I ended up having to deal with three problems basically at the same time shortly after I completed the initial testing for nitroglycerin. I had started the process of designing the reactors and the building itself for nitroglycerin production when a third eagle arrived. Unlike the other two, this one decided that, indeed, the top of the island was too crowded for it, and it'd much rather settle a little ways down one of the ridgelines in the craggy portions of the island. That required my immediate attention. If we let it settle for too long and another eagle comes along, we might compound the problem.

Trying to deal with one drugged eagle was already going to be a handful, and letting it get out of hand could result in us not being able to easily drug individual eagles, with the end result being us needing to cull some of the population. The eagles seem sympathetic to each other to some degree, so allowing one to aggravate others would be very unwise. It's thus best to deal with them individually as they arrive. Once we've done it a few times, I can probably leave the task to the eagle management teams, but I'll need to oversee and monitor the sedative uses until I'm comfortable with the dosage necessary.

This particular eagle was extra difficult to deal with. First, it settled quite far from the nearest road, meaning all of our handling of it required foot traffic. Second, it was our first attempt at drugging and clipping the wings of an eagle, so there were multiple unknowns. The first problem we had to solve was the initial drugging. Some basic testing had been done with ground birds to determine the best bait delivery system, but whether or not it could work on an eagle was up in the air.

What we decided on was a carried bait container with an overhanging hood that could be attached separately. The bottom of the container had a paper pulp that had been soaked in ether, with fish stacked on top. The hood was then attached to the bait box, and a decoy object made of fish was placed near the box to get the eagle's attention. It took two days, and four batches of ether before the eagle took the bait. The ether evaporates somewhat quickly, so we had to replace it twice a day, requiring it's own logistics line to keep us supplied.

We waited a ways away, keeping watch over the bait station until the eagle finally came down. It first ate the decoy, and then inspected the food box. To eat the fish in the ether box, it had to stick it's head through the hood, which served to concentrate the ether fumes. While the eagle was cautious, and clearly reacted to the initial fume whiff, they also seemed to sedate it initially, and cloud it's judgement, as it continued to eat and inhale, it soon fell unconscious, allowing us to quickly get to work.

The few dozen soldiers and eagle management demons and I all came as quickly as possible to begin our work. While the eagle was heavily sedated from the ether, we had multiple tasks to quickly take care of. While I worked to get the leather mask attached to the eagle to begin supplying oxygen and nitrous oxide to keep it sedated, multiple demons spread its wings out. I'm not even technically sure if clipping the eagle's wings will work, given it seems to use some amount of magic to fly, but I suspect it'll at least impair its flight control enough to discourage it from flying often.

Once the mask was applied and working, I quickly made my way to the outer edges of the eagle's wings. I used very large clippers to snip about 8 feathers to half their normal length on the outer edge of each wing. After I finished one wing, the demons began moving the wing back, so we could be ready as quickly as possible to begin the process of moving the eagle.

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After both wings were clipped, a large rope was wrapped around the eagle in multiple places, and then the eagle was lifted onto a makeshift stretcher we had designed that was meant to be carried by 20 individuals. In the meantime, a dozen or so demons had arrived to where we were, all hauling various items. Some had baskets with down feathers, others carried bundles of branches. All had come from the eagle's initial nesting site that they'd found.

By then, the eagle had been out for nearly an hour, and we were still at least 8 hours of travel from making it up to the selected artificial nest for this eagle to reside in. The demons carrying the nesting materials were able to move more freely, and went ahead to begin prepping the nest area. Every two hours or so, a resupply of nitrous oxide, oxygen, and ether would arrive to swap out the supply in the cart we were using to keep the bird unconscious.

There were a few close calls where the eagle started to stir and rock the stretcher, but a sharp sudden supply of ether would knock it out again. After we finally set the eagle up in its new nest, and removed everything, it came to in about ten minutes. It seemed quite out of it, and clearly was distressed. On one hand, it seemed to be a success, with us having relocated the eagle without killing it. Over the next few days though, it became clear that it wasn't as successful as I'd hoped. Perhaps it was just that the eagle is still somewhat confused between the clipped wings and being relocated, but it seemed that it might have suffered some amount of brain damage, probably from being unconscious for so long.

I've asked for regular updates on the eagle's situation. If it recovers fully, then it's not much of a problem, but if it's permanently injured like this, we'll maybe need to change how we handle this process. Perhaps we'll need to split the travel up, or transport the eagle while its awake using some metal restraints. It did at least seem to be a partial success for a first try.

It was unfortunate that I had to take a multi-day detour to deal with the eagle, because we really do need to start dealing with the leviathans as well. We had our first major problem occur as a result of the leviathans, though I suppose killing them would have still caused the issue. A crab shell blocked off a large part of one of our artificial tide pools, and it took a few days to clear it enough to restore our supply of fish. I was dealing with the eagle at the time, and Zaka came up with the solution to remove it. It was too big to move, and very difficult to break. So, he ended up having an artillery piece brought over, and at close range they repeatedly fired into the shell.

It didn't break through on the first shot, but it did damage the crab shell enough to encourage them. They ended up using about 100 artillery shells before they'd broken the crab carapace down enough to allow use of the artificial tide pool to resume. When I returned and saw the remnants, I suggested that they use some sulfuric acid to remove any large pieces that were still in their way during low tide. The process would be extremely dangerous, but it should embrittle the shell. Ultimately, you just need a strong individual to use meteor shot to throw a large glass container full of concentrated acid directly at the shell. After a few hours, a single artillery shot should be able to break through the newly embrittled piece of carapace.

After both of those urgent problems were taken care of, I finally returned to finish the final stages of the nitroglycerin facility's design, as well as begin testing and design for making an explosive barge to deal with leviathans. There are multiple problems to solve related to making an explosive barge that I need to tackle. We have the issue of fine tuning the sensitivity such that it doesn't explode due to a large wave, but does explode when damaged by a leviathan. That breaks down into multiple smaller problems of a trigger mechanism, and whether or not dynamite can actually be used in this setup, or if we need to figure something else out. Once the nitroglycerin plant is under production, I'll begin tinkering with the designs.

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