These small brick sized items where made by one of Lord Caasi's apprentices to impress a kitchen wench and was quickly capitalized on.
These items look like a copper ingot about the size of a brick, and have a hollow crystal sphere set two thirds of the way down. The sphere is half filled with Philosopher's Mercury mixed with water, and the brick itself has that sheen giving when alloyed with Philosopher's Mercury. The top of the item has the symbol for top cut into it, but is otherwise unblemished. The item comes in two parts, the first being the copper brick, and the second being a dark metal box that the brick fits into.
The item repels water up to three feet away in a semi-sphere emitted from the bottom of the brick. The alloy with the metal, and the mixure in the crystal sphere 'filter' out all noise ecept the one sound that will make it work right, so no matter where it is, or what all is 'hearing' the only time it will stop working is if there is NO noise at all. This allows people to work with it, and it can be placed in the box that comes with it to keep it from working at all. When these items are attached to the inside hull of a ship or boat, it allows the vessel to float on a cushion of air, negating friction with the water, while still allowing the boat men to use oars, poles or sails.
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? Responses (16)-16
Interesting...Though I'm not quite sure how it fits in with the Mercury...From what I saw, the mercury required vibrations of some sort to perform it's effects. Perhaps I'm just missing something?
Just to note, 'aquarespublica' would translate from Latin as 'the commonthingwater'...
accually try the translation again CP and you will really get water repulser.....And the Mercury needs vibrations to work right? But you have to have the right vibrations all the time, so if you make the Mercury only able to collect one vibration (say the vibration that repulses water)by making it in an alloy with the birck, and modifying it in the crystal sphere, it will only 'hear' one sound and so only do one thing...no matter what noises are made, or not made, there is enough back ground noise to make it work (however it can be augmented by producing the right sound)
OK, I see that, but where is the sound coming from?
Are the boatmen required to make "brrm, brrm" noises?
What am I missing here?
Interesting idea but, given what the Mercury does, I'm not entirely convinced it will work - unless I've misunderstood the Mercury of course (which is quite possible).
Definitely has some potential but I'll hold off voting until I'm clearer on how it all works - please clarify.
This what I love about alchemy, we all try to wrap our scientific mind around the magic. If someone said it was magic runes that did this, we would all go 'oh. okay.'
'Repel' is certainly NOT res publica in Latin, but - an interesting approach to hovercraft. I guess the oarsmen are expected to sing, loudly ...
'What shall we do with a drunken sailor?'
'res publica'- Latin, meaning, the people's thing, or the common thing; origin of the English word 'republic'.
look...i know that it means that...but that is what 15 different translation sevices on the net gave me for repel...so please find a better one, and I will change the name
Naw, man, doesn't matter, I'm just giving you a hard time.
Cool concept, dig the steampunk (or.. uh... alchemy-punk?), plus one for effort gives you a...
4/5.
Wouldent work.
The 'cushion of air' would displace a mass of water equal to the weight of the ship.
The ship/'cushion of air' would still have to push through the water.
It would not significantly improve the boats performance.
1/5
A little uncharitable,don't you think? Even if the science of it is a little wonky,it still deserves at least 2/5 for the sheer creativity involved. 1/5 is just miserly.
The fact that such a thing wouldn't work in real life is a poor reason to rate this item badly.
I mean, think about it- almost all of the items on our boards are MAGIC for Cthulhu's sake, and you decry this one for not being true to real-life physics?
I dunno', man, I dunno'.
To each his own, Stormy. (Can I call you Stormy?)
Mass is not everything, area has alot to do with it. And if you would bother to check the physics of it all, you would find that, like a hovercraft, it will inprove the spead of the vessel a great deal.
*Sigh* if only we had a system that functions perfectly with real-world physics, whether or not we do though, Anteaus is right on this one, that's a speedy boat!
You'd still need something producing constant noise even if it's just wind, and a silence spell could really turn the tide if two of these boats were engaged.
Hm. It's a little unclear at parts.. the science is iffy, but like people said... its MAGIC science :)
The link to the mercury is not working now.. I'll have to find that manually, but maybe someone could fix that some time.
I like the idea of the mercury, and I like the idea of the brick to stop the vibrations.. a floating boat is a nice idea.
Thanks for noting. Links updated.
