Talk:AFOH/@comment-14850713-20150827134552

IC:

Off the AFOH island of New Syracuse, the old cruiser Wagram churns through the water at a stately pace. She could be mistaken for one of the "museum ships" in service but she's not. A revolutionary craft when she was launched, she was christened Dupuy de Lome, after the famed French naval designer, and would go down in history as the first protected cruiser. Rusting as a floating barracks in Toulon early in World War II, she escaped with the rest of the fleet to Hybridland (nearly foundering along the way). She lost her name to an equally ground-breaking AFOH battlecruiser (one of the first to sport the armored-ring concept) and renamed Wagram after Napoleon's brilliant victory over the Austrians, but that was about all that remained of her glorious history. Because the British laid claim to part of the French Mediterranean squadron, she was supposed to be interred in Alexandria, but her captain and crew chose to make the long journey to AFOH. To avoid a diplomatic row, she was declared as the personal yacht of the Comte de Guichen (Admiral Bouexic's grandfather) in the list of ships submitted to the AFOH High Command, and kept under wraps.

An observer may not detect anything different with the ship. But there are telltale signs that this cruise is not an ordinary one. There is no smoke billowing from her stacks. Her noisy boilers are silent, replaced by an incessant hum. Then alarm bells start to toll as crewmen scurry about as if on drill. The hum gets louder, the ship shudders, and then she lifts out of the water. Slowly she rises, 20 feet...30...40...100, her sharp bow pointing forward. The hum escalates to the familiar drone of a nuclear turbine, and the old cruiser picks up speed. She flies in a straight line for several minutes. Then she glides slowly back into the water, seemingly resuming her course.

AFOH scientists have been working on a material with anti-gravity properties. Dubbed cavorite from the seminal H.G. Wells novel on space travel, it is formed into plates that generate lift when charged with electromagnets. In the case of Wagram, her bottom hull is covered with over 2,000 plates. Adjusting the electromagnetic charge of individual plates propels the craft or changes its direction. As cavorite is still very expensive to produce in mass quantities, it is still in the testing stage. The plates are also brittle and prone to heat damage, making it not yet fit for combat or aerospace use. But its advantages are compelling: flying craft need not have very big power plants, thus saving space for protection or payload.

Because of the ultra-secret nature of the project, Wagram was chosen as the test craft as she looks more at home in a museum than as an experimental vessel. And as revolutionary as she was when first commissioned, she is again in the forefront technological advancement.

OOC: Ok, I was bored as hell. So I made a steampunk cruiser.