Mechanistic Engine
Machines, driven by mana flows or powered my mundane means, which combine components to produce either specific new mana flows, weaves, a construct, or mechanical work of one sort or another. The term is very broad and often applied to describe many different classes of mechanistic device. Everything from an arcane clock to a powered bolt to a Gollum to a Pusher Engine for an Airship may be referred to as a mechanistic Engine. mechanistic Engines may be powered by crystal, the charged rune, directly from Magi, mundane means such as combustion, or some combination thereof.
Utility
Use of mechanistic engines runs the entire gammit of sapient activity. Eeverything from transportation to communication to war, all forms of economic and social activity, etc.
Manufacturing
Produced in large volumes in foundries or sometimes on an ad hoc basis for more specialized devices. In modern times foundries have increasingly begun to make use of standardized components, with manufacturing divided into numerous optimized and discreet steps. Large foundries producing common mechanistic engines can employee thousands of workers and use components manufactured all over Visere.
Social Impact
The lowering of prices and universal availability of mechanistic engines has drastically increased standards of living across Visere in recent centuries. It has also resulted in untold death and destruction as wars waged by nations making use of mechanistic engines became dramatically more destructive.
Parent Technologies
Children Technologies
Access & Availability
Universally available in Visere, though prices increase and the level of availability falls off with increased complexity of course.
Complexity
This varies wildly from simple devices a child can cobble together from homemade parts to devices requiring components from multiple different foundries and only affordable to governments or large institutions.
Discovery
mechanistic engines date to as early as the late 1st Eon, starting from around 26,000 BF. Early mechanistic engines were extremely simple. True mechanistic engines as we think of them in the modern sense date from the Era of the Kingdoms of Metal in the 2nd Eon, starting around 21,500 BF. Late 2nd Eon mechanistic engines from just before the onset of the Ice Age appear to have been nearly as sophisticated as modern ones as far as can be told from the examples in the archeological record. They came into use again as civilization recoverd from the Ice Age late in the 3rd Eon but then dissapear again from the archeological record as Arcana became inscrutably complex in the millenia immediaterly preceeding The Fall. It is believed among scholars that constructs and useful work must have been produced by some esoteric process not requiring physical means, or using a means that has not survived in the archeological record for some reason.
After The Fall simple mechanistic engines once again appear in Visere by around 1200 AF and gradually increased in sophistication as Arcana and New Learning advanced into modern times.
Remove these ads. Join the Worldbuilders Guild
Comments