The second tank arrived after another two days of waiting. In that time I recalled that I should probably be extra careful around the production of azides. Not only are they explosive, but given the dangers around nitrogen bonding, they're probably toxic. This means I'll need to set up an even more environmentally controlled area for research than I've used in the past. That means operating with distilled water, a fume hood, and highly controlled surfaces.

After everything seemed to be in order with the second tank, I did have a final discussion with Kao about future plans. If the first offensive seems to go well and they reclaim some territory and are able to hold onto it, we may want to start building out some additional production around Ostark itself. It would remove our monopoly on supplies, which is another way of saying it removes a single point of failure from causing everything to crash down. For the time being, we're the only source of mana engines, so while we can help them build out factories, they'll still be reliant on us for some time to actually provide them with those components.

Two days into the five day trip back to Kembora, a note was discovered hidden on the ship. Based on the content of the note, I can only assume Elora hid it on the ship at some point. It read:

"You are being tolerated because of the current situation. You seem to have forgotten your station in the world. When times become less trying, a penalty will have to be paid. The degree of severity will depend upon your actions. This is your warning."

All things considered, this was less severe than I had expected, but also made me somewhat concerned. I have seen some of what the elves are capable of in direct combat, but I have no idea if they have magical long range weapons. Everything I've seen of how magic works indicates that they probably don't, but probably and definitely are two different things. I also have made some assumptions that elves are like glass cannons, but it's possible that they have strong passive magical defenses as well.

It frustrates me, but it does mean we need to focus some amount of our production on building up some of our own defenses. To some degree, our ships count towards both offense and defense. However, we may want to consider building out more robust coastal defenses as an extra precaution. After all, Kao is an honorable but a practical man. If the elves threatened him with something akin to a genocide, it's possible that he'd betray us to protect his people, even sacrificing the few thousand on our island to save the rest of the dwarves. While unlikely, it's a dark possibility.

Shortly after I arrived on the island, the ministers discussed the cautionary note from Elora, along with plans moving forward. We've decided that we should probably expand island defenses where possible, while also considering what the next few years are going to look like. The two military ministers will be heading out shortly with the next tank to begin joint operations with Kao. We aren't actually sending much of our military to assist, directly, but since we have the most practice operating around our equipment, having some individuals there to answer questions will be useful, combat is out of the question, given the potential confusion when the fog of war breaks out when there are demons on both sides.

I've mentioned it many times in the past, but dwarves and demons work quite well together for construction. The blocks that dwarves cut are very easy to use stoneshaping on to create a solid structure. That results in mechanical production being the bottleneck, with buildings waiting on machines to be made to fill them. That does mean that we actually do have the spare construction to work on building out more coastal defensive structures, basic infrastructure to those places, and housing for a larger population.

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For me, however, the industrial demand means that for the last 10 days, I have had to focus on mining fluorite. Otherwise everything will grind to a halt. It has been quite unfortunate that the dwarves haven't found any other fluorite deposits either, though depending on the fluorite type and location, it could be deadly.

I put in a request for some modifications to a space within the main lab building I built decades ago, on the second floor, to have a proper lab built out. It's going to be outfitted with refined lightstone surfaces all over the place, fume hoods, specialty storage cabinets, and water storage and collection. I've requested a lot of kinds of glassware as well. It shouldn't take too long to make, but that doesn't really matter, since I'm sort of chained to the fluorite mine anyway for a little while. I think that in a few more weeks time, I'll probably have excavated enough that groups can come in occasionally using cryogenic fluid to start assisting in harvesting the fluorite, which will start to free me up.

In the mean time, I've started to review previous notes I'd made on chemistry, to see if I can spark some of my memories on how to even try to proceed with producing azide compounds. The one good thing I have going for me is that I have plenty of nitrogen precursor materials to try to work with. I have nitrous oxide, nitric acid, and ammonia production systems available, so I do have quite a bit of options to try things out.

Twenty more days of mining fluorite, and the temperature has come down enough that excavation teams can work for a couple of hours every few weeks with the assistance of cryogenic fluid. Since there are multiple individuals, rather than just me, their output averages out to about the same amount as I am able to produce, meaning I should be free to being work on my projects. Well, after I ensure the lab space is all in working order.

I have a few dozen experiments I want to try for trying to produce azides. There are a lot of possibly chemical reaction pathways to pursue, and without having charts of enthalpy values to reference, I can't say off the top of my head which reactions are favored versus not, or what temperatures or pressures might adjust those values. As such, it's going to be a long process. One thing that I've decided to do, however, that will make doing some chemistry easier over time is produce some highly reactive substances. We have plenty of strong acids, we have at least one strong base, and we have the ability to produce strong anions in the form of chlorine gas.

We haven't, however, really set up the other half of salt electrolysis line to produce a strong cation in the form of sodium metal. As such, I'd like to have that available as well. Azide, is a triple nitrogen group with a negative charge, so having sodium metal available should allow me to stabilize the azides, should I find a pathway to producing them. If sodium azide is explosive enough, then great. If not, then I'll at least have a material I can use as a precursor to other metal azides through acid reactions. Of course, I'll need to be able to infer if I even have sodium azide or not, but with element numbers that low, stoichiometry and atomic masses should give me a good hint whether I've done it or not.

Something else of note that I've been seeing is the breakneck production pace around the island really is something. Everyone is bustling about and working hard. We've slowed down the pace that we're killing clam leviathans in order to produce more shells for war, but they were already reaching a point where the clams weren't moving as much after a recent kill, meaning that we're probably nearing the end of them. They have jumpstarted the average levels of our populace by quite a few decades worth of passive level gain, so they've been quite valuable.

That has led to an increase in the number of stoneshapers we have. Combined with the sheer amount of stone blocks being mined, things are expanding fast enough that I'm glad we have those extra demons who can summon imps now. The other ministers have also had to adapt quickly, adding extra projects all over the place to supply all the necessary food for the expanded population. Some of the dwarves have started helping with terracing projects to expand farmland as well. Honestly, it's quite something how fast things change, and how different the island looks compared to a few decades ago.

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