You take a moment to look out from your throne room high in the defunct Comms Tower, drinking in the sight of Sala-Zione and the progress you have made. A new dock, a fishing trawler and a well equipped communal workspace. All these things and more have been built by your command but there is still so much to do. The defenses are strong enough for now, but they could be stronger and you worry that you don't have enough trained fighters. You consider for a moment inviting a tribe of Eastern Nomads to settle in Sala-Zione but quickly dismiss the idea. Even if an expedition could be sent across the Narrow Sea and into the East and they somehow managed to make their offer without having their skins turned into a charming cloak and boots ensemble and their skulls thrown onto the skull pile the idea of a calling down a horde of Nomads on Sala-Zione is much like the idea of leaving your children in the care of a pack of wolves for safety. Still, you consider asking the Nomad to train you militia when he returns with the bioreactor expedition.
However, there are things you can do here and now. You order the construction of watchtowers on those spots along the ring wall that have been damaged and reinforced with alloy plates. Its not the most dramatic improvement, but more elevated firing positions are always a good thing.
You also get around to ordering a number of smaller projects that had slipped you attention. Since the fishermen have told you that muscles have been spotted on the chains that anchor the dock, you order construction of floating buoys with anchor chains to farm and harvest this delicacy. In the communal workspace the Tinkers fire up the electrolysis machine and soon water is being split into hydrogen and oxygen. Unfortunately, you don't have a compressor to store the gasses so it's somewhat useless for now, but in combination with the bioreactor it should open up the way for production of all sorts of powerful explosives. One of the Tinkers, eager to put the gas produced thus far to use, fills a crude balloon made out of some waterproofed cloth and a long real of string with hydrogen and many people wonder to see it floating merrily over the workshop for a few hours before it loses pressure.
You continue you investigations of the bioreactor, trying to discover what explosive compounds it can create. It seems that it can easily produce hydrogen an oxygen, as the reactions is relatively simple. The primary materials would be air and water, but some biomass would be likely required to provide energy as the sample organisms that can do it with just air and water are pretty inefficient and slow. You would also, as with the electrolysis machine, need a compressor to actually bottle and store the resulting gas. You also note a number of other explosive compounds that would be simple to produce, trinitrotoluene and nitroglycerin foremost among them. These are pretty unstable but you feel confident that if you had samples or formulas for a better explosive you could use the reactor to synthesize it. It'll be dangerous, as working with explosives always is, but with appropriate safety measures you could soon be churning out your own explosives. This thought fill you with joy.
You also set up a tank filled with seawater to see just how this Neo Alga_Minamalis 3345A behaves. The results are somewhat surprising. The first few days sees rapid cycles of growth, then a die-off where the bulk of the algae sinks to the bottom and decomposes extremely rapidly, leaving only tiny calcium carbonate shells behind, then another rapid bloom. However, after the third day spots of rust begin to appear in the tank from the corrosive nature of the seawater and the algae reacts immediately, going into a frenzy of growth which quickly ends with all of it dying off and sinking to the bottom with no new blooms. Strange, but it seems to do no harm.
On the matter of the Solar Furnace, you decide to delay for now, until word arrives from Rome. Oddly the Technocratian caravan doesn't arrive this week as scheduled. They've always been on time before. As if the universe was making up for it, one of your sentries reports that a ship is standing off from the dock. It seems to be a trading vessel, but cunning raiders have used that trick before.
A week has passed and it is coming to the end of late spring. What do you do now?
Alcide Brunelleschi: Family Armor, Laser Rifle, Hover Scout Trike (currently on loan to the Roman Embassy)
Sala-Zione:
Population:996
Major Official Buildings:
The Main Building (water desalinization and machine shop), the Control Room (computers that control important stuff), The Reactor (a Sony AFIC MK23.a45 civilian Light Industrial Fusion Reactor) currently at 33.68% of fuel capacity and generating 14.92% of potential full capacity, the Control Tower, once a large comms relay unrelated to the plant but within its walls, now missing its dish and the seat of your government.
Minor Official Buildings:
A small steel barrel and chain dock, painted white.
5 Muscle Farming Buoys
A communal workspace with two laser cutters on robotic arm mounts, a bank of well ventilated furnaces for small jobs, some smaller furnaces and forges for custom work, a sheet cutter, two milling machines and three medium casting machines, carefully laid out workbenches and tool racks, a power line, a small simple greenhouse and, an electrolysis machine, 1 Bioreactor in working condition. 6 Tinkerers and 35 apprentices available for work.
Prototypes and theoretical: three prototype rocket launchers, a small prototype steam engine, three prototype mortars. Blueprints for a fusion powered hauler, steam powered fishing trawler.
Citizen Owned: A variety of houses, from rich to poor. Many small industries. 6 tinkerers workshops, A large Solar Forge operating bellow capacity (owners slightly annoyed).
State Stores: 2 large caliber linear accelerator rifles, 600 6mm nickel cored Alloy tipped rounds, 19 Kalash Rifles in a poor state of repair, 4850 rounds of ammunition. 37 Arbalests in good repair with 20 pig iron bolts each. Three satchels of pipe bombs. A large pile of assorted Alloy. A small pile of composite plates. A medium-large stock of basic spare parts and scrap metal. A small stock of essential advanced parts and 24 spare laser power packs. 76,128.26 L of pure water. 20 Composite rods, one crates of electrical parts. 9 barrels of preserved fruit. A compact and efficient computer unit. 1 pressurized container holding 5kg of HE-3. An ☼armored exosuit☼. A small pile of knives. 6 simple HE rockets of unknown design. Some assorted trade goods (nails, bolts, torches etc). 5 large spools of copper wire. A strange gyroscope.
A heavy hauler with large trailer, fusion powered electric engine, Alloy chassis and heavy steel plate steel bodywork with firing slits, wedge shaped dozerblade.
A steam powered steel fishing trawler.
Health: No diseases of note, an immunity to genetic plagues.
Defenses: Large Circular Pored Stone Wall, in reasonable Repair. 11 breaches filled with crude stone blocks and Alloy plating on the outside with watchtowers built on top. 30 dedicated Militia with Old Composite Armor and Laser Rifles, 3 out of action due to injuries. 10 town watch armed with truncheons. 2 Rocket launchers with 2 HE and 2 incendiary rockets remaining.
Food Supplies: Adequate. Stocks slowly rising due to new trawler.
If you notice stuff that should be here but isn't, please tell me. Likewise with any suggestions I may have missed.
Nomad away! I feel a turn coming on.
It seems the force is strong with this one.
Author
Topic: You are a Lord of the Wastes (Read 26115 times)