway, so no great loss if surgery may be often not good enough.
Simple stethoscope.
There is a tool that allow healers and surgeons to hear internal sounds of the human body, for example heartbeat, or sounds of lungs, or bowels. These sounds often differ between healthy and ill people, and between various types of diseases and wounds. Healer or surgeon could of course press their ear to the body of the patient, but such closeness is often unadvisable, germs and stuff. Use of a wooden, funnel-shaped tube with an ending on the ear side is better and safer. You press one end to the body of your patient, and other to your ear.
By the way, do you know what sound is? Vibrations of air, basically. Extremely subtle with comparision to serious movement of air like wind, but human and animal ears can somehow detect these subtle and invisible sound waves. In airless place, though only far up from the ground such places exist, there would be no sound.
This also can explain what echo is, reflection of sound waves produced sometimes in empty caves, bottom of the well, etc...
Sound waves travel through the air, bounce off the cave walls and can be heard again by your ears.
Basic psychology: dreams.
Do you know what dreams are? Many unlearned people in many simple nations thought that all dreams are magical, but this belief is untrue and unwise. Surely, one dream out of many may be magical somehow, as magic in your world exist, but mostly... The vast majority of dreams simply help mortals "to store important memories and things they learned, get rid of unimportant memories, and sort through complicated thoughts and feelings." This wisdom may be slightly helpful to people who talk with these of troubled minds.
What influences our dreams? Learn about the possible causes of dreams and how to better remember them.
www.healthline.com
Psilocybin mushroom, also known as magic mushroom.
There are mushrooms that cause vivid, dream-like visions when a mortal is awake. As is the case with dreams, there is no shortage of people who see magic in effects of these mushrooms, even though there is no magic, but only mundane (but weird) reaction of the mortal mind. Some research suggest that moderate and responsible use, under strict control of a wise person, can help warriors with mind damaged by battle, and adults who were overbeaten or otherwise abused as children. These mushrooms are small, with size of about one up to two human fingertips, often light brown. Most often grows in groups, in grasslands not forests, especially wetter areas. It is often found in pastures that have been fertilized with sheep or cow dung, although it does not typically grow directly on the dung. It varies in shape from sharply conical to bell-shaped. On the underside of the mushroom's cap, there are between 15 and 27 individual narrow gills that are moderately crowded together.
Source, Wikipedia, also, this mushroom stuff is illegal, do not use in the real world, etc, etc, etc, etc
Priesthood.
A long time ago you asked what a benefit, if any, may be there from having priests. I then called priests "useless parasites", but after these decades of thinking and looking at things, I see some mild benefits and I started to understand why many gods decided to have priests. Why priests exist? Priests, who usually know how to read and write, are much more useful for these cities and nations and gods that lack table-rulers and singers. As you have table-rulers and singers, that already do many things done for other gods by their priests, this is less essential for you.
Spreading useful ways of thinking - your Singers do that for you. Writing - your Singers and Table-Rulers do that for you. Table-Rulers are good at numbers.
Priests also maintain temples and show respect to their god with rituals. Rituals that besides showing respect are often useless. With more wisdom, mildly useful things could be done as rituals instead: maybe washing of hands and bodies, boiling water and drinking herbal tea, proper care for the sick, making devices for you, practicing ways of discovery for you, talking with people of troubled minds... But as I said, many useful things that for other gods are done by priests - are already done for you, simply outside of temples and by singers and table-rulers instead of priests.
Priesthood could be perhaps a way of life for these youths who are too bad with numbers to be great table-rulers, and too bad at singing to be great Singers, but love you much more than most youth. Such people could be priests. Such people could help singers when no ability to sing is needed and table-rulers when there is no need to be excellent with numbers.
Even a priest cannot be a complete idiot with love for you as their only useful thing. Even priests need to do their duties somewhat properly. Boldness not really needed, nor great talents with numbers, but reading, and writing, and some basic thinking ability are useful.
I know about the priests of the Catholic religion that were allowed to be meek but despite that were respected for their wise, polite and nice, very nice advice. Somewhat like singers, but without boldness and singing...
To summarize. There may be some small benefits to have people who love you and constantly encourage others to show respect for you, but many things usually done by Priests are already done for you by your Singers and Table-Rulers, so your need for priests is indeed much lesser than it's usual for gods.
But there is no reason to hate the idea too much! That is my opinion after many, many years of considering this matter carefully and, I hope, without any madness.
If you decide to allow some few people to be priests, simply make sure that singers and table-rulers are more important, above priests.
Equality of opportunity and Priesthood.
I can see nations where priests were like a separate tribe of people, yes, but I generally consider that as the bad way of doing things. As you know, I'm one of these voices that believe in some inequality between people as more beneficial than risks of discord, but at the same time, I believe that riches and position above others should come out of cunning and talents of the individual person - instead of benefiting forever their whole family. A possibility that one person may be better than most people - always exists. But a possibility that everyone in the family, and their descendants, will be better than others - is slim. So I support having some of such people outside of their families, as is the case with your Singers.
That's called equality of opportunity. People under such a system are not equal, but riches come to the individual person only because of cunning, hard work, and usefulness to you, not because the whole family is above others forever.
Simple inheritance tax.
I can see nations that tried to create some sort of a wise balance: they valued some inequality as more useful than discord and allowed a whole family of an exceptional person to benefit for a while: if the exceptional person very much wanted that to happen instead of being drawn out of their family. But at the same time, they were against raising some families above others forever. They tried to solve this problem by taking most of the family wealth in tribute after their exceptional member died.
Simple welfare state.
Poor people can ofter tolerate rich people better and hate them much less when some wealth is taken out of the rich families and given to the poor. Well, obviously. The Ten Nations are doing this. But the Ten Nations are doing this so strongly that there are no rich families or people at all, and the cities are not doing this in any way or shape. Two unbalanced extremes. A wise balance could be possible instead: the rich must share, but not always everything. Truly exceptional people and families could retain more than others, at least for some time, as a just gift for their service to you, Great Bianca. For example, you could say that anybody allowed to be rich must share with poor families 10% of his wealth after every ten years. And you could give to the poor some part of a tribute taken after death of a rich person. Make poor believe that riches are temporary gifts that would after some time return to everyone, even if not as fast as now.
Riches as gifts for serving you well, and for doing other desirable things, producing more than others, working smarter than others, introducing new productive innovations...
People allowed to be rich could be also encouraged, in songs for example, to be humble and responsible: to use their wealth mainly for productive and healthy things, like buying more diverse healthy food, and more soap, and washing more often than poor people can afford; instead of using wealth mainly for colorful clothes. Many simple grey clothes washed often are much more healthy than one rich-looking but dirty robe, and it's the rich-looking robe that create the most hate from the poor. Encourage rich to buy better plows, useful devices or horses, to increase useful production, and to experiment with complicated devices and innovations. Not to walk around with golden jewellery. This is a matter for customs not laws of course.
A few more words about some inequality.
Surely you can understand that it could be sometimes useful for you to have people doing work for you not only out of labor tribute or respect but also in exchange for baubles that 50 years later would mostly return to you. There are many types of people, some better motivated by respect or virtue or honor, but others better motivated by greed. A wise balance of incentives is often useful.
I can see nations that used small things of equal weight made out of gold, silver, and copper. Well, coins were mentioned a long time ago.
About judges and tests of judgment.
It would be best to test potential new judges in your Great Home.
To avoid wasting your valuable time for that, you can create 5 people Table-Rulers Council to do such tests. Then you could be reasonably sure that the Judgment of Merit is as sensible as possible for mortals.
5 is a nice number for small councils: when there is any vote, then there is always a sensible majority and no tie. At least when there is a reasonable law that nobody can abstain.
Regardless of such details, there is also another benefit, as all candidates for judges would be forced to see the greatness of your Great Home and, during their travel, how the Ten Nations live. That's more important than it sounds: with passing time, memories about your conquest will feel more distant, so important but distant people need to be reminded strongly that you exist.
Heading to a place for the sake of visiting, The Hajj, also called حَجّ Ḥaǧǧ.
Many people of the Ten Nations and many of your servants currently live far away from the Ten Nations. They may have children far away from the Ten Nations. This can create division among your currently loyal people, this can cause them to grow very distant, or maybe even cause their descendants to forget about you after a few generations. I can see a partial solution for such a problem, The Hajj. Your Singers could promote a way of thinking that would emphasize that all people of the Ten Nations, even those who live in distant cities, should travel to the lands of the Ten Nations once during their lives. Why? Because this show that a person is virtuous and loves their Nation properly. Maybe create a pillar of stone that should be visited or something like that.
Or maybe simply enforce tribute of labor even on distant youths, but this could be harder than a promotion of a new way for thinking. It's easy to assemble these youths that live inside of the Ten Nations lands, but it must be harder in the case of these far away. It may be better if they could be politely persuaded to visit.
Capital City.
A "capital" is the main city of an Empire, where the Great House of the ruler and their numerous servants and table-rulers live and where they receive the tribute from less important parts of an Empire.
Your Great Home is slightly like your capital, but it's not a city, so not exactly.
But I imagine that you constantly receive more and more tribute, not only goods but also tribute in labor. So in the future, you may have not only Biancvint as your city but also a city of craftsmen and servants and table-rulers around your Great Home.
This may be beneficial as long as the labor of craftsmen, magicians, servants, and other people is used well. Now, after so many conquests, you certainly can afford to take enough food in tribute. During harder times, food can be taken not out of the Ten Nations, but from outsiders.
A good capital should be well-defensible, have a great road network around, and river great enough for keeled ships is nice, or sea, or lake. A few wide roads should extend even inside of the city as firebreaks and for easier transportation of goods, when possible houses should be made mainly out of brick and stone, and clean water and careful removal of harmful waste are very beneficial for health.
Identification sign (seal).
That's a somewhat similar idea to printing, but perhaps more useful now. In addition to using fingerprints for identification of important writing, an unique and complicated sign may be carved from a small piece of wood. Such a sign could be then used to make an impression with ink or wax on a parchment, to mark thIs parchment as something important, or written by a very important servant.
Wax seal can also show whether parchment with message or a package was opened or not. Apply wax and unique seal in a way that would always cause destruction of the wax seal before package is opened.
Unique names and maybe numbers for all villages with a table-ruler.
Maybe table-rulers already use something like that for writing and messages, but if not, then such idea could often prevent confusion and mistakes. Unnamed places are like people without names: surely you can describe these with their apperance or location, but it can be impractical and cause weird mistakes.
Boats? Rudder maybe.
I don't know much about boats, but I know that you can steer a boat or a bigger ship with a rudder: underwater (wooden and wide) blade that is positioned at the back of a boat or ship and controlled by its helm (handle) and that when turned causes the vessel's head to turn.
an underwater blade that is positioned at the stern of a boat or ship and controlled by its helm and that when turned causes the vessel's head to turn in the same direction… See the full definition
www.merriam-webster.com
The tiller is a type of helm, the handle attached to the rudder.
If you want the bow of the boat to go right, for example, you need to move the tiller to the left.
Rapid back and forth movement on the tiller helps create drag and slows the boat.
The tiller is what steers a boat — specifically, the handle attached to the rudder. Tillers are generally found on smaller boats because it would take too much force to steer larger ships with hand tillers.
www.vocabulary.com
Like wooden and wide blade that "cuts" water at the back of the boat. Test this on various small models first. Testing on toy models is often great and cheap, even though bigger real stuff sometimes act slightly differently.
As is usual, my words are probably not enough and heavy experimentation is needed to figure out many, many details.
I can confirm what another has said. Our glimpse of fate has revealed to us that the king and the magician will be youthful for fifty years since they drank their potions, but the inventor is now entirely unaging. They may well have died or become monsters or simply not been healed at all by the potions, but luck and fate has turned so that all the potions were effective to some degrees.
The purpose of mortars is not to hit a wall, but to hit what is behind the wall. If you wish to batter down a city's walls and take it intact perhaps they are not useful, then.
[x][Judiciary] Send a singer each spring to oversee the Judges of Biancvint until the next spring
Judging disputes between judges is not quite as simple as judging disputes between ordinary people. Whatever judgement is ultimately reached when two judges argue, other judges will often look to it and say 'it was decided thus last time this issue came up', and cling to the decision made by whoever you appoint to resolve disputes... I think that if the judges themselves pick a superior judge they will squabble and argue among themselves for who gets to be superior judge and cause trouble. You should pick the superior judge.
I would say you should send either a table-ruler or a singer - and more likely a singer, as the singers are more loyal to you. Anyone asked to pick worthy people ends up picking their friends and family -- better to have one who has few friends and family in Biancvint keep the judges in line. I would suggest a singer over a table-ruler for this because the singers know more of what you consider important and fair and orderly, even if a table-ruler's job is closer to what a judge does in some ways. The fine details of each case that a table-ruler might grasp can be presented by the arguing judges to a singer just fine.
[x][Shrine] Bianca should be venerated in shared temples maintained by priesthoods of other gods
As to the monuments, I am not sure forbidding worship would actually work. Priesthoods can be strangely stubborn and it would not surprise me if they venerated you despite you forbidding it and then became all the more bothersome because they developed with strange ideas. However by making you one of many and only venerated in temples to other gods, without real priestesses or temples of your own, the giantess may be satisfied without generating a priesthood that would cause trouble in the future. I may be swayed on this advice if other voices have arguments about it, though.
...The cursed woodlands worry me but I have no clever suggestions regarding driving them back besides attempting to discern how the spirits of that place think and how the woodland plants spread. If that is understood, something can be came up with to stop it.
Some thoughts on Naumo and Gawdtha, I think any division where they divide the loot or gamble for the right to take tribute will perhaps cause fighting between the two tribes and lead to resentment and anger. However, it does seem to me that Naumo is overstepping themselves if Gawdtha already had a relationship with these outsider. I am not sure what my judgement on this is quite yet, I will think on it more. I will also think on all the other matters you ask for advice on.
What trouble could priests cause? If there is no additional raising one tribe above another, at least? As I said, many usual things that priests do for cities of outsiders are already done by either singers or table-rulers, but if the priesthood is done wisely - so certainly not like the Burgeck wanted that done - I fail to see great dangers.
And humph, if temples are shared with other gods, then the Free People of Ten Nations wouldn't be able to worship in these if I understand customs right.
I have no great love for priests, but if people want temples, let's give them temples.
I feel, by the way, slightly troubled by the fact that the Ten Nations are so much above over others. Bianca should be above others, as well as some great and loyal people as I explained during my talk about equality of opportunity, but... The current situation sounds unstable, like sooner or later cities and tribes of outsiders that pay tribute may rebel. Any ideas on how to slowly change that without irritating the Ten Nations? Humph.
Maybe draw some of the best, exceptional outsiders out of their conquered cities and tribes and encourage people from the Ten Nations to marry these or use them as table-rulers? Not unprecedented, the son of the King of Wrul managed to join Ten Nations by marriage.
Tribes of the Ten Nations, with exeption of lesser giants, believe that there is no need for bigger numbers, you say. Humph. Tribes as a whole, yes. But what about small families and individuals? Let's imagine, a bold young man or woman want to create their own new family. But two people, or even a few people, are too few to do that properly. Surely they could benefit from more pretty and hard-working wives or husbands, even if drawn out of outsiders, humph.
Or imagine a village where people share many common ancestors. It's only proper and healthy for quality of their instructions of life to search for wives and husbands pretty far away.
And it could be nice to promote a way of thinking that could argue as follows: conquests benefit not only the Ten Nations and Bianca, but even the conquered, despite their need to pay tribute and serve. After all, the conquered are savages that know nothing about the proper ways of living, while the people of the Ten Nations know how to wash, heal wounds more often, respect Bianca, prosper... Such a way of thinking sounds entirely sensible. There should be some hope, maybe false or maybe true, that the conquered people may be also raised if they start to love Bianca enough and learn proper ways of living.
If you don't put [x] in front of your vote, the tallier won't count it. The tallier makes things easier for me. If you make it easy for the tallier, you are making it easier for me.
Further, the tallier only counts your more recent post in which you place one vote. So whatever you decide, you will need to either make a new post with all your votes or edit one of your posts to contain all your votes and make sure you don't have any votes in any posts that come after that and before the voting period closes.
For example, you can check the vote tally right now. The only votes counted are from liberty90 and Ciber.
If you are undecided, you can vote for 2 or even 3 alternative options and exclude only the one that you hate the most. Vote tally can understand this perfectly well.
The matter of the Great Haunted Forest is unpleasant, as I feel ashamed that we caused this mess. While we rarely know magic, we now have reasons to believe that the forest may grow for many hundreds of years. But you have more and more resources than it was the case before. Could you use your magicians and the tribute of labor to slow this terrible process?
I distinctly recall that QM said that it'd take Industrial Produced Magic to stop/destroy it, though it'll stabilize eventually.
Not certain if that's valid to use, but it's what he said.
While without "magical industry" it's not possible to deal with the forest permanently, it may be possible to significantly slow down the forest expansion, I believe.
The New Justice System.
I want to propose, and I would appreciate also discussion with other Voices about the matter, a new model for judging crimes and disputes, for use in big villages of the Ten Nations, that could be advised for voluntary adoption by villagers.
In big villages, for example, these with over 300 people, Free People of a village who are older than 14 and widely considered sane, would assembly to vote whether they want to change to this New System or remain with their current system. This voluntary decision would ensure less discord and allow the Free People to freely remain with alternative systems when alternatives work well, and enforce change in these villages where changes are desired.
The Free People know how to vote? There are many systems. Raise hands for YES. Or throw a stone into a bucket for YES. When there are many different options, not only YES and NO, then they can use many separate buckets for these, or use obviously different stones. Whatever. Whatever the method. If the majority decide to vote for YES, then the new proposed system is as follows.
They would elect a 5 person Council of Justice, to serve for a 5 years before the next election. The council would act to judge disputes.
The Council would select a Chief among themselves, and also two or three Village Guards to ensure that criminals would always obey the Council. Guards would usually live like normal people and do their duties of protecting the Council and helping to enforce judgments only when a crime is seriously suspected in the village. Hopefully, they would be rarely needed, as regularly elected Council obviously judges in the name of the Free People, not tyrannically. Still, it's better to have Guards selected, just in case.
During future judgments, the Council of Justice would at first hear words of the accused and of the victims (if there are living victims), see evidence if any, hear witnesses if any, and ask Table-Ruler or Singer (if there are any in the village) for advice about laws.
Then the Council would vote to determine whether an accused person is guilty of a crime. If 3 among them vote YES, then the Chief of the Council would determine punishment, after, again, asking either Table-Ruler or Singer for advice (if there are any in the village).
If Table-Ruler or Singer would be present and felt that their expert law advice was completely ignored by the Council, or that the judgment was gravely unjust, then they could protest, but not to you, but to the First Singer or the First Table-Ruler.
Only if the First Singer or the First Table-Ruler decides that the situation indeed warrants your attention, only then you would be bothered.
This system is designed to still offer Free People much more freedom than in cities, but at the same time enforce more order than now.
An alternative way is to elect the Council only to determine whether the accused is guilty and for details of a dispute or punishment have a Judge selected according to tests done in your Great House, instead of electing Chief for the Council. Such a way may offer your Servants more direct control but may feel to the Free People like less free and more tyrannical system.
Inquisition of the Ten Nations.
Even if sentences of the village authority - either the new one or the various currently existing systems - are strongly suspected to be unlawful, it may be NOT necessary to bother you if you create also the Inquisition of the Ten Nations. 20 or 50 Inquisitors, under command of a First Inquisitor, could be raised above others, armed well, and march to villages suspected of unlawful judgments, to investigate the matter in your name. Hopefully, this would be needed only very rarely. If needed only very rarely, even such a small number of men could be often enough to replace your harsh attention.
This whole system may sound complicated but should waste less of your time when implemented well, not more.
A piece of small advice about law enforcement and proportionate force needed to enforce order.
Village Guards, City Guards and to a lesser extent even Inquisitors, differ from the Armed Forces and warparties in their main duty: they mainly enforce laws, instead of battling with outsiders or raiding outsiders.
This means, that during "fighting" against one drunk criminal of the Free People - like during a Festival, for example - Guards or Inquisitors should often try to use non-lethal force. For example, wooden clubs instead of deadly metal weapons. They should also own deadly weapons, but these deadly weapons should be used only against outsiders, obvious traitors, and greatly dangerous criminals.
That's still mixed elements of local democracy with tyranny and pure barbarism, and any lawyer would be disgusted and shocked, but you know, the Bronze Age.
The 'eye' which I referred to last time is a small protrusion along the side of a boat that an oar can be rested against and pushes against the oar when it is rowed. If the boat holds an oar in place instead of the one rowing, a man can wield two oars at once, or use both arms on a longer and heavier oar, and thus put more effort into their movement. I have heard tell of huge, long, low, and flat keeled ships driven with speed and power by forty men driving twenty large oars on each side through the water. Such ships could be very nimble and quick, and carry warriors near enough other boats to throw stones and arrows, or even jump to other boats. I think sailing ships are generally regarded as better if you know how to make very good sailing ships... Though a ship of many oars can still carry sails has the advantage that a lack of wind does not leave it stuck.
More complicated and advanced sailing ships often carried cannons and fired at each other with them. A big enough ship can carry many cannons around on the water without sinking. You turn the ship to aim the cannons at another ship or at foes on land, and then try to fire them in time with the rise and fall of the boat. I think there are improved ways of firing a cannon more quickly that would make this easier? Of course, this is horribly dangerous with the cannons you have now, which are inconsistent with each other and prone to exploding.
It should be known that lodestones, small pieces of grey stone which sometimes naturally form shapes like cubes and pyramids and attract iron to themselves and attract to each other in some directions but are repelled in others, are magnetic. 'Magnetic' and 'magnetism' is the name of the property that attracts iron and attracts and repels other magnetic things. Magnets are objects which are magnetic. Anyway, a useful device called a Compass can be constructed by taking an iron needle and rubbing it on a lodestone many times in the same direction, or possibly by striking it with the lodestone. This should impart a little bit of magnetism to the iron needle. By driving the needle through a piece of cork or light wood and then putting the cork in a bowl of water so that the needle is horizontal with the surface of the water, the needle will slowly come to point in one direction no matter how it is placed in the water.
This is because the whole earth is like an enormous but very, very weak magnet - another magnet will be pulled ever so lightly to align with it. The force is so small that you can only tell by letting a magnetic needle turn freely so it is pulled into alignment. One point of the needle should come to face north and the other south. Which end points north will be the same each time. You can paint one end of the needle to tell north and south apart. This can be used to help ships and travelers find their way, and while the sun's rising and setting also tells you which way north is, a compass can do so more precisely - and can do so at any time of day without stopping to view the sun's procession or even at night if you have light enough to see, which might be handy.
Lodestones are usually grey and silvery or brownish-black and are only found on the surface of the world, very rarely deep in caves. It is said that they are created by lightning, but I am not completely sure this is true. As I said before, they sometimes fall into pointy shapes like cubes or pyramids, but not always. Another telling sign of lodestones is that they can sometimes attract magnetite dust, which clings lightly to it as that stone is heavy with iron. Compasses are good for helping boats find their way, though it would take quite calm seas to use a still bowl of water to find your way. By putting a tiny hole in the center of the magnetized needle and placing it on another needle with a small amount of oil so it can turn freely, a compass that does not need to float on still water can possibly be made. The best compasses are made this way, though it would take careful craftsmanship indeed.
Magnets also interact with electricity and lightning in complicated ways that aren't obviously helpful to make something useful with what you have now. A magnet that is moved relative to coils of copper wire generates a little bit of electricity. If you fixed a magnet in place and spun around it some copper wire tightly coiled into a tube shape no wider than a fist, as if the tube were a very long wheel, you could create a small and controlled piece of lightning in those wires. The wire might grow warm as if by magic, and if the ends of the coiled wire were put near each other they might produce a spark or give a shock to one who touched it. It would be much trouble to put this to actual use except as a curiosity, though. Perhaps bits of this have been explained before but I forget.
After some thought, I feel that I'm ready to adjust my votes. Discussion with other Voices is welcome.
[X] [Judiciary] Write-in: Let them select one judge from their number to be over them and to answer to Bianca, but only for five years, after which they select another. Also, send a singer each spring to oversee the Judges of Biancvint and their First Judge until the next spring.
[X] [Shrine]Write-in: Have singers and table-rulers maintain a temple to Bianca in Liavint, but allow also a few priests made only out of these people who love you very much.
[X] [Retreat] Move the Galugr to the former site of Wrul and the currently fallow croplands and pastures around it
[X] [Tributary] Write-in: Punish both tribes for this discord by taking that "friendly" tribe of outsiders for yourself
Hope that Bianca dont know this cause I'm proud of myself XD
Do you know oak tree Bianca? Do you know acorns? Acorns are great great food but people need to know how to prepare acorns properly otherwise badly prepared acorns good only for pigs. And thats a waste I tell you. Acorns are better for humans when done good. There are mild poisons in acorns how to remove poisons?Easy. Only use acorns when brown. But even with brown ripe acorns we have a problem. Bitter terrible taste and mild poison if eaten too much by people and good only for pigs. How solve that? Easy. Smply leaching it out of acorns in a pot of boiling water, pouring out the hot water and having repeated changes of water. Continue doing this until the water does not turn brown after you have strained and replaced it. There is also method without boiling: this method is bagging the nuts and allowing them to soak in a clean, flowing stream for a few days until no brown-colored water is seen when checking their progress. Remove the acorns once leached and leave to simply dry or to make roasted nuts after drying, as desired. Raw acorns can be stored for months without spoiling; this dramatically increases their value, being a "process as needed food resource", however, they must be dry or otherwise they can get moldy and mildewed. But only when leached are they ready to use! Its possible to make many stuff from acorns. Acorn flour. Or add to stews. Or many many methods but remove damn bitter stuff before.
Oak trees are good very good for ships. Good to have oak trees. Warning. "The leaves and acorns of the oak tree are poisonous to cattle" bitter stuff like acorns. Pigs are immune but when done better acorns are too good for damn pigs! Share this wisdom and without bitter stuff acorns great for people better than many foods. Healthy. Some tribes may LACK WISDOM and think: acorns are food of pigs poor starved losers... but NO simply do acorns properly! And then excellent stuff
Useful windbreaks maybe? Oaks. Not only oaks but thats one idea. Maybe we will have more ideas
And do you know how to eat stinging nettles? Nasty nasty plant but people need to only boil it and then its great for health! WARNING use leather gloves or something raw nettles are yes stinging. "Believe it or not, however, nettles can be a delicious, nutritious, non-stinging food." Your goal here is to "blanch" the nettles — boil them for a short time — so that their stingers are inactivated.
wikihow.com/Eat-Stinging-Nettles
When people farm. Teach people to use cunning not only hard work. Someone lack wisdom and plant only apple trees. Apple trees suffer from disease. Better: "one apple tree is planted with one plum, and one pear, and one hazelnut, and one peach, and five gooseberries, and ten blackberries, and ten blueberries, and dozens of non-fruit plants that return nitrogen and minerals and mulch to the soil and produce flowers and nectar that attract beneficial predatory insects and birds that eat the bugs that prey on our fruit. "
My fellow Voices, are many among you offended that Bianca was not fascinated by overcomplicated devices last time? Or that we were forced to wait for more years than it was usual before? I ask because I feel your presence and yet not many among you try to say things, much fewer Voices than years ago.
I'm a cat, and cats can be evil, black ones especially, intelligent cats doubly so, but seriously, advising is fun.
Vote on our main decisions at least, so that we can progress properly.
Anyway. When I think about matters of evil, I'm now reminded about something.
Bianca, you say that people of the Ten Nations are equal, and yet you already used some small inequality to enforce better customs. At least i think so. Let me explain. You once said, that these among the free people who refused to use your black soil, were deprived of your magical blessing, and then experienced "ruin" when their land was depleted by their farming idiocy.
I understand that in this one case other families of the Free People refused to help and share WITH OBVIOUS IDIOTS, at least in numbers needed to fully feed these obvious idiots, at least in numbers needed for idiots to prosper equally to intelligent and decent servants of Bianca. See? Inequality is decent sometimes.
Well I, for one, likely don't have time to do anything in this quest for at least two weeks due to an impending exam period.
Also, Bianca, if you're hearing us discuss here about voting periods the way we're doing right now, I can tell you right now that it's a brand of madness you're better off not trying to understand.
Maybe we could actually have Bianca reply to a few quick questions?
I am a bit confused about the problem of the tributaries. Seems to me that if you want to lay claim to all the tribute from a people, then you aught treat them the same as a herd of sheep or a particularly fertile field.
Well, I think that I understand the problem. One among the Ten Nations tribes, Gawdtha, believes tributary tribe of outsiders ("Friends of Gawdtha") to be their ekhm... property (or at least vassal), and another tribe of the Ten Nations (so equals to Gawdtha), the Naumo, raids "Friends of Gawdtha" anyway without recognizing such a relationship.
I would be tempted to take these "Friends of Gawdtha" outsiders directly under the authority of Bianca, if these outsiders are so friendly, obedient and hungry for protection.
If that is the case, then I would say that the metaphor of a flock of sheep or herd of cattle works well. There is little honor in herding cattle, but there is honor in protecting the herd from those who would steal it.
