Difference between revisions of "Project Mortis"

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==Industrial Archaeology Programme==
 
==Industrial Archaeology Programme==
  
==Tundrok==
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==The madness of Grod Malakan==
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''Tundrok...bloody Tundrok''
  
 
==The 'Gravrig'==
 
==The 'Gravrig'==
 
[[Category:Babkha]][[Category:Military]][[Category:Ryker Airships]]
 
[[Category:Babkha]][[Category:Military]][[Category:Ryker Airships]]

Revision as of 13:40, 23 September 2016

Project Mortis was a perennial Babkhano-Elwynnese-Shirerithian research project geared towards the reverse engineering and mass production of a viable anti-gravity engine based on old Jasonian technology and recovered artefacts. The programme, subject to technical difficulties, duplication of effort, cost overruns and the sometimes fraught, bloody and treacherous nature of international cooperation, managed to produce two viable prototypes - the Omen Jayatar Gravship and the IRS Kaiser Ayreon. However the costs associated with the production of the two prototypes, the notorious safety record of the onboard Babatom nuclear fission reactors, and the final collapse of the Mango-Camel Pact, saw the Shirerithian military forgo the option of entering into full production. The project was unceremoniously, and in some cases literally, buried and forgotten.

It was an industrial archaeology programme that was so long in its gestation that it eventually became subject to its own industrial archaeology programme.[1]

Nonetheless, the technology rediscovered, pioneered, or generally bodged by harassed engineers from whom the impossible was demanded, when on to pave the way for the development of the 'Gravitational Inversion Rig' developed in Cimmeria at research facilities on the island of Tundrok which would find its way into the designs of Ryker Airships.

Background

The Omen Gravship was the most feared weapon in the arsenal of the Flying Islands of Jasonia. There was literally nothing else quite like it save for the flying islands themselves. However with the downfall, in every sense of those islands, the Omen disappeared from the pages of history and was never recovered.

The Imperium of Menelmacar appropriated the last vestiges of Jasonian Tech and incorporated them into its own designs, which the demonic Sirithil in his hubris also christened an Omen gravship. It is generally held that even though they did, at two miles in length, exceed the originals in scale, the Menelmacari versions were on the whole inferior copies of the original.

A freak navigational mishap during the Skerries "Fluster Cluck" otherwise known as the 1st Lighthouse War, believed to have been caused by a trial batch of the infamous Treesian Red, caused one Menelmacari gravship to come to grief inside the territorial waters of the United Baronies of Treesia, where it formed a small atoll upon which subsequent layers of guano were deposited over the passing of millenia, obscuring the wreck, which Elfinshi shame ensured was omitted from all writen records.

At around the time of the abortive Treesian Apocalypse the local representatives of the Cult of Y'Brekki granted to a consortium of Babkhan merchants the right to mine a certain small but guano rich atoll in the Skerries, presumably under the mistaken belief that since the end of times was at hand it did not much matter who they sold the real estate to even if it was their enemies from the 2nd Lighthouse War.

Due to an unfortunate cock-up in the Celestial Bureaucracy, Treesia persisted after the apocalypse, albeit under a regime of dubious legitimacy, which brought it into the infamous Grand Commonwealth. The Skerries were then brought under an authority which permitted unrestricted access to the Skerries by Babkhan and Karnalian military forces.

During this time reports of Babkhan guano miners dying of radiation sickness were starting to be circulated. In due course a research team from the Commonwealth Defence Research Facility was sent to investigate. The incineration of this team alerted Commonwealth authorities in Shahanshahi-Tara to the existance of something of immense antiquity and value buried under the bird shit.

After several Shirerithian years of excavations, subtle Karnalian explorations and unsubtle Babkhan detonations, the timeworn superstructure of the Menelmacari gravship was attained. Alas the bulk of what remained was in a little better than fossilised condition. However, on the basis of what was recovered by the archaeologists and engineers the scientists of the Commonwealth were able to ponder and speculate.

Some of these speculations led to the Hurmu Gate, an awe inspiring edifice - if somewhat prone to unfortunate bouts of combustion - that was capable of punching a hole in time and space. Not necessarily good for the fabric of the universe, but very useful for the oligarchs of the Commonwealth when the GC presence on Micras collapsed in on itself.

It would be fair to say that most of the work on applying the rediscovered Jasonian/Menelmacarian technology had been undertaken by Karnalian scientists, with the Babkhans merely being willing to take the credit for someone elses work. However this changed when Sarhang Mustafa Horten joined the Commonwealth Defence Research Department (the passage of time had facilitated its promotion from a mere facility to a department of state). A true genius, he accelerated the process of rediscovery, even producing the first working prototype of an anti-gravity levitation device in the modern era. However this prototype was ultimately responsible for the destruction of a small Cyberian moon that was home to an extensive archive of obscure legal texts and codes of interpretation so painful to read that the text of Earth's treaty of Lisbon would seem quite straight forward in comparison. So let us agree to never again speak of this disaster but just be grateful that it occurred otherwise we would still be trapped into Raspur Intermicronational Conference without hope of reprieve or escape.

The fall of the Commonwealth facilitated the return of the Kingdom of Babkha to its rightful home on the continent of Eura after a long period of exile on Giess that had been tedious in the extreme and punctuated only by bouts of fighting absolutely everyone at least once. This at last brings us into recent history and the restoration of the Mango-Camel Pact and with it the long-sundered tradition of Babkhano-Shirerithian cooperation.

Omen Jayatar Gravship

Not far from Tymaria City the MoMA and the Babkhan VDS (Vizierate of Defence & Security) agreed to initiate the project to bring a gravship type vessel into operational service. Simultaneously the Yardistan Navy of its own initiative began a programme to develop a navalised version. The MoMA/VDS variant was subcontracted for the development and prototype production phase to Osman Almagro Industries and Elwynn High Tech Enginerring.

Although subject to delays, budget overruns, and unimaginable disasters, the new vessel was completed to the point where it could be subject to testing by a joint Shirerithian-Elwynnese team in the county of Cimmeria.

Although unmanned the prototype, under autopilot from a dedicated control centre in a secure Tymaria City facility, levitated successfully from Wolfraven, and as captured on the imaging equipment of a recon satellite attained a low Micras Orbit before beginning a controlled descent which ended in a successful return to Wolfraven, avoiding active international aerospace and maritime shipping routes.

The Omen Jayatar Gravship underwent works at a secure, SAVAK guarded, Osman-Almagro Engineering facility in Alkhiva Ostans where it was being brought up to its full technical specification. Unfortunately the Euran Cold War and the eventual collapse of Babkha resulted in the destruction of that prototype.

IRS Kaiser Ayreon

Industrial Archaeology Programme

The madness of Grod Malakan

Tundrok...bloody Tundrok

The 'Gravrig'