Mechanization: Three Gifts
CuttleFish2.0
Friendly neighborhood cuttlefish
- Location
- Seattle, Washington.
Evolve Kindly Senior trait to Eager Tutor won.
Day 44 Potec's Season, 11653
Xilotl knelt in the dirt and drew a claw through the soil, feeling the way it piled up against their finger. Loose and faintly moist from a passing rain shower— conjured by one of the overseeing artisan-priests to prevent erosion, it filled the gaps between scales and clung to where flesh met claw.
"Mmm," they hummed, standing up and shaking the dirt off their hand.
Like called to like and a resonance beyond sound rippled out from a point within the artisan-priests. Green ghyran flared, wriggling deeper into the soil, furred ghur hissed and scurried away while brilliant chamon gleamed into prominence, rising like the dawn to the surface of the soil. An uneven patina fading away in seconds as the aethyric resonance Xilotl had created dissipated and the other Winds settled once again.
Sweeping their gaze across the rest of the field they spied Ittetuhlot standing amidst a trio of stegadon and their crowd of handlers, deep in discussion. Behind the great beasts lay timber cages lined with wooden teeth, the rope of their harnesses slack across their backs as they paused in their labor; piles of dead vines and stalks gathered within.
Turning back to the ground at their feet, Xilotl considered what they had observed.
More than a century since these fields had been rejuvenated— decades of planting and harvesting, mere weeks between cycles, had taken a toll upon the soil beneath their feet. Brachiating rivers of ghyran wound through the dirt, isolated nodes of chamon and sparks of azyr and aqshy flickering in between them. There was a tang to the air that Xilotl had not tasted in centuries.
Not since… since those first few decades in the wake of the Great Catastrophe, when every hand had been required simply to feed all the new mouths suddenly occupying the temple-city. Drastic Efforts had been required. Even as the wild tides of magic had begun to retreat and the stars started to right themselves, the world still churning from the accumulated unreality; the artisan-priests of Zlatlan (and beyond) had poured yet more magic out. Fields of golden and crimson-purple eared xiuhtotl sprouted overnight, their roots sheltered by the broad leaves of huahexotl gourds, and their stalks wrapped up in the clinging tendrils of chuotl.
And still thousands died in those years, starving as entire harvests turned to poison and fields became desiccated wastelands.
Hard won lessons had been bought by those lives.
Magic could only push a field so far, could only substitute for time up to a point before food in the belly became venom in the veins. There was a unique scent-flavor-feeling to a field on the brink of disaster, an iron and blood taste mixed with the rancid odor of rotting blood and the feeling of something crawling up the spine. Xilotl had become intimately familiar with it over those years.
Thankfully this was far from that. Zlatlan knew exactly how far to push a field; at lower intensities, certain combinations of plants could be grown nearly indefinitely, the various biotic and chemical processes working to produce healthier soil. Such methods had fed the Servants of the Old Ones since the first temple-cities were founded.
But they were more suitable to a reality very different to the one they found themselves in.
Before the Great Catastrophe, if there was too little food in one place it was easier to simply move bodies about until things were again balanced. Afterwards though, that was no longer possible; simply communicating between Huitzacatlan and Chuqitzan took significant effort, and without the magical enchantment laid over the jungles of Chuqitzan'xlamund'botl the lands beyond Zlatlan still threatened to spill forth fresh, new horrors.
Shortcuts had to be taken.
As the years dragged on Zlatlan honed its knowledge. While the Three Gifts were invaluable staples growing them together required significant investments of labor, but separately? Or in pairs? Such planting patterns could be maintained without nearly as much effort, especially the tall growing xiuhtotl. Dried it could be stored for years under the proper conditions.
Xiuhtotl was a greedy plant though; drying out the soil it grew in and imbalancing it with an overabundance of aqshy and hysh— it took only a few plantings for a field to lose much of its fertility without intervention.
And while the other two Gifts were less harsh upon the land they presented their own difficulties. Without support from some sort of sturdy partner or external framework chuotl proved to be much less productive, its fruit grew small and stunted, smothered in the dirt. Planting it alongside xiuhtotl was most common, but wooden frameworks could also serve and allow a second crop to be planted alongside.
Huahexotl did not damage the soil nor did it need support for best results, but it could easily choke out a field if whatever it was planted alongside was not already well established.
Not only the Three Gifts were grown of course. There were other, lesser, crops; some like cuamoqli had been brought over from Chuqitzan while others had been discovered in Huitzacatlan. Cuamoqli was a low growing shrub whose roots grew thick and fat with useful starches, that could be eaten roasted, made into mashes or flours, and even the leaves could be eaten by beast and zar'kaix alike.
Growing all the food required for both required speed to make up for the lack of simple space. In the years since the Great Catastrophe the artisan-priests of Zlatlan had learned exactly how to take a field to the edge of failure without ever tumbling over the edge. Thirteen parts in twenty of the temple-city's fields remained active at any one time, the other seven parts left fallow.
Like forging a blade, one could not simply keep beating at hot metal and expect to form a proper edge. Improper alloys— bad nutrient mixtures in the soils. Quenching— a year or two of idleness. Beat an edge too thin— grow something too intensive for too long. Too much, or too little heat— waiting too long to conduct certain rituals or carrying them out too soon. So much needed careful attention, that could go wrong.
Xilotl had not attended a field in centuries, having long since returned to their forge, but little had changed in that time. Some fine tuning of planting cycles and harvesting. Largely though it remained as they remembered, which simplified the work ahead of them somewhat, rather than needing to familiarize themselves with new practices they and Ittetuhlot could instead proceed to finding where the greatest savings in labor could be found.
BREAK
Hours later the two skinks found their way to Xilotl's workshop in the forge district, a large chamber towards the northwestern corner of the northeastern district. One wall of the chamber was dominated by an enormous hearth; a sloping half-octagon of stone and obsinite, edges inscribed with glowing glyphs, and set with a bronze door wide as the span of the artisan-priests arm and tall enough to reach mid chest on a saurus. On the front of the door were the glyphs of Potec, Xokha, and Chotec.
Various tools hung from the walls and three sets of enormous stone plinths were arrayed before the forge, while a wooden table and a bed were set against the wall farthest from the hearth. It was at this table that Ittetuhlot joined their fellow skink.
"Harvesting is the main issue," said the chief.
Xilotl clicked their tongue, "Still need to investigate processing and transport."
"Planting and harvesting are the most labor intensive portions of food production. Gathering mature crops takes dozens per hectare on average, savings there are most likely to see greatest return."
"True… but, take chuotl for instance. Brute mechanical methods will either damage support frameworks or partner crops, adversely impacting overall efficiency— less forceful solutions are too likely to leave significant portions of each harvest on the vine, requiring additional labor. Post-harvest processing presents much simpler conditions."
Ittetuhlot growled in frustration, "You are correct. Still harvesting operations are the primary bottleneck on labor."
"That is true," agreed Xilotl, "And worthy of investigation, but reliable, if limited, gains are likely from other sections."
Potec's Season, 11653 to Caxuatn's Season, 11657
Splitting their time between continuing to speak with the skinks and kroxigor working the fields and those hauling, storing, and turning the gathered crops into usable food the next several years passed rapidly. And as Xilotl had predicted it was much easier to develop mechanisms to simplify those tasks.
Generally both xiuhtotl and chuotl were prepared for storage by drying, there were enormous courtyards scattered across the barrios of Zlatlan where ears and pods could be spread out to dry beneath the open sun. Very similar to the process of drying aziki seeds turning into tea. From there though further processing and storage differed significantly. Dried pods were easily split in the hand and the beans within sifted from the paper remnants of the pods by pairs of skinks; one holding a large leaf fan while the other shook handfuls of beans in a loosely woven basket. Pod fragments were carried away by the wind, leaving only the seeds. Once separated from their pods the chuotl seeds could simply be stored anywhere dry, rehydrated and cooked as needed.
Huahexotl barely needed preparation at all. Their thick, waxy rinds kept out most pests and diseases, allowing them to be harvested and stored for months without worry.
But the kernels of xiuhtotl on the other hand needed to be separated from the dense, tough, cob to which they clung; a task typically done by hand simply by applying lateral pressure to the kernels. To even get to that point though required stripping the tough outer leaves and layer of fibers that lay between them and the kernels. From there the kernels were often ground into flour or meal for storage, though they could also be easily stored whole.
Cuamoqli was a more temperamental plant. Once cut the roots had to be quickly processed or else they became inedible, turning black and unpleasant to the taste.
Most fields of cuamoqli were harvested in a gradual sequence where sections of the fields reached maturity days apart so that fresh cuamoqli could either be used fresh or processed before another yield was produced. Processing involved first skinning the roots before then pulping by either stone mallets or mills (hand cranked or otherwise operated), after which the resulting mash would be wet screened over large wooden tanks to separate the starches from the rest of the pulp. Then the starches are allowed to settle in the tanks, the upper layers usually removed to be rescreened, and agitated before being allowed to settle again.
Several areas of inefficiency were obvious; husking ears of xiuhtotl, pod and seed separation, starch settlement, screening the cuamoqli mash, kernel separation and grinding just to name a few.
But there was a balance to be struck between brute labor savings and the cost of implementation. Purely mechanical solutions were preferred over anything with all but the most minimal enchantments.
BREAK
Xilotl designed a device composed of two wooden disks, each set with stone studs on their inner faces that counter-rotated to one another by a hand crank. Set into a wooden ring that sat atop four legs, a pair of mechanical arms attached to the sides of each plate ran down to a pair of pedals that when activated on pressed the two plates together.
Place over a basket or other container, cobs were fed into the top of the plates and as the plates rotated they tore the kernels free to drop into the container below. A loosely woven mat could be placed between the bottom of the device and the container, allowing the kernels to fall through but capturing the denuded cobs which could then be carried off by other skinks. Rather than dozens of skinks slowly separating kernels over hours, a small team of skinks could do the same work in roughly the same time. There were further efficiencies to be gained by increasing the number of devices working together, but Xilotl had little time to contemplate them as they had to move on.
Most grinding, whether for flour or meal, was done by either hand mills— heavy stones only a little larger than a skink's head with wooden handles that were laborious rotated with kernels or cuamoqli root between them, or by larger examples worked by two or three kroxigor at a time. The latter were as wide across than a skink was tall. Once up to speed they were actually quite efficient but the effort required to lift the mill stones in order to place kernels or roots where they needed to go and then to get the stones moving was not insignificant. In fact it was enough that overall they were not terribly efficient.
Xilotl spent at least three seasons iterating over several designs involving various gear ratios or pulley systems in order to more efficiently generate the force required. Each worked, technically. But the mechanical complexity meant that maintenance would be a significant, ongoing issue.
It wasn't until the artisan-priest was delivering a new greatbow for one of the cruisers that a more efficient solution struck them.
Rather than attempting to keep the same dimensions of grinding stone, why not size down and instead keep power delivery constant?
Because of the particulars of Zlatlan's sacred geometry there were a few parts of the temple-city that saw fairly consistent winds. Particularly along a line drawn southwest of the Temple of Tzunki towards the west gate and one drawn northwest from the center of the temple-city through the temple complex containing the Temples of Chotec, Tlanxla, and Uxmac. Using the same basic principles that drove sailing vessels, Xilotl built a wind driven mill that though smaller in capacity could operate near constantly with minimal supervision.
Day. Night.
Four narrow sails sat at the top of a narrow stone pyramid set atop a broad octagonal wooden platform, and as they caught the wind they spun a timber axle which was connected by a pair of perpendicular gears to another timber axle which in turn drove the upper of two millstones. Simple levers allow the same millstone and the attached axle to be raised and lowered in order to stop grinding.
In a few years more than a dozen would be built.
But again Xilotl had little time to consider such things, as they once again moved on. Addressing the processing of cuamoqli was more difficult, as many of the primary constraints were due to chemical processes; oxidation and enzymatic reactions occurring in the roots after they were cut. Magic could slow or even halt those processes, but that would mean involving at least a dozen artisan-priests on an ongoing basis.
They judged the opportunity cost greater than the expected benefit.
Unfortunately they could not see any great efficiencies to be had, only a small increase. By digging out a few dedicated settling tanks and then building large dedicated screens to fit them a meaningful amount of scale could be achieved. It would rarely reach capacity, but the overall labor outlay for processing cuamoqli would still go down as it could be more or less continuously processed in small amounts.
Day 67 Caxuatn's Season, 11657
"Mraaaa!"
Ittetuhlot watched one of the bastiladon stubbornly refuse to move beneath the waiting yoke.
Beside it the other beast chewed placidly at a pile of leaves, casting a brief glance at its young companion with a distinct air of irritation before returning to its meal. Two skink handlers scrambled over top of its shoulders, adjusting the leather strapping so it sat in the seam between shell and flesh as it ran down to the first leg joint.
Midspan of the beam a trio of thick poles kept the yoke beam aloft.
"Initial trials were conducted only with the most agreeable beast but— "
At last one of the handlers goaded the beast into action waving a bundle of leafy fronds in its face, and the bastiladon stepped beneath the beam of the yoke. Working quickly the rest of the handlers coaxed it into stepping into the leather straps and began adjusting the fitting so that the yoke would sit correctly against its shell.
" —we have begun expanding trials to younger beasts, to get them used to the devices."
"Mmmm, " Lord Wik'keer'mal hummed, his attention for the moment more focused on the troop of huiniyot curiously watching the proceedings from beneath the shades of his palanquin.
Standing a little over shoulder height ahead of the bastiladon was an enormous device of Ittetuhlot's own devising. At least in principle. It had taken several iterations and the help of several more mechanically inclined chiefs to reach the current design; it was a four and a half meter long wedge set on eight wheels each as tall as a skink, two on each outside edge and four more between the two bastiladon. At the front of the wedge were several narrow plows in between which were pairs of bronze blades.
Behind the leading edge lay a screw, one to either side of the center, oriented so that whatever fell on them would be carried to the center of the device where a ramp of segmented wood with low partitions would carry things up and over the back of the mechanism. Bands of thick rope linked the wheels to the internal mechanisms, so that as the bastiladon drove it forward it would constantly work to move the harvest up and over, dropping stalks and ears into the center where they could be picked up by waiting crews.
"Fine tuning of the catch mechanism is still ongoing," keeping a large moving cart moving in sync between two beasts was proving more difficult to manage than initially thought.
Ittetuhlot was confident a final design would be ready by the end of the decade though.
With a start the two bastiladon finally moved into place, the yoke fully settled against the rim of their shells and the whole mechanism began to creep forward. Two openings allowed both beasts to see where they were going, by primary guidance was done by a handler to either side with a long pole that tapped at their side whenever the apparatus began to veer.
The first stalks of xiuhtotl met the front edge, bending forward slightly before the mass of growth ahead forced them into the cutting blades. Gradually the first few ears and scraps of crushed stalk appeared over top of the ramp, carried slowly up and over. One of the waiting skinks picked up an ear of xiuhtotl and quickly brought it over.
A good half a meter of stalk still clung to the bottom, but the tough exterior leaf was still attached and there was no sign of crushing or other damage.
"Progress," said the slann.
Notes: No vote this time. This one really fought me. Next up Experimental Pool Work. Comments, critique, etc.