PmWiki | Waylight / HillStory

A number of cantons needed to flatten a sandy hill to get to the copper deposits underneath. This is how they reacted:

The Tsuxians sent a disgraced bureaucrat to order the hill to move, and had a thousand peasants do it with shovels when it didn't move, then busted the bureaucrat back to agricultural duty for lack of faith and inefficiency. There is no time frame or budget; the labor was volunteered and the job got done exactly when the Bureaucracy predicted it, or so the paperwork says.

The Cascadians hired 20 earthmoving crews with 5 earthmovers each, who did the job late but roughly on budget.

The Enotrians hired 60 earthmoving crews with mixed equipment, who did the job on time but 10% over budget. An investigation into the budget overrun found nobody guilty of anything, but the cost of the investigation itself sent the job 50% over budget.

The Ustrians hired 5 engineers with an enormous bucket wheel excavator landcrawler and had them accidentally dump the overburden on top of Harmattan on purpose.

The Zorians hired three sages and fifty workers to buid windtrap sails, and waited a year for the hill to erode, then sent out more workers to harvest rather than mine the copper.

The Elvitans hired a survey crew to carefully map the amount of copper under the hill, added it to their reserves ledger, issued the relevant credit notes, and left it under the hill.

The Kerbians blew up the hill and, come to think of it, probably half the copper. Then had a party in the crater.

The Thraces treated it as sport, divided into competing teams, and did most of the work without motorized equipment. Or shirts. Or pants.

The Selenites are still waiting for someone to do the job for them after batting some eyelashes.