I held no delusions about the dangers of this mission. The threat doesn't come from the demons in small boats, it comes from potentially docking at elven docks. I've reiterated the point in the past, but the danger to our ships comes from being in close quarters with powerful magic users. As such, we won't be docking at any port. Instead, we'll use smaller rowboats to transport whatever items we're supposed to pick up. From Ostark to the first port on our list, the travel time is 11 days for our ship. The various ports all have very light sounding names in elvish that all translate to things like 'Verdant Bay' or 'Bountiful Growth', which I find to be a little pretentious, but I suppose I can wait until tomorrow to judge exactly how they look when we arrive at our first stop.

Once you clear the coast and reach the deeper portion of the inland sea, the winds become less erratic and the water is actually more calm. We decided to keep a log of the demon boats we sank. What they looked like, how many demons appeared to be on board, and how many were close together.

For the first two days of travel, there were no demon ships, which I expect is because of the number of human boats patrolling that area. There seemed to be three different sizes and shapes of demon boats. The first were the dinghies that matched the ones we saw when we arrived at Ostark. These small vessels are quite a bit smaller than the canoes that they crossed the ocean in, and usually only have 6 or fewer demons with a few small crates centered in the boat. The second size are the long canoes. The ones we saw all seemed to be fairly worn, so I assume they are the same ones that many of the demons crossed the ocean in. The canoes can hold up to 20 demons and supplies. The last size is that of a small ship. They're oddly proportioned, and seem to be designed something like a mimicry of the human and dwarven ships, though they're quite crude. It's hard to say exactly how many could fit in them, but I'd expect it's about 50.

As for how many we actually saw and sank, well, we sank all the ones we saw, though we didn't verify that the demons themselves drowned. Perhaps some will survive and make it to shore in places. That isn't much of a concern though, since all the continents are infested with some amount of low level demons, which is why they have adventuring parties that travel about dealing with infestations when they become dangerous. If a handful make it to the shoreline, it won't disrupt as much as if the full ships made it.

We sank 22 dinghies, 9 canoes, and 2 of the ships. Most of the dinghies were solo, but there were two pairs and one group of four. There was something surreal about seeing the reaction through our telescope from almost two miles away after one dinghy cracked in half from a shot while a second boat watched on. The canoes, by comparison always were in groups of three. The canoes would suffer the same fate as dinghies, usually suffering complete structural collapse from a single good hit.

The ships were each independent, and took a few shots before they'd start to sink. The first ship we were more measured in our use of ammo, waiting to see how the ship and crew reacted before hitting them again. With the second ship, we tested out our higher firing rate, and sunk it rapidly. For about 9 days worth of combat, we did quite the number. Not every ship was full, but assuming they were nearly full, we probably took out around 350 demons.

In the mean time, I started drafting designs for something akin to a modern tank. Without primers for ammo, small arms simply are beyond our reach in any meaningful way. With basic magic like meteor shot, things like muskets are just far less useful, and putting something like a musket into a vehicle is just as useless. I drafted a few basic design ideas, but a large portion of the design will need to be based on testing. For example, if we use meteor shot as a baseline, how thick does the armor need to be to survive multiple hits from heavy projectiles? Heat dissipation and proper thermal regulation is also tricky. They may need to be powered by fluorite-mana crystal hybrid cores, which will require it's own testing and design considerations.

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Overall, these tanks, from just my rough estimates, are quite large and heavy. It can't really be nice and small either. No, just to fit the necessary components that we have available, it'll have to be over 30 feet long and at least 10 feet tall. In other words, we'll barely be able to fit one in our cargo bay on our ship. Future revisions of the design can probably get it smaller after operational testing and results and improvements in other technologies come along, but with our meager population, we have to operate with a lot of overlap between construction options.

I've paused my work on trying to design mineral wool as well. There are a few issues that I'm not sure how to overcome related to heat management while trying to spin fine fibers of molten rock. The temperatures are just too high for precision work with any technology we currently have. I can envision a way to do it, but it'd require frequent repair and upkeep by stoneshapers, which defeats the whole purpose. Instead, I've started to mentally evaluate construction ideas that, while labor intensive, would achieve the same insulative effect.

I was very impressed when I saw the elven continent for the first time. It's very interesting how all three continents are different. The human continent, from what I can tell, is mostly plains and hills. The dwarven continent is mountainous. The elven continent, all the way up to the coast, is covered in massive trees. Estimates using our rangefinder and inference put the canopy at 1200 feet along the shoreline, and higher further inland, though how much of the inland rise is caused by terrain is unknown.

The trees themselves are very interesting, and unlike anything I've ever seen before. Their bases sometimes span up to 100 feet, with most being between 30 and 60 feet. Almost every two-hundred feet of vertical growth, there is a large bulb section in each tree with the tree being devoid of branches just above and below each bulb. There is some variation from tree to tree on where the bulb occurs, but without fail there is a large bulbous section. Just above those sections are where elven buildings are constructed, spanning up from a bulb and fanning out onto the branches above for a few stories before halting.

Between the various bulbs there are multiple forms of connections, between bulbs on a single tree, there are vertical pulleys and ladders. Between different trees there are rope bridges and occasionally ziplines. The forest floor is quite gnarled with massive roots as well, making me wonder how the dark elves really navigate the area at all. I didn't have to really worry about coming up with a reason why we didn't want to use their ports, considering their docks were practically non-existent. They appear to simply be built out on large roots that stretch further out into the sea than the neighboring land. The shore area is so rough that I wouldn't feel comfortable navigating anywhere near it anyway.

The town we stopped at didn't have many goods for us, and a single round of the rowboats collected all of it, with it being mostly comprised of dried fungus. Shasta had signed documents to present to them, and it seemed to be enough of a reason for them to provide what they could. We've got 26 stops to make all along the elven coast after this. If things go at this pace, we'll be done in twenty days, give or take a little bit, and back on our way to Ostark. Honestly though, if each place we stop at has this little to give then I understand why no one wants to bother with this. If this wasn't a front for using our ship to destroy other demon ships, this wouldn't be worth it.

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