Scribe Technical Progress Report 001

FAO Court, Dancers, Scribes T Darksun Subject: ‘Crucible of Souls’

Scribe's Notes:

Court should be advised that I have no idea whether this represents a complete view of the project as people don’t tell me everything. This is everything I know about what’s happening. If you want this to work and you want me to coordinate the production, then I need to know everything that’s being done.
Secondly, the plans we have been given are mostly sketches and vague ideas which I can only presume is deliberate because the Prophet knows better. I am forced to conclude that he has a plan, but wants us to figure out the details which sound pretty much like him. Therefore I make NO promises about whether the proposed solution meets his requirements because they have not been communicated in any clear fashion.
Finally, I am writing progress notes because no-one else is that I can find. Once again consider this a complaint about the lack of properly documented experimental results. Before anyone says anything, yes, I know. So very many very clever people with lots of power and super secret plans but if you want something like this actually built you need rigour and documentation not a bunch of theatrical iconoclasts who’ve decided to play researcher today. This is how we did it in the Sunfury, and in the RAS.

Technical Readout:

The ‘crucible of souls’ is, at its most simple, a repository for soul energy that can then be directed by a trained operator. The system is comprised of three major components:
The Base Unit: A large golden casket, which provides the housing for the soul energy. The base unit contains the storage capacitors, and all main arcane components and circuitry. Moving the base unit will require significant effort. The primary purpose of the base unit is to hold soul energy in an arcane conducting loop, ensuring the energies neither suffer entropic decay nor stagnation. ‘Pathway Mechanism’: The pathway mechanism provides the means by which a stable portal can be opened from the base unit to the designation target. The pathway will open a paradimensional conduit (exact dimensional coordinates are yet to be specified), allowed shunting of energy from the base unit to the target at near-instant speed and with only modest energy loss due to dimensional friction. The majority of the pathway functions are embedded in spells and sigils attached to the base unit.
Control function: The control function allows for the targeting of points in co-azerothian space, and allows for the operator to select and control the mode and magnitude of the soul pulse. Current design parameters give the crucible two operating modes. In mode one, the stored soul energy can be targeted on a point and remotely deployed. This will have the effect, in simple terms, of significant energy damage to an area around the targeted point, up to and included severance of souls from physical bodies. In mode two the stored energy can be deposited in inanimate corpses in order to simultaneously raise bodies from the dead. This can be done locally to the crucible, or remotely via the pathway.

Current State:

Base Unit

Base unit physical specifications are about complete.

Significant quantities of ultra-high purity gold are required to build the base unit. Current stocks are not adequate.

Significant quantities of specialised ‘undead wood’ are also required. Current stocks are not adequate.

Structural reinforcement of base units is currently not within tolerances; additional information has been sought from Zandalari on how to construct vessels that can hold more energies. (Djik is looking into it).

No current failsafes are installed, or even designed.

T Wiskerville has completed the initial prototype of arcane loops for reliable long term storage of soul energy. Prototypes are physically viable, but present an arcane engineering challenge in terms of scale – current prototypes can only hold single-digit’s worth of individual soul energies.

Pathway

Current designs use resonating charged soul shards to open pathways. This is likely to be unstable, and require periodic resupply of soul shards (which are definitely going to erode in this environment)

Teams acquiring Legion teleportation and beacon technologies from Netherstorm in order to attempt to stabilise the pathway. Also attempting to acquire Ethereal portal tech.

Control

No significant progress made. T Darksun beginning spellwork for control functions. Some limited progress on designing resonance architecture.

Current Actions:

Interrogation of Suramari libraries for any comparable technologies or spells, with particular eye on anything that could be used for benchmarking (Valreau, Ereldryl)

Review of captured Legion tech (Tarietha, Liandar, Valreau, Mika), review of potential other sources of energy transfer

Acquisition of Nethershards and Sentinax beacons from Broken Isles (Tarietha, combat teams)

Continued development of storage prototypes (Mortharas, Wiskerville)

Securing of data and high-quality components from Zandalar (Dijk, Mika)

Type

Report, Intelligence