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[Stirk]

We have three Design Phases left and have to remember we arn't designing a bunch of weapons, we are designing Etroa.

You raise a good point. We should probably focus on the type of social and cultural stuff that we can't really change as easily once we're in the shorter timeframe of the war. Although maybe that's what the military / civ split is all about.

And so I'm not just telling people to do things, here is another input that we can somehow force into whatever we need!

Etroa had long been led by a council of nobles, one from each major city and arbitrarily sized large portion of rural land. In theory they have roughly equal amounts of power, each with a single vote on council matters. In practice the power switched between several different families as each traded favors, threats, bribes, and other standard political persuasions. Each ten years a Council Head was chosen from among the Councilors, acting as the "King" or "Emperor" for the remainder of their reign. In practice the position was often for life, a new Council Head being chosen meant that the internal Etroan politics was shifting.

During the Renaissance era, the rise of guilds meant that a new wealthy class of non-nobles had begun to form. Guild's internal structure varied from guild to guild, often either being lead by the founder and their descendants or a council similar to that ruling the nation. Not content to confining themselves to inter-guild politics, many of the more powerful guilds took to buying the Councilor's votes outright giving them a parcel of political power. Eventually this lead to many of the nobles, blue in blood but in the red in the bank, to sell their positions outright. Those guilds that could afford it then received the legal right to vote on Council matters, effectively giving them legal control over a large potion of the nation.

With this setup, we can then shift into Guild control or expand the voting rules to make a Republic without having to have a bloody internal revolution!
...Now we just have to find out how to put all that into a design and or revision!

[TricMagic]

Military:
Sunseedlock Musket: ()
Plasma Bomb Reaction: ()
NOLAS: (1): Vostok
The Tulenov Steam-Clipper: ()
Sunic Cartridge: (1) Stirk
Civilian:
Great Galleon: (1) Vostok
Moonseeds and the Steam Train: (1) Vivalas, TricMagic

I like the Steam Engine ideas, but I think we are a bit too early to implement them (Twin's comment was that we might get a single train rather than a train route). We 100% need to get moonstone at some point. I am also in love with using Sunic for sunseed things. I'll wait until we get more civilian ideas before picking any of them.

We should probably pick out a government system at some point, from the sound of it Askia has some fancy background organizations (Soldier Priests, Warrior-Sorcerers, etc). Making our own is probably a good choice, since we've mostly been focusing on things instead of people. I tried my hand at it with the guilds, to fit into the craftsman angle we've been playing. If we want to have a royal family, this would be a good time for it to be introduced. If we want to have a major religion, this is a good time for a reformation. We have three Design Phases left and have to remember we arn't designing a bunch of weapons, we are designing Etroa.

1350-1600, right now, I think.. First steam train was 1803.

Major differences. First, we already made a prototype many years before in the steam hammer. That same steam hammer and the revision we did means we can place rails pretty quick, hopefully. Second is that while it may take a while for them to spread, they can do so. And the third is the Sunseed/Moonseed. Normally for steam engines, you need heat and water. Sunseeds handle the heat, and Moonseeds recycle the steam, and Etroan Craftsmanship makes sure there are no problems with the actual mechanics, hopefully. We did make a steam powered hammer early on after all.

I'll come up with a ship in a bit for military. though honestly, we seem to lean toward military expansion as well as trade expansion...


Military design.
Note this is, probably not practical.

One man spent years studdying gears, pipes and pistons, steam power. And at the end of it all, they decided to use wood and metal to build a giant puppet. With bones of tree logs reinforced with metal bands, and sockets for moving arms and legs. Atop this existed gears and pulleys, all connected to the central chest. And they finished a giant puppet 30 feet tall by armoring those sections with wood and leather.

But for power. When moonseeds were discovered, they immediately used that to build a head, which once running would continually turn gears. In the torso, a driver had a glass view outside, covered with woven mesh. And from there, they could control the pulleys with levers to move the arms and legs bit by bit. And so, this giant puppet took it's first steps into history.


It took up a club and tore apart fortifications and armies alike. Ever advancing. Wherever the Norsa vardarianna puppet went, it left a hole in battlefields. It was eventually replaced once it became too old to be maintained, but each one served as a powerful force for Etroan expansion wars.

[Vivalas]

I was thinking about the whole moonseed thing, and, well..

For an engine to work you just need a constant thermal gradient. This can be accomplished by either adding or removing energy, which both the sunseed and moonseed can do on their own. You could build a steam engine with either or, just with moonseeds it's a lot more efficient.

[TricMagic]

What sort of engine even runs off entropy?

Moonseeds make the water colder, turning steam to water, and water to ice, eventually. Sunseeds turn water to steam, meanwhile.


I mean, the only case is a Cold Fusion scenario, that I can think of off the top of my head. Though Cold Fission would also work, maybe? Not that I have a clear idea of it other than being related to lowering temperatures rather than raising them.


If energy is removed from a reaction, nothing mechanical will occur. This effectively renders such a method pointless for mechanical energy. And in a steam Engine, what would you replace the Sunseeds with to make steam? Or do you have something that would only require Moonseeds.

Either way, it's playing with thermodynamics, rather than just relying on heat and heat leeching that the two already can do.

[Vivalas]

It's not a reaction, but a process. If you remove energy, you create an area of lower temperature where heat will flow. Creating an energy 'void' of sorts (a moonseed), would cause heat to flow towards that void, in the same way that an energy source (a sunseed), would create a gradient towards the atmosphere. If you're using a moonseed to power a mechanical process, you're using the atmospheric ambient temperature to draw energy from, otherwise you're using a sunseed, which will create a gradient towards the atmosphere (and the energy comes from the sunseed).

Theoretically, anyways, if a moonseed cooled to absolute zero, it would be just as efficient as if you had a sunseed that went to 400K or so. The configuration of the engine would be slightly different, but there's not much difference in using a heat source with the atmosphere serving the part of rejecting heat, or using the atmosphere as a heat source and rejecting heat to the moonseed.

[Vostok]

Military Design: Sunic Cartridge
As materials advanced across the ages, the impressive ability of sun-stone to explode any human it managed to enter became less and less relevant as new armor conspired to prevent the rock from eliminating its target. Fortunately, those same advances in materials came up with a solution! Etroan alchemist had, in attempt to turn the base metal into gold, combined crushed sunseed into molten lead creating a material known as Sunic Lead. Sunic Lead is pyrophoric and flammable, a strong enough impact causes it to release heat and ignite (helpfully igniting anything in contact with it). It is also "Self-sharpening", impact with a hard object causes it to fracture in a way that retains an edge thanks to the sunseed fragments layout. With this material, the alchemist had ironically struck gold - centuries later it would be the choice round for Etroan musketmen. It would easily pierce even the greatest plate armor, set alight the mightiest of ships, and send any cowards who dare face the might of Etroa running for the hills.

In short, it is not-Depleted Uranium.

With this development allowing firearms to become much more common than in many foreign lands, Etroa tended to be on the cutting edge of gun development. While their ammunition retained the ball shape popular at the time, they developed a paper cartridge to allow for faster rates of fire and to give the powder some amount of water resistance. There would be two compartments made out of paper, one with a Sunic Lead ball and another with the powder charge. The end of the cartridge would be bit open to allow for some powder to be placed on the pan while the rest of the powder would be poured down the barrel, followed by the remaining paper and the ball (with the helpful assistance of a rod). Our now-loaded firearm could then be fired, the Sunic Round igniting whatever target is unfortunate enough to be in its sights.

As I said in the Discord, I personally think the Sunic Round is a waste of a design action. It's a good idea, but it's more of a revision thing, both because of its relatively limited scope and because it can likely fall under "bring an earlier design into the present era," considering how it's more or less a successor to "put sunseeds in spearheads and boil people alive when you poke them."

What sort of engine even runs off entropy?

Heat engines in general depend on a spontaneous exothermic reaction, yes.

[Vivalas]

I mean, combustion engines for one run on entropy. They work by igniting a gas while the cylinder is in its upmost position, and then entropy (or the tendency for the gas to want to expand to its greatest volume and therefore greatest disorder) causes the piston to be pushed downwards.

[Madman198237]

Remember that there are many ways of describing how one thing "works" in terms of basic physics principles, so you, Vivalas, might very well be saying the exact same thing that Vostok is saying.

[Rockeater]

Military:
Sunseedlock Musket: ()
Plasma Bomb Reaction: ()
NOLAS: (1): Vostok
The Tulenov Steam-Clipper: ()
Sunic Cartridge: (2) Stirk, Rockeater
Civilian:
Great Galleon: (1) Vostok
Moonseeds and the Steam Train: (3) Vivalas, TricMagic, Rockeater

[TricMagic]

Military:
Sunseedlock Musket: ()
Plasma Bomb Reaction: (1) TricMagic
NOLAS: (1): Vostok
The Tulenov Steam-Clipper: ()
Sunic Cartridge: (2) Stirk, Rockeater

Civilian:
Great Galleon: (1) Vostok
Moonseeds and the Steam Train: (3) Vivalas, TricMagic, Rockeater

We will also need votes on the military design too.

Something found in our lands would likely be these. Fourth most common element on Earth. Though there is the rather obvious possibility it will just go up in flames as a disaster.

[Stirk]

Military:
Sunseedlock Musket: ()
Plasma Bomb Reaction: (1) TricMagic
NOLAS: (1): Vostok
The Tulenov Steam-Clipper: ()
Sunic Cartridge: (2) Stirk, Rockeater

Civilian:
Great Galleon: (2) Vostok, Stirk
Moonseeds and the Steam Train: (3) Vivalas, TricMagic, Rockeater

[Vostok]

Sunseed glass was first created sometime during the tenth century by a glassblower known as Ivan Nazarov, famous for finding inspiration for his work while under the influence. While drunk one day, he decided to try creating glassware with crushed sunseed added to the mixture, which resulted in a vase with an otherworldly glow to it, shining even in the dead of night. Lucky for him, this impressed the priest who commissioned the piece enough that he managed to avoid getting executed for heresy. This technique was then passed down through the Nazarov family for the next four hundred years, bringing great renown to his descendents, who used the technique in everything from vases to stained glass windows.

The first recorded use of sunseed glass for practical purposes was in 1570, when a brilliant young naval officer by the name of Jaroslav Obdržálek commissioned a set of marine telescope lenses made of the material from Aleksey Nazarov. It quickly became evident to Obdržálek that what he had was the world's first night vision telescope, and after some experimentation it was discovered that Sunseed Glass amplified the light passing through it. Seeing the potential of such a technology, he partnered with Aleksey to explore the use of sunseed glass in practical applications as soon as he left the military. Soon after, they patented a system of sunseed-glass light amplification known as NOLAS, or "Nazarov-Obdržálek Light Amplification System."

The first and most obvious use of NOLAS after night vision was to create a spotlight far brighter than what came before it by mounting several NOLAS lenses in series, adding a light source (parabolic mirror optional), and sticking the whole thing on either an artillery carriage or some other mounting mechanism that allowed it to be pointed at things. This basic idea was used in everything from military searchlights (good for disorienting the enemy and/or burning some retinas when used as part of a defensive installation, sometimes capable of lighting things on fire given the right settings) to optical telegraphy to experimental stage lighting for theater productions once the cost went down enough.
---
This wouldn't be figured out until much, much later, but the sunseed-glass reaction operates as a special case of blackbody radiation. Some of the incoming photons are absorbed by the sunseed glass, exciting the atoms within it, and is quickly re-radiated along the same path as electrons fall back to lower energy levels. Because of the special properties of the sunseed particles inside the glass, however, more photons are emitted than are absorbed, creating a light-amplification effect.

Military:
Sunseedlock Musket: ()
Plasma Bomb Reaction: (1) TricMagic
NOLAS: ()
The Tulenov Steam-Clipper: ()
Sunic Cartridge: (3) Stirk, Rockeater, Vostok

Civilian:
Great Galleon: (1) Stirk
NOLAS, bis: (1) Vostok
Moonseeds and the Steam Train: (3) Vivalas, TricMagic, Rockeater

[TricMagic]

Military:
Sunseedlock Musket: ()
Plasma Bomb Reaction: ()
NOLAS: (1) TricMagic
The Tulenov Steam-Clipper: ()
Sunic Cartridge: (3) Stirk, Rockeater, Vostok

Civilian:
Great Galleon: (1) Stirk
NOLAS, bis: (1) Vostok
Moonseeds and the Steam Train: (3) Vivalas, TricMagic, Rockeater

Vacuum Tubes and skill in making glass going way back. Enough to convince me to do it for the military one.


Hae raht- The Steam Paddleboat

Hae raht- The Steam Paddleboat. Where the rest of the world entered the age of sails, Etroa entered the age of Steam. With greater access to materials, and techniques from afar, Mad Rúatan and Tric Ingóle worked together. Utilizing ancient designs long since discarded, they saw the potential of a ship that traveled perpetually.

In this, Mad Rúatan designed the ship, and Tric Ingóle the propulsion.

Taking wood, they designed the first screw pipe. These pipes were carved with metal to have grooves, which slotted together. They then made a chamber of wood and metal, and placed cut sunshards in it before closing it with a top, carved with tubes sticking out the top, those tubes having a screw carved into their outer section. Then, more pipes were screwed on, inner carvings fitted onto the outer carving, and sticky rubber glues made from the Rubber Tree used to seal it tight.

Leading from the top of this chamber, the pipes led to the first bit of metal. A fan-wheel stationed inside a chamber. It's shaft moving into the container's wall was sealed as best it could, and had a large gear attached at the other end outside.

As the would steam rise, it would pass the fan-wheel, turning it's blades from the immense pressure being produced by the sunshard boiled water.

This steam continued on into the upper pipe on the other side, before curving back around. Here, the recent discovery of moonseeds, which could be made by leaving a sunseed buried in very cold conditions, made it's appearance. Moonseed inset into a wooden cage. Here, the steam ended it's journey. In this container, mirroring the sun chamber, the steam gathered and condensed into clouds which then rained down the holeat it's bottom. For the hole the steam entered was from the side.

Down it fell, past other small moonshard fragments inset into the pipes, before bottoming out, flowing into the Sun Chamber from the side like a waterfall.


During normal operation, steam produced would flow into the pipe leading up and to the side pipe. However, the moonshard fragments rendered that side journey impossible. It would cool and freeze long before reaching the Moon Chamber that way. And in this manner, there was a cross-pipe. This cross-pipe led off not to the Sun or Moon chamber, but outside. Normally closed off during operation to maintain high, continual pressure in the system, when the metal and rubber caps was opened up, one can pour a large amount of water inside. By using sea water purified by sunseeds, one could fill the Boiler. And at the bottom of the path the water would normally flow before entering the Sun Chamber was another cap on a small subsection cross-pipe. Opening this one would let the water spill out before reaching the Sun Chamber.


It is the world's first Boiler. We have neglected to descirbe what it turns though. The gear is directly connected to a number of other gears. Which lead to one final gear. And this gear, a masterwork of Etroan Engineering, would be connected to a huge paddle outside, spanning the rear of a ship.

The Boiler is right next to the Paddle. And this paddle turns continuously and steadily. The more water is used in the Boiler, the faster it spins, and the quicker the attached boat moves.

When not active, a single gear has a attached pole one can use to remove it, which cuts off the connection between boiler and paddle.


In this manner, along with rudders, a boat that requires neither winds nor current to travel at a steady pace across seas and rivers.

[Madman198237]

Public Sanitation (Sorry it's a lame name I know)
Some simple applications of steam power include moving things, like water. A simple application of steam-powered hand tools is construction. Combined, Etroa produced networks of amazing public works in every city, town, and even most villages. Aqueducts bring water into cities and networks of sewers with Sunseed steam-powered screw pumps allowed for water to move through the sewers at a good speed, carrying waste away from the cities. Baths supplied by aqueduct water and warmed with Sunseeds provided a level of public sanitation beyond most people of the time, allowing Etroa to weather several small outbreaks of dangerous disease with far less harm than other nations.

The improvements in sanitation and, more importantly, legacy of large-scale public works stemming from the early invention of the steam tool, propelled Renaissance Etroa to the forefront of the world in population and in cleanliness. Visiting an Etroan city was not, unlike many such cities, an exercise in dealing with horrible smells.

Military:
Sunseedlock Musket: ()
Plasma Bomb Reaction: ()
NOLAS: (1) TricMagic
The Tulenov Steam-Clipper: ()
Sunic Cartridge: (4) Stirk, Rockeater, Vostok, Madman

Civilian:
Great Galleon: (1) Stirk
NOLAS, bis: (1) Vostok
Moonseeds and the Steam Train: (3) Vivalas, TricMagic, Rockeater
Public Sanitation: (1) Madman

[TricMagic]

Military:
Sunseedlock Musket: ()
Plasma Bomb Reaction: ()
NOLAS: ()
The Tulenov Steam-Clipper: ()
Sunic Cartridge: (4) Stirk, Rockeater, Vostok, Madman
Sun Rounds: (1) TricMagic

Civilian:
Great Galleon: (1) Stirk
NOLAS, bis: (1) Vostok
Moonseeds and the Steam Train: (3) Vivalas, TricMagic, Rockeater Veto by GM
Public Sanitation: (2) Madman, TricMagic

I am a bit pained that heat has lost again.. Hua... It does not help I can see it, at all.

Well, back to the drawing board.

Sun Round

With the introduction of guns to Etroa, naturally we made some great guns with our craftmenship for their time. We also took to trying to use sunshards as bullets. It kinda went badly.

Normally, we don't get this kinda force applied to sunseeds OR the sunshard arrows that got made during that one war. However, when you make a bullet out of a sunseed, and that sunshard bullet hits something it can't pierce through and blow up in steam explosion, the entire thing shatters.

At which point, a super hot white fireball appears from where it broke. That fireball also takes everything around it with it, leaving naught but charred husks and slag left, if that. Not even a stray fire. Everything just burns cleanly and quickly.

Also, we kinda didn't take proper precautions and the shooter Savage ended up way too close. He's fine, but missing his eyebrows. And hair.

Well, Sun Rounds are still a dangerous but welcome addition to Etroan armories regardless. Since they are crystal balls they at least won't get diverted by the Askians.


Reaction: Trigger- Sufficient Kinetic Energy to cause shattering to dust. Effect is determined by volume of sunseed/shard consumed, along with kinetic force imparted. Greater Volume/Force= wider effect. Strength is capped up to Vaporize as all the Sun's energy in that piece is released at once around it, almost seeming to form a miniature star.(note not an actual star, just enough heat to literally be white)