Excerpts from Volume XIV of the Journal of the Royal Geological and Mineralogical Society (1872)
A rare mineral found in remote areas, unobtainite is a blue faceted crystal. Its unusual properties were discovered by a Fellow of our Society, Doctor Edward Isling...
While searching the mountainous regions of one of Her Brittanic Majesty's central African colonies, Doctor Isling was caught in a sudden thunderstorm. Lightning struck the ground near his camp, where he and the rest of his expedition were sheltering from the fury of Mother Nature. Doctor Isling happened to be outside of his tent, and saw several blue crystals emerge from the ground at the point where the lightning had struck.
What Isling had discovered was the levitative property of unobtainite when exposed to galvanic influence. Other scientists would go on to find that one could control the level of repulsive lift generated by the unobtainite by increasing or decreasing the flow of galvanic energies through the mineral.
Of course, since that time, our British engineers have created means to manipulate the flow of galvanism through unobtainite and acquired a supply suitable for the production of a small fleet of aerial craft. Steam engines (sometimes heated by handwavium reaction) are connected to generators, which then feed the rheostatic devices which control the repulsor lift generated by the unobtainite.
...additional deposits are rumored to exist in the fabled 'floating island' of Laputa, being the probable cause of that mythical land's gravity-mocking flight...
...Martian princes are no strangers to unobtainite. Martian science discovered the mineral - which is in far greater abundance on the Red Planet than on our sphere - millennia ago. They reached a plateau in the development of flying craft some 2,000 years past, and have since not added to their store of...
...no source of unobtainite has as yet been located on Venus, though many strange lifeforms abound there...
[Editor's Notes: I have been considering the source for our essentially implausible flying craft. I have talked about unobtainite before, but thought that the storyline needed re-working. I hope you enjoyed it. For gaming purposes, unobtainite is available in small amounts on Earth, and in far greater mounts on Mars. Earthly steam engines power generators to feed the unobtainite; Martians use slave labor to crank a generator. I am also re-thinking the mineral handwavium, and expect to give more information about that in the near-ish future. There are also a couple of deep secret projects in the work, of a potentially commercial nature. We'll see.]
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