I’m not sure if I could be more proud of Coda than I am right now. I was kinda confused at first why he has artificer instead of engineer, but it’s not too difficult to guess why: engineers are fully mundane, artificers use magic. At least that’s what my current theory is.

I really like his design for the tension archway, too. It’s pretty complex, but the shape tickles the engineer part of my mind for both how effective I think it’ll be, and just how cool it looks. It’s almost a shame the web will be fully encased in concrete, but that’s just how it goes sometimes. Some of the best designs are only obvious to the people who get to take a peek at how it was all put together.

Coda and Jello soon go their separate ways, with my bat looking pretty energized to build a more proper prototype than the one inside Jello, and my Purifier making her slow way towards Violet. It can be difficult to tell what Jello is thinking, even more than my other scions, but I think she really liked being a part of the design process with Coda, so she seems to be looking very forward to looking around the metalworks.

I nudge Fluffles to see if he wants to join her, since he didn’t reject the possibility earlier, and he soon uncoils from what I think was a bit of meditation and flaps his way towards my protege. I take the opportunity to take a closer look at the metalworks.

As it is right now, it’s fairly small. Violet has been having her gremlins and moles digging into the walls of her expansion area, and she put her metalworks inside one of the walls. It’s technically a secret metalworks, though the entrance is fairly obvious. The reason it still gets to be secret is that the entrance is a lot smaller than even the smallest delvers can fit through. They could probably reach an arm inside, but who’s crazy enough to go sticking their arm into a random mole hole in a dungeon, no matter how friendly the dungeon is?

Legs is pretty long by now, but he’s still easily able to slip in, and I don’t think Fluffles will have any issues, either. Jello will have no problem at all. While she seems to prefer being a cube, she has no problem taking whatever shape is needed to get somewhere.

Inside, it becomes clear pretty quickly why a metalworks is different from a smithy. For starters, there’s only a single forge, and it’s not a very big one. I don’t even mean it’s puny because of the relatively low level. I mean it just doesn’t take up much of the floorspace. The metalworks is definitely more for cold working, rather than hot. A smithy will usually make things that are supposed to be a single piece, too, but the metalworks makes things with moving parts. Lots of files, grindstones and saws involved, not to mention pliers, screwdrivers and so on.

Though again, lots is a relative term. The room simply isn’t big enough for lots of things, but it’s enough to know the kind of work that will probably be done in there. Legs is currently working on the folding spearhead, just working out a prototype from the designs so he’ll have an idea of what it’ll take to make a real one, and eventually pass the designs on to the spiderkin.

Looking around in there also reminds me that my magmyrm seem to have decided what they want to focus on. Thing and Queen have started getting their projects rolling, and with Coda having his breakthrough, I think he’ll be able to find the time to pick up his side of the traps, too. At the moment, it’s mostly marking the tunnels for what all is planned, and finalizing where the moving walls and such can be placed without having to do too much extra digging.

The magmyrm have been watching them at work, and I think are trying to help. I would have expected them to kinda crowd Queen, but I think Thing is actually a bit more popular among them. Thing was certainly nervous about them helping at first, especially around his books and such, but if the magmyrm are actually as hot as they look, they’re good at controlling it. No so much as a singe has appeared on Thing’s things, so he’s getting less and less reluctant to let them help.

Queen accepts their help readily, and even has some of them heating various mixtures as she finishes and tests a few things in the tunnel. Even if she has a perfect sleeping gas made, it won’t work if the airflow in a specific tunnel is wrong, so there’s a lot of testing on those grounds, too.

The project with the lighthouse is getting started, as well. It’s probably going to be a bit awkward for the seagulls for a bit, but Hullbreak’s crabs are doing their best to clean up and level the rough area. Coda did a survey a while ago, so at least the basic spot is planned out, but there’s still a lot of things to do. Leveling and cleaning are simple enough to get started on, and not so much work that it can’t be changed if Coda discovers the planned foundation area won’t work.

In theory, foundations are simple, right? Make it solid and then build on it. The problem is, a lot of things can look solid when they aren’t. A mechanical engineer can generally pick up whatever they’re working on and give it a good whack to test how solid it is. Civil stuff is on a scale that a solid enough wack is hard to produce, and breaking a full-scale prototype to test the strength can be a bit expensive. But that’s only half the problems a civil has to deal with.

A mechanical engineer can just say the ground isn’t going to move, and design thusly, mostly because they can design the moving parts to move relative to the ground. A civil engineer needs to make sure the ground actually doesn’t move. Everyone knows not to build a house on sand, but civil engineers need to know what patches of ground might be secret sand co-conspirators. Ground can settle a lot if you’re not careful, and can make a house act more like the leaning tower than most might be comfortable with.

The other thing is drainage. Even a gentle drizzle puts out a lot of water over the area of a house, and that water doesn’t just vanish. It’s easy to think of water erosion as a slow thing, because it is slow for rocks and such, but it can be shockingly quick for even seriously-compacted dirt. Do the drainage wrong, and the water might like to flow down and around the foundation, shifting the surrounding dirt away and now the foundation isn’t actually supported, and the house is the leaning tower again.

Thankfully, I’m pretty sure that kind of erosion won’t be too much of a problem. I don’t know how well the concrete will last against pounding waves, but at least those same waves have the tendency to wash away all those tricky dirt and sand patches before some enterprising dungeon decides to build a lighthouse/combat area. A Fighthouse, maybe. I should probably let Hullbreak actually name the thing.

Speaking of Hullbreak, I’m getting a bit more and more proud of him, too. The progress is still slow, but he had his first combat encounter with delvers just the other day, and it seemed to go smoothly. A group came to see what was the hubbub on the seagull island, and decided to have a crack at some of the crabs.

Hullbreak had all but one scatter, and the delvers dispatched it pretty quickly. He then nervously sent out two more, and they were also pretty quickly dispatched. I was watching the entire time, interested to see what he would do, and was doing my best to not butt in and tell him what to send. He needs to learn, not just be told what to do. I couldn’t help but smile when I felt a question through the bond, if four crabs and a couple gulls would be too much, and I told him it should be fine.

The delvers were actually pressed from that attack, but seemed satisfied, if a bit banged up, after it, and soon got back into their boat. Hullbreak’s reaction to the fight was very interesting, too. I could feel him worrying about the delvers like he worries about his merfolk dwellers, and I even had to gently persuade him to not call the attack off when one of the frontliners took a claw punch to the face.

I think it’s good progress. It’s good he sees the delvers as something besides a threat, and maybe being able to see them get a little banged up and be no worse for wear will help him with his dwellers. He’s still a bit paranoid about their protection, but with them starting to thrive properly and mostly take care of themselves, I think he’s learning to trust them with their own safety. It’s still a long process, and I can feel him chewing his metaphorical fingernails when the merfolk head out past his perception, but he’s improving. Just them farming and hunting outside his borders used to send him into almost a panic, so doing the equivalent of nervous pacing is a big step up.