kirabug's idea files

Day 208:

The lava is glassed in and now sounds something like a massive swarm of bees bouncing against the inside of a glass beehive instead of like death incarnate bubbling.

So that’s an improvement.

The waterfall is also contained, although not to the same extreme because having the water loose is nice and cooling for the air, which we kind of need what with the giant glass lava river taking up most of the middle of the room.

Also, I appear to have found another chasm. I am sure you are shocked. This one looks like it heads east, toward the big mountain. I’m going to follow it.

Slowly, though. There’s still gold and emeralds just sticking out of the walls.

Day 207:

Well more than half of the lava river is walled in and I should be able to get around it to reach the gold ore I can see sticking out of the wall behind it.

I should, but there’s a waterfall in the way.

See, I knocked a piece of rock out of the ceiling so that I could put down a piece of glass and lo and behold there was a waterfall behind it.

I couldn’t hear the waterfall over the loud popping sounds the lava makes when it spits (though I have to admit those are getting softer as I wall it in).

So now I have to finish walling in the lava *and then* wall in the waterfall so that I can get the gold.

Wish gold was useful or something here. I feel like an alternating-hot-sweaty-stinky-cold-shivering-wrinkly fool down in that pit.

Day 206:

Lava pools spit.

This is important to know, because humans are not made of glass and will burn up in the lava.

• Fortunately, my armor is quite thick.
• Unfortunately, it now has a hole three quarters of the way through it thanks to a flaming pyrotechnic rock.
• Fortunately, I have enough iron to make an anvil to fix my armor.
• Unfortunately, that’s a lot of work.
• Fortunately I have a river of lava here to do the heating and reheating of the metal.
• Unfortunately, the lava spits.

This planet shouldn’t be named Serendipity. It should be named Circular Argument.

Day 205: I may have miscalculated how much glass is required to wall in a river of lava. Spent the day armpits-deep out in the bay harvesting all the sand I could.

Sand is heavy when wet and I am dog tired.

Also, the cave house stinks of coal fumes. What I’d give for a pocket-sized fusion reactor right now.

Day 204:

I’ve found a long snaking river of lava in a cave I was digging to get to the big mountain.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that the lava here seems to be thicker than molasses (whatever that is) and — this is the weird part — yes weirder than usual — it doesn’t melt glass.

I have absolutely zero explanation of that and I’m hoping sometime in my lifetime whoever bails me off this rock will bring a physicist or maybe one of those material scientist types who could explain why the laws of thermodynamics aren’t applying here. I mean, the lava’s a hell of a lot hotter than the coal I’m burning to make the glass in the first place.

Anyway, this means I can, with enough glass, wall in the lava so it’s safe to travel around.