Industry and Technology
Having a much better understanding of how the guilds work and where technology used to be was critical to the improvements the University makes. While ideas like interchangeable parts and mass production have been huge collaborative projects, other smaller goals were much easier to achieve, especially blast furnaces and steelmaking.
Looking back across the time since I arrived, it becomes clear to me that my initial impression of the state of the society was wrong. Inath appeared to me to be a society in decline, slowly losing technologies and understanding that they once had as the First and Tsar that they descended from. Where humans used to be all over the world, monsters and zombies have slowly pushed them back into this large but limited area.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Whatever the initial war and the later Great Migration events were, very little survives from that period. Despite First Landing being a semi-preserved city of a presumably highly magical civilization, no magical artifacts survive beyond the summoning stones and other unpowered devices. No documents or records beyond oral history survives. This is very strange since even the worst of disasters should still leave some trace of prior technology.
Instead, like the Elkas and Fukas, humans were driven back into an agrarian society after the war. While stories of the wonders of the First and Tsar serve as a guide post as to what is possible, and almost certainly the reason why ironworking was never lost, the whole magical and technological tradition had to be practically reinvented.
Zombies only recently appeared a few generations ago and have only become a major threat in the last two, leading to the retreat to Inath's current borders. Indeed, if the zombies were as weak as they were implied to be starting out, given how zombies slowly develop new abilities, it would not be surprising to find out that the initial appearance of zombies would not have been a threat to even the post-Migration society. Much less the First and Tsar.
In this light, my near miraculous success can be boiled down to sheer luck. Inath is not a civilization in decline, in fact it was slowly building itself back up and I simply gave it a kick with Earth knowledge and ideas having arrived at just the right time for my own admittedly limited knowledge to be useful. The Ironworkers guild already had sophisticated furnaces for blister steel, experience with molten metals and other complex technologies. They would probably have reinvented the blast furnace on their own not long in the future.
Even now, I still wonder at how quickly the prototypes and advances have been made. The ingenuity of the Ironworkers in particular cannot be understated, along with their excellent project management. Being able to coordinate the construction of a steel furnace using triple shifts as well as ensure the flow of materials isn't stopped is not trivial. They might even better at it than Earth society was during our industrial revolution.
The conditions were simply ripe for my success.
This is never more apparent than when my projects attempt to reach too far. Elemental fractionation of plasma by application of heat is something that is possible given magic, however the infrastructure of strong magical power sources is not present to take advantage of this. Landar's attempts to make a computer are huge and unwieldy and full of bugs. I suspect Project Flight will run into similar limitations when the time comes to make viable aircraft. While attempts to make a magnet for the generation of electricity has been successful, the applications so far are limited due to the poor efficiency of generators and heavy losses on experimental wires.
Standardization is probably right at the edge of what their techniques and sophistication can support. No other city or town has been able to obtain truly interchangeable parts like Minmay has. The sudden leap forward into mass production in Minmay can likewise be attributed to standardization of construction parts like nuts and bolts, allowing designs that no doubt already existed to be refined and produced in commercially viable quantities by relatively unskilled labour.
I cannot expect the breakneck pace of improvements to continue as we head into more complex technology.
I have no more low hanging fruit left to try, and while the problems we will encounter are definitely solvable, I feel that the next major breakthrough will not be something I expect.
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Science
Project Flight continues. The wind tunnel was quickly completed and testing on wing structures has begun. While I do not recall the design of lift surfaces and the derivation of the flow equations is still far beyond us, I have at least demonstrated Bernoulli's principle by measuring pressure across a pinched glass tube. We are heading into a realm of engineering that I am not familiar with and many of the principles I only recall vaguely or even just by name, the rate of advancement when we do not have a theoretical underpinning is markedly slower.
Even so, the project is optimistic that the problems faced can be overcome. Even if the project ultimately takes too long to be of use to the zombie war, advancements made can be applied in other areas. We have teams looking into designing tubes and structures for strength while minimizing density, a materials team aiming to reproduce plastic, at least two teams working on aerodynamic design, two trying to make a light enough engine. Engines in particular are being taken in two directions, one using pure magical force to drive the wings forward, the other trying to utilize the greater energy efficiency of generating heat, starting with the design of turbine blades.
In other news, a different branch of the project is focused on lighter than air flight. Levitation is easy enough with a supply of magic but exceedingly inefficient. A kilogram of weight burns one power unit every five seconds just to negate the influence of gravity, with more required to keep it stable. A team is trying to build better magical containment tanks in order to store more magic, while another is trying to follow in my footsteps by making hydrogen balloons. My warnings on safety have led to investigation into refining helium from the natural gas normally bled off by the oil casking company in Inath and fractional distillation of air to make nitrogen fire suppressors.
All in all, both lighter than air and powered flight project appear to be progressing slowly, although only the lighter than air teams have had any successful flights. While lookout balloons are not useful at Fort Yang due to the presence of steep cliffs overlooking the entire valley, designs have been put forward for trade with Ranra for use at the eastern-most towns.
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Kalny's cataloguing of all known plant and animal products has been completed. He might have missed a few, but this sweep of the Federation lands is reasonably complete. This was quite a surprise since I didn't think this was possible to do for a single moderately sized firm.
It turns out that Inath has a strangely low biodiversity. For most categories of life, whether they be plants, animals, insect or fungi, there appears to be two to three examples in each category and that's it! There is exactly one species of beetle! Three fish and four bird families! And here I was wondering why I never saw any ants. The only species for which significant variation exists are bacteria, fungi and presumably viruses.
It is as if someone had tried to re-create Noah's Ark, ran out of space and so decided to take a few examples of every type. How this lack occurred I have no answers for, not yet. Just another difference between Inath and Earth that no one noticed until my assumptions clashed with theirs.
My suggestion that their biosphere might have been created by deliberate design was met with scoffs and incredulity. Even Landar just shakes her head and smiles at my foolishness at suggesting that anyone, even the First, could create life ex-nihilo. Making variations in existing life like dwarf windeyes and Elkas from humans? Sure, the First could do that. Making an entirely new type of life or creating the life on this planet? No way.
This is in spite of their own creation myth outright stating that the First arrived or were brought to this planet in the same way as all the plants and animals. That was clearly metaphorical, they say.
The irony of my reversed position on the creation versus evolution debate is not lost on me. The micro-design argument merely makes the analogy even more ironic.
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Society
I am pleased to note that I have come across the first instance of a mass market luxury good that wasn't fancy food. The University book store now has a single shelf stocking fiction!
Apparently the falling cost of low grade paper and printing has reduced enough that small stories have begun to circulate. Sheafs of ten to fifty pages roughly bound together, carrying all sorts of stories. Romance, drama, tragedy, comedy and even the occasional attempt at a heroic epic. In fact, one of those epic tales of an adventurer and a noble son is a serialization, with regular twenty page chapters published every week!
A few words and a meeting was sufficient to kickstart the formation of a publishing and editing company. While regarded as a waste of time and money by the more literal minded, I have always had a soft spot for a good story. Besides, this can only encourage literacy. That shall have to be my explanation for my support.
The rest of the expanding bookstore is still carrying the latest lectures and the first scientific journal on Inath.
In any case, the start of mass market entertainment is indicative of the changing face of the society. With greater disposable income from factory workers, it is clear that the economy is starting to pick up on this new demand too.
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Governance and Infrastructure
A trade in magical power that arose many months ago has gone into full swing with the new mana wells. With the price falling every day, the peasants initially training to sell magical power beads have lost that side income. Minmay has authorized a small expenditure to encourage further training of those people in the University in order to get more alchemists, with a bond of military service for three years.
This is just one of the few economic shifts and problems that Minmay and his Lesser and Greater Circles are tackling. In this sense, even though they are based off the Inath Federation's Councils, the Lesser Circle works like the local council dealing with Minmay city issues and the Greater Circle is deals with regional governance. Chancellor Minmay retains the final say in all matters however, though their suggestions and input carry significant weight.
Income tax has been established across the board, including in villages and outlying regions. For most peasants, there is not much change as they still pay tax in grain but the shift in accounting as well as the first attempt at a census has caught many light cases of corruption or simple miscalculation.
Building codes, for fire safety as well as utilities have been established. All new houses come with at least better fire resistance and a sewer connection, which is still not fully implemented in the poorer districts.
Mapping Minmay city as well as registering house numbers have created a fully complete labeling and addressing system for every property in Minmay. This has allowed the establishment of a formal mail and parcel service that previously was an ad hoc series of messengers run as a side-business by the Recordkeepers. Bicycle mail carriers have been very common, with young teens carrying mail, boxes and newspapers all over the city and into the countryside.
Part of the mapping has led to a zoning system where industrial areas are segregated from the residential and commercial areas. Noise pollution has become a problem with the heavier industries and while residents are already fleeing factory areas, formalized zones should help infrastructure and utility planning as factories consume far more resources in water, magic power and special waste than residential houses. The Ironworkers have always been set apart from the city to reduce soot staining the buildings, this is more important than ever due to their increasing output of poisonous heavy metal waste.
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
The development of a rush-hour like traffic pattern however is a challenge that the Circle has to deal with now.
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Economic pressure from the lack of currency has begun to ease as the first major shifts in trade has taken root. Barge ships arriving at the downstream port carry Inath and Illastein coin in exchange for Minmay goods and services, merchants over land similarly move currency towards Minmay from the rest of Ektal. King Ektal's first major payment for his massive order of guns has also arrived, the Chancellor demanded payment in actual coin.
While this has helped Minmay city, I fear that the economic shockwaves from all this monetary movement will affect the economies of the entire Federation. With Ranra starting their own ironworks and Inath moving into a strange hybrid of farming magical plants plus mana wells for magic, I suspect an explosion of industrialization will happen once Minmay manages to export standardized production. The branch University in Ektal has already met with success, though limited to the glass industry.
Knowing this, I have written to Queen Amarante, asking her to consult with Morey. I hope that even if Ektal refuses to issue fiat currency, the Federation as a whole might have more luck.
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Illastein and Democracy
I do not have much hope for Morey's attempts to introduce democracy to the post revolution Illastein. The news and rumours that have flowed out of the chaotic post-war mess have been fragmented except for those reports that Amarante shares.
What they all agree on however is that Amarante's small army of administrators, auxiliary knight parties and proto-militia sent to keep order have done just that. They have also formed an 'interim' government that has turned Illastein into essentially an Inath puppet state. They are lucky Amarante is a well-liked and competent ruler, in peace time at least. A more ambitious Inath would have taken the country offered up to them on a silver platter by the Hero with cackling glee.
It is only Amarante's sheer reputation for storybook fairness that has Ektal and Ranra not seeing this as a prelude to Inath removing southern opposition before turning northwards to unite the Federation. Amarante has promised Illastein will have an independent government and they believe her.
Interesting.
Still, King Ektal is preoccupied worrying about this potential threat when his country is about to send over half its fighting force invading northwards into zombie infested lands. Something that Minmay is going to leverage in the coming negotiations.
Morey's request that the large and sparsely populated country vote representatives into its government has been met with skepticism here in Ektal. The peasants do not have the education required to make intelligent choices. Such a large country cannot be governed by popular vote when it takes a fast messenger over a month to travel from the desert frontier to the southern border with Inath. The representatives will be populists who will destroy the country.
All counter-arguments that are valid. Morey's speeches on his route back from Illastein have given the ISL listeners and some of the peasants inspiration to view the country with a national identity, but that is a tiny tiny fraction of the overall population of Illastein.
Thank whatever gods that might exist here that Amarante's 'temporary' interim government is not going to be temporary at all. I could easily believe Illastein still being governed by Inath twenty years later.
Similarly, the Greater Circle of elected Barons here in Minmay, while democratically elected representatives on the surface, only the very worst of the Barons have been ousted from their rule. Chancellor Minmay also retains absolute power, the Greater Circle are strictly advisory, much like the regional court before. This is as much a way for the population to air grievances in village election meetings (no rallies here!) as well as an excuse for Minmay to replace Barons that are too unpopular.
This whole undemocratic democracy reminds me of the transitional state to full independence of the British colonies. Rather than just throw democracy at the people and expecting anything but chaos, this state of affairs is partial recognition of the effects of the popular revolts, one successful and one not. The peasantry have a little more power as their literacy, political awareness and economic importance grows.
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Ironworkers
Air fractionation has been stable for some weeks, with only scaling issues remaining. Uses for a controlled atmosphere are many, primary among which is the basic oxygen furnace. Together with a source of chromium found in the Aldir region and a much larger deposit in Ranra, stainless steel is now under serious development alongside aluminum.
Rather than use an eletrochemical process, for which electrical infrastructure and understanding is quite lacking, a carbothermic process was proposed. Using the latest furnace design with a preheater to achieve roughly 1000 *C under a controlled introduction of oxygen, the ore is then further heated by direct application of magic to achieve the highest temperature record for industrial production of 2600 *C, upon which the excess unreacted carbon in the coke would reduce the alumina to aluminum gas. Due to the heat and alumina vapours, this required them to suspend the melt with pure magical force and use a mostly inert atmosphere. The vapourized metal and flue gases are then separated by condensing aluminum product in a graphite condenser maintained above aluminum melting point.
The process is still under research. Laboratory attempts at the scale of a few grams have been occasionally successful, though the need to make furnaces and equipment that can maintain the controlled atmosphere under such temperatures is a massive challenge. Collecting and separating the molten product, which is at roughly 700 *C and still under inert atmosphere, is also a challenge, though less of one given the experience with steel.
There have been several new craters in the Ironworker's Blast Zone due to reactor meltdowns. Even the refractory brick cannot withstand the high temperatures and if the magical suspension of the reaction mix fails and it contacts the wall, the bricks explode due to the heat, leading to further containment failure and rapid disassembly. The highly energetic aluminum gas and coke also catches fire and explodes on exposure to atmospheric air and bits of furnace and ore end up scattered over most of the research area. And the furnace walls themselves have to be almost a meter away from the reaction as the shed heat is so high the bricks slowly melt if they are too close even if containment is successful.
There is also the problem of consuming argon gas for the inert atmosphere, maintenance of the physical portions of the valves under extreme conditions, and the huge magical energy consumption. A better refractory furnace lining would solve many stability problems.
Regardless, the rewards were deemed worth it from the properties of the laboratory produced aluminum and stainless steel samples. And the engineering problems, if solved, is expected to open up similar reduction processes for rarer metals, phosphorus for fertilizer and possibly even nitrogen fertilizer by thermal dissociation of nitrogen gas. Laboratory determinations of Ellingham curves still require a proper infrared temperature sensor, but it is estimated that a 3500 *C reactor could reduce any metal, even sodium.
The reason why a carbon reduction was deemed easier than electrical is due to the way magical force can contain material, no matter how hot. Even gas can be contained efficiently if the molecular speed is not too high. Furthermore, magical heating pays no attention to how hot or cold the material is, not requiring higher quality heat sources, just power. Just as a laser on Earth can be used to heat anything to incredible temperatures, so too magic. Without any of the inefficiencies of lasers or the attendant infrastructure.
High energy experiments have already managed to decompose hydrogen atoms into naked protons. I don't know what temperature was achieved exactly, but it's over 10 thousand degrees.
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Magic
A power infrastructure has to take into account the characteristics of magical power. For that purpose, I shall detail recent findings with our experiments in high energy magic.
Magic Energy and Magic Density are terms coined since my last journal entry. Magic Energy is what we call a "charge" or scalar property of the mana that carries it, this magic energy is what is consumed when a magical effect is activated. Magic Energy is measured as magical power units and 1 unit is sufficient to counter the weight of one kilogram of mass against the force of gravity for 5 seconds.
Magic Density refers to the amount of mana within a unit volume, here our units were also in magical power units before the difference between the two was discovered. This is now referred to as magic density, where 1 unit is the ambient density at sea level in Minmay. Currently, this measurement is not widely used except in University records.
A common method of measurement is through pressure, the weight on a magical barrier piston that a certain magic density can support against ambient. A 2 magic density volume supports about 40 tons of weight per square meter. Obtaining magic energy from magic density difference to ambient yields about 170 magic power units from a 1 liter volume of 2 magic density. Rather like pressurized gas, the yield in magic energy scales proportional the magic density difference to ambient.
At current technology, a magic density containment vessel is limited by the physical materials that contain the pressure. Since the containers are often made of steel, powerful enchantments reinforced against the magical pressure can be supported, enough that the physical vessel fails first as pressure increases. With the appropriate safety margin, the best containment vessels can achieve about 50 magic density. The Borehole outputs at 1.05 magic density with just under 1 liters per second of volume, mana wells range from 1.005 to 1.02 increasing with depth and volume rates of 0.01 to 0.05 liters per second increasing with diameter. By having the bottom of the shaft actively pump magic density at the cost of magic energy, recouped at the surface, the Borehole now outputs nearly five times the power of what it did before, about 480 magic power units per minute.
Related to these measurements is a composite called the Power Ratio. This refers to the ratio of magical power units relative to magic density in one liter and is therefore related to the amount of magic energy each bit of mana is carrying. This ratio does not affect the operation of magical effects, which are limited to the total magic energy even in high magic density environments.
However, since magic energy can also be stored in high magic density storage vessels, and does not add to the pressure, a high ratio means more net energy can be stored within the same volume of the vessel. Since magic does not contribute to the weight of the containment vessel, the most weight efficient storage of magic is high magic density and high power ratio. This is of course important for the development of the flight project, which needs a weight and volume efficient power storage.
Power ratio when transferring magic energy between spells or effects stays exactly the same even if moving to a spell of greater or lesser volume. Theoretically, spells will have a maximum magical power units for a given volume equal to their power ratio times the volume; this was verified as power transfer from an equal power ratio source will not work once that amount is reached. This gets significantly more complicated when the source(s) and the existing spell have different ratios, the result is a mixture of magic with different ratios rather than an averaging of power ratio.
This theoretical limit is already known as the smallest volume that will contain the total power output of a mage, which is around 1.5 litres. (see notes below on human power ratio measurements)
Power ratio can be increased artificially. A different method of energy transfer than casting spells can push magic energy into a volume with a ratio above the level of its power source, but requires the source to have a higher magic density than the output. Interestingly, this is the same process by which casters 'flare' their magical signals as this generates a massive magical signature, possibly due to escaping magic energy.
The process incurs a penalty in magic energy of up to thirty percent. The magic energy successfully transferred to the magic density within the target volume thus adds to the final power ratio. Again theoretically, power ratio can be scaled infinitely by using the high power ratio energy as input for a second stage.
The problem with creating both high magic density, high power ratio storage is that this requires dedicated facilities since the processes to increase the power ratio outputs magic that has a density that is below ambient. Using that as input to a magic compression engine is thus very inefficient and requires multiple staging to get to the highest magic density levels.
The conditions for catalyzing conversion into the high density magical crystal seems to be a magic density above 60 and a power ratio of more than 1200. Properties of this high density artificial magic crystals are still being investigated, but they look promising as a method of energy storage as they are nearly as energetically dense as coal, without the attendant heat transfer problems coal would have.
Of interest to the summoner clans is that since the magic density of a human body is naturally around 1, and the past experiment had shown spellcasting expels magic from the caster of which the safe amount is also fixed at around 1.5 liters a day, the power ratio of the spell output is the definitive measure of the caster's magical power. A "common" knight has power ratios around 70, Landar achieves 150 on a good day. Ereli, the Hero's companion and currently regarded as the strongest caster alive reaches nearly 600. Barely trained humans manage 25 or so, Fukas are similar but can output almost 2 liters before fainting, Elkas have power ratios at less than 10 but can output almost 30 liters and recover that in half an hour. Elkas however gain power ratio very slowly even when trained, I suspect a different biological mechanism for their magical power recharge is responsible.
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Landar and the university team have successfully created the first theoretical spell before a practical casting was performed. In traditional spellcrafting, spells were designed and refined with successive rounds of improvisation until the final form was experimentally optimized. However, their answer to the accelerated shield piercing blasts is both ingenious and so complicated that it is impossible for a person to cast it directly.
The shield is a diffuse shell set to modify all spells passing through it in the same way that magic circles or casters apply changes. By modifying the spell's boundary to be almost completely made of holes, the contained magic inside the attacking spell is rapidly leaked into the environment. Provided the shield is set far enough away from the target being protected, a disruption bolt passing through it will dissolve into the air before hitting. Initial calculations and design bore out in the magic circle version that was tested later.
While Minmay is glad that we finally have an answer to the shield piercing attacks Landar invented many months ago, I am more interested in the advent of theoretical spell design. Only Landar truly appreciates how far we have come in understanding magic that a design of a spell on paper could be refined and put into practice with only very minor changes later.