Void Compression
With the advent of new technology and the energy needs associated with them, new means of generating energy efficiently were needed. Standard fuels that are commonly used to power the common steam engine are an unfortunate scarcity in Cairne, and so scientists and engineers were forced to seek answers to this complex problem elsewhere, lest progress be irrevocably halted within the industrial prospects of several nations. To this end, as luck would have it, a strange discovery along the fringes of the Eastern Wastes opened up a new world of potential opportunity, Nullmetal . Though extremely rare, this new metamaterial allowed engineers, inventors, and scientists among the Bechtlarite and Culvakt nations to design a means by which the very substance of the Void that nearly destroyed their world might be harnessed as a powerful resource, able to be utilized in the fueling of the Culvarkt invention called the Hammerdrive Engine. These things combined have sparked a new technological age of potential growth and achievement hindered only by the scarcity of Nullmetal.
Utility
As a fuel source for the Hammerdrive Engine , the usefulness of this technology is revolutionary. As a power source it is unmatched, despite the serious danger of using it. This allowed both the Bechtlarite and Culvarkt nations to further innovate their designs on transportation, internal power systems for structures, and various military implementations as well.
Manufacturing
Along the fringes of the Blighted Lands, several factories have been built to refine Nullmetal and to gather and compress the less volatile Void essence found there as well, keeping the environmental concerns as centralized to contaminated areas as possible and as far removed from civilization as possible as well. The close proximity of the two production facilities allows for the two to work in unison as well, reducing the need for transport of the materials from location to location until it has been processed and compressed down into its more manageable form.
Social Impact
As the aspects of long range and high speed travel are being implemented, the ability to transport people and goods over long distances quicker and at a significantly reduced cost and risk is opening up a wave of industry, as well as a race to collect as much of the Nullmetal as possible. While trade and industry bost are at an all time high, political tensions have increased as multiple global factions begin to set sights on the limited and quickly dwindling Nullmetal resources.
Parent Technologies
Access & Availability
While the method is far from secret, the cost and implementation of the technology used in this process is so significant that even the Becht nation depleted a great deal of its resources just to develop and manufacture the devices it has.
Complexity
The entire process in incredibly complex, utilizing the Void Collection Device, or VDC in tandem with the Diamond Forge to generate the compressed Void material. This process is not without significant risks of accident and contamination as it deals with a highly volatile and toxic substance that generates a great deal of environmentally damaging waste and presents a severe health risk to those that work with it regularly.
Discovery
Ephram Nadus , the Bechtlarite scientist who lived in the city of Armuun, was a highly talented inventor and scientist who made a significant contribution to the field of energy production with the development of Void Compression Technology, as well as several other significant inventions. Following the discovery of Nullmetal , Ephram ran the substance through an exhaustive round of testing and experimentation, discovering the limitations and boundaries by which it could be manipulated and used. While his initial intentions were to replicate the process in a laboratory environment and hopefully synthesize the process that generates the metamaterial, all his attempts to do so failed. However, during that process, he became aware of the Culvarkt designs on a new type of engine that was being built intended to utilize Void energy and generate power by harnessing the reactive nature of it to drive the device. The largest flaw with their designs was the inefficient means by which they gathered and contained the essence needed. In its raw, vaporous form, the essence quickly depleted and would need to be replinished, requiring large containers of the volatile substance. Nullmetal being exceedingly rare, had caused their development and production to come to a halt as large amounts of the material were needed to facilitate these demands. Seeing this, Ephram was graced with a moment of inspiration.
Utilizing the Nullmetal he had available, Ephram pieced together a vacuum pump that could draw in the Void essence using a capillary action and house it in a containment vessel through a long glass tube using the cohesive properties of water as an insulator against the reactive nature of the essence as it moved through. If this process was done in brief intervals, the reaction could be staved off from damaging the tube as long as the essence was not permitted to linger within it. This method allowed him to siphon off large amounts of the vapor-like essence quickly and store it within a Nullmetal containment housing.
With the raw essence stored, the next step was to render it into a compressed form that would be easier to manage, more fuel efficient, and safer to handle. While it took some time and a great deal of trial and error, Ephram, being a highly intelligent scientist, was well aware of the existing techniques for compressing materials into smaller, denser forms. In his quest to develop a reliable and efficient compression technique, Ephram experimented with a variety of materials to find the best option for compressing the reactive Void essence. He stumbled upon the idea of using diamonds as compression tools through his research or experimentation. Diamonds, due to their exceptional hardness and durability, were an ideal choice for compressing reactive substances like the Void essence. With the idea of using diamonds as compression tools in mind, Ephram then designed and built a large diamond compression device, which he called a Diamond Forge , that could squeeze the Void essence between two inverted diamonds very slowly but generating levels of compressive force never before achieved prior to his experimentations. He surrounded the Void substance with a cooled liquid containment chamber to maintain its stability during the compression process and was successfully able to compress a large amount of Void essence into a small, but incredibly dense brick that could endure repeated reactions for an extended period of time before being depleted.
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