Chapter 13: Natural fort and preparation for a new metal

During these days, the men finished building the well and the canals, now we will not have to irrigate the crops carrying water from the river with metal buckets.

Despite having sold all our metal reserves, we still had the necessary objects for daily life, such as buckets, pots, axes and swords.

Although we do not have the need to have weapons, we still keep them since we never know if we will find a problem.

Now that the work in the crop is reduced, all the members of the tribe have more time to do other things. The men go in small groups to hunt, normally in the meadows we can only hunt the odd wild boar. In change here the fauna is more diverse, sometimes they hunt birds, rabbits and if they were lucky a deer. Luckily the area where we stayed does not inhabit demonic creatures, this was also one of the reasons why I chose this site. Unlike the northern and southern areas of the river region where demonic creatures abound, the central area next to the Pleiades is inhabited mostly by common wild animals. Although of course I only know this thanks to the minimap. The rest of people, such as the prairies and the merchants, think that the region of the rivers is full of demonic creatures. For this reason it is very rare to enter this region.

The site I chose is perfect, on the one hand to the north, we have the Pleiades, to the south the river, to the west at about two kilometers there is a gorge, on the east, the river passes on its lower part, and on the east the forest that continues for about 20 kilometers where some hills begin that behind it is the sea. In the central area of ​​the river region, where we are located, the region has about 80 kilometers from the meadows to the sea, to be exact is the narrowest area of ​​the river region. On the north side, the distance enters the meadows and the sea is about 150 kilometers, and in the south, the distance is almost 300 kilometers occupying a good part of the southern prairies.

If I stop to think the only way to get where we are is from the passage where we pass the river, because after the lake that is 2 kilometers to the east, the river decreases in amplitude to 300 meters and depth it reaches 11 meters, it does not change until it reaches the sea, the Pleiades also hinder the road to the north to a certain point but in the north there are more rivers than in this area, although they are not as big as this, they continue being an obstacle to having many. To be frank this area we can consider it a natural fortress.

With the passage of time, we will surely increase the population and with that we will also increase the amount of land that we have to cultivate. As a plan I decided once we can move to the island of the lake, as this is not so far from here, we are from this area the place of cultivation. From this area we can easily make some 400 hectares (990 acres) of cultivation land, although that will need a lot of labor.

On the other hand, the foot of the Pleiades mountains will build the forges. This will be convenient for transporting the ore that will not be long when having the forges close by.

I really do not know how the Pleiades were formed, but in itself they are a treasure. Of the twelve mountains grouped and the inactive volcano of the center, large quantities of minerals of different kinds can be extracted, it is as if each one can provide us with different metals that, according to my current knowledge, would not be possible for their formation. Actually I can not give an explanation to the origin of these mountains. The mountain that we have closest to the surface is full of dark red or brown rocks, these are hematite, made from around 70 to 50 percent of iron. We can also find closer to the west cliff limestone, and to the east where we find another of the mountains, its surface is of different types of clay.

If we carefully explored the Pleiades we would find minerals rich in: iron, tin copper, coal, salt and other minerals. Some minerals have to be dug up like coal and salt, but at the moment we do not have enough people to make mines. In contrast, minerals rich in iron, copper, tin, limestone and clays are found in abundance on the surface of these mountains.

All this information was obtained thanks to the mini map, with it I can obtain descriptions of the objects and people that appear in it.

During these days I ordered some men to go to the mountain along with some wagons to extract some of these minerals. Mors who was in charge of leading the group was excited, but then he got discouraged when I told him what minerals he had to bring.

At first I thought we would start again with the bronze forge since he also explored the mountains where he found copper and tin. But I told him that he could only bring a small amount because he wanted me to bring as much clay, but to separate the white clay, limestones and although it would take them long to transport them, I also asked them to go to the sea to collect sand. To reach the sea would take almost a whole day so this would be an expedition of several days. With them were also 4 warriors who would serve as an escort, although the rest of the men also knew how to fight, these 4 men had the ability to "warrior", this showed that they had greater skill in combat.

-then we can only bring those minerals- Mors spoke to me with an angry face.

-yes, since they are the ones we need- I, despite seeing their anger, I only answered.

-you do not have to be angry, I promised you that I would teach you how to make a metal many times better than bronze, even better than the iron that only dwarfs are supposed to make-

- ... well it's fine- Mors still seemed discouraged, but I want to see when I see the result of all the preparations.

When I saw how the mineral collection expedition group left the village, I could only think about the next plan that was in my mind. With these materials we still can not make the metal that I want, but they are necessary to build the structures that we will use to make this metal. It does not stop to move to me in spite of not being a blacksmith, even I get excited just to think about those tall towers, and in its lower part to see how the molten metal comes out at high temperatures and then see how they take the form we want. I can not wait to see the blast furnaces.