Soundmetal
I met the two of them this morning— the mechanics. Bright-Rail and Rail-Bright, I think their names were; that's how toritos change their names when they get married, I think. They're both taller than me, even if I don't count their horns. Friendly, too. I guess everyone has been pretty friendly to all us Shepherds, even though I don't think I've done half as much as the others. What I need, I told them, is a machine that lives on its own. If people are going to be going into the calamity, outside of the safe perimeter we've set, then they can't be stranded for something as simple as a lack of fuel, even if we can teach them to make fuel on their own. We don't want them to be exhausted if they come face to face with a monster, or... anything else. We need something that works with them, but something that can work independent of them if it has to. They said they can make something without a problem. They were already brainstorming names for it, barely remembering I was there when they set to work. It's interesting how they work. At times during the preparation, I swear I saw them moving in sync. There was something efficient and beautiful about it— it reminded me of how it felt to watch Fuse and the others fill in the framework of Gaska. They hadn't even started yet. I didn't really know much about verbal magic before this. I'd seen some winglighters do some of it, but that seemed simpler, almost, or maybe just more natural; they just hummed, and the world responded. These two were different. Bright-Rail started, I think, with an odd note from her throat that brought a rough,Siddhartha Milagro, 10XX CC.
Utility
Soundmetal is widely used in anything that might try to mimic living tissue, though its weight can complicate this.
Manufacturing
Soundmetal is typically generated by two mechanics using verbal magic. One mechanic acts as the "generator" while the other acts as the "sculptor."
Parent Technologies
Access & Availability
Outside of its use in heart engines and voyager ships, soundmetal is fairly accessible to the public. Its most common use is as it always was; more often than not, soundmetal is overkill for ships, and so most people prefer it be used in prosthetics.
Complexity
Basic receptive soundmetal is fairly simple for torito-trained mechanics to make, but the magic that goes into matching rhythms and creating pseudonervous systems, as well as self-regenerating material, is much more complex than the average planetary mechanic can manage. Typically, Voyager-trained mechanics learn to work with this during their time at the academy, though even the Voyager corps outsources some of this work to particularly proficient torito mechanics.
Discovery
The generation of soundmetal actually came about when pre-cataclysm toritos were investigating ideal materials for prosthesis. They found that metal generated by verbal magic tended to "match" with organic material more readily, possibly because the natural rhythm of the metal would adapt to the biorhythms of circulatory systems. The integration of pseudonervous systems came later.
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