Temperature and Air

[TarlimanJoppos]

Using the Temperature Talent, two Elementalists could tag-team a container and lower the temperature enough to freeze the air. The discovery that air can be frozen would be massive enough, but when you look at the time component, the elementalists are going to see the various gases condensing out at different points in the process, leading to the discovery that air is composed of several different gases. Throw in some Maracian influence, with their idea of "science", and you've got the foundations for all sorts of trouble. Imagine a Thief armed with a liquid air squirter, able to freeze difficult locks and shatter them with a single sharp rap. Imagine the spells that come about - Blizzard Sphere is nasty enough, but a sphere of frozen air. Yipes. My players have already successfully frozen a small quantity of air, and have published their results. The genie is out of the bottle. Now what?

Opinions / commentary?

[Drucifer]

Very cool.

[Lord of Badlands]

cool indeed.

[ManDrake]

I'm not sure that the Temperature Talent builds like that. But pretending that it does for the moment, what would this gain an Elementalist? They already have the power of cold in several different flavors. It sort of like saying, I can use this slow and primitive method to reproduce an affect that I can already do with a spell. An Elementalist can already use his Ice Spear on a lock if he wants to destroy it. Or Rust, or one of their many other spells. Containing at -78 C liquid CO2, which is probably the best mid level Elementalists could accomplish assuming they work together isn't a simple task. You'd have to make a magical container to hold the liquid to keep it viable. And if you are going to all that trouble why not just make a magical item to produce the cold effect desired. There is already a flash freeze storage method, which I would suspect that you can steal Cold Storage with some tweaks and use it for the Elementalist based off this research. You could make a more powerful ice spell for them, probably a high circle spell that flash freezes someone. But that's just like the Petrify spell. So once again, the game mechanic would all that would be changing not really the affect. The now what would be, that the Elementalists will specialize in Cold Effects most likely for some period of time.

[ragbasti]

[The_Gun_Nut]

I'd have the dwarf invent a Hero engine (not that kind of hero). You know the one that's a brass ball with two angled spouts on either end? Some kind of curiosity like that.

[ragbasti]

you mean the aeolopil or what it's called ?

I was thinking about that but that thing is like the prototype of a jet engine which could lead to rediculously fast air ships xD
So i'm rather going with the steam engine ^^

[The_Gun_Nut]

Early steam power can't produce the kind of forces you are talking about. It would be far, far easier to whip up an air elemental and have it push the airship.

A player of mine thought about altering a t'skrang riverboat fire engine to produce some sort of rocket propelled version, but we deemed the fire engine to big and cumbersome to be of any real benefit for that.

[Telarus_KSC]

In my opinion, the Fire Engines are steam-powered (Upandal's gift to the river-locked T'skrang, the very river + Fire becomes their source of locomotion).

I had a guess that this is what Varulus III and the Prophet Shivalahala Syrtis fought about "in strictest confidence" (but there were other possibilities in the fiction, like the Everliving Flower, I think... might be remembering that wrong tho).

In my evolving steampunk campaign, that _was_ what they were fighting about (the dwarf Forges kept getting close to steam engines, but the Questors of Upandal kept failing to produce workable prototypes, and through supplication eventually learned that it was a Secret that He gave to the T'skrang Houses, and the dwarfs would need their blessing first...enter the tense negotiations). The Prophetess at the time didn't want to give up such a well kept Secret and loose control of what made the trade-networks run smoothly.

Then it gets complicated with the K'tenshin defection to Thera (and some Theran Havenheards making deals with Artificer for engineering knowledge), and Triumph landing @ Lake Ban.

[TarlimanJoppos]

I've been fooling with other kinds of elemental engines. Air Engines are easy enough. The problem comes when you have an engine that's too powerful for the superstructure of the airship. In my campaign, a whole new class of airship had to be engineered to use the air engines - enter the skymoram. Based off the t'skrang shimoram, they use an angled bracing on the outriggers that goes directly to the keel, to distribute the thrust into the spine of the ship and keep the engine pods from ripping loose. There's only a few of them in existence a year of game time later, partially because they're so insanely expensive to build that only large / wealthy governments can afford them. The players also had a new class of cargo vessel designed, which ran them a couple hundred thousand silver in shipwright and drydock and construction costs, never mind the air engine pods. However, this ship can travel non-stop, without needing to tack or otherwise change course, because it's not dependent on the wind. The players put it onto the newly opened trade with the Maiar (the Mayans, in what is now Belize). They figure it's going to take about a year and four or five trips across the Ocean of Storms before the ship starts turning a profit. But then these are players whose characters think long term and make serious investments.

The water engine was developed by House K'tenshin, which has built a submarine with it, taking advantage of the fact that t'skrang can stay submerged for long periods of time, and so they don't need a watertight hull, just air bubbles for the occasional breath. K'tenshin is using it to try and start a war between V'strimon and Syrtis, attacking the two Houses' riverboats and making it look like the other House did it.

Don't ask me about the Earth engine. I can't talk about that without permission from James.