Some more thaumatechnical musings...

The Synchropter

(Some times is also known as the Whirligigger or Forchtenstein’s Folly) A flying machine based on a complete rethinking of the principles involved in the more widely known gyrocopter. The synchropter was a singled engine (5-cylinder radial piston, alcoholic engine, 160 hp), dual rotor flying vehicle whose two rotors of two blades each, whilst rotating in opposite directions, interlocked with each other to provide lift, propulsion and aerial stability. The first synchropter prototype was shown to the public at the 1910 Hofenstadt Mechanical and Technological Arts Fair where it garnered much interest and respect for its designer, T.M. Forchtenstein. The Royal Ordnance Board expressed an interest and purportedly advance a healthy research grant, and in 1916, at the height of the Great War against the Goblin King Turjin the Terrible, the first fully operation synchropter was wheeled out onto the testing ground at Fronhoven before Crown Prince Erebus and assorted high ranking officers of the military high command. At this time the war was not going well with suspected Qionst* involvement leading to several reversals and this, combined with the Crown Prince’s increasingly erratic behaviour contributed to the project being terminated when the synchropter failed catastrophically in midflight, killing both its test pilot and T.M. Forchtenstein upon whom it crashed (he had been demonstrating the air craft’s potential to hover in the air when one of the rotor shafts broke away from the engine). The finished synchropter actually flew successfully for several hours previous to the official test, but nonetheless its destruction, as well as the death of its inventor, meant the project was unable to survive budget cut backs later in the year. No other synchropters were built, but the original prototype still resides as a dusty exhibition in the Schwartzenburg Hall of Science. The current where abouts of T.M. Forchtenstein’s blue prints is unknown.

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The Gravity Engine

An extremely complex thaumoturgical machine invented by the Lord High Thaumamechanician of Immenrohde Jareth Saaxenhuiser IV and built at great expense by the Saaxenhuiser & Bruyner Electrical Company in 1901. Housed in the basement of an old shot tower in the vicinity of Pommenich, the gravity machine was powered by four large steam turbines in a nearby factory building and the power input was rumoured to break all previous known records for a single mechanical artefact. The Gravity Machine was tested several times in the summer of 1901 and witnesses in the surrounding country side reported numerous strange sights with farm animals going missing, lambs being born with abnormal features and even a green aurora that hung in the night sky over the old shot tower. Several unidentified flying objects (flying cubes) were also reported in nearby villages and the local militia were called upon to investigate by the Mayor of Pommenich. The authority of the Lord High Thaumamechanician however ensured no one from the outside world was allowed to investigate just what the gravity engine did.

The mystery of the gravity engine was partially solved when after the revolution, the Central Commitee brought charges against the then Lord High Thaumamechanician Axell Wantzenau in 1925. Wantzenau had been Saaxenhuiser’s assistent during the final construction and testing of the Gravity Engine. During his trial Wantzenau revealed that the Gravity Engine was in fact a Temporal Portal which was supposed to bridge time itself. The workings of the machine with its Fundamental Interactors and Super Dense Electromagnetic Fields were not explained. Indeed Wantzenau claimed he did not fully understand how the machine worked, but he testified that Saaxenhuiser had theorized that by generating a massive ’thauma-psychokinetic envolope’, he could influence the flow of the temporal fluid to open a gate way to what he term ’Negative Space’. Wantzenau understood this to mean time moving backwards. His testimony stated that Saaxenhuiser conducted numerous experiments on live animals and even at one stage a Goblin prisoner. According to his theory these creatures would appear before they left, but Wantzenau related that this never happened. Only on one occaision did a test subject return and that came as a complete surprise. Some twelve and a half hours or so after it had been thrown into the portal, which Saaxenhuiser called the enveloping field, a white rabbit flew out again and darted from the room. Saaxenhuiser considered this a great breakthrough, for although the rabbit had travelled in the wrong direction, it was obvious that it had moved from one point in time to another, simltaneously. He immedietely reset the machine to the same calibrations as before and another rabbit (this one brown) was thrown into the enveloping field. Nothing happened however and after fifteen hours Saaxenhuiser gave up and went to bed.

Due to the nature of the machine, as explained by Axell Wantzenau, the portal stayed active even when the power was disengaged. Why this happened was a mystery. Just in case, the door to the laboratory was kept locked and guarded at all times. That night there was a thunderstorm and the lightning appeared to strike the shot tower numerous times. At some time around midnight Wantzenau was awoken by the guards who wished him to stop Jareth Saaxenhuiser who they claimed had locked himself in the laboratory and could be heard shouting and laughing to himself. Wantzenau together with Saaxenhuiser’s financial partner Vincen Bruyner ordered the door to be broken down but by the time they arrived they found the laboratory empty and the Gravity Machine running at full power. Saaxenhuiser’s notebook lay open on a desk and several pieces of paper were lying around it. On one, Saaxenhuiser had scribbled;

The whole chamber is subject to a constant magnetic field which causes charged thaumazoid particles to travel in helical paths, reverse the polarity by oscillating the field and the particles stabilize. I knew I’d done it when the black rat appeared even before I’d thrown him through! I almost expected to meet myself at any moment, but I understood the danger of this and decided to try going forwards instead. My little helper went first of course, just to be safe and his spirit remained intact when he reappeared sixty seconds later. I’ve finally done it! I will now reset the machine for sixty seconds again and pass into the future!

Saaxenhuiser has never been seen since. According to the guards, his last laughter was drowned out by a loud bang and it was later discovered that a bolt of lightning had travelled down the lightning conductor at around the moment when Saaxenhuiser is believed to have entered the enveloping field. Whether or not this caused his machine to malfunction, or whether or not his calculations were incorrect is unknown. The Royal Society of Natural Phenomena investigated the machine and ordered to it be turned off. When it became apparent that the machine was already turned off but the portal remained active, the shot tower was ordered to be destroyed. At the last moment his Majesty the king intervened for it was argued that at any moment Jareth Saaxenhuiser might suddenly reappear bearing untold secrets and arcane knowledge and so the tower was sealed into a psychotropically reinforced concrete sarcophagus instead. A corp of special guards was established to monitor any thaumaturgical leakage from the site and to make sure no one entered the thirty mile exclusion zone which was established in the wake of the disaster.

Since then, the portal has emitted several ’things’. In 1919, a loud braying noise, as of a very loud brass trumpet could be heard coming from the sarcophagus. This noise lasted for several minutes but guards in the secure observation chamber could not make out anything untoward in the chamber itself. Then in 1923 a white rat was spotted lying dead in the back of the chamber. No one had noticed its arrival but the portal was the only way into the room. Over the course of the next ten years various strange things happened in the laboratory. Things appeared to have been moved about. A chair one day and a table another. On one occaision lights appear to be glowing about the control desk and one guard reported seeing a ghost in the laboratory, though he was later dismissed for drunken misconduct. The most spectacular event took place in 1920 when two guards who had been on duty in the observation chamber were found dead by their replacements. The bodies were duly examined but no cause of dead was identified, though it was noted that both guards appeared to have aged considerably.

At the end of his trial Axell Wantzenau was sentenced to twenty years of social re-education at Schneppfau for numerous political crimes but as is often the case with the mystery of the Gravity Engine, Axell Wantzenau went missing the day after he was transported. According to one theory he managed to escape with the Lord High Thaumamechanician’s notes and papers and is currently living in exile. According to most independent observors though, Wantzenau was quietly garroted in the road and buried in a secret grave. The Central Commitee wanted to keep the story as quiet as possible. Today Pommenich is a ghost town, patrolled by the Special Operations Group of the People’s Militia and all access is denied.

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* Qionst are a skilled and dangerous, subterranean Goblin race, much given to demonology.