Skyblock time again (AG Skies 2)

[ICountFrom0]

It failed.

I wasn't able to get enough mana into the reaction fast enough. My items dissolved into nothingness in the middle of forming that new material.

I've got an idea of something that will produce a bit more mana for me on a better time table. It all starts here, a proper treefarm, no more just sitting and waiting, or bonemealing oak wood as I need it.



Rubberwood won't have much use, to be honest. Sure I could sawmill it down into planks, but I honestly like the look of oak better and apples are a good thing to have. Still you can't get rubber without it, and from that comes the plastics needed for the machines from the minefactory.

Yes, I built a farm that makes plastic, in order to make farms that use plastic. I'll only ever need so much of it... suppose I should let the farm stuff itself once I've got a large enough stockpile. The second pad there is for oak wood. The extra saplings go on to the third pad where oak leaves are harvested.



Gloriously, now that I've climbed up my tech, now that I can make almost anything I want, I can simplify the ductwork into something beautiful. Well, perhaps not beautiful, but well made. Not handsome, but handy. Still, I enjoy the look of it, though at first glance it's confusing. Power, items, and the sludge with only two lines. No need for servoes or filters or extractors.

I am going to try to keep everything that needs mana up here on this one floor, though that might take a few bits of reworking. Mostly because I'm not sure how I could easily get mana elsewhere. Tough, I have been poking at the force relays, and there's a lens that might interact with them, pass through the world without passing through the world.

I've time enough to experiment with almost anything. Almost.



Some things are not for experiments. You simply want them to be as safe as possible. You don't want to take risks with infusion. I've got crystals below, and the glowing plants of botania, when they float above the infusion also add to that stability. So too do the pillars that I've placed around the altar. Mana pylons contain any mistakes until that stability too is spent.



It took a bit of mana to make those pylons and convert the flowers, and that mana comes from this munchdew. I let the system run a while, built up a stockpile of leaves and then placed them a few stacks at a time, adding more and more while the plant feasted. Still one shouldn't have to sit and watch one's plants so constantly. Time now to draw on another resource, not just my time.



With a bit of trickery, a tiny AE system is now pumping leaves out as fast as it can and the munchdew is as well fed as I can make it. Though in time I'm going to make this a much grander operation. One cannot depend on a single source of power, of any kind. I'm thinking 4 kinds of power before I'm done.

Still it's just trading on one sort of power from another, this draws quite strongly on my RF production, the treefarm is not inexpensive and nither is this system. It was enough for me to get some terrasteel. Enough to make the core of the gateway and the pylons.



Powering this portal takes yet more. I could perhaps be patient, one full pool split between the two pylons would be enough, the munchdew would get there, but I've had a bountiful harvest. I shall share this harvest with a gormandus. The food I've not yet eaten, I share with this plant and in turn it feeds the pool. Thus I am able to open the portal.



The elves on the other side are gracious and willing to trade. Trade I did. I've got quite a nice little stash of advanced materials now. An Orechid or two will help my troubles once I've built my system to have robust enough mana supplies to handle such a drain on my systems. Handled the same way I've built the munchdew. Perhaps too I will arrange the purity of that flower to run for itself.



I've done so much waiting, it's about time to treat things more seriously. Truth is, this axe isn't very good for trees, or for fighting monsters, but it does have some strange properties. It seems that the strange materials has reversed the very nature of the axe. Instead of damage, it heals. Not just myself but even a zombie villager. That would have made things a little easier before, but I did not know.

Still, now I can sit, safely, and watch paint dry or plants grow, knowing the axe will heal me and keep me alive.



The list of things that I'm required by the overseers to make is rather small in botania. I would not call it quickly finished, there was plenty of times where I sat in aggravation while waiting for just a little more mana.

There wasn't much of a reward for this chapter, but it did get me to build a system that is robust enough to make many more things. Though in such a world as this so many things I'd normally make would only spell my doom. I have no need to move faster or jump better. I hope to find ways to use this mana wisely.



I've little enough mana to start, but I'll use a large chunk of it to improve this ring into a better form of the aura ring. Now while I work with other tasks I'll be able to form a little more mana in my tablet. Likewise it'll preserve the manasteel tools that I've built to work these fields.

I said before that I seem to be short on power. The treefarm provides wood enough and that was something I was short on when I went to upgrade my solar system before.



This time though I'll not run out of wood so easily.

.... This time it was silver. About 800 silver for each of these panels. Still, That's enough power that I need to make a better way to carry power.

That's only going to cover the day, so when the night falls I'll have to lean on the lava. Since I've got iron enough it's also time to upgrade the generator another step. Now this culinary generator can chow down and process my food into power even faster.



I've also upgraded the power backbone another step. I was having just a little trouble with some machines not getting enough power. With these changes I'm able to take the flux windmills down.

While I'm patching holes and filling in little projects for the overlords, I paused a moment to make sure I'd made all the materials.



Nearly every material I could make, I've now made. There where a few forms of storage that I'd not yet properly investigated, the overlords where making demands. I've spent so much time doing my own things that the demands where piling up for a long time.

I'm not entirely sure that I really want to do too much with the ender tank, it's got such high costs and seems to do so little for it. A few drums would store more. On the other hand, one of them built would look pretty good.



Okay, okay, more then one. One for each fluid, with tesseracts. Purely for display. I admit I've been planning this from the start.

Seems though such plans fall through the cracks. While I can make anything, I'm not yet able to have as much of it as I'd like in unlimited amounts.

That's not the only thing to fall through the cracks.



Seems having a village up on top of the roof isn't the best place to have one without a wall to block them off from the ladder. Quite a few of them escaped down here.

So with the launcher and the safari nets. Collect them all, weed through them and find the good ones.

I've got them all safe in a chest. I should head up to the village can capture them too. Another sort through to get the best of them.



Still, I can drop them safe in the chest until it's time to collect the rest and make the village simply the best of the best.

I've been charging my wands with fights from monsters and flying out to charge from nodes, but it's time to unjar some of the nodes I've gotten as rewards. They are small but well balanced. It'll give me a little to keep going until I get to the big project.



Though before I can get to the big project, I need to finish one of these older ones. I've been trinking about this since I first had witch water.

There's no cinderpearls in the sky. Sure, agricraft let me buy some seeds for them from a villager, but they don't feel the same to me. I really wanted to form one from the raw escences. I wanted to do this properly. Into the cauldron goes magic, and fire.



Out comes a cinderpearl. From what had been mundane materials.

Making the shimmerleaf is a little less efficient. Copper leaves behind quite a bit of metal in the crucible. I seem to have little choice though, can't find a better source. The seeds require silverwood near them for them to grow well.

Still, in goes the netherwart and the copper, then the flower.



Out comes shimmerleaf. I'll need more of these. Lots more.

Into the boiler goes half a stack of charcoal. A stack of sugar cane. A stack of cobblestone. A stack of stone to get ordo. Four stacks of planks to get the arbor. A little more to be sure.

Witch water, cinderpearl, shimmerleaf.



I've got 50 points of instability protection. The infusion is 10 points. If things go wrong it can get quite a bit worse then that, but I've got enough protection to cover even the worse case.

So it's no shock that I got it to work, and I got it grown. Greatwood.

This can be the core to new growth.

 

[ICountFrom0]

New growth, a fine tree indeed. Greatwood even.

A highly magical material, very responcive to magic and vis. It'll be useful for a number of crafting tasks. Still, there's ways to make this into an even stronger, more exotic material. Though, first, I want to take advantage of the mana I've been collecting, the cobble that's been slowly compressing and some exotic materials I've been saving.



First I craft the tool with the most slots I can and upgrade with emerald and diamond. The Terrasteel gives quite a boost to what I can do to the tool to start with, even with having to save two upgrade spots. Parts are swapped in, one at a time, for bedrockium until I've got maximum durability on the tool. High durability and two slots for the upgrade, a resonating flux capacitor now fits into my tool. One more swap of parts and I've got the best I can make, at least for now.



This pick is strong enough to break almost anything, stores massive power, and takes a long time to break even when it's out of power. I spent a while in the nether, clearing a space to try to train it. Once I'd trained it a while there was enough gain in the tool that I'm contemplating changing the pick head to a material that isn't as lightweight and fast, for it breaks anything in a blink no matter what.

I've also been able to reinforce it with enough obsidian to make it completely invaluable to damage. Making the preparation that I'd done in making the tool little more then an amusing test. Perhaps I learned something, maybe not, but it's good to know that I've been able to make something that will last.



Likewise this blade, strong enough on it's birth to do more harm then good in the wrong hands. I practiced the deadly swing on zombie pigmen when I was tired of swinging my pick, the blade only got stronger and stronger. I've soon grown this into a tool of destruction and slaughter that matches the pick in raw destructive force. Still, it might not be the most lethal tool I could make, but it will do until I discover more ways to bend this reality to my whims.

Though I do admit it, this was just a distraction, a way to relax after the battle of cataclysmic magics that it took to infuse that tree and change the world. I took a break, I did this to draw breath and give myself time.



For too long if I wanted a machine I hooked it up to power just long enough to use it, otherwise I'd automate it so that there's be that resource done and ready and just waiting in the chests. All of them are here, even one I'd not thought I'd want, or use. Phytogrow is a limiting factor in how often I can grow things with it, still it's given me an idea or two.

The central pillar often had a mess of machines around it, removing from the stark beauty of the void. No more.

Well, in truth there's other machines I'll need to do that with still, but for now, if nothing else, these machines are done. Each ready to turn a chest of materials into results. Still, other machines will be boxed in pipes to never see daylight, working endlessly and tirelessly to produce the materials to rebuild the world and please those overlords, so my tasks are ne'er done.



Oddly in order to understand the purity of silverwood you first have to indulge and explore taint. In the pristine sky there is only one source of this exotic poison. Myself. So here I sit, eating and passing the time, filling this drum with a material, one that would be collected from animals, if it was safe to go near them at all.

From me, into the tank, and then into an aspect boiler to separate the poisons from the pain and the small sliver of taint. Then into vials.



Shards broken into slivers. Slivers into the cauldron. Shard to give it shape and purity out. Due to the shattered nature of the world there are many things that have no spirit, and thus no aspects in them. So many things I'd normally be using just don't function. It's been a bit of a search to find things that can go into the cauldron to give me the aspects I need.

The balanced shards have many uses and when I have destabilized them with fire into this strange magical salt, they make up the second thing I needed.



With alchemy it's possible to infuse a poppy to get shimmerleaf.

It's also possible to take the refinement even further.

Taint in the cauldron, and then the sano, the very escence of healing until the poison is overwhelmed, and the visshrooms are magic and herba, further enhancing the nature of the magical plant to get the shimmerleaf to bloom into an etheral bloom.



Diamond, and crystal aspect, the closest to purity you can come. Etheral blooms so that the node will be pure. Salis mundis with magic essence to fuel the change. The arbor is needed to balance things out, so the tree remembers itself. Thus the greatwood tree is pushed through into a higher energy magical state, the silverwood.

This is just one sapling and one of anything is almost never stable biologically speaking, the next step is to grow and harvest until I've gotten enough.



The magical grafter with repair, one of the rewards of the overlords is key to making sure that I get saplings from the tree. While normally I'd use a crook, there are some things and some times the old methods are best.

Place the sapling, water it, harvest with the lumber axe, break with the grafter until it's nearly worn, then regain my strength with the healing axe while waiting for the rest of the leaves to dissolve. The magnet to make sure that nothing goes stray.

Until I can convert back what the pure nodes have changed I'll be letting the island exist to mark them.



Normally you'd only get a few silverleaf growing under the silverwood in the magical forest. A new tree might have one, or you might not get any. I cannot spend forever planting and replanting trees for them, they are too valuable a resource.

Thus I've made a place for them in my garden.

There are only four spots left in the garden where things are not yet growing. One of them might never be possible, but I shall reserve the space for it just the same.

If I have a use for it, I grow it. If they might be required of me, I grow them as well.

I've a use for the shimerleaf.

It's a strongly magical material, and just enough to give me access to one more exotic alchemic reaction.

Mytheral.

 

[ICountFrom0]

Bottles everywhere is a mess, even if I put the bottles and vials into chests when I don't need them. Storing them inside the drives is much better. I'm a little short on whispy essence so I can't make too many of these strange technomagical constructs just yet.

For now I have to be careful not to store more then I need in the system at any time. It's much nicer to be able to break things down without having to worry that I'm wasting any of it. Cook it up, bottle it, and then set it down for the infusion. That lets me progress to the next step.



The output on the system. Now advanced alchemy that is honestly advanced, not just a little easier. As long as the aspects are somewhere in my system I can use the construct to generate any of the alchemical marvels I've been slowly doing by hand. The slow process that gave me my first balanced shards is now just a matter of throwing in some water shards and making sure that I've got enough on the drive for them.



Not everything has an easy source. The destruction of the world has left some of these items empty of life, so I must be a little more careful then normal. I must search a little harder. Sometimes there is nothing I can use if I need massive amounts of an aspect, just no good sources. Alchemy has the answer, break down the aspect. With the buffer in place and a one way pipe it can flow the essence neatly into the jar and into the system.

This single device changes corpus from something that I must farm from the creatures to a product I can break down from crafting tables.



When you are trying to bottle 1600 or so huamus to feed into an infusion to collapse the magical core into a node you will take any shortcut that you can.

It is a dark and unholy practice but I am willing to brace myself and handle the madness in order to have my own node on this island. One of my own crafting and devising.



Once I've made the node I've the need to feed it. Combine it with the few others I've been given and another smaller node of my own construction to tip it over the edge into being a true monster. For that I need to infuse the stabilizer with even more magic so that I've a complex enough device. This one will let my node feed from the others while protecting it from the hunger of others.



That process can only be helped by the passage of time. Thus time I will use smartly. Another infusion here allows me to feed the infusion process from essences within the drives. I won't need to use jars as long as I've got space enough for all the aspects. This isn't true right now, but eventually I'll have space enough for everything.



The first thing made has proven to be quite the inspiration. Soul sand has tine bits of memories in them. This device processes these smallest bits into fragments of knowledge. With those I wasn't just able to advance my research. Nay, I was nearly able to complete it. Some things are still beyond me, I cannot find the trigger in some cases, others I am unsure.

Maybe there are things that I must still scan. I'll save enough of the notes to hopefully complete the search in ease. If I've not saved enough of these notes, I've also saved the device.



One of the inspirations was that I could use that phytogenic device to grow the taint tendrils from the seeds without having to have the dangerous environment they normally need. I do not get anywhere even close to the same crop that I'd get if they had the correct factors in place, but it is enough for me to make a magical flower. This one feeds on the taint left behind by the others, or on mistakes and corruption my other contraptions have left.



I've completed the node. It is less then the sum of the nodes fed into it by far, but in a way it is so much more. An untapped potential. Though in order to use it I need to progress a little further. Before I do that, I'm having urges. Hungers.



The world must be neatly finished. Cleaned. Tidy, neat, orderly.

As I work I produce chaos. Wires scattered. Platforms disrupted. My order broken.

Is that a hint of madness... perhaps. Maybe I'll take a little break from this until I've regained myself.

Maybe.

 

[ICountFrom0]

A touch of upgrades to the main sifting setup has them going through resources so fast that I don't have a stockpile to draw on for my crafting. So it becomes time to make additions to my setup. While I could make any of these on demand I've always preferred to keep stockpiles of anything that I could produce an unlimited amount of easily. If one can have infinity, embrace it.



A slightly tricky machine to contemplate, but no stranger then the sifting machine. Sand into sandstone, sandstone into nitor and sand, then back. Nitor is in a few things here and there, mostly I just want to have it. Nothing wrong with that is there?



While this isn't the land of the ice and snow, I can collect some, store it, and now it will be there when I need it. I might be able to add one more tweek to make another kind of ice, or perhaps another machine completely for latter.




Likewise, from the water I can get a small amount of salt. I still think it would make a rather pretty building material, I've just not yet found a place that catches my eye for it. Though, truth be told, where would I put it? Everything I make is just going to be consumed in the recreation of the world, so why spend much time in contemplation of such tasks.



With only one processing system it's not practical to let the system do much autocrafting. I don't want to have to wait for the mindless demands on my system to halt before I can get my own work done. That's also why I like to keep an infinity or two in a chest here and there. Though if one wants things to happen effectively one must automate, and then automate the automation.

Thus another set of chips get made. And from them I've constructed a few more blocks of computanium. Now my work won't be interrupted if I let the system autocraft by itself some. This gives me an entire new set of things I can upgrade.



First the manual smeltery as a test. The system makes the pyrothium dust, any time it is needed, and melts it down for the smeltery. Course this is little I need this for anymore, but some things from the past must be preserved. One never can predict the possible deviation that might strike the world. One can never be too sure or too safe.

Working in the ruin of the world, there is always an example of what has gone wrong, you need only ever look down.



Still a tangled mess under the gearworks, but with the pyrothium even the hardest to forge materials craft faster then ever before. No amount of work makes these wires want to lay flat or be orderly in the slightest. Still, I can trace how things flow, and understand the madness I made.

Though, perhaps I only understand madness because I am mad.



Could be madness, could be just that nobody else understands.

I've formed the inscribers into a tower. The most compact form I could. On demand, and I demand much from my system, the materials come in, flow up to the presser, and get pulled into the final presser before being delivered back to me.



I get such a charge out of this, when things go right. Course crystals arn't the only thing I could charge in this. Still I have little use for an entropy manipulator when I can do anything it can do with my machines. Still, now the system can make charged quartz on demand.



This machine means that I'll need to teach it to grind the certus and fluix and quartz on demand, somewhere, eventually. Though the certus is the thing I am least likely to need because of the amounts I get from sifting. The other two though... in due time.

First though, I'll just concentrate on this one step at a time. Build a machine, and then automate it. Latter I will need more machines, and so I build them. The press demanded pure certus, and now this system can make it.



Thus with the machine satisfied, I can build more. More. Yet more. Almost enough.

Almost enough is never enough, but I'll stop here with these for now.

Though truth be told, I might be putting the mad into mad scientist. I took this rest and tinkered with my machines to try to escape the madness, and it might not have worked.



Though if this is madness I still have some of my mind left. With the new machines, comes new demands for power, and my solar system has grown complex enough that I dare not try to make more just yet. Not when it can so easily obliterate my silver supply.

This new lava system is being fed by two cobble gens, each turning turn and turn about to fill the cauldrons. Those in turn are heated by pyrothium. The lava is carried to barrels under the cobblegen for compactness and beauty. Beauty in the eye of myself if no other. I've even used some of the most advanced liquid pipes and servoes that I could produce.



One more machine, this one to try to preserve my life. I might be a little crazy, but I'm not going to enter into this final form of magic in this world without some sort of precaution.

It's a simple matter to fill the altar the first few times when you've gotten yourself to 40 hearts of life and you can cure yourself with a resonant healer. Though without the unlimited conduit I rather quickly burn out the power storage in this machine. This escence is not a cheep thing.



It also makes me rather hungry. I find myself glad of the ring of nutrition because it costs of me even more then the axe can restore to me sometimes. I have laughed at the axe of healing being unable to heal me. Laughed as I drive the knife into my hand again and feed the altar more.

More and more needed, growing the altar another layer higher and more ornate.



It's not requiring anything exotic from me in materials. Stone, glowstone, sometimes water or lava. The one thing it requires most from me, is something I have plenty of. It's a sacrifice that must be made if I want to progress in all these schools and complete the missions from the overlords.

I admit I've not heard from them lately, I think they are upset from how few of the tasks I was given that I've actually completed. Though truth be told I had to improve the infrastructure before I was going to be able to take the demands they made very seriously.



This though, shows me that there is another task that I will have to undertake before I can turn myself to more serious matters, to serious quests. Though perhaps I am insane in thinking about it. To expand again, just one more chunk, on all of my floors, even where there might be slimes?

I must be insane. I am talking to myself after all. Writing in this book as if anybody was going to read it.

One level isn't too much to worry myself over, but thinking of doing it all. Yes. Madness.



The next upgrade, a fourth level, it wasn't so hard to make. The resources on the pillars. Well, those take a shard that would normally be daunting to get, if I wasn't so careless with the nether. The corrupted materials there drop the shards, and those shards easily become the blocks.

Without being willing to do that mad thing though, I'd ever need to corrupt the blocks myself, and that too seems like madness, or bind a blade that can smite the foes for me and enshard the life of the monsters. Perhaps it was creatures of the overworld that got trapped in the burning sand as the world was consumed. I know not.



To go further, I must step backwards. Remake the altar with the most potent blocks. Let it have access to more lifepoints then is entirely healthy, and then channel it into one of those shards. Though it's not one of those shards, it is nearly a hundred of them.

Rather a large pile of these red crystals are formed this way, empowering the shards with my own life.

Then I infuse the red crystals with more of these shards in an alchemic process to make the blue shards.
It's only when I combine them into clusters can I make the most potent of forms.

Though before that I have to make another trip into the otherworld and make more beacons. Such an outlay of materials.

Madness.

Beauty, but madness.




Still, if madness can propel me through these impossible demands, and let me do what must be done...

... perhaps the world can be saved.

Though madness claim me, there is work to be done.

 

[JaRyCu]

Reading through your journal makes me want to restart my Regrowth world again, and document it this time by creating my own story. I LOVE what you've done with your AS2 world!

 

[ICountFrom0]

Time.
As much a resource as anything else.
I'm going to be spending quite a bit of it doing rebuilds on these newly enlarged platforms.
I've also got this better wand from having to do the demented quests of the overlords, might as well use it.
This means I've got time to spare, if I use it wisely. Thus this. Build the blast furnace, hit it with quite a bit of magic and then feed into it impure iron in quite a large quantity. Over time the magic will slowly refine it into quite a bit of steel. I don't even have to be here watching it. Not a bad way to do it. I know I'll be needing this soon, I've plans.

Always plans.



As I was cleaning up and putting the animals into storage I had to setup up emergency containment cell of chickens. Using alchemy I was able to increase the hatching odds of the eggs, and then build this neat little cell for them. By letting the chickens watch and report back it will prevent any further creatures from being sent to attack me while I work.



Next a less simple matter of collecting the villagers. I don't want them falling off while I'm working, or going through a hole and escaping. Further the golems that they build are sometimes dangerous to me. They cannot be reasoned with if I swing absently and strike one as it comes too close. They had to go as well. A nice clean open area to build in now, to produce what needs producing and make my upgrades.



Cow containment and contentment. I've not yet automated the lamp that encourages the herd, but I've found a way. For now I fill it manually so I can keep control over this situation. In time I will let things progress further. There is just the one more round of careful upgrades to go on this.



The hidden chronotypers move the calves down before the cows can notice they are gone. The aging blocks make sure that I don't get too many of them before the harvest. Everything moves neatly, easily from one step to the next with as little of it being seen as possible. Yet there are places that I can watch the progress and make sure in safety.



I've kept these connections to the least complicated ones possible. I'm only giving the system power. When I want to draw from it in meat, or slime, or sewage I do that by hand, by the bucket or the tank. I don't need any of these things very much right now, and I mind little if there is waste. In time I will build a system to handle it, I've saved space for it of course.



I've also built another building in the middle. A few more doors for the villagers, and a place to attact them in close so that I can trade easier. It's even got a trading station in it so that I need not pass among them if I do not desire.

The roof is cunningly made to hide the solar that I use so much of to power my base, and yet there is space for me to add quite a bit more as demands increase.



Inside I've taken a small amount of this space as my own bedroom and secured it as much as I could. Right down to placing a mega torch to keep the monsters away. Though that might not help if there's an invasion, though the golems of the villagers will keep things safe in that case. Still I might add an additional set of armor and a spare weapon when I revisit this.



Another thing I've been thinking of making a beginning on. I've put the lesser queens of impure and unstable lineage to work in these hives to collect the first materials needed to make the future generations. Those will need more complicated machines. These will take only time. Time is something I have enough of as I continue the rebuild, so they will stay, and work for me.



Yes, time, I've got time. Thus I spent a while with an alchemist chemistry set, making exotic reagents. Processing materials that normally would have little do to with one another to make them into useful things. It was a strange experimentation finding just what worked with the catalysts to make what, but in the end I had enough of them to satisfy the demands of the overlords. They demanded I make ever more exotic wands of these materials. I hesitate to actually make use of this as a wand myself, as it can draw on my life to power itself, but perhaps there is a way around it. I will keep that in mind as the project continues and I get down there.

On the other hand I was able to infuse living wood and the dreaming wood of the elves into a wand that I rather enjoy. It required me to make quite a few runes and do a rather unusual infusion but the wand recharges from the tablet and a ring that I wear. This is much safer then letting it draw from my life, if slower. This has let me save the scepter for crafting, and for when I need it most.



Need can drive you to many strange things. This small warped seed is normally only exposed to metalum, turning it from a distorted blot into an ingot of oddly pliable void metal. I say normally. Seems that if I feed it from the life essence of the altar I'm able to get one of the elderich guardians to spawn from it. I call life from the void itself. Then it attacks me.



Still, with luck and work and perhaps a bit of pain, it can be captured. Imprinted on a crystal and forced into a wrathful cage. Thus do I gain access to these strange creatures without having to open holes in the world and let the void out. Without quite embracing madness. This is perhaps a good thing. It is not good to be alone with only madness for company. It leads to... things best not spoken of.

 

[ICountFrom0]

Thus do I continue to spread the green and growth. The tower is improved step by step. I'd had to remove much from this floor to rebuild it, the flowers are first to return. These strange flowers grow well even without anything to make it go faster and I need not many of them for these natural crafts. Still when you've made such a thing plentiful you do try to find other uses for them.



I do admit I'd thought of making blocks of them, a touch more of brightness in the world, but it does not seem to be the right thing to do. Surely this place will be consumed in the regrowth of the world, there is little reason to make of it a decoration. On the other hand, the petals do make lovely dyes, and with that I could make for myself a feast of epic bacon. That can feed me, and the gardens, as there are flowers that feast and give back in mana.



I do intend to make this floral fortress a bit of a growing garden. The mana making mighty growth. There are many resources that I might have in the garden, and many uses for those resources. Oddly even the sludge produced as a biproduct of growing things has it's uses. Still, I don't want to see it piped past the plants, so under here I lay the pipework.



Storage drawers, and into the network they go. I'm sure I will find a use for these. Even the pink has a use. Others...

I decline decoration, but still, sometimes, I am tempted and tested. Surely the overlords would rather then I work for them.

Still, I can't live always in a land barren and empty. I do what I can to preserve some beauty in my work, even if it is the stark beauty of a clean line.



From the sludge and from pine comes more podzol, and with that, fertilizer, and some offerings from the cows I am able to make this special soil. It holds water uncommonly well and means that I need not worry as much about watering these crops.

It's a bit of a strange thing to have such choice in materials. Stranger still to only pick so few of them for my growing garden. When the gifts of stone, gravel, sand, and dust return such plentiful gifts there is little that I have honest need to make. Though I did grow every seed for my garden, and could harvest anything I've need of, or even grow more of them with the machines, but standing there with a watering can does not always bring pleasure.



Each of these crops has many uses they can serve. Wheat becomes food easily enough. Bread and toast is the least of the power they offer. Animals love it, but it also can be broken down to power the lamps. The seeds make good seed oil and even the hay bales have uses. Carrots are there because of the pigs, but also because carrot cake is one of the easiest things to satisfy the appetites of flowers. Sugar cane is a masterwork of multi purpose plants. Sugar yes, but paper and even building materials. Soy is always something that must be grown. While it is hard to process there is a wide range of things that you can eat that is made from it. Cotton, string, flax, wool. There are many ways to get these products, but you are always going to want them. Finally I went with a source of ender pearls. While I could grow myself into the end and farm there for them, I admit to being a little worried of a battle above the void.



Thus a huge stockpile of these shall join the others. From this will flow the carrot cake and the epic feasts of bacon. Perhaps even sugar charcoal, if I ever find a use for it. So many items and so many uses. I just need to preserve them here in drawers so that I don't overflow my drives.



Very little tinkering was needed to make the tree farm into something very useful. Just a little space so they didn't get the crops confused on the way to storage and things are well done indeed. This time I've gone so far as to make sure that the sludge boiler is completely safe. Hunger is a dangerous thing even now.



Thus is the start of my farms, but this was meant to be my botania region. Not just a shell, but a thriving living place full of life. So with this completed, a pause, and a look through the other resources. I discovered the thirsty tank, and it is able to keep the petal apothecary filled for me. No more need to keep a bucket with it. No more need to pause and fill it. This makes it so much easier to produce many of the same flower at a time.



The hard part with botania is making sure that you have enough power. This magic isn't free. Before I used a few leaves and that has given me this armor that has kept me safe, that won't keep me safe once I go looking for trouble. I'll need more power. I do intend to go looking for trouble.



Some would paint the wires. I make a grid of them, carefully tinkering until each is placed just how I want them. The wires for them go just under. Instead of just one munchdew I used the new system to make four. Quite the reach and absolutely an appetite. The leaves don't have much of the natural mana in them but the leaves are able to make up for that by consuming so many of them.



Still, the system can place leaves fast enough that the flowers are never starved. Often the munchdew are not hungry at all. This means that the leaves make the ground a carpet to stand on. None of the fine wires of tehcnology that is behind this system can easily be seen.

The more I can keep this place looking clean and natural the better.



I've left the sub processor in place, where it can be seen, glowing, a contrast to the magic of the flowers. This I like. Though perhaps I will instead hide it under a glowing stone if it displeases me latter. One never does know what will change with the demands of the overlords.

With a solid source of mana in place I've got the resources to craft up more runes and make more flowers.



Each of these four represents a small garden that is strong in power that I can setup to make this place even more then it was before.

Charcoal, feasts of bacon, cake, and the products of bees.

Each of them can be made into power without nearly the space requirements that the munchdew required.



Not today.

But they can.

Likewise this other chest holds the further resources it'll take to complete the rebuild of my garden.

Though I've been up here a while, and all these machines that serve my garden take power. There are things I must attend to if I am to progress.

 

[ICountFrom0]

(I'll try to not do the "stopped in the middle" cliffhanger to you folks again this story. Things where a little more interwoven then I thought, wow.)



Sometimes one project has to sit in the middle for a little while. Most cases it's a lack in a resource. In this case I'd just discovered that it was taking too long to keep producing the higher tier materials from scratch every time I needed them. I'd depleted so much of my stockpiles in making the machines, not to mention the simple truth that I'd run through my patience. What good is it to have all the power, if I have to do things myself all the time?



I've machines to handle that. To grind down the metals into dust. To pulverize coal. Dust from obsidian. These little tasks that took my time. They shall not be my responsibility anymore. Metal minion machines to do my work for me. To combine the metals to make all the little alloys, invar, electrum, brass, bronze, and the hardened glass. Life is better when I don't have to stop and make these things. Now I can request all the pipes in all the complications and delights of life in ease.




Lets not stop, not with that, further, the tier 3 metals. Melt down something, blend a few metal dusts together, soak with the exotic material, and then smelt it into an ingot. Sometimes it takes pyrothium, sometimes it does not. Now it's easy enough to request this as I require it. Now I won't have to stop and come down here each time I run low. I can spend that much more time building my upgrades on site.



With every increase in machines, comes an increase in the demand for power. These machines take care of solar panels. Refining the mirrors with lapis, with rare earth in the clay, and with blaze rods.

There is some beauty in making a machine that can refine it all in a single device.



With each of these, a number of materials are melted down, held in the tanks, and as I need them the various bits are filled with these exotic fluids. Cryothium for the ducts, enderium for tesserects, redstone for the storage cells, glowstone into lamps.

With this base of work completed, I can actually get to the work I've been needing to do.



With my desire to feed the flowers, I've a need for easy food. I've already gotten the soy growing, but that by itself is only good for soup and broth. Nine at a time into the pressers. Pulled out and done again, and then again. The tofu must be worked and reworked time and time again to make it firm enough to be used. A touch of automation in the molecular assemblers produces the dyes and I get something that resembles rainbow bacon, close enough to fool a flower.



Fluix.

When you just toss the materials in and let them react in the water, you can do a few stacks at a time, even if it means waiting for the crystals to grow and charge.

When you are wiring your entire base with the smart cables and going through fluix stacks at a time though, you can't keep stopping.

Though making a machine to drop things for you, isn't the easiest. Still I was able to make it look good.



Thus do I return to the task I had in mind, it feels like so long ago before.

I've ideas for some of these, but I remain stumped just the same on the bees.

A moment of work and I've got another bit setup too.



Once I've got enough mana I can put to use the books I've gotten from taking apart the items that the fishing machine had pulled from the deeps...

This bit of magic will sit quiescent until then though. So perhaps is best to begin.

The carrot cake was a slightly tricky block to place, in the end it was solved by the tireless efforts of a golem.



It's slightly shocking how badly machines handled the cake, though perhaps the lack of understanding of hungers means that it will always be thus from the inanimate and obstinate devices.

Now the endoflames, they will consume anything that burns. They are also eager enough to snap it up off of the conveyor belts. Trick of it is to find them a food that they enjoy, and to keep the number of items waiting to be consumed low, for the sake of the world.



Around and around goes the coal, and into the hopper if they do not want to eat just yet. I could add more but there's a bit of style to having four each of the flowers I feed.

The last of these big projects, trickiest and hungriest of them, a plant that eats anything. It also must be kept from over eating.



The remote comparitor keeps a crystal eye on the mana pool. As it gets fuller the signal grows. This signal goes into a subtraction mode comparitor. The comparison signal comes from a bibliocraft bookcase with redstone volume 1 in it. This lets me control how full the mana pool becomes before it stops. This signal is passed to a magical hourglass. If it gets any signal the hourglass resets and stops. A mana defector also passes a signal into the hour glass, resetting every time the fed flowers cough up mana. If the hourglass is left without interuption for 30 seconds it sends a pulse down the relay and triggers the dispencers, each to fire rainbow bacon to the flowers.

Truth of things is, much of this could be, might be, and will be tucked away out of sight, but sometimes you want to watch the work, just to be sure.



Sometimes it's because a machine does not quite work the way you'd expected. This one is one of those, but it does at least produce the livingrock and livingwood for me. As much as I'd like, all the time. I seem to be using much more of the stone then the wood, as much as I find the dreamwood to be rather delightful to look upon.



So much of the stone, but in theory I've got enough to support this, to eventually meet my demand and fill every one of these mana pools.

Even with the demands of the portal.



Not that I need to be in constant contact with the elves. Perhaps I will close this portal again. With the destruction of this world they cannot be entirely happy with the risk that the devastation will spread and strike them too.



The last two finishing touches, the placement of catalysts and the preparation to be able to again make terrasteel. So many uses that I can turn mana towards with these simple items, and yet so hard to get exactly right. Still, if needs must, I will find a way to make them produce what I desire.

This world is entirely shaped by that desire, for all was once void.

 

[Pascal Simard]

Madness! This is madness I tell you! You are delving too far into darkness and blood and whatnot. I shall have to brand you heretic! Your overlord? No, Dark Gods, out to devour your soul at the service of a purple cat!

 

[goreae]

Madness! This is madness I tell you! You are delving too far into darkness and blood and whatnot. I shall have to brand you heretic! Your overlord? No, Dark Gods, out to devour your soul at the service of a purple cat!

The cat isn't even special either. It's just a purple cat.

 

[JaRyCu]

@ICountFrom0 would you mind enclosing your images in spoiler tags? I love reading your posts, but it's hard to do when I click to the page from my email link, and then that part of the page is forced downward 20-30 times from the images above loading it.

@goreae Does that cat have all of it's legs or is it a 2-legged purple cat?

 

[Pascal Simard]

This world is entirely shaped by that desire, for all was once void.

Actually, the world was once a piece of dirt and a tree...