Based on my conversations with Shasta, I decided to keep an eye on the new goblins until I got word from Kao that the dwarves'' ship arrived. I''m glad I did decide to keep track of all of them as well, since I doubt anyone else would have caught on to some of the subtleties of what was happening in the various goblin enclaves. Since we create housing, then fill it almost instantly, it''s uncommon that new goblins get placed in older communities, though it does happen occasionally due to a previous resident evolving, and thus needing to move into a bigger space.
As a result, we basically ended up with a few distinct situations and behavioral patterns that arose, dependent on the makeup of any particular goblin community. Our new goblins came in three types, the fight pit goblins, the one-day evolved goblins from the test summoning area, and the spoiled multi-day imps that evolved into goblins after some time.
The one-day evolved goblins seem to be able to be swayed heavily by their surroundings, with a weak personality and lack of in-built drive. If they ended up in old communities, they pretty much ended up the same as any other goblin, which was good. I''d be interested if, longitudinally, they develop stronger convictions after some time of being in those communities, or if they remain easily influenced. If they ended up in a community with two or fewer fight pit goblins for every spoiled goblin, they''d all become spoiled, including the fight pit goblins. Though the sample for that was only two communities, so it''s not definitive that this is the case, but it''s still a worrying result.
Thankfully, they don''t seem to remain spoiled for too long if you separate them into existing communities with good work ethics. I didn''t want to cause some kind of epidemic of lazy individuals though, so I filtered them out two at a time, and kept a close eye on the communities they moved to. Unfortunately, even moving a spoiled goblin into a community of hard workers did little to change their opinions, at least over the month or so I watched over them. Thankfully, it didn''t damage those communities either.
The lazy communities, when they existed, quickly realized they needed money, and all sorts of undesirable behaviors arose. Some resorted to crime, while others begged and borrowed from those who had money. Zaka had to get involved a few times due to theft being committed, but he was shocked when the goblins simply shrugged off his punishment, and didn''t do what they were told. So, two of them are now sitting in a jail cell. That at least motivated a few of the others to actually follow through with the punishments that Zaka gave them, though they still did the absolute minimum.
Fundamentally, this brings up two bigger fundamental problems. One of which we''ve already somewhat addressed with the dwarves. The first problem is that when people of different belief systems try to live in one place, there will be some amount of negative consequences. Now, with the dwarves, those negatives were outweighed by the positives. The biggest downside of the dwarves joining us were their various vices. With them came alcohol and gambling, and both had generally negative effects on some amount of the demon population. On the flip side, they brought lots of new food cuisines, as well as knowledge and skills from the mainland, and an expanded workforce.
It''s possible to look at these lazy goblins as a different culture, to an extent. They''re lazy, arrogant, and have no respect for authority. As a result, they just place pressures on our society as a whole. Thanks to all the different infrastructure we''ve built, Kembora is something like a labor paradise. While some goblins work a lot simply because we have a culture of hard work, any individual would only need to work about two days out of every five to earn a comfortable living. The bare minimum though would only require one day of work out of every ten.
Right now we only have a few dozen lazy individuals, and that number is decreasing after having redistributed some of the goblins out of lazy communities. If that number was instead increasing, we''d have to make a few hard choices as a society, and I don''t know if Zaka is up to it. If the percent of lazy individuals increases and we wanted to support them, then everyone else would have to work harder to make up the slack. Now, we do have quite a bit of slack, so we could support some non-working individuals, but too many and we''d have a problem. It''d also slow down our other work, since we''d have less of a free labor pool to pull from for new projects.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
Ultimately, if there were too many we''d either have to choose to let them starve, kill them ourselves, or exile them. I would also have trouble making that kind of decision, so I''m going to try to prevent that from being the case. Ultimately, I do feel obligated to some degree to take care of the spoiled ones, since it was sort of the environment I set up for their summoning that caused their rotten behavior. So as long as the number remains small, that''s fine. Since they''re lazy, I also won''t have to worry about them becoming too physically powerful to deal with.
On an unrelated note, I also caught wind that Elora has been asking around about our magical ovens, and has been seen near to some of our retrofitted facilities with sterling engines. I was concerned something like this might happen, so I''ve asked Zaka to double the amount of guards at the lab. Ultimately, the guards wouldn''t be able to stop her if she tried to force her way in, but if they at least discourage her from trying to sneak in to discover our secrets, that''ll be good.
It''d take a lot of effort to actually convey everything necessary to reproduce our technique for making artificial fluorite as well, and I doubt the elves could do it from language alone. I expect that, even if Elora herself went back to try to reproduce what she''d seen exactly in the manufacturing area, it''d take a few years for them to replicate at the minimum. Her window is also rapidly closing to even be able to leave if she were to try to overpower us and steal it, and I doubt she''d do that. The elves seem to generally think in terms of decades, rather than years, so I''m sure she''s more than content to wait until an opportunity arises to do anything.
Their natural pace is so slow as compared to our technological development, that I think she might not actually grasp the actual magnitude of what we''re doing. To her, both the oven and the stirling engines that were retrofitted probably seem like minor improvements over existing systems. After all, we were just using a windmill before, and this is only a minor improvement, and the ovens are barely a replacement over wood.
She''s probably also somewhat aware of our cryogenic liquid facilities, both old and new, but it probably just seems like a way to help grow mana crystals and mine fluorite. Of those things, growing the mana crystals is probably the most interesting thing from her perspective, but we''ve been doing that for a long time. Our fluorite, however, is probably the more important of the two, and it''s the harder of the two to replicate. The mana crystal gives an incredible source of mana, but if you require individuals to convert that mana to be useful, you''re still limited by population. If, however, you can use fluorite to convert that mana to something useful, then those large mana crystals suddenly become exponentially more useful.
In any case, the longer I can delay information leakage of our technology to the rest of the world, the longer we''ll be safe. The unfortunate reality of being an island nation is that the rest of the world simply has more resources and population to work with. Meaning that any of our technologies that they take can be turned against us and used in larger numbers faster than we can use them ourselves.
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At the end of the second month of winter, we got word from Kao that the ship had arrived safely. Though there were a number of other problems that seem to be happening. The three continents started preparing for the next demon invasion last year. According to historical records, we''ve reached the most likely time for an invasion to occur, or at least, the next fifteen years or so fit that timeline. Sometimes they come more recently, and other times they take longer, but something like 70 percent occur in this time window, so they take some precautions to defend themselves.
Knowing that, we''ll also start taking precautions. I haven''t found any evidence on this island of occupation prior to us being here, but between mudslides and other erosion, it could just be infrequent, and that evidence has been buried. Kao also said that all the paper that the dwarves brought as trade goods was burned, and that their king is worried that sympathies for any demons might make the invasion worse, so he''s been putting out a lot of heavy propaganda. After burning their goods, he''s been telling people that we used them for slave labor, and basically only paid them a meager wage in the amount of dwarven coin we sent them.
Kao and the soldiers themselves know that isn''t true, but given the state of things, going against the king would be dangerous, so they''re keeping their mouths shut. Considering the anti-demon fervor that seems to be spreading, I''m going to remove the crystal ASAP and put it back underground to continue growing it. Even if the dwarves are only preparing for a defensive war, I''d rather just have them be fully discouraged from trying to invade us, and the leviathans should do a good job of that. I think it''s worth considering putting even more of our population into a military just in case of any threats, be they demon or otherwise.