What Can SV Teach an Evil Sorceress? (abandoned)

[LoserThree]

0

                         NOTICES

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

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)

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

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.

 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.

---

Spoiler: All you really need to know to play

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.

                    Collaboration Post!

Spoiler: How the game is meant to work

1. 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
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. QM composes QMPC's responses to player posts made during the cacophonous interlude and updates their notes.
6. 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.
7. QM composes the QMPC's post-break update, player vote questions, and player vote options.
8. GOTO 1

Spoiler: The Quest Master Player Character

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.

 

[devilgirl666]

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.

 

[We Just Write]

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.

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.

 

[liberty90]

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.

 

[We Just Write]

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.

Click to shrink...

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.

 

[liberty90]

I appreciate your contribution, but I'm pretty sure that Bianca knows nothing about our ways to measure weight, distance, or volume.

 

[We Just Write]

I appreciate your contribution, but I'm pretty sure that Bianca knows nothing about our ways to measure weight, distance, or volume.

Click to shrink...

True, I suppose. That explanation was mostly for your benefit anyway.

 

[Demonic Spoon]

[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.

 

[liberty90]

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.

 

[Ciber]

[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.​

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[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.​

​

[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.​

​

[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.​

​

[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...​

​

[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.​

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.​

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Is this thing still on?

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huh...

...

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.​

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Millwright​

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[We Just Write]

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.

 

[Rockeye]

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.

 

[We Just Write]

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.

Click to shrink...

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.

 

[Rockeye]

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.

 

[Paloneia]

Spoiler: ooc

Would it be a good idea to post the art of war for Bianca to see? I imagine it would be useful for her, but it would take up a lot of room.

 

[Ciber]

Spoiler: ooc @ Paloneia

High school english class rules apply. You can rewrite "in your own words". Just quoting entire books or articles is not kosher on account of the OP has to actually read all this stuff. Your goal should be to write to entertain everyone else as much as they entertain you.

 

[LoserThree]

16b

Firstly I would like to thank my patrons for their trust
                      and patience.

There were problems with people's votes.  Please remember
the [X] in front.  Not that the uncounted votes are the
reason for the longer period since the last update, mind
you.  Just please try to vote in ways the tallying system
                        will count.

	Underclass	Vassal	Hurrah	Horse
liberty90	It's fine. Let the Galugr solve their own problems the way they see fit.		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.	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.
FwiffoForce	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.	Refuse	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.	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.
I just write	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.	Refuse	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.	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.
eternal-potato	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.	Ask her how she plans to accomplish this when you tried and failed. If her plan is good, give her the gold, but also send warriors, singers, and table-rulers. If not, or if she refuses to tell, don't.	Tell him it's foolish to go alone, but he is free to be foolish as long as he makes sure his duties are seen to while he is away (possibly permanently). Perhaps by chosing a worthy successor.
devilgirl666	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.	Refuse	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.	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.
Demonic Spoon	It's fine. Let the Galugr solve their own problems the way they see fit.	Bring the gold to the Giantess and accompany her as she subjugates Ekhaicvint	He should send the most heroic youths, perhaps a hero will be made	Take the mare as tribute. Calm her with herbs so that she can be bred
Ciber	It's fine. Let the Galugr solve their own problems the way they see fit.	Bring the gold to the Giantess and accompany her as she subjugates Ekhaicvint	He should send the most heroic youths, perhaps a hero will be made	Lan probably knows what they're doing, leave them to it

 In a previous edit of this post, I mistakenly reported a
      tie where the actual count is three to four.

Spoiler: What Bianca heard

Black Cat here, welcome.

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Click to shrink...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

Finally, it might be possible to create a ramp so you can just march your troops over.

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.

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[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?


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.


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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Honey is over 99% sugar. When dissolved in water the difference should be negligible. As a side note, I should be able to dig up a good recipe for hydraulic cement in a bit; that will make bridge building much easier.

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I think that Bianca is simply very unfortunate in the fact that the river selected for her first bridge is truly unusually full of deep mud.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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So Kahl died? How? She was not that old.

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Anyway. 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".

Spoiler: ooc, source

Wikipedia

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.

Spoiler: ooc source

Wikipedia

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.

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Spoiler: OOC TIME AND CHANGES

Could you loserthree extend deadline to 20 NOV also before voting I would like to know is this version of update finally final or any changes STILL PLANNED.

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.

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Spoiler: ooc response to devilgirl666

An extension to the 20:th is a nine-day one which practically doubles the total time. I'd say that's a bit much if you ask me.

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.

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.

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.

Spoiler: Unfinished explanation

I shall try to explain how to produce it, but I cannot guarantee that I get everything right.

The first step in making paper is to produce wood pulp. There are more advanced and efficient methods to do it which produce better paper, but I think the one that would be easiest to understand for you is the one called soda pulping. Firstly, chop down a tree. As soda pulping is a relatively crude method, you are going to want a well-suited tree for this, ideally a coniferous tree with relatively soft wood. You may try a fir tree, for example. Once you have chopped down a tree like this, remove all the bark from it. The bark is not necessary for the rest of the process but must be removed - dispose of it however you like.

Once you have a de-barked log, you must chop it into tiny pieces. Normally when an axe chops into wood, little wood chips fall to the side. You want to turn all of the wood that will be used into such wood chips. Once that is done, wash the wood chips in water to remove any sawdust or other unwanted elements. Next, put the wood chips into something large that can hold liquid. You don't necessarily need to put in all of the wood chips (for this same reason, you don't necessarily need to chop up the entire log as long as everything you do use is chopped into little pieces) so when you're experimenting, feel free to use a cooking pot and only some smaller amount of wood chips. Unfortunately, I forget the rest of the process right now. Maybe I'll remember later, or maybe another voice can fill you in.

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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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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Spoiler: OOC

Aye, that be so. Since the vote for voice system was done away with, she'll hear anything not tagged as ooc

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

I tried to suggest mass-production, after all.

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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I appreciate your contribution, but I'm pretty sure that Bianca knows nothing about our ways to measure weight, distance, or volume.

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True, I suppose. That explanation was mostly for your benefit anyway.

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[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.

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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.

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[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.

[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.

[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.

[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...

[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.
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.

Is this thing still on?

huh...

...

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.



Millwright

Click to shrink...

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.

Click to shrink...

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.

Click to shrink...

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.

Click to shrink...

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.

Click to shrink...

 

[That-Random-Guy]

Loserthree I notice certain ratings from you

 

[LoserThree]

Spoiler: ooc

Loserthree I notice certain ratings from you

Click to shrink...

My intention is to rate everyone's post during the communicating-with-Bianca periods. Mostly to be encouraging in the normal, ratings-encourage-people sense. But also to let players know I read them.

I don't rate those posts until after voting closes, though, because I don't want my feedback to steer people's choices.

 

[Ciber]

Spoiler: [USER=312]@LoserThree[/USER]

Its less "Trust & Patience" and more "Fiscal Irresponsibility".

The Egyptian Egg Ovens Considered More Wondrous Than the Pyramids

A hatching system devised 2,000 years ago is still in use in rural Egypt.

www.atlasobscura.com

[Egyptian Egg Oven]
In my most recent trawl of the archives I have analyzed the writings of one Diodorus Siculus. His writing was a chore to parse and his fact checking suspect, only impressive for its sheer volume, but I did chance upon on interesting passage:

"The most astonishing fact is that, by reason of their unusual application to such matters, the men [in Egypt] who have charge of poultry and geese, in addition to producing them in the natural way known to all mankind, raise them by their own hands, by virtue of a skill peculiar to them, in numbers beyond telling."​

More worthy sources confirm that this technique may be worthwhile for the people of the Nine Nations.
A hen can only care perhaps 15 eggs at a time, any more would not successfully hatch. But with human assistance they could be far more productive. By constructing a sort of oven you can replicate the conditions required to hatch a fertilized egg. The important conditions to match are heat, the amount of water in the air, and the regular turning of the egg.


Oh hey I just thought what about trained birds?
Cage different birds and train them to flap on command. Hopefully this produces an easily controlled spirit that can push air. Do this with a bunch of different kinds of birds and train them for different amounts of time. Can smarter birds make moar wind? Or bigger birds? Are they easier to command if you hand raise them from a fledgling? Does the amount of time you spend training them affect how controllable they are? Try solitary vs flocking birds. Predators vs prey.

Blind devicer should become numerate and literate. Multiplication table. Learn to draw realistic depiction of life. Do a few disections and make detailed drawings of how the bones and muscles and fat fit together. Compass & straightedge geometry. perspective. Drafting blueprints drafting table isometric plan view using dashed lined and leaders. Right triangles. Calculating forces. Tangency. Conversion of force to distance. Bending moment. stress. vectors. The mountain thinks itself Inviolate steady and sure, but the winds of change wear all to dust in time.

[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 load bearing surfaces 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.
A potentially useful technique it to cast only a thin layer of bearing bronze inside a casing of some stronger metal.

Wooden A frame to support arch. temporary wooden lintel to support door / window arch.
What makes the new blood for the viens? And what is the purpose of that which sits behind and underneath the stomach, and that which is only found beneath the bladders of men, or alongside the wombs of women?
Devicer is as immortal as bianca and should be groomed to take up a certain role.
Devicer should visit each village of the pact to discover how everyone farms and learn a bit of diplomancy. take a look at the soil. how rocky is it, how much sand and how much clay. How do the natural plants around the villages differ.
Take two sturdy pots; one large and one small. At each village strongly pack the small pot entirely with soil from one spot which is cultivated. Empty the small pot into the large pot and fill the large pot with water. Stir well. Do all this before noon, stirring when the sun is at it's highest. Let the pot sit covered and undisturbed until noon the next day. Then slowly pour out the pot. Pay close attention to how much silt remains suspended in the water & the composition / color of the soil and what layers it forms.
We have over time given much contradictory advice for what rotation of crops is best. The truth is that there is no single best rotation. You need to take into account the qualities of the soil and how much you value each crop you could grow.
The reaper is moving in a good direction, but actually by itself it is one tool for one job.

The nine nations don't have chickens! do they try to keep any fowl for eggs?
Chickens are one of the most efficient sources of meat, and by far the best bird to farm for eggs.
Based on the bronze age setting, domesticated chickens may have made it as far as the middle east.
Chicken are a kind of bird found in jungles far to the south east. Probably past a very arid area to the west or impassible mountains to the north.
Chicken cannot fly long distances, only in bursts enough to reach treetops.

Long ago it was mentioned that locusts are occasionally a problem. Did you know they are quite edible?

Probably have to confirm to bianca which people actually got immortality. Also maybe confirm that the evil forest is not something that can be defeated.

We should have these festivals once a decade and put together a series of competitions to chose one person to give the immortality potion to. Have the singers spread around that only the most virtuous (in the way that we define virtue) get the full immortality, and those who harbored a secret dishonor would die. That would give us a way to subtly assassinate the powerful who are loved but who are not easily controlled. Or just give bad flavored water to those who need not die but we don't want to have actual immortality. We want to say that the ritual is influenced by virtue not honor. Honor is doing what is be for your family or tribe, but virtue is doing what is best for all people. Allude that Bianca's source of immortality is her focus on improving the lives of all people everywhere. Great PR XD.
Too many immortals or long lived would dilute biancas claim to godhood and potentially become enemies. Bianca may have to actually be nice to people she makes immortal lest they grow vengeful. Immortality is only a gift if the extra life you live is better than being dead. I would be supprised if the Devicers gratefullness lasts more than a couple lifetimes, so thats how long bianca has to convince her that being biancas loyal devicer serves her long term interest best..
Immortals are much worse for all the reasons that bianca was against writing.
Table rulers are good for recording who owes who.

 

[LoserThree]

16c

Spoiler: ooc Kuwuzt's Potion Test

The potion test for Kuwuzt of Zouchaud, First Chief of the Ten Nations, and King of Enonl will be 2d10 dice rolled as percentile. The results will be measured against the following scale.

01 - 05 : Uh oh - Kuwuzt becomes a monster
06 - 15 : Nuh uh - potion has no effect
16 - 25 : Huh - Kuwuzt regains his youthful vigor for a decade, then rapidly catches back up
26 - 80: Uh huh - Kuwuzt regains his youthful vigor for 50 years, then resumes normal aging
81 - 100 : Whoa - Kuwuzt becomes immortal

The sizes of the various result ranges are such because this is the potion that the magician made for himself but which was seized by Kuwuzt and secreted away when Enonl fell to the 10N.

  Kuwuzt's Potion Test: 56 - Kuwuzt regains his youthful
      vigor for 50 years, then resumes normal aging

Spoiler: ooc Blind Inventor's Potion Test

The potion test for Peyuvo of Eppam, the Blind Devicer will be 2d10 dice rolled as percentile. The results will be measured against the following scale.

01 - 05 : Uh oh - Peyuvo becomes a blind monster
06 - 20 : Nuh uh - potion has no effect
21 - 35 : Huh - Peyuvo regains her youthful vigor and sight for a decade, then her vision fades and rapidly ages to normal
36 - 90: Uh huh - Peyuvo regains her youthful vigor and sight for 50 years, then resumes normal aging but retains her sight
91 - 100 : Whoa - Peyuvo regains her vision and becomes immortal

The sizes of the various result ranges are such because this is the potion that the magician made for Bianca under duress.

  Blind Inventor's Potion Test: 100 - Peyuvo regains her
               vision and becomes immortal

Spoiler: ooc Magician's Potion Test

The potion test for Hersaulf the Unaging, Dread Magician of Enonl will be 2d10 dice rolled as percentile. The results will be measured against the following scale.

01 - 10 : Uh oh - Hersaulf becomes a monster
11 - 30 : Nuh uh - potion has no effect
31 - 50 : Huh - Hersaulf regains his youthful vigor for a decade, then rapidly catches back up
51 - 95: Uh huh - Hersaulf regains his youthful vigor for 50 years, then resumes normal aging
96 - 100 : Whoa - Hersaulf becomes immortal

The sizes of the various result ranges are such because Bianca has not made it easy for the magician to gather or prepare his materials.

As ever, I realize I'm just obfuscating d20 rolls here right now. That's fine.

    Magician's Potion Test: 51 - Hersaulf regains his
  youthful vigor for 50 years, then resumes normal aging

Spoiler: ooc Kuwuzt's Tutelage

I want to determine how successful King Kuwuzt is at teaching his heir how to govern.

Kuwuzt isn't a very good teacher, but he does have the skill so at least he's avoiding halving his successes (2). Though by our standards an average city council has good odds of having at least one member with notably superior governing skill, Kuwuzt's skill isn't bad for his time (1). Kuwuzt's heir isn't just doing this because she wants to make him proud, or just because she wants power, but also because she is competing with her heroic and deceased brother, Gast son of Kuwuzt (2). Both Kuwuzt and his heir are literate (though not so practiced that they read without moving their lips) (2). Kuwuzt's heir is numerate enough to do sums of both surplus and deficits (1). Bianca's singers will aid (1). Bianca's table-rulers will 'advise' (1). Kuwuzt is going to focus on leading warparties, which is not much like ruling a city but it's pretty much how he thinks because it's what he's been doing since he was, like, twelve and it's almost exclusively how people in the Ten Nations think authority works (-1). Kuwuzt's heart isn't really in this because none of his other children live up to Gast in his eyes and anyway he's just going to be gone for a season or two, right? (-1).

Kuwuzt will be rolling 2 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 - 1 - 1 = 8d10. Kuwuzt is heroic so will count 6s and better. The result of his roll will determine how capable is heir is and the degree to which she is accepted as king by the other powers in Enonl. Poor governorship means revolts. Lack of acceptance means coup attempts.

1 or fewer success = revolts and a coup within months​

2 successes = revolts if Kuwuzt doesn't return within two years, coup likely even if those are suppressed​

3 successes = revolts if Kuwuzt doesn't return within two years, full backing of 10N​

4 or 5 successes = revolts if Kuwuzt doesn't return within five years, full backing of 10N and some surviving Enonl leadership​

6 successes = no revolts or coups attempted​

7 or more successes = Enonl enters a Heroic Age​

While it's possible for any polity to enter a Heroic Age, getting one in anything less than a city would take especially extraordinary circumstances. Even in this case, a Heroic Age is only possible because Enonl has plentiful resources, most of its infrastructure survived being taken over by the 10N, and important improvements were added like capped wells, iron bloomeries, and a rudimentary understanding of the relationship between groundwater and disease.

During a Heroic Age, tests made by or for the sake of the polity as a whole as made as through by a hero. Additionally, while pestilence or sabotage remain possible, famine will not occur for logistical, economic, or resource management reasons. Tests that may be made by or for the sake of a polity include defense, conquest, campaigns of information directed at the populace, the founding of institutions, and the construction of infrastructure.

4: revolts if Kuwuzt doesn't return within five years,
full backing of 10N and some surviving Enonl leadership

Spoiler: ooc Kuwuzt vs. The Hydra of Asaragz

I want to determine the results of the quest of Kuwuzt of Zouchaud, First Chief of the Ten Nations, and King of Enonl to slay the Hydra of Asaragz and return to his throne.

This is going to be a test of Kuwuzt's weapon skills, which are downright exceptional because he's literally been practicing since he could hold an ax (6). Kuwuzt's has called the greatest living warriors of the 10N to him as a companions in his quest (2). They have at minimum the finest bronze arms and armor, with some steel (3). THe singer that accompanies them will advise on hygiene, which may prevent them from taking ill on the journey (1). The table-ruler that accompanies them will track supplies and navigate by map and stars to prevent them from lacking food or other essentials (1). Bianca has allowed a witch among Kuwuzt's companions to call on the map-making spirit of her former first table-ruler who went defected by balloon (1). The party will bring firebombs involving both the best 'gunpowder' available and high-proof alcohol (2 any incendiary devices more complicated than a burning arrow rerolls 9s & 10s and keeps successes, and cancels successes on and rerolls 1s & 2s and additional failures cancel successes; more 1s, 2, 9, or 10s mean more rerolling, but only in the direction of the original dice)

The Hydra will be testing their beastial combat skill, which is worthy of legend (8). It has home field advantage as it knows its island very well (1). It has six heads for biting and spitting (flammable) venom (2). Unlike other beasts, it cannot be driven off and has no fear of fire (only a very realistic wariness of being burned directly) (1).

Kuwuzt will be rolling 6 + 2 + 3 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2* = 14d10 + 2*d10. He's heroic so counts 6s and better.

The Hydra will be rolling 8 + 1 +2 +1 = 12d10. It's magical itself so will also count 6s and better as successes.

The kind of success had will be determined by the difference between the rolls.

Kuwuzt wins by more than 4 successes = Kuwuzt returns victorious in the same year with a Heroic Companion​

Kuwuzt wins by 3 or 4 successes = Kuwust returns victorious the next year​

Kuwuzt wins by 1 or 2 successes = Kuwuzt returns victorious over two years later​

Tie = The hydra eludes Kuwuzt, who does not return to Enonl for over five years​

The hydra wins by 1 or 2 successes = Hydra slays some companions and survives​

The hydra wins by 3 or 4 successes = only a single companion returns over ten years later​

The hydra wins by more than 4 successes = neither Kuwuzt nor any companions return alive​

8 to 6: Kuwuzt returns victorious over two years later

Spoiler: ooc Reaping Machine

I want to determine if Peyuvo of Eppam, the Blind Devicer sufficiently perfects not only the reaping machine but the process of its manufacture such that it can be used throughout the Ten Nations without, like, first developing precision engineering and a supply chain of replacement parts and such..

This is the task that Bianca has set before Peyuvo, the completion of which is part of her debt to Bianca for her immortality. It's not going to be easy, but Peyuvo has plenty of time to keep making attempts, happenstance willing.

This is going to be a test of Peyuvo's mechanical design ability, which is not a skill she actually possesses. So instead she'll be testing her intellect, which is what got her this far in the first place (6), but she'll only get to keep half of her successes. Peyuvo not only has produced one working model (twice now, in fact, since the first was destroyed in a fire), but she also has the designs her competitors built (1), and the assistance of some of her competitors themselves (1).

In terms of mechanical design, designing and building a single reaper that will work reliably and which can be maintained by someone other than its maker is substantial (4). Designing it to be reliably built by anyone who can work the materials is harder (3).

Peyuvo will be rolling 6 + 1 + 1 = 8d10 and must roll 14 successes (double 7 because Peyuvo doesn't have the skill) to design the reaper as she was directed. Peyuvo is magical herself so she will count 6s and better as successes.

edit: I neglected to mention that Peyuvo will eventually acquire mechanical design skills if she keeps at this long enough. Peyuvo will acquire the mechanical design if she tests the skill four times. She already tested it once in building the original design that won her the potion.

2 against 7: failure

Spoiler: ooc Kahl's Mare

I want to determine if offspring can be had of the giant mare.

The mare never does accept the company of a stallion on her own. So what we're testing here is plan B.

This is going to be a test of Bianca's ability to magically calm the mare such that she allows a stallion to inseminate her, so that's sorcery (6). BIanca has a repertoire of spells for livestock fertility (1). Bianca has the opportunity to make several tries at this (2).

Bianca will be rolling 6 + 1 + 2 = 9d10. Bianca is magical herself and is using magic so she will count 5s and better as successes.

The number of successes Bianca has will determine the result

2 or fewer success = No foals, just some dead stallions and eventually a dead mare​

3 successes = No foals, but when the mare died Bianca made a limited number of Furious Mare Potions from her carcass​

4 or 5 successes = Kahlian Rageponies are still too small to be ridden by anyone over about 120 pounds, but they're bloodthirsty, which is conditionally valuable​

6 or 7 successes = Kahl's Warhorses are large and difficult and dangerous to rider and footsoldiers alike​

8 or more successes = Kahl's Warhorses plus a Heroic Hostler​

6: Kahl's Warhorses are large and difficult and dangerous
to rider and footsoldiers alike

        Tests for this installment are complete.

LoserThree threw 2 10-faced dice. Reason: Kuwuzt’s Potion Test Total: 11

LoserThree threw 2 10-faced dice. Reason: Blind Inventor’s Potion Test Total: 20

LoserThree threw 2 10-faced dice. Reason: Magician’s Potion Test Total: 6

LoserThree threw 8 10-faced dice. Reason: Kuwuzt’s Tutelage Total: 44

LoserThree threw 12 10-faced dice. Reason: Kuwuzt vs. Hydra (1) Total: 71

LoserThree threw 2 10-faced dice. Reason: Kuwuzt vs. Hydra (2) Total: 13

LoserThree threw 3 10-faced dice. Reason: Kuwuzt vs. Hydra (incediary) Total: 11

LoserThree threw 12 10-faced dice. Reason: Hydra vs. Kuwuzt Total: 71

LoserThree threw 8 10-faced dice. Reason: Reaping Machine Total: 49

LoserThree threw 9 10-faced dice. Reason: Kahl’s Mare Total: 60

 

[Rockeye]

Spoiler

So they all worked - and the blind inventor's worked best. I forgot who Kuwuzt is tho.

 

[liberty90]

Spoiler

So they all worked - and the blind inventor's worked best. I forgot who Kuwuzt is tho.

Click to shrink...

Kuwuzt of Zouchaud, First Chief of the Ten Nations, and King of Enonl

A pretty important person, I would say

No need to speak ooc until the next update.

Anyway, immortality and long lives, yay.
(At a terrible cost in other human lives, but well...).

 

[Ciber]

I am most happy that the inventor is the only one who got actual immortality.

 

[We Just Write]

A bit sad that the reaping machine hasn't quite been perfected yet, but soon!

 

[J.I.M.S]

Kahl's Mare was a success! Who cares if they're a danger to the rider lol. All that matters is that juicy juicy genetic data still in the gene pool