Quoted By:
"What ever for?"
"We were seeking the same thing. We just had to get entangled with that blasted order of Alchymists and their mystical secrets. Tell me, do you know how the miraculous Von Graaf Archimedean apparatus works?"
"Some of it, certainly, Sir. It is the backbone of our airfleets, and we are using it in the Pelagion class to generate buoyancy - oh, but you already knew that, didn't you."
"Yes, but how does it work, exactly?"
"It is a vacuum chamber that has aether pumps which, as I understand it, pump out the intestitial mass of the aether using magnetick lines. The inside of the vaccum chamber consequentially acquire net negative mass, and the chamber generates lift."
"That's as much as they teach at the academy, yes. In reality it is much more complex. Would it surprise you, Mister Gladston, if I told you that the Aether has not yet been experimentally detected by anybody? If you take away that one concept, then the method on which the apparatus operates is a complete mystery to everybody. Not even Herr Von Graaf himself was the brilliant mad scientist he presented himself to be. He was in bed with the Alchymists."
"But - half the world trade and military at the moment is in airships!"
"Yes. Flying machines are of course a marvel of technology, and when one has such a blessing, one tends to not look too close. At some point, however, one has to wonder - was it truly worth it? If it wasn't for bloody alchymists, if it wasn't for their schisms, always probing around in places man was not meant to fathom - well, today, we would not have the Archimedean, we would not have airships, and I am absolutely certain we would not have this war."
