Shield Generators
Introduction
Shield Generators are protective devices that generate a force-field around a central hub. They are most often used as personal protective equipment for high-risk jobs such as mining, oil drilling, and aethership crewing and maintenance. Shield Generators can be tuned to be airtight, and as such they are frequently used on aetherships as an emergency air-seal. They also have military applications, and some cities are protected by large-scale shield generators. The armed forces of The Holy Roman Empire are notable for their widespread use of personal and large-scale shield generators.
History
The first shield generator was theorized by Professor Albrecht Sponaugle of the Graz University of Technology in 1835 in an article discussing the possibility of tuned force fields. After a presentation of his paper at the University of Vienna in 1836 he was given an Imperial Grant to continue the research and assemble a team of engineers and assistants. A laboratory was constructed in his home town of Weiselberg, and the work began. In 1844 Prof. Sponaugle passed away during a train derailment while traveling to a conference in Venice, and the work was continued by his primary assistant, Dr. Mihály Gál. A working prototype was ready for testing less than a year later. Over the following years the design would be refined to lower the initial device’s prohibitive energy consumption.
The first public showing of a successful Shield Generator was the display at the 1851 World’s Fair in London’s Crystal Palace. Visitors were invited to throw provided vegetables at a statue of the young Kaiser Franz Joseph I, while a plaque beside it stated “THROUGH THE GRACE OF GOD, SCIENCE WILL PROTECT OUR EMPIRE” This was allegedly impromptu, and nearly caused criminal charges for the team who organized it, but the Kaiser himself found the display charming, and so all charges were dropped. The booth was very popular, drawing a large crowd for the duration of the fair.
After the fair ended an Imperial Monopoly for generator production was issued to Schwangau Teknic, a corporation in Bavaria that specialized in highly complicated technology. Orders flooded in from all over the world, but per the terms of their license, they could only be sold to government approved buyers. This limited the spread of the technology, and due to this it would take many decades for non-imperial generators to appear. When the first successful aethership launched in 1854 it was carrying an early generator, as well as a team of Imperial engineers to both maintain it and to make sure that no one examined it too closely.
Like many pieces of technology, the first military use of the Shield Generator was during the Italian Wars of the mid 1850s. Prior to the outbreak of the war, several large generators - the largest of their kind at the time - were purchased by the Papal States and installed at key points in the Vatican. Many of these generators were in fact paid for out of the Kaiser’s personal fortune as a gift to the Church. Due to this, during the Neapolitan siege of Rome Papal forces were able to withdraw into Vatican hill and weather the hail of heavy artillery currently devastating the rest of the city. This ultimately allowed them to prolong the siege for months, and successfully survive the war with control of the city of Rome.
The effect of the few shield generators deployed during the war was a stunning success. Due to this a program was initiated that allowed Imperial cities to install their own as part of a defensive network. It also began a long espionage campaign from the other major powers in order to discover the secrets of the technology. The Maruska incident in 1866 was caused in part by French desire for shield generators. The British were the first to crack the secret in 1872, followed by The United States of America six months later. This contributed heavily to the construction of the Jefferson Warp-Gate. Domestic production of shield generators allowed for aethership fleets to grow dramatically in a short period of time.
In 1875 a push began for the miniaturization of shield generators that resulted in Schwangau Teknic losing its state granted monopoly. Dozens of smaller companies erupted onto the scene in an effort to compete with the newly formed British and American Corporations. Kaiserlich Beschützer - known more often as KBS - came out on top in 1883, after its main rival, a British corporation called Varley Aegisworks , suffered a catastrophic fall from grace due to the failure of its technology to protect Queen Victoria during her assassination attempt.
The breakthroughs in miniaturization that occurred in the 1880s led to the use of shield generators becoming ever more commonplace in the following decades, with the most significant event being the adoption of personal shield generators for military use by the Imperial Landwehr of The Holy Roman Empire in 1902. This was part of a project to modernize the armed forces of the empire, and was one of the most expensive bills the Imperial Reichshofrat had ever passed. The sudden spike in demand for the rare-earth elements needed to produce the generators contributed to a mining boom across the outer colonies, and subsequently to the widespread adoption of lower grade shield generators as PPE for dangerous labor. The combination of plentiful materials, efficiencies discovered during mass manufacturing, and high demand resulted in shield generators becoming relatively common, if still expensive.
The widespread adoption of generators for dangerous labor did not however coincide with widespread military adoption. For most nations the cost was deemed prohibitive, and therefore they refrained, with the exception of some large scale generators for targets deemed sufficiently important. The decision was made to focus shield production towards support of the aethership industry rather than direct military support. The HRE, being very wealthy and also having made a conscious decision to largely refrain from the Aether Race, did not have to choose.
Mechanics
Shield generators emit a field of resonant force in a sphere around the emitter. The sphere can be modified by additional resonant points to conform to more complicated shapes, such as a ship or a person. These most frequently take the shape of emitter plates with distinctive tuning hollows built into them. The frequency of the field generated can be adjusted to change how much force is required for something touching the shield to trigger it. At higher frequencies the shield can create an airtight seal, but becomes extremely brittle, and is prone to failure if a large amount of force is applied to it. At lower frequencies it may stop a bullet, but likely would not stop a slower moving object, such as a blade. Because of the brittle quality of high-frequency shields, many modern aetherships employ a double layered approach to shielding, with a smaller, high frequency air-tight shield nested inside of a larger, more elastic lower frequency shield.
Shields can be locally disrupted if an object is pushed into their path. As such many aetherships have exhaust ports that protrude from their shields, as well as long barreled guns that can do the same in order to fire. Shields encounter difficulties at higher speeds, as the force carried by otherwise undetected objects becomes greater at speed. Some soldiers report their shields struggling to deal with rushing air as they run. Because of this it is rare to see shields mounted on fast moving vehicles or objects. Visually shields are almost impossible to see besides a slight shimmering that sometime occurs if the air is polluted or dusty. When activated they glow a faint yellow on the affected area, and make a distinctive crackling sound. A method for determining if a shield is active is to check for an inexplicable metallic taste, or rampant static electricity. Additionally, over long periods of time shield will attempt to wear through any objects in their path, This means little in regards to harder materials such as steel or concrete, but plant life usually does not survive prolonged exposure.
Comments