While I've been coordinating the work on the aircraft, I'd been building up quite the backlog of work for the new capital ship. I was still attending some of the meetings, but there was a lot more to do than that, which I had to catch up on over the summer break. On one hand, a whole bunch of the work is relatively straightforward, since everyone else is putting in the man hours to actually design and test components. On the other hand, that means that I'm stuck pouring over those results and ensuring that they'll actually work with the developments happening on other fronts.

For instance, we're upping to total power supply for the ship considerably, but that comes with new safety measures that need to be taken into account that the previous ship design didn't need to worry about. A whole bunch of things would be easier if we just had rubber, with it's flexible and wear resistant properties. As far as I can tell, no one knows of any natural rubber-like substance producing plants. That'd mean we'd have to make synthetic rubber instead, which is normally a byproduct of oil processing, which again, there is little evidence of the existence of.

I've looked over geographic maps, and very unfortunately, the places that I'd expect oil to exist lie outside of our alliance's territory. Some more northern regions of the human continent and portions of the elven continent would perhaps support the buildup of oil, and possibly some regions of the inland sea, though those are even more tenuous. Polymers, and plastics as a whole, are very complicated to make without precursor organics, and without crude oil, isolating what you want is incredibly difficult. Some plants and trees have resin-like materials in them which are used for waterproofing, but none of these resins have shown the kind of properties I'd hope for to make a more permanent bond, though there might at least be a halfway solution somewhere in there.

If we weren't in this cold war sort of situation, it'd be great to start taking samples from plants and seeing if anything can be harvested from them. We've found at least one industrially useful material from our own island in the form of the plants that have mana poison inside them. I'm sure there are plenty more that could be useful if a wider net were cast to test things. I imagine, due to the scale at which mana seems to work, many plants have evolved methods for using magic as a defense against smaller insects and disease, rather than materials like latex, which has led to the situation we find ourselves in now with a lack of a number of organic materials that I know to be highly valuable. Again, not that they might not have their own valuable substances, just that they aren't the kinds I am knowledgeable about.

We're actually sort of at a tipping point in that regard though, an edge of where my knowledge can take us. Many of the technologies from the 20th century center around plastics, rubber, and oil. Some can be worked around, especially with magic, but others are harder to deal with. There are probably entirely new technological avenues to explore that might exist that could be just as revolutionary as natural rubber or latex. There are plenty of technologies that I can catch up that have been neglected, but as far as the overall advance goes, I expect things to slow down significantly without plastics as miniaturization will be more difficult.

All that to say, I've thought about it a decent amount as many of the go-to solutions for problems I've had to solve for the capital ship and aircraft are impossible to recreate currently, which has also caused me to start re-evaluating how long I think some technologies might take to develop. Often times my guess takes into account the sorts of tests I expect I'll need to do to recreate a technology, and sometimes there are setbacks beyond that, but they're usually minor. I realized I simply can't recreate sonar yet, and if I'm adding rubber and plastics to the list of things that are nearly impossible, I think I'll need to factor that in when I estimate how long other new technologies will take.

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There were more interesting developments on the mainland a few days ago, and we had a ministers' meeting yesterday to discuss matters. We're only half-way through this semester so far, and there haven't been any setbacks or discoveries in development for new technologies that would warrant any updates to my scheduling so far, nor did what happened have any influence on changing our development directions.

A rebellion has broken out in a handful of human states bordering the inland sea. They're being called peasant rebellions officially, and as far as we are aware, they aren't being funded or influenced by us in any way, so they very well could be. The rebels have claimed a number of port cities, and have sent out a request for aid to our alliance.

According to the information they've sent us, which could be filled with half-truths to gain sympathy, citizens in many countries are being relocated to "factory towns". From what we're guessing, the fact that they don't have access to mana crystals means that they have to space their factories out to ensure they have enough power to operate. As a result, they're redistributing their population to ensure that the factories have workers and the necessary supporting infrastructure and personnel to operate.

Beyond that though, very little work is being done to improve the actual worker's quality of life. Not that I can speak much to that, especially in recent years. We've added some technologies like: magic ovens, sanitation, clean water, along with a diverse diet but honestly, I've been quite bad about quality of life for our populace. For the demons who are generally more complacent, it's been fine, and I've let the dwarves build their own entertainment too. So I suppose it's a matter that the humans are being forced to change their lives and really aren't getting much in return that might be the issue.

In claiming these port cities, the humans have also claimed a number of their version of steel ships. It's exactly the kind of incident that could start off a whole war. If we do nothing, these humans will obviously lose. Regardless of having ships, they don't actually have the factories for ammo, and a bunch of the personnel and tanks have been pulled from our border, and will likely go crush the rebellion sooner than later.

We can't even really offer them a safe place to relocate to, as no country would accept that sort of behavior on it's face. It'd practically be the same as claiming their port cities for ourselves. Even covert operations would surely be noticed. We don't even make the same kind of ammo as they use. The best idea that I could come up with would be if they took their stolen ships, and attacked us near Bonbordon. If they attacked us, and we sank their ships, their survivors could actively flee into the human countries in the south, and no one could blame us for not rooting them all out.

That has multiple other problems related to it, like introducing new spies into our territories, and still having the chance of causing escalation. The option that we're selecting to send to the alliance meeting, unfortunately, is that we do nothing. It's too risky to take any action, and even if we don't help them, this will wear down on the other sides' morale and resources. If we did help them though, it might fuel more rebellions which could also be useful. We're just one vote in the alliance meeting though, so whatever is decided there will actually be our action.

Just in case it is decided that we'll help in some way, our message is being sent to the mainland along with a number of troops, ships, and supplies, so that they'll be ready as soon as possible. Time is of the essence if a decision like that is made. If war does break out, we're still a long ways from a capital ship being built, but we've already installed two of the large turrets as defensive features on Kembora, and aircraft are actually closer to completion, and would potentially see combat.

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