I finally found some time to get the requested railway equipment, including two additional steamrollers, scheduled to be delivered to the mainland. I had to make a few trips back to Kembora to ensure all the materials were still available and able to be manufactured. Kembora is continuing to grow at a steady pace under the governmental system we outlined in our constitution. Pretty soon, Drazvok will need to more fully develop its government, since it's been steadily growing. I've been operating as something like governor for it until now, and while the academy itself is an entirely different story, the nearby town full of support staff and other citizens has grown enough that I really shouldn't be the one managing it anymore.

I had hoped that over this break I'd be organizing a handful of my own internships for students to do, but its clear that my schedule is going to be quite full already. At least what will be taking up that time will be teaching replacements for my administrative and governmental tasks in a bunch of areas. That should free me up even more for the future to be able to focus my efforts more directly on the academy. I will still have to make the occasional trip back to Kembora to handle upper government planning as one of the ministers though. I've thought a few times about whether I could have someone replace me there, but it doesn't seem feasible at this time. No one else really has enough knowledge of engineering and science to provide the same quality of insight and direction for construction efforts.

For example, there have been multiple questions as to why we keep expanding our steel production when the railroad construction can't keep up with our production amount. We've been using some of it to further fortify Kembora, and have started to add fortifications to Drazvok as well, but even then we're producing way more than we need. We aren't selling that steel either, at least not in its raw form, which has made some of the other ministers question why we are doing it, and I'd argue they're right in questioning it when we could be working on other projects with immediate benefits rather than stockpiling steel.

The reason for it, however, goes beyond any individual item or idea. I've already started to see the seeds of the reason at the academy, which is something almost no one else on the planet would recognize, because they haven't been to earth. The amount of steel needed for hundreds of items that haven't been invented yet is the reason. Ships take a lot, so do railways, but so will automobiles, hand tools, power tools, high-rise buildings, radio towers, and hundreds of smaller items that all are on the cusp of being invented.

On earth, steel production would rise to meet the demand over time, and there would be a shortage of steel production for periods while the industry tried to catch up. Since I already know that there will be demand, we can jump start our own production to ensure we're at the market forefront to reduce the chances of being outmaneuvered. The self-propelled wagon club is already closing in on a first model of an automobile. Funnily enough, it looks a lot like early models of the automobile from earth. We'll need more fluorite and fluorite processing to keep up with that kind of demand as well, something which I haven't been following as closely to see if new deposits have been found or not.

The humans, likely with the help of elves, have replicated our fluorite processes, so its possible they'll quickly replicate automobiles when we introduce them into the market. This is all the more reason why we need to keep close ties with the dwarves. Our island's natural resources won't be able to keep up with global demand for very long. This is part of the reason why I want the railway on the dwarven continent. Increased logistical capacity there can make transporting ore and raw material all the way to Kembora economical, allowing us to compete. If there is one thing we do have in abundance, at least, its iron in the form of basalt. If the basalt formations continue deep under the island, then the hypothetical area of basalt that we could mine would be astronomical, as long as we can manage potential risks at those kinds of depths under the ocean.

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Without intending to, I've stumbled upon the essence of colonization that Europe enacted at the beginning of the 20th century, though admittedly, we aren't invading the dwarves directly, so perhaps its closer to what America did in Latin America. I think our terms with the dwarves are a bit more fair to both parties though, so maybe not. In either case, we're purposefully providing logistical and industrial capabilities to them with the purpose of having them enter the trade market at a cheaper price for overall mutual benefit. The retrospection that it seems to almost be a natural consequence of industrialization and resource requirements is a little amusing, I just hope that in another fifty years, we won't be seen as having exploited them unfairly. I suppose that result will be dependent on how much they prosper due to our influence.

While all the other faculty had quite a bit more freedom during this summer break, I was busy getting everything reorganized and handling peripheral duties. I organized the first mayoral election on Drazvok, with voting only being open to permanent residents. I've left it up to them to handle naming the city when it reaches that point. For now, similar to Kembora for a long time, the town and island have the same name. Eventually Kembora City was the name that the city took, so I won't be surprised if Drazvok City is the name that is decided on here too. The population of permanent residents is only a few hundred people, so it's by no means large enough to have anything more than a mayor for now.

I also got word that the railway team now wants another 3 steamrollers. It's at the point now in the trade city that I think they should move beyond having just a mayor, and they should start having officials in charge of things like the railway industry. Then they can have their own authority to make requests back to Kembora and negotiate for these sorts of things themselves. I'm not sure that they even need more steamrollers if they're operating everything efficiently.

Unlike Drazvok where I've been operating as the sole point of power, they've got their own provisional government already. So I've sent word to the minister of administration at our federal level that they need to be looked at to have more positions of government created. I oversaw the Drazvok elections just because of convenience for all parties, since I'd be the one handing off the duties anyway to my successor.

The self-propelled wagon club didn't quite reach the point of what I'd call success by the end of the semester, so I didn't quite feel as bad that I couldn't manage any interns over the break. We've continued our trend of having fewer students drop out between semesters as well, so I think that things are headed in the right direction still. The only thing I've been a bit frustrated about has been that I haven't really had the free time to really develop a strong relationship with any of the students.

That might come back to bite me later, since I'd really like to hire outstanding students to either become faculty or manage industry for Kembora. Part of the benefit of having the trade city on the mainland is that some amount of industry can be built there, allowing dwarves that we train to still live on their home continent all while still working for us. If I don't have a good enough relationship with those individuals though, the odds of them accepting an offer go down.

It wouldn't be the end of the world, given that there isn't anything like intellectual property rights, so even if they took some of their ideas and tried to replicate them on the mainland, we still have an edge in a lot of ways, but talented individuals themselves are also a resource, and a valuable one at that. With more of my time freed up, I'm hoping that I can remedy that situation moving forward.

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