The downside of military construction becoming it's own managed entity is that it will need it's own competent leader. I negotiated a bit with Zeb in order to secure the construction team that I think will be most capable of taking on this task, given their participation in prior military constructions. Since the team in question was one of the two most senior teams, there were a few concessions I had to give in order to actually get them. Foremost among the concessions was that this team and a different team would be split and recombined. The military corps will get the senior construction demons that were on that team, but the more middling demons will be replaced with newer recruits. Basically, the team will have leadership and rookies, but that's it.
Honestly though, considering the potential dangers they may have to face, I'd rather lose a rookie than a 5 year veteran. It'll also let those rookies build their entire career experience in the military corps rather than splitting some of it with domestic construction. Just like how most of the regular construction teams have spent a large amount of their time building housing, this team will spend most of their time on a handful of reproducible military buildings, letting them become more skilled at the process.
Zaka agreed to let us take with us 30 guards, though we came to an agreement that they'd only be guarding the defensive area on the beachfront, and wouldn't be in any of the watchtowers. That's fine though, as it frees up the soldiers that were in charge of guarding the beachfront to move to watchtowers. We'll also be bringing with us 50 laborers and a bunch of saws and hatchets for processing the cut wood. To actually fulfill that role, I've put a special request in at city hall with quintuple the normal pay. The risks are outlined as well, so we'll see who decides to join us if anyone does at all.
We didn't want to wait too long before heading back to the other island, so after only three days we set out. We only ended up filling 30 of the labor jobs, but considering we actually didn't have as many spare hatchets and saws as I thought, that ended up being overkill anyway. We did have some spare large axes that some of the military ogres can use to cut down all but the biggest trees in a single swing. I put in an order for many more saws and hatchets so whenever we come back next we can replace any damaged tools and potentially supplant our workforce. Most of the laborers who are joining us on this trip are fairly low level, but there are a couple of hobgoblins among them. Depending on how we decided to handle the tree cutting, the laborers might be gaining a few levels from the clear cutting of forest paths as well.
As we got everyone loaded into the boat, we waited for the barges to clear the path out. Most of the barges from the last two times we've done this have ended up reaching back to the island, and were then carefully unloaded and recycled to be used again. If we weren't attempting to do that, we'd run out of them too quickly for us to safely travel in and out of the harbor like this.
In the meantime, I began drafting plans with the new military construction corps. Foremost we're going to erect tougher defenses around the beachhead. That will likely take a few days. While the idea of recovering the fort would potentially be attractive, having an actual landing site is far more important than that. The laborers will help with hauling stone to the sandy beach to allow construction. I myself will also be participating in some of the beachhead construction, though I'm supposed to try to keep myself out of danger, even though we really haven't seen any evidence of anyone who would be too dangerous to me.
In the meantime, we'll have a section of the army begin the process of cutting down trees in these observation paths. At night it might be hard, but during the day, we should be able to spot any demons crossing from one cleared area to another. Additionally, it will give any army patrols a faster route to further parts of the island to clear out enemies. Overall, it will just make the island functionally smaller.
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We discussed the idea of building a moderately sized wooden fence down the cut pathway, but ultimately the idea was rejected on a few grounds. Foremost was the amount of labor and time it would take to construct, second was the thought that a wooden wall would only really prevent the very low level demons from crossing it, and they aren't a real threat, so wasting the extra time to build it would be hard to justify.
It's been 28 days since we returned with the hodgepodge of reinforcements, and while I can't say things have been going smoothly, they haven't been particularly difficult either. While we've been systematically rooting out enemy demons, it's been very slow going. While every couple of days we get word that we've managed to take down a higher level demon, it'll take quite a long time to get them all if we keep this pace up. Our casualties and injuries have been fairly low, but they're also non-zero, and we're constantly dealing with rogue enemy goblins turning up.
They aren't particularly dangerous, as I've stated before, but they do slow down any searches that we have going on. Further, if we don't deal with them, there is a chance that in a year or so, we'd come back and the island would be repopulated again with rogue demons. It'd be one matter if we could simply convince those new demons to join us, but as we've seen with some of these goblins, they're practically feral, barely speaking the demon language, if at all. To be fair, our fresh goblins also don't speak our language initially, but if they've established their own society after leaving them for some time, it'd be very difficult to negotiate with them at that point.
There is an upshot to this problem, however. It really does seem that if you isolate demons somewhere, and they don't currently have a demon who can summon imps, they do seem to gain the ability pretty quickly. It's definitely something for us to keep in mind for the future. The degree of required isolation is something we'll have to figure out. Right now, housing is more of the issue than summoning is, so unless we want to start putting demons in slums, Zaka alone already provides plenty of new population.
We've developed a nifty system to help with injury recovery. Since we're cutting down trees anyway, if the injured are in good enough condition to be brought along, they're kept close to the tree cutting to gain levels. Every so often, an injured demon will prestige, and all but the most extreme of injuries is healed. In essence, we're getting even more bang for our buck as a result of the logging process.
The logging process hasn't been problem free either though. There are occasional interruptions by rogue demon attacks, and unfortunately, two of the laborers did perish in the first attack. Since then, we've kept a contingent of 30 soldiers supporting the laborers. Some escort those who are hauling while others guard the ones doing initial processing of downed trees.
That said, they've gotten into a pretty good rhythm. Some of the wood is being used to fashion makeshift crates held together only by wooden joints that lets them transport some of the smaller branches easier, while the rest of the trees are cut into logs and hauled back to the beachhead. From there, we basically have small boats moving constantly from the shore to the ship where they're lifted up, and the wood is loaded into our cargo bays. Since we've been loading about 30 tons of wood a day since we got into the groove of things we're almost at capacity on the ship, so we'll need to return to our island to unload soon. We need to return to pick up more preserved food to supply the army as well, so the timing is pretty good. I'll pick up more tools while we're there, and try to hire some more laborers to speed up the whole process too.
Since I only spent two days rather than three back at the island, we only ended up getting another 10 laborers, but it's better than nothing. We unloaded around 900 tons of wood, loaded up a bunch more food and some more tools, and promptly headed back. Production on extra artillery pieces and shells is coming along well. The shells were just being stored in a warehouse, so I've instructed that they should be stored in the nitroglycerin storage facility in their own silos instead. They can be stored in larger amounts in each silo given their higher stability and lower explosive power.
When the construction corps of the military is available, I'd like to get a custom storage area built just for storing artillery shells. I thought about asking Zeb, but I figured this sort of fell under military construction, so I shouldn't bother him with it so soon after our negotiation.
