Having completed all my responsible projects (for now); I'm getting back
to completing three scratch built, diesel-punk half-tracks which have
stood waiting for too long. The models are inspired by Oleg's Sheev'dra
role playing campaign, and can be used in possible skirmish games,
though the primary reason for their construction was the simple pleasure
of building something unusual.The above image shows various parts for the first two models, which are based around a pair of surplus Company B Ford scout cars which I bought a fair number of years ago, but never built once I'd seen how small they were. The trailer behind the gun tractor is meant to be a steam powered automatic mortar but I haven't yet decided what kind of gun the tractor should be pulling. At the moment, I'm torn between a bio-diesel powered howitzer, or a nebelwerfer style multiple-tube rocket-launcher.
Recon half-track with entirely scratch built tracks and suspension and an enlarged cab for a single driver. Its hard to see, but this model, as shown has over 120 parts. The camo is based on contemporary Swedish vehicles. The colours are a bit strange due to the crap lighting conditions, and the model has yet to be weathered. The figures are Grymm by Hasslefree Miniatures.
Gun tractor. Similar to the recon half-track, but with an even bigger cab and a much bulkier under-carriage. The idea here is two vehicles built by the same group of dwarves, thus sharing some characteristics but being essentially two very different vehicles. The tracks on the gun tractor were bought from Ramshackle Games. I messed about with the image colours because the model was badly lit. I'm still working on the forward wheels and there will be a winch mounted at the front also. I think I'll paint this one in a more a utalitarian grey blue camo scheme.
This model represents a much bigger half-track than anything built in the real world. The idea here is for a double decker IFV with lots of gun ports and armour plating. The shape of the vehicle is based on a 1920's British design by Burford, and it is more or less scratch built. The turret came from Ramshackle Games but I haven't yet decided if it will stay. I may make a turret of my own design, or not. I probably won't. The body is made of a 2mm cardboard inner structure, clad in acrylic and pvc sheets. The tracks are cannibalised from a 1/35 Soviet T-26 tank.
Over Christmas I drew a few more autogyro's for Oleg's Dog star RPG. I've already posted two previous designs here and these continue the concept of larger, more sophisticated auto gyro's than anything actually built and almost comparable to fixed wing aeroplanes. Most of these designs are based on American air craft of the second world war. This is because I've tried to keep to a certain sense of style that defies the low tech capabilities of the engineers. Since the Dwarves in Dog star have certain pre set limitations and capabilities, I've tried as much as possible to stay within those parameters. Naturally, I've also take a few liberties along the way.
These designs are not meant to be anything but fantastical. The aspirations towards a sense of possibility and realism is merely me having fun. I doubt any of these designs would actually work, though I don't see why large autogyros couldn't be built. Modern concepts do exist for big heavy lift autogyros.
The first (image above and schematic below) is the BU-53 based on a Junkers JU-52 and inspired by the opening sequence of the film 'Where Eagles Dare'. The rotor blades are a bit small in the sketch, but this is due to the lack of space in my sketch book. For this reason I usually don't bother drawing the rotor blades (they're also tricky to get right).
The next autogyro (below) is the only one of these desigsn to so far have made an appearance in Dog star (and the first of those posted in the autogyro post). The 'Valkyra' is a converted freight transporter, known as a Mannsfoschen, Type XII Jäger transportvorrichtung, with upgraded engines and a remote controlled gatling gun turret mounted just below the nose canopy. Oleg's Dwarven gatling gun designs are powered by diesel combustion so they're under-powered by conventional black powder standards. The range of its primary weapon limits the 'Valkyra' to close attack, but gravity means it can fire on targets beyond the weapons ordinary range of 1,500 yards. As any one worth their salt can see, 'Valkyra' is an obvious cross breed of the B-25 Mitchell and the P-61 Black Widow. Due to the limitations Oleg has placed on Dwarven technology in Dog star, 'Valkyra' has Victorian/First World War performance, but fairly reliable engineering for all that (Dwarves being excellent engineers but opposed to mass production).
The next is the Hunterwassser Mk 1, a civilian transport/executive air craft, inspired by the tilt rotor prototype Bell XV-3. The idea here is either one engine sits in the rear of the main fusilage with power transfered to the props by means of crank shafts, or propulsion is provided by two small engines. Seven Dwarves can sit in the canopy section with the pilot in the nose.
The next two designs are military gunship variations on the Hunterwasser concept. They are the two seat 'Hornet' type A and the heavier, four seat 'Hornet' type B. Based loosely on a fantastic amalgamation of the Cobra attack helicopter and the B-25 medium bomber, the idea is for a cheap ground attack aircraft using two powerful engines for higher speeds. Additional fuel can be carried in drop tanks under the engines pylons. Note autogyro's don't need wings, but they do need large tail planes for stability. Unlike aeroplanes, they can fly very slowly and would make good gun platforms against primitive ground forces (this is an important factor in Dog star).
Since Sheev'dran Dwarves are not big on industrial scale mass productions, I tend to imagine that each autogyro is hand built and thus different in individual ways. This doesn't mean that popular designs don't exist though, only that designs get modified from aircraft to aircraft.
The Type A is armed with two .75 chain guns in the engine pylons (and powered by the engines) and two gatling guns in a remote controlled belly turret. The Type B has a similar armament, but with an additional gun turret. These autogyro's are designed to circle over a battle field and pour down fire over enemy troops. Larger or hardened targets could be stafed with the chain guns
The last design is the 'Lightning II', and although it is not the only combat autogyro, it is the only such aircraft I have designed with air combat specifically in mind. This design was also posted in my previous autogyro post. It is based on the P-38 Lightning.
The idea of the 'Lightning II' is for an autogyro built for high speed, able to simply out run, and out climb anything it should meet in a dog fight. It has three engines powering two pull and one push propeller and a single .75 chain gun in the nose. It is a large air craft and can carry two Dwarves, though it requires only one to operate. Like the 'Valkyra' it is a unique aircraft.
If you know what an autogyro is, then your probably seeing something akin to the above image in your head (don't you just love how the illustrator has given Bond the classic Bond pose even though he's cleary flying, whilst being shot at, firing his own machine gun and launching two missiles). The aircraft in that picture is the classic British 'Wallis design' of the 1960's. More about that later.
Autogyro's, gyrocopter's and helicogyro's are all aircraft which use rotor blades to stay up in the air, but which aren't helicopters (in other words they usually can't hover or take off vertically).
The most simple difference between a gyrocopter and a helicopter is helicopters have powered rotors and autogyro's don't. Autogyro's work by means of air passing over the rotor blades, making them spin and in return giving the aircraft lift. Aeroplanes use their wings for the same purpose. Lift is what keeps air craft in the air. The autogyro was invented in 1923 by the Spanish aero-engineer and pioneer of flight; Juan de la Cierva who had been trying to build a three engined bomber for the Spanish military, but who found to his dismay that it kept stalling (in other words the aeroplane lost lift). In order to deal with this, Cierva turned to some designs he'd been playing with the year before, and in 1923 he managed to build the worlds first functioning autogyro, the C-4 (thats it in the picture below taking off for the first time in 1923). When the engine of the C-4 stalled, as engines were also wont to do quite often in those days, the C-4 was still held aloft by the 'autogyration' of its rotors, and still had sufficient lift to glide safely down to the ground with ease.
Cierva continued to build autogyro's, spending all his remaining money on the next prototype, the C-5, and then getting a grant from the Spanish military for the C-6. These aircraft were still experimental though and real funding was needed. A Scottish industrialist named James G. Weir stepped up and together they founded the Cierva Autogiro Company, in England. Cierva, now with real funding started producing more and more sophisticated aircraft, improving his designs one after the other. The British government got interested as did an American industrialist named Harold F. Pitcairn who set up his own licensed manufacture of autogyro's in the USA. Focke-Wulf of Germany were also very interested and were granted a license to manufacture their own variant and the Third Reich was eager to assist other aero-designers to build new and interesting aircraft also.
In 1929, Cierva tested the C-19, by far his most advanced model as it could start its rotor spinning prior to take off (thus giving the C-19 the ability to take off on a shorter run way). Up until this point, Cierva had been building his autogyro's as if they were fixed wing air craft and relying on control surfaces to steer the vehicle. This meant, at low speed the pilots lost their ability to control the aircraft as control surfaces require a flow of air in order to function. The slower the speed, the less air flow and the autogyro's become more difficult to control. Cierva solved this problem by developing a direct control rotor hub that allowed the rotors to be individually tilted and thus made the rotor the primary method of steering as opposed to control surfaces on wings. Since the rotor was always turning (thanks to autogyration) this mean the aircraft could now be steered at very slow speeds and thus the pilots wouldn't find themselves losing control as they came into a slow landing.
A C8 above Bryn Athyn Cathedral
What this meant in practical terms was, the autogyro could take off and land on extremelly short air strips thus giving the autogyro a decided advantage over fixed wing aircraft. They still couldn't take off and land vertically, like helicopters can, but in the 1930's helicopters were still a decade away from stealing the show and autogyro's were in their golden age.
Like so much of that era, it all came to tears in 1939. The Second World War eventually did away with the autogyro as a practical aircraft. People came to see them as clumsy, inefficient and just not worth the bother. I get the feeling that a lot of people were influenced by the sleek and sexy designs of fixed wing aircraft and so these were developd to a far greater degree. Fixed wing aircraft also had fewer moving parts and were more practial to boot. Fixed wing aircraft production sealed the fate of Cierva's designs, relagating them to the cheap seats and Cierva himself was killed in a plane crash in 1936 thus ending his innovation. The only significant autogyro design to come from the Second World War was the unpowered German Fa-330, designed to be towed by a U boat and used as a look out post (I bet that was a cold duty). The FA-330 was designed to be broken down and stowed inside the U boat so it was very small and easily taken apart (see below). Its fascinating to watch given that the only thing keeping the Fa-330 up in the air is the forward motion of the U boat.
Fl-184
The Japanese had a variant of the same idea and the British used their autogyro's to calibrate their coastal radar defences, but on the whole the autogyro was eclipsed by other aircraft designs and became an obscure curiosity. The Germans had played about with numerous designs, including the Fl-184 anti submarine prototype but after the war was finally finished, things looked bad for future autogyro development. Times had changed and the helicopter had arrived to steal the thunder. That was until a Russian immigrant in the USA named Igor Benson came across an FA-330 and was motivated by its light weight simplicity. Benson designed his own version, the B-5 which was designed to be pulled behind a car, presumably along beaches. Later he added light-weight motors to his designs and finally in the 1950's he had perfected them with the B-8. The USAAF tested the B8 as a possible aircraft escape vehicle under the designation X-25b (which makes it sound very grand) but nothing much came of that.
X-25b
Crew: 1 Dimensions- Span: 22 ft, 8 in; Length: 11 ft, 3 in; Height: 6 ft, 3 in Max Speed- 95 MPH Range- 84 miles Max Altitude- 15,000 ft Power Plant- One McCulloch 4318 piston engine with 72 hp Weights- Empty: 247 lbs; Loaded: 550 lbs
If you consider the autogyro's design evolution, you can see how the FA- 330 set the template for the next fifty years. The 'next major design' after the B-8 is the Wallis autogyro (as seen in the James Bond poster at the top of this post) and it has very little innovative difference from its predecessor. Ken Wallis spent a lot of time and effort trying to sell the idea of the Autogyro, as a military reconnaissance platform, but no one was really interested. The Wallis design, like the B-8 is a small, buzzing little thing, eccentric and dangerous to behold. A few attempts at building commercial variants went no where. Wallis's most spectacular successes came from Hollywood, where both James Bond and Mad Max made use of autogyro's, in equally unrealistic fashion.
Gyrodyne's
Fairey Rotodyne
A gyrodyne is a hybrid between the autogyro and the helicopter. Like a helicopter it has a powered rotor, and can subsequently hover and take off and land vertically. At least in theory. In practice the levels of power needed mean gyrodynes have been few and far in number and those that were built, used a run way to take off. The story of the gyrodyne starts in the golden age of the 1930's (of course!) when a German aircraft designer named Anton Flettner got involved in building helicogyro's (see below) and autogyro's. His first practical model was the Fl-184 anti submarine prototype (see above) which crashed and burned in 1936. The Fl-184 and its successor the Fl-185 were based on the autogyro idea of forward propulsion using additional propellers, but unlike Cierva, Flettner powered his rotors, effectively making them into gyrodyne's.
Fl-185
These designs eventually led to the famous Fl-282 Kolibri, which is sometimes considered the first practical helicopter, though technically it is a synchropter as it had two intermeshing rotors.
Dr. James Allan Jamieson Bennett, who had become Chief Engineer of the Cierva Autogiro Company after Cierva's death, took the next step. Bennet took Flettners idea and made a prototype gyrodyne which had a shaft-driven rotor with torque correction and propulsion for translational flight provided by a side-mounted propeller. In other words, it had a second prop to stop it from spinning out of control, just like a helicopter but in this design the second prop also provided forward propulsion. Bennett's concept led to a redefinition of what a gyrodyne was as it acted like a helicopter when landing and taking off, but flew like an aeroplane. The most immediate practical application of this came in 1946, when Bennet's design led to the creatiion of the Fairey FB-1 Gyrodyne (see image below).
Crew: 1 Dimensions- Span: 15.7m. Length: 7.62m. Height: 3.10m Max Speed- 225km/h Power Plant-1× Alvis Leonides 9-cylinder radial piston engine, 520 hp (388 kW) Weights- Empty: 1,633kg. Loaded: 2,177kg.
The FB-1 was never more than a pair of protype's, but they demonstrated a wide range of record breaking capabilities. Enough for a new variation to be built; the jet gyrodyne of 1954, which was a gyrodyne with small jets at the tips of its rotor wings (technically this also makes it a helicogyre)
Events bring us now to the Fairey Rotodyne (see image above). Without a doubt the crowning glory of all western autogyro's, gyrodyne's and helicogyre's. Designed to carry passengers, or as a military cargo carrier, the Rotodyne first flew in 1957. It could land like a helicopter and had the cruising speed of a fixed wing aeroplane. It excelled in trials but was killed due to post war politics which saw American designs take precedence.
Crew: 3 + 40 passengers Dimensions- Span: 15.7m. Length: 7.62m. Height: 3.10m Max Speed- 343km/h Range- 830 km Power Plant-4× rotor tip jet burning compressed air/fuel2× Napier Elandturboprops, 2,800 hp (2,100 kW) each Weights- Loaded: 15,000kg. Max: 17,000kg
Whilst all this was going in the west, the Soviets were busy with their own, parrallel development. The Kamov Ka-22 was the resulting monster. As far as I am aware, it had no commercial purposes.
Crew: 5 Dimensions- Diameter: 22.5m. Length: 27m. Max Speed- 350km/h Range- 830 km Power Plant-2 × D-25VK turbo shafts, 4045 kW (5500 hp) eachCapacity: 16,400 kg Gross weight: 42,500 kg
A helicogyre is a helicopter or Autogyro which uses small propellers or jets to turn its main rotor. Naturally, as this was very unweildy, such aircraft never got past the design stage, but as the jet gyrodyne, the Hiller Hornet and the Fairey Rotodyne demonstrate, the idea wasn't without some merit.
Some personal designs...
There is no conceivable reason why a large, fully developed autogyro couldn't be designed ...save for costs and practicality. As a consequence of this, I have drawn a couple of my own designs (for my friend Oleg's RPG campaign 'Dog star'). These frivolous twin boom designs are based on numerous pre-existing fixed wing aircraft designs, especially the B-25, the P-38 the OV-10 and the P-61. I doubt they'd actually work, but I like the idea of autogyro's and its interesting to wonder what might have been...
Valkyra is a Dwarven transport autogyro with combat capabilities. She can carry 10 soldiers in her cargo compartment, plus two passengers in her uppermost deck. The crew sit in the primary cock pit and a single gunner/bombadier sits in the nose.
Lightning is a smaller, faster, gyrodyne. It has three engines, two pulling and one in the rear of the fusilage which powers the pushing prop and gives power to the rotor. The idea is, with long range drop tanks, Lightning would be able to cruise to the fight, then discarding its tanks power up the rear propellor and accelerate to combat speeds. It has a crew of two. A pilot in the nose and a navigator/specialist in the rear.
(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.
Of late I've been quite ill with myriad complaints and not really up for much. I get ill a lot (in case you hadn't noticed) so I've been spoiling myself with films, books, TV stuff and EVE and generally not being very interesting or creative. But one thing I have been doing is inventing Dwarven thaumatech*
This is probably of no interest to any one but myself and my friend Oleg (for who's game these thaumaturigal mysteries and inventions were created) but since this is my blog, then I can post what ever I want to and thats about the end of that. Heh heh heh heh.
So any way, in this role playing game, I play a group of Dwarves (yes they are seven in number) and these belong to an ethnic group known as Blue Valley Dwarves. As a means of flexing my imagination then I've been dreaming up fantastical machines invented by this ethnic group over the course of their history. This is strictly an exersize in frivolity you understand, a way to solidify random thoughts, so if your not into that sort of thing, then please keep moving, there's nothing to see here....
Oh, random thoughts and idea's are always welcome. Don't stand on ceremony, most of my idea's are stolen any way.
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Blauen Light.
(Some times is also known as Blauen Radiation or the Blauen Chemical Ray) Several centuries ago, an old top secret military project developed Blauen light as a method of attacking Qionst**. Blauen light is known to have been an electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than visible light, very similar to ultraviolet, but ultimately ’not of this world’. Quite where Blauen light came from is unknown, but its effects could be profound. Any one caught in the direct glare of Blauen light become incapacitated by an extreme lethargy which gripped the mind and body to so great an extent that the victim was quickly unable to respond to external stimulation. At the same time the light had an effect on organic matter, causing a darkening of the flesh that could quickly become a serious burn if untreated and even caused deformation over a long term exposure. Blauen light was invisible to the naked eye, but could be seen with ultraviolet filters. Unfortunately the secret of Blauen light has been lost. The Qionst quickly discovered that it could be countered with reflective surfaces such as a polished metal foil suit or umbrella. Highly polished metal armour also provided a high degree of protection. Eventually Blauen light was abandoned. Many years later an experimental thaumaturg working with some old artefacts she’d aquired noted that even reflected Blauen light can also be used to detect demons since these were illuminated, but not harmed, by it. She concluded that Blauen light might be some sort of light from Hell, but was unable to explain why the qionst should not have been aware of such a thing when it was first deployed. All subsequent research with Blauen light has been discontinued since the revolution*** and all known artefects have been destroyed or lost. There is no common knowledge remaining as to how to even generate Blauen light any more and many believe it may be a myth.
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The Cube of Hochwolkersdorf
An intricate cube of densely packed tubes and machinary, measuring roughly fifty inches to a side. The Cube of Hochwolkersdorf is said to be a containment vessel for evil spirits but no one knows for sure if this is so, or how the device works. Maribus Hochwolkersdorf was a mediocre alchemist and thamuaturg who lived in Flemendorff in the tenth century. During his research one day he came across a novel method of capturing spirits in a negative energy thauma-field and set about designing a means of utilising this discovery to make a trap. With some help from local mechanicians he eventually built an artefact that was able to capture and hold wandering spirits (and some even suggest daemons). Hochwolkersdorf activated the machine and discovered it worked perfectly. Pretty soon he had a fine collection of malignent entities trapped within the cube’s internal, negative energy thauma-field but he then realised he had no way of shutting the machine down without releasing these monsters and was thus forced to leave it working. For a long time the machine was kept in a basement store room in the Royal Society of Alchemists, but when that society was accused of treasonous behaviour and disbanded in 1611 the cube was moved to the Schwartzenburg Hall of Science where it still resides to this day and can be viewed by scholars and budding thaumamechanicians for a small fee. No one is quite sure how the machine works. It appears to be a perpetual energy device since it has been running, without pause for almost ten centuries and yet has no moving parts that any one can perceive. According to one of the several inscriptions on its outer surfaces, the machine feeds upon the energy of the spirits it traps. Another of the inscrptions warns: ’to open the cube is invite the mischance of all evil upon the world’.
Notes * Thaumatrugy. ** Qionst are underground Goblin people. ***The Blauendallen (Blue Valley) Revolution took place from the over throw of the Royal House of Aachen in 1917 to the foundation of the first Central Commitee in 1922. Since the fall of the House of Aachen, the industrial nobility and most of the Bourgeoisie have been scattered in a disorganized diaspora leaving only the Lumpenproletariat and their militia behind. Since then a Central Committee has ruled Blauendallen with an iron hand.
