Lightning Technology

[tanderson11]

I am developing a setting for a coming campaign, and the natives of the continent have developed ways to harnass the electrical energy of lightning. I am blanking on how they might put this technology to use.

I was wondering if the Playground has any ideas what technology this would make available and how it would interact with magic.

[Grinner]

You might want to look into the works of Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. The politics behind their technologies are also worth ripping ideas from.

[Agent 451]

Batteries.

Edited to add an actual use: You could have the electricity being used to power things such as Eberron-style creation forges. Or perhaps there is a special metal that when exposed to high energy lightning (like being used as a lightning rod) gets imparted a small amount of either electric resistance when forged into armor. It could impart a small amount of electrically based damage to weapons as well (maybe armor too, if you're feeling crazy). Neither of which would be an enhancement, but a natural property of this exposed metal.

[Xuc Xac]

I am blanking on how they might put this technology to use.

Are you kidding? It's electricity! Look at the computer in front of you and every other thing in the room that's plugged into the wall or has batteries in it. We have a lot of different sources of energy on the Earth: coal, nuclear, solar, water wheels, burning wood, etc. They are all used to generate electricity because that's what all of our technology runs on.

[kieza]

Also, everything they build needs to be covered in tesla coils, from an aesthetic standpoint. And, every engineer needs to have wild white hair and a german accent.

[Agent 451]

Also, everything they build needs to be covered in tesla coils, from an aesthetic standpoint. And, every engineer needs to have wild white hair and a german accent.

Now I have an intense desire to play Red Alert...

[alchemyprime]

First thing: Lighting and heating and cooling. Electricity is what it is because it lets us run machines we normally could not run, and with that we can light and heat our houses without fire, and cool our homes without manservants or ice. A simple electrical current running can make a small fan: enough electricity means a bigger fan, perhaps large enough to cool people in a room.

And food storage would be useful too! Refrigerators and freezers, obviously.

But these people are harnessing lightning, so obviously Electrical Assault weapon crystals would be common, items that grant Electricity Resistance and why not personal railguns? Little handheld guns that shoot beams of electricity or electromagnetically charged pellets?

And why not electromagnetic shields, essentially a battery powered force field, deflecting metal and electricity based attacks?

Just tossing ideas out there.

[beyond reality]

I am developing a setting for a coming campaign, and the natives of the continent have developed ways to harnass the electrical energy of lightning. I am blanking on how they might put this technology to use.

I was wondering if the Playground has any ideas what technology this would make available and how it would interact with magic.

A lot depends on what other technology they have. "bottling" electricity doesn't automatically lead to microwaves and computers by any means, it really depends on their other resources.

First, do they have the means to use this electricity on a large scale? Can they may fine wiring (or manufacture it through magic). Do they have access to large supplies of copper or other suitably conductive materials (or again, create it through magic)? Do they have the glassworking ability to create vacuum tubes?

Here are three simple electronic tools that could theoretically be developed very quickly.

*Lights and heat. These are pretty simple (just a conductive loop in a glass bulb essentially) and could be made early. With a big enough infrastructure these could be put all over a city, connected to a giant power station. Electric heaters work basically the same way. Together these could massively improve the way of life of your average medieval city. More lighting means the ability to work longer days and typically lower crime in urban areas and the benefits of heaters would allow heating the homes without time spent gathering firewood etc, reducing smoke and smog. etc.

*Telegraph. These are really simple electronic communicators that could massively improve the connection between different parts of a large kingdom or empire.

*Simple Motors. This basically just requires an understanding of magnetics and would allow for small, simple moving parts. Exactly what can be made with this depends on the resources of the kingdom.


Beyond that you need to advance in other technological areas (especially chemistry and materials science) to do much impressive.

[kieza]

Well, if you're looking for magitech, I've actually got a very similar country in my campaign setting. Here are a few ideas:

-Obviously, you could weaponize this tech. Imagine lightning-guns and storm bombs and electrified gauntlets.
-You could have a telegraph that fires horizontal strokes of lightning between transmitter towers, sending data in morse code or binary.
-You can have electrically-powered foundries and factories, which, in an already industrial setting, would mean that their cities would be far, far cleaner than those of coal-burning countries.
-One thing that's going to be a constant if this tech is in wide circulation is that every mountain, windmill or tall building in the country is going to be covered in lightning rods to bring down as much power as possible.
-If there are gnomes present, there will be joy buzzers.

[DefKab]

Now I have an intense desire to play Red Alert...

"Dah? Okay. Incredible!"

[Saladman]

You have seen Stardust, right? Obviously they will have sky ships catching lightning in bottles, which can then be discharged to zap people, or sold for other uses.

Which leaves the other uses unanswered. Obviously, there's animation a la Frankenstein. That suggests everything from flesh golems to clockwork to physical necromancy might be powered by electricity.

As to interaction with magic, possibly electricity animates things at a lower level than equivalent spells, but only where articulation is already provided. That is, lightning can never animate a table or other solid construction the way animate objects can, but an articulated clockwork bird can be done at a much lower "level".

I do think, whatever you decide on, you should resist the temptation to have lightning power everything. Leave some stuff out, leave some stuff that magic is better at, leave some technological areas that lightning doesn't help with and that are still at a non-technological level. Otherwise you end up with steampunk at its worst rather than its best, everything's reskinned with gears on it except really everything's just normal underneath.

[Calzone]

It would be neat if they couldn't store the lightning, but could merely harness its awesome power (Especially cool if they have rituals to summon storms).

Some ideas:

• Specialized forging techniques using lightning strikes to smelt ore / weld large pieces of metal
• Shooting iron rods (ballista, etc) into enemy fortifications before summoning lightning
• Highly effective executions
• Fishing in small ponds
• Power large machines for a short period of time
• Power the experiments of crazy magicians
• Arc the lightning across a bunch of metal channels, igniting torches across the city

[deuxhero]

Aluminum production?

Also 3 people with the same avatar in a row!

[Ravens_cry]

Well beyond the obvious "Look in front of you", Cygnar from Warmachine tends to this kind magi-technology. Looking up their fluff might give some ideas.

[Lemmy]

Aluminum production?

Also 3 people with the same avatar in a row!

Yeah, for a moment there I thought Tanderson was talking to himself...

My 2nd thought was "Why would he do that?"
My 3rd thought was "It's the internet."

Then I noticed the different user names...

[fusilier]

You might want to look at this website:

http://www.weatherimagery.com/blog/h...ghtning-power/

It's a short article on the problems of attempting to harness lightning, but provides some details about lightning that might be useful.

Lightning is static electricity, which makes it somewhat hard to convert to dynamic electricity (as I recall).