Arcane Machina

Arcane Machina refers to the historical concept of Arcane magic being used as the sole energy source to sustain the operation of Machinery, Appliances and other devices. It had a wide range of applications, from both Industrial usage to domestic, and was the fundamental power source behind much of civilizations in Erra.
It is commonly accepted that the principle of Arcane Machina lead to the destruction of major societies following The Collapse, as all devices that incorporated the technology would spontaneously fail due to the severance of magical flow.
Constructs and Golems, while sometimes powered by Arcana, do not fall under the category of Arcane Machina.

History

Initial Conception

The proposal to use Arcane energy to automate simple physical processes was first made by Dremon Bryrel in 692. At the time, the Urusheen Government were looking for energy sources that could potentially be used in automating production work, as the existing systems of Constructs and Golems would frequently suffer from multiple points of failure and high maintenance requirements, resulting in inefficiencies in the industrial output of the nation. At the time, Electricity and Combustion were also being considered as potential solutions, due to the high potential of power and ability to scale their operations as necessary.
While the alternatives proved to be promising, Dremon Bryrel's unique methods of infusing Arcane Energy into a source core within the object, effectively "programmed" with a simple instruction to carry out (much like existing Golem construction), outshone the others in terms of sheer energy efficiency. In nature, Arcane Energy is very rarely converted into other forms, which represent 'lost' energy, depending on the type of element used. By preserving the initial magic in a neutral state, the rate of decay in a single core was extremely low, able to last up to several years depending upon the size and complexity of the task required for it.

Early Inventions

Following the successful demonstration of the potential in Arcane Machina, the Urusheen Government quickly put Dr. Bryrel's technology to the test in a number of field trials. The first creations implementing the new Arcane Cores would be simple industrial elevators. Heavy materials would be placed inside the elevator at one end, and elevated or descended to their destination through the use of Arcane Cores fixed to strong pulley systems - In essence, it was a significantly scaled up version of similar construction systems used for smaller projects such as roof tiling.
This would then be expanded upon to provide very basic methods of lateral transportation. Initially, this would be cargo systems that effectively provided the same service as the Elevators. However, the idea was also used to carry personnel to and from their destinations as efficiently as possible, with multiple dedicated passages being set up across the test site - The very first automated transport hub, taking inspiration from similar Carriage-based companies that would make use of depots.
Eventually, as confidence in the potential of Arcane Machina grew among the Urusheen Government, it would steadily be integrated into its intended role of Automated Production - At first optimizing small tasks that required little oversight yet were too insignificant to be operated by Constructs, before eventually phasing out the existing automatons in order of lesser importance. By 699, the first Urusheen factory had become entirely dependent upon Arcane Machina, and the adoption of the new technology began to truly take off in society.

Wider Adoption

Following official press releases by the Urusheen Government, entrepeneurs would swiftly begin racing to integrate Arcane Machina into commercial applications, hoping to capitalize on the recent successes. Notable among these first creations would be implements used for heating and cooking - Ovens, Furnaces, and other such objects that traditionally ran off of Fire or similar heat based sources. Interestingly, this was a direct contradiction of the research that had been published by Dr. Bryrel on energy sources - It stood to reason that using an Arcane Core to produce heat and similar fire elements would cause a significant reduction in efficiency, and most "true" Arcane Machina operated at either cold or neutral temperatures. However, as noted by the frequency of such appliances in a common household before The Collapse occurred, this did not seem to be common knowledge.
In 703, the first personal transportation would be completed following a collaboration between Dr. Bryrel and a number of engineering artisans that had formed a collaborative effort between nations. Their concept was to create large machines capable of transporting multiple individuals across long distances, similar to Carriages, but with the ability of self propulsion instead of utilizing work animals. Having heard of the systems created by Bryrel's team in the establishment of Urusheen's factories, they requested his assistance in integrating the technology as the primary source of energy for their vehicles. Within a decade, this partnership would spawn the first instances of mass public transportation and began to be integrated in many of the common nations of Erra, providing safer, faster and more reliable means of carrying civilians across the lands. However, the machines were also prone to being hijacked and stolen, particularly due to the value of Arcane Machina components at the time, leading to a series of frequent escalations in security and defense.
In 715, Dr. Bryrel would further his research into empowering machine objects with Arcana energy to create long distance communication devices, that would enable individuals to speak with other persons without the need for active spellcasting or the services of other magi. Initially, this was used in important governmental operations to bypass the requirement of a Sorcerer to scry the messages, for details such as Administration and Military operations. In time, it would fall into novelty uses for civilians as a pricey, but intimate alternative for long distance communication. However, the Arcane Machina communication devices still had a major flaw in their size, taking up the space of a 0.5x1 Chest.
However, usage for broadcasting messages would particularly take off in 723 when the international Bard group Sapphire Scene would partner with a company specializing in the new devices to play a live concert to multiple major cities at once. By replicating the message sent through the Machina device, it could be sent to several receivers, which were located in private restaurants. Individuals could pay the price of admission for seating at these establishments and spend an evening dining while listening to the performance. The event was a sellout success and enabled the band to play for a much larger audience than traditional venues could hold, and would lead to the popularization of listening to public broadcasts and performances across the world - Formally known as "Audiana".
As the decades passed, Arcane Machina would see more and more widespread usage, becoming a fundamental building block for future societies to be built on as the primary energy source of the world by the 800th year.

The Collapse

With The Collapse, almost all Arcane Machina were immediately rendered completely inert. Cores no longer provided any energy, and any infusions performed upon the devices also spontaneously failed. Transportation would immediately cease to function. For vehicles, this would mean they ground to a halt where they stood, becoming inoperable and useless, while heavy duty transportation such as Lifts and Elevators would come to a complete standstill or, in cases where proper safety standards had not been implemented, cause fatalities. Communications were disrupted on a large scale, lighting systems completely failed, food preservation shut off - Society effectively saw the overwhelming majority of appliances they had been using to survive become nonfunctional in a matter of seconds.
Cities that were heavily dependent upon Arcane Machina would suffer greatly - The largest population centers suffered a crisis with widespread panic setting in after a few hours, while newer cities built with the use of the technology in mind would become almost entirely inhospitable as a result, causing a number of derelicts that remain not entirely explored to this day due to the risks involved.

Post-Collapse Reinvention

In the decades following The Collapse, attempts were made to try to salvage the existing technology in some form. It was discovered that, as we know now, there was no chance of repairing the machines to their original state with the lack of access to Arcana, and the scarcity of professional engineers following the incident in surviving communities ensured that repair efforts would gain little traction. It would take until roughly 902 before Electricity begun to be implemented as a potential replacement power source - Research notes on its usage had been notoriously difficult to find following the complete destruction of Ionin, and while the notion of returning to such a source had been widespread for quite some time, the implementation of such methods became a note of considerable difficulty. Effectively, it required the re-invention of Steam Engine technology, using the generation of Steam to provide the requisite energy required to power Dynamos that transfer it into usable Electricity.
The usage of these systems was very limited, at first, due to setbacks with stability and safety of the involved systems, as well as difficulties scaling up the size of the Engines to suit higher demands of energy output. While there has been much progress in restoring some of the machines that were used before The Collapse, the process of rewiring such devices remains limited, with it being easier in some cases to simply scrap and salvage existing materials to create entirely new ones instead.
Lighting and cooking, being the most simple uses for Electricity at any scale, can be commonly found across civilizations. Modern production facilities make very little use of the energy source due to a drastic downtrend in population size in the centuries after The Collapse, being reserved only for heavy duty processes that can't be easily replicated by an individual's hand. For transportation, personal vehicles remain almost exclusive to the most wealthy individuals in modern society, with mass transit between established population centers being the vast majority of usage now, with numerous settlements being constructed on known transportation paths as a result to compensate for the lack of independent power generation.