Conflict on Mars!

   The first supplement to When the Navy Walked is now available as a PDF from Wargames Vault. Entitled When the Navy Walked: Conflict on Mars!, the new book adds details on the setting, some new rules for aerial combat and weather, two new unit types (Creatures and Behemoths), additional races, new scenarios, more armies and new Edges and Flaws that can be used in any game of When the Navy Walked... That's an awful lot of stuff to pack into one book!

   I am the editor for this product (as well as the second edition of the Core Rules), and honestly, I think we did an even better job with this first supplement than the Core Rules. Not that there was anything really wrong with the Core Rules! But, I keep noticing minor imperfections that just make my editor's soul cringe. I haven't gotten my copy of the final product of Conflict on Mars!, with art and everything in it yet, but I have seen a few peeks and previews of it, and it should be a great product.

Fantastic Minerals Explained [ooc]

Okay, for those of you who are starting to scratch your heads and say "what's up with all the fake minerals?" I have written this post to explain how I see everything meshing together in my little VSF universe.

Hydrium

Firstup: good old hydrium. I may need to change the name, as it was originally created by an author named Kenneth Oppel. I took the name because I liked it, and have credited him several times for it, but it is still technically a copyright infringement if I ever publish any of this. At this point, I think I am safe under the realm of amateur fanfic. So look for a name change to something like helios, or monoionic hydrogen, or something, in the relatively near future. Anyway, what it is, is a lifting gas, several times more efficient than hydrogen and non-flammable. So, way better than hydrogen, and responsible for the motley assortment of Zeppelins and other lighter-than-air vehicles floating in the skies of my games.

IMVU (In My Victorian Universe), hydrium is produced biologically. It can be found on all three of the inhabited planets. On Earth, only certain subterranean fungi produce it, so it is found in underground deposits. On Mars, large flying creatures produce hydrium and store it in bladders within their bodies, allowing them to fly. As yet, I have made no specific mention of hydrium on Venus, though I intend it to exist there.

I posted on hydrium last year a few times, especially in regards to the deathrays. I also mentioned it as appearing in plants, causing floating trees. This is an idea I have discarded as too similar to Space 1889's liftwood trees.

Handwavium

Handwavium is the energy soure that has opened the aether to Earthly explorations. By bathing handwavium crystals in an alkaline solution, a rather intense heat is created chemically, without using oxygen. The handwavium gives off a green glow as the reaction takes place. The handwavium acts as a catalyst, and is not consumed in the reaction.

Handwavium reactors boil water to steam for use in steam engines, turbines and generators. The process is remarkably similar to a nuclear power plant: large pipes with water in them pass through the reactor vessel, heating the water via conduction (if I remember my heat transfer types correctly). The resultant steam is then put to work. Large reactors can provide sufficient power for generating electricity for entire small towns or factories.

Handwavium is rare and widely scattered on Earth. Deposits of the green crystals have been found in England, Ireland, Egypt, Nevada, South Africa, Siberia, Manchuria, and the Andes mountains, among other places. It can also be found on both Mars and Venus in similar deposits. There is an apparent correlation to ancient civilizations' ruins and handwavium deposits. I will probably develop more along those lines in the future.

Unobtainite

IMVU, there are two methods of generating better lighter-than-air lift than is actually possible in our known universe: hydrium and unobtainite.

Unobtainite is a blue, slightly translucent crystal. It is entirely unremarkable until an electric charge is passed through it. Once it is exposed to 'galvanic forces,' unobtainite begins to rise upward. The more voltage is passed through, the stronger the anti-gravitational force becomes. Thus, by increasing or decreasing the voltage by a simple rheostat, a vessel equipped with unobtainite lift will gain or lose altitude.

Unobtainite has several advantages over hydrium. The most important is that it takes far less volume of unobtanite to generate the same lift, given sufficient electrical current. It can thus be carried inside a vesssel, behind protective shielding, whereas hydrium requires a large gasbag which, for all intents and purposes, is unarmored. Unobtainite vessels are swifter, with far less drag than hydrium zeppelins. Also, piloting an unobtainite vessel is much easier to do, and requires fewer crewmembers.

Unobtainite is found on Earth in small quantities. The largest deposit so far has been located in the central African highlands. It is much more common on Mars, where Martian scientists discovered its amazing properties millenia ago, at the height of the Martian civilization. To date, no unobtainite has been found on Venus at all.

Copyright Notice:

Please note that, other than the name hydrium, as explained above, I do claim copyright on the ideas outlined above. Feel free to use the ideas in your own personal and private games, so long as you grant credit appropriately. Please do not print or publish these ideas in any form or format without my permission.

NEWSFLASH: Hurricane Cuts Communications

A severe storm has caused a good deal of damage in the Republic of Texas, where many of our faithful readers (and both writers) live. It is our sincere hope that all our readers have been inconvenienced as little as possible during the recent troubles, and that they will be able to resume their normal lives as soon as possible. Our correspondents in the area suffered only minor damage, but one (myself, actually) was forced to evacuate the area with his family for a short time.

Just imagine what it would be like if we had no orbiting stations to observe and warn us (via heliograph, of course) of incoming stormfronts! The loss of life could be catastrophic!

In further news, the Journal has only limited access at this time; however, I have prepared for your reading pleasure a short treatise on the development of the first British landships, which you may read in the links marked 'Publications' under the heading of "Prince Royal-class Landships." Also, a preliminary version of a history of the Papal States Army and Navy will be made available today, though it is certainly not finished.


[OOC: Hurricane Ike was, for my family, mostly a great inconvenience. We evacuated to Dallas two days before the storm arrived, and were lucky to be able to return to our home in Leauge City (between Houston and Galveston) on Wednesday. We realize how blessed we are to be able to say that, and our family's prayers go out to those who lost loved ones or who suffered serious property loss. My wife is temporarily out of work until the business she works for gets up and running on Galveston Island again. I am scheduled to report to school on Wednesday morning at this time.]

An Interesting Article for your Perusal

A Brief Discussion of the Possibility and Difficulties of Æther Travel
A Paper by F. Robert Goslingen, FRS
Published in the Royal Society Annotations
May, 1859


Briefly defined, the luminiferous æther is a special medium for the transference and propagation of electromagnetic light waves. It exists beyond the shell of our planetary atmosphere; indeed, it fills the gaps between all planetary atmospheric shells. Through it, the light waves produced by our sun – and, indeed, all other light-giving celestial objects – travels as sound waves through our own air.

The æther, to use the more common term today, was first proposed by Thomas Young in 1803. His book, Experiments and Calculations Relative to Physical Optics, contended that light was a wave, and not a particle as proposed by Sir Isaac Newton. A Frenchman named Augustin-Jean Fresnel carried on Young’s work in the 1820s. Physical scientists at that time were aware that all waveforms required a medium through which to travel, and so the idea of the æther was born. This idea was further strengthened by Maxwell’s work which indicated in 1834 that light was an electromagnetic wave rather than a mechanical wave. As electric charges can not exist in vacuum, there must be some medium through which the light travels.

This new medium, æther, is unlike any other known to Man. It acts as a liquid for planets and other celestial bodies moving in their stately courses, and as a solid for the fast-moving light waves. George Gabriel Stokes, FRS, and Lucasian chair in Physics at Cambridge since 1849, describes it as “a substance similar to pine tar, in that it resists fast moving bodies more urgently than a slowly moving object.”

Thus, it seems that the æther can only be passed through by solid objects, like a ship, when traveling at velocities less than that of light. And yet, to influence the æther as a medium for the purpose of generating thrust, some form of electromagnetic force seems necessary. With such a form of thrust, a vessel would move at a useful speed by pushing against the suddenly solidifying æther to the rear of the vessel while keeping the æther ahead of the vehicle liquid. I believe that I have discovered a means by which to generate exactly that sort of thrust…

Parrotfolk Article Added to Archive

I have added the original Parrotfolk article to the archive list of publications on the left hand menu of the journal. This should help you reach it once the articles have cycled off from the main page of the journal.

Please feel free to print, read and enjoy, but remember that I retain the copyright on all of the material I publish via the Internet. If you wish to make changes, include it in your own works, etc., please do the right thing and ask permission first.

I have another short story written that I may publish here as well, but that one I actually have a hope of selling in the future, along with a series of other short tales in a similar vein.