Entanglement Engines (with pieces taken from Cloud Ships under permission of D7)
"Just as splitting a magnet in half between its north and south poles only results in two new bipolar magnets, a similar phenomenon occurs in orichalcum. A body of cast orichalcum, split into multiple pieces after solidification, retains a material "memory" of its former wholeness. The reasons for this are still under wide debate [...]"
"Furthermore, arranging multiple such pieces of so-called "entangled" orichalcum in space and briefly energizing them in a connected circuit encodes that spatial position into the orichalcum's internal electric field. Applying a current to any one of the newly "pinned" pieces of orichalcum will cause the whole array of pieces to return to their original configuration as though a rigid connection existed between them."
"The strength of the connection between these pieces is dependent on the magnitude of the provided current. A weaker current results in a less rigid connection, such that even small outside forces might dislodge the pinned orichalcum from its position and cause a structural failure. Intuitively, this means the effect only lasts so long as one or more entangled piece is powered. Because this effect relies on the field being able to induce a charge among all linked components, a linkage cannot be maintained at an indefinite distance, and maintaining a greater separation without failure requires more power."
It was the explosion of industry fueled by the Red Revolution that caused even deeper views into the properties of the miracle material of Orichalcum. It was the shipwrights that first came to use the entanglement properties of Orichalcum to their benefit, the expansion of the Confederation southwards required an extensive line of rails to be built to deliver supplies and ship goods between settlements, but Chains were hampered by their reliance on an outside accelerative force to move down their rails. The great highway of the Interbarrial River Network ignored due to its swift northern flowing current preventing larger cargo ships powdered by sail and oar from navigating its pathways. A solution was found a pair of inventors, Tetlacatl an educated man from the great northern cities and Huitznahuatl a native Monsooner woman who had grown up in the southern settlements sailing the River Network and had designed some of the few classes of traditionally powered ships that could sail up the river towards the Vale.
Tectactl had discovered the properties of Entangled Orichalcum (hereafter referred to as EO) worked with Huitznahuatl to construct a ship capable of using its properties to sail up the river up its own power. A set of steel pistons arrayed inside a block of cylinders and connected to a crankshaft was placed inside the heart of a wooden ship, the heads of each piston made from EO and entangled to a position at the lowest extent its piston could travel with each piston offset so that they would each reach the furthest extent of their travel at a different time. At the top of the cylinders was a diode connected to an ichor battery, when the pistons were manually spun by the help of a starter arm the first EO covered head would reach the diode and become charged activating its entangled properties and forcing the piston downwards for the brief moment it is being powered by contact with the diode. This downwards motion would by virtue of being connected to the other pistons by the crankshaft have them also come into contact with their own diode repeating the process.
After this process was started the pistons would continue to cycle inside their cylinders until the battery ran out of power or was disconnected manually from the engine. Connecting the crankshaft of the new Entanglement Engines to a paddle wheel and in later days a propeller allowed a ship to sail up the river network even with a full load of cargo, this process soon being copied by Chain builders that connected them to a pair of large wheels with teeth on either side of the carts that interfaced with a pair of mundane iron rails with corresponding grooves cut into them for the teeth to connect with set one on either side of the main Orichalcum rail, allowing the Chains to move large amounts of cargo under their own power as well as industrial centers across the Confederation began to use Entanglement Engine powered machinery that increased the productivity of finished and precision goods tenfold. It was truly the dawn of an even greater age for the Confederation.
