Technology

Overview
Steamhaven is based somewhat off the Victorian era role-play, it has technology generally seen from about 1800 - 1900. Such as electricity. Something that would mostly be seen among the Ech caste or higher and some Rew.

Things like early photography, telegraphy, steam ships and steam railroads also exist. However, as we are a Steampunk role-play with magic, there will be some advanced technology; such as airships and some automatons.

Below will be a list of different types of technology to help give role-players an idea on what to expect. This of course isn’t everything and things may be updated over time. We also encourage those who play an inventor character or some sort of researcher to invent things within the RP.

Steam Cannon:
A steam cannon is a cannon that launches a projectile using only heat and water, or using a ready supply of high-pressure steam from a boiler.

The early device would consist of a large metal tube, preferably copper due to its high thermal conductivity, which would be placed in a furnace. One end of the tube would be capped and the other loaded with a projectile. Once the tube reached a high enough temperature, a small amount of water would be injected in behind the projectile. In theory, the water would rapidly expand into vapour, blasting the projectile out the front of the barrel.

Steam Engine:
Steam engines can power trains and boats or run factory equipment or mills, steam turbines can produce electricity. Steam can power cars or farm equipment, heat houses, power weaponry–it can even run clocks.

In a basic steam engine heat is obtained from fuel burnt in an enclosed firebox. The heat boils water in a pressurized boiler, turning it into saturated steam. The steam transfers to a motor which uses it to push on a piston sliding inside a cylinder, powering the machinery. As the steam cools it is exhausted into the air.

There are all sorts of steam engines of varying sophistication, including underwater jet and rocket-type engines. Even steam-powered submarines. Escaping steam and boiler explosions can call all sorts of devastation, disaster, and injury.

Aeronautics & Aircrafts
An aerostat is a lighter than air aircraft that gains its lift through the use of a buoyant gas. Aerostats include unpowered balloons and powered airships. A balloon may be free-flying or tethered. The average density of the craft is lower than the density of atmospheric air, because its main component is one or more gasbags, a lightweight skin containing a lifting gas (including heated air as well as gases that have a lower density than air) to provide buoyancy, to which other components such as a gondola containing equipment or people are attached. Especially with airships, the gasbags are often protected by an outer envelope.

Aircrafts get even bigger like blimps, zeppelins, dirigibles, and airships. They could be grand and elegant passenger ships of gleaming wood and polished brass, or could be patched and clunky cargo haulers, or these vessels could be filled with the most fearsome people to haunt the skies—air pirates! They could be steam, helium, or hydrogen powered. Maybe they’re solar or run on aether.

Also popular, personal aircraft like “detachable wings” – small powered gliders with wings or hoverboards. And don’t forget the flying car or the flying city—or the genetically engineered airship made from a Whale in Leviathan. Flying machines go beyond the dirigible and are only limited by the imagination.

Analytical Engine
The Analytical Engine was a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer with a design for a simpler mechanical computer. The Analytical Engine incorporated an arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and integrated memory, making it the first design for a general-purpose computer that could be described in modern terms as Turing-complete.

Analog Computer
An analog computer is a type of computer that uses the continuously changeable aspects of physical phenomena such as electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic quantities to model the problem being solved.

Automatons
An automaton is a self-operating machine (an autonomous robot). They could be anything from elaborate clockwork singing birds to robot servants. They could be lifelike or stylized, maybe they even have a windup key in their back.

Clockworks
Machines using elaborate clockwork can abound in Steamhaven. They can be anything from automatons to actually being the “heart” of a home. They could set off explosives, or run radios, trains, or analytical engines.

Aether
Aether is a classical element. In ancient times it was thought to be the forces beyond control. In the later era, the term luminiferous aether was used to describe a medium for the propagation of light. There’s a lot of room to use this mysterious element in everything from a power source to a scapegoat for natural disasters. It is known rayguns shoot superheated aether.

The first such explosive was black powder, which consists of a mixture of saltpetre (potassium nitrate), sulfur, and charcoal. When prepared in roughly the correct proportions it burns rapidly when ignited and produces approximately 40 percent gaseous and 60 percent solid products, the latter mostly appearing as whitish smoke. In a confined space such as the breech of a gun, the pent-up gas can be used for propelling a missile such as a bullet or artillery shell. Black powder is relatively insensitive to shock and friction and must be ignited by flame or heat. Though it has largely been supplanted by smokeless powder as a propellant for ammunition in guns, black powder is still widely used for ignition charges, primers, fuses, and blank-fire charges in military ammunition. With varied proportions of ingredients, it is also used in fireworks, time fuses, signals, squibs, and spatting charges for practice bombs.

Nitroglycerin
Nitroglycerin, also called glyceryl trinitrate, a powerful explosive and an important ingredient of most forms of dynamite. It is also used with nitrocellulose in some propellants, especially for rockets and missiles, and it is employed as a vasodilator in the easing of cardiac pain.

Ray Gun
Ray guns are as quintessential to Steamhaven as airships. They are “directed energy” weapons used for maiming or killing people and powered on all sorts of things, from aether to neon. They can come in all sizes and shapes, and generally are metallic-colored. Sometimes they may be pearl-encrusted for evening wear. After all, a lady’s ray gun says a lot about her.

Flintlocks
Flintlocks had a frizzen (striker) and pan cover made in one piece. When the trigger was pulled, a spring action caused the frizzen to strike the flint, showering sparks onto the gunpowder in the priming pan; the ignited powder, in turn, fired the main charge in the bore, propelling the ball.

Cutlass
A cutlass is a short, broad sabre or slashing sword, with a straight or slightly curved blade sharpened on the cutting edge, and a hilt often featuring a solid cupped or basket-shaped guard. It was a common naval weapon during the early Age of Sail.

Gothic Hilted Swords
The gothic hilted swords were a family of swords carried by officers and some NCOs of the navy. They were primarily infantry swords, although they were also regulation pattern for some other officers such as surgeons and staff officers. The term “Gothic hilt” is derived from a perceived similarity between the curved bars of the guard and the arches found in Gothic architecture. They were elegant aesthetically pleasing weapons, although they were considered by some to be mediocre fighting swords. The weapon and its variants had a very long service life.

Dress Sword
The small sword, or dress sword, is a light one-handed sword designed for thrusting which evolved out of the longer and heavier rapier of the later era. Any man, civilian or military, with pretensions to gentlemanly status would have worn a small sword on a daily basis. Militarily, small swords continued to be used as a standard sidearm for infantry officers. In some branches with strong traditions, this practice continues to the modern day, albeit for ceremonial and formal dress only.

Prosthetics
Made from steel and brass, this unusual prosthetic arm articulates in a number of ways. The elbow joint can be moved by releasing a spring, whereas the top joint of the wrist allows a degree of rotation and an up-and-down motion. The fingers can also curl up and straighten out. The leather upper arm piece is used to fix the prosthesis to the remaining upper arm. The rather sinister appearance of the hand suggests the wearer may have disguised it with a glove. Made of steel and brass.

This next prosthetic was for a below-the-elbow amputation. It is made of wood, leather and textile. The arm suspends from the body by a leather shoulder saddle and single strap that passes under the opposite underarm. The forearm connects to a lace-up arm corset by steel struts. It provided the wearer with a range of movements. The small wooden hand has fully articulating fingers and a rotating wrist. There is also a small hook fitted in the palm with three locking positions. This is for carrying items such as bags, or grasping utensils such as cutlery.

Articulated leg prosthetic based on previous wood and bone models. This consisted of a wooden shaft and socket, steel knee joint, and an articulated foot with artificial cords or catgut tendons that connected knee flexion with foot flexion. The tendon system caused the first incorporation of dorsiflexion and plantar flexion of the foot with accordance to knee movement, an aspect of prosthetic feet production that is used and desirable today.

Medicine
The most common medications used by doctors are things like morphine, codeine, opium, and heroin. There were also things like foxglove, a common garden flower. Most medicines, if not used correctly, can be poisonous. Most other medicines are botanical. However, there have been some who used magic as a means of medicine or used it to enhance medicines. But as everyone knows using magic takes quite the toll, so isn't always common.

Carbolic Acid Sprayer
This was developed as a way to kill germs during surgery. A carbolic acid steam atomizer produced a thick, cloying, sweet-smelling cloud of atomized carbolic acid that soaked the surrounding area and even the surgeon. The sprayer was just one way to use the antiseptic: Some clean their hands and tools with carbolic acid and soaked patients’ post-surgical bandages in the material to kill bacteria. The introduction of antiseptics such as carbolic acid to surgery improved patient survival for all types of surgery. Before this invention, about 40% of amputations resulted in death.

Cupping Set with Scarificator
The tools in a cupping set were used for bloodletting. The scarificator is an instrument with spring-loaded blades that deliver many cuts simultaneously. Once the patient was cut, the doctor placed a warmed cup over the wounds. As the cup cooled, the vacuum created caused blood to flow from the wound, sometimes with the aid of a pump attached to the cup. Later on with technological advancements, electrical pumps were sometimes employed to speed the flow of blood.

Anesthesia Kit
For most of history, cutting into flesh or pulling teeth caused excruciating agony. Strong liquor, herbal medicines, or even drugs like opium could not stop patients’ suffering. The introduction of anesthesia changed the practice of medicine forever.

A few courageous dentists and physicians experimented with nitrous oxide (laughing gas) and with ether and chloroform, two thick, sweet liquids that evaporated quickly in air. They discovered that these compounds sedated people or caused them to lose consciousness so surgery and dentistry would be painless.