Jadegas

**Jadegas** is the common name for a gas found in abundant quantities in Onshitama and Keloruela. As a non-flammable, non-toxic and easily accessible lighter-than-air gas, it has been used for millennia to create balloons and airships for both military and commercial purposes, particularly by the Onshians. Though both odourless and tasteless, it is easily identified through its vibrant green colour, hence its name.

Jadegas is mostly known in its gaseous form, but it typically occurs in the ground as a solid, typically referred to as Jadegas ore. It is usually transported in the solid ore form rather than the gas, since the gas is more expensive to keep contained. The dark green ore is extremely soft and crumbles easily, and turns into a gas on contact with water - or simply in very humid conditions. The water must be in liquid or vapour form for the reaction to work, meaning that reducing the temperature below freezing is an effective method of slowing or even completely halting the conversion into gas; historically, this was achieved with frost mages.

## History

The first references to Jadegas balloons are dated to approximately 700BC in what was then the Kingdom of Onshi, but they were evidently extremely difficult and expensive to make and maintain at this stage, and written sources regarded them as highly impractical. Jadegas balloons only became commonplace in approximately 300BC in Onshi (now a republic) due to the employment of Harpies as crew, who were able to solve most of the key challenges of piloting balloons and airships through their air magic. Harpy mercenaries were also instrumental in fending off the steadily growing ranks of air pirates - who were, in turn, almost entirely Harpies themselves.

Jadegas airships grew in size towards the turn of the 1st century AD to take advantage of economies of scale, and airships began to take on rigid bodies to support their size. Airship hangars and ports expanded to accommodate the massive new vessels, and trade by air became just as important as trade by sea, dramatically reducing the journey times to Keloruela and Chalparna in particular. Onshian air merchants became especially wealthy by facilitating trade between Keloruela and Chalparna; these neighbouring countries were only a short flight apart, but were very distant by land or sea due to the Violet Mountains blocking passage. These air merchants gave Keloruela unprecedented access to Chalparni spices, causing major shifts in Ruawi cuisine and leading to the development of their famous spiced smoked meats.

The integration of Inecuria under the Nesarian Empire only made things easier for Jadegas airships, as trade could flow more freely and wealthy investors across the continent could connect to each other and fund ever-larger fleets of ever-larger airships. However, the airship industry hit a major stumbling block when magic began to falter and disappear, beginning in the 11th century and largely complete by the 13th; without Harpy air mages to overcome the difficulties of moving such massive vessels through the air, engineers began trying a bewildering array of mechanical solutions to replace the magical ones. Since most of them did not work, airship travel was greatly reduced and most fleets were reduced to a tiny portion of their former size.

The most effective solution was developed not by an Onshian, but by the Chalparni inventor Sathir Bashnavam (though he always insisted on referring to himself as Ladhari and not Chalparni). He developed upon an earlier abandoned concept of a muscle-powered propeller that used water as a hydraulic fluid to create what is regarded as the world's first commercial steam engine in 1459. Sathir's engine used coal - a resource very abundant in Chalparna but scarce elsewhere in Inecuria - to boil water into steam which powered a major axle, which was connected by interlocking gears to axles rotating propellers.

Though expensive, difficult to manufacture, inefficient and heavy, this engine was widely recognised as the clear future of air travel, and the Imperial State invested in its development. This, in turn, is widely regarded as a major factor in the relatively early onset of the Inecurian industrial revolution, as well as the growing importance of Chalparna as a country within the continent. Sathir's engine was also attempted for sea travel. Though it did work, it was eventually abandoned; its advantage in powering the ship against the wind or when no wind was available was not enough to overcome its substantial weight, size and cost. As such, engines would not return to ships until the 19th century.

Sathir's steam engine was later developed upon by a Librarian named Imeia the Elder (to distinguish her from Imeia the Younger and Imeia the Eldest), who drew intricate plans for a steam turbine in 1543. No attempt to make this design into a reality succeeded for almost a hundred years, as the materials required to make it function properly simply could not be manufactured at a high enough quality.

The industrial revolution, however, improved manufacturing processes and cheapened the cost of producing high-quality alloys enough to make Imeia's turbine a possibility, with the first fully-functioning turbine being produced in 1639. However, they remained prohibitively expensive to construct and maintain until the turn of the 19th century - and only for a brief time, as the industrial destruction of the Imperial Civil War soon made them impossible to produce again. Many airship fleets also consciously rejected turbines due to their inability to easily reverse, despite far higher efficiency when moving forwards.

The Imperial Civil War, whilst devastating the industrial capacity of Inecuria and severely harming the ability to make new engines and produce parts to repair broken ones, occurred simultaneously to a magical revival which - at least temporarily - made the challenges of air travel meaningless as air magic could once again be harnessed to pilot airships with ease. Airships took on a newfound military role in the Civil War; no longer requiring a heavy engine freed up space and weight for guns, ammunition and explosive bombs, which were used to patrol the skies, attack military targets from advantageous angles, and quickly move soldiers over difficult or impassable terrain.

## Modern Jadegas Airships

Jadegas airships continue to be used for commercial purposes, though their military value has been made obsolete by planes and helicopters. Airships are prohibitively expensive for commercial passenger travel compared to trains and planes, but they continue to be used for luxury cruises, offering a different perspective to cruise ships as they can pass over Inecuria's scenic landscapes and can safely come relatively close to the ground for passengers to observe wildlife.

The main use of Jadegas airships, however, is hauling cargo. Whilst Inecuria's extensive rail network handles almost all cargo transportation on the continent, airships are capable of cutting across difficult terrain and accessing remote areas that have infrequent or no rail service. They are also capable of going over water; though they have nowhere near the capacity of a cargo vessel, they are much faster, and are preferred for time-sensitive deliveries across water.

Jadegas airships are not merely used within Inecuria, though this is where the vast majority of them exist; they are also found across Southeast Asia and, to a small but steadily growing extent, across the western world. As a lifting gas, Jadegas has numerous advantages over hydrogen or helium. Though not as cheap as hydrogen, it provides slightly more lifting force - approximately 3% more for the same volume of gas - and, crucially, it is non-flammable. As an added benefit, Jadegas's bright green colour also makes it nearly impossible for gas leaks to go unnoticed.

### Ionised Jadegas

Most importantly, however, is how easily Jadegas can be ionised and how its properties change once it becomes ionised (i.e. once it becomes a plasma). This property was discovered at some point in the 1st century BC, but the mechanics were not properly understood until 1894 - and, due to the absence of plasma magic to make it possible, it could not be utilised in airships again until the 1950s.

A peculiar property of ionised Jadegas is that its lifting force substantially decreases compared to when it is a normal gas. It still provides lift, but depending on the degree of ionisation its lift can be reduced by up to 60%. This can be used to serve the same purpose as ballast, by changing the amount of lift itself rather than countering lift with weight. Modern Jadegas airships use gas cells lined with wires that provide both heat and electrical energy into the Jadegas, causing ionisation once the gas immediately surrounding the wires hits 100 degrees Celsius. The ionisation then rapidly proliferates throughout the entire cell as long as the heat and current is maintained, and if they are shut off, the plasma will recombine back into a gas over the course of 30-120 seconds depending on how large the cell is, restoring normal levels of lift.

Ionisation as a method of controlling lift (and therefore altitude) is not without its disadvantages, however. Every time the Jadegas plasma recombines back into a gas, a small portion of the plasma will recombine into something other than Jadegas, referred to as "waste products". This can happen even in a cell filled with 100% Jadegas with no other gas molecules within it, but the phenomenon is greatly accelerated by the presence of other gases. These waste products typically provide very little or no lift and are essentially dead weight within the cell. Airship fleets must entirely vent and refill their gas cells every four to six months to remove waste products - but while inconvenient, this is not particularly expensive as Jadegas is cheap.

## Jadegas Ore Reserves

Jadegas ore has been continuously mined in Onshitama and Keloruela for millennia. As a material, it is easy to harvest and easy to transport so long as it is kept cold and dry. As environmental concerns grow amongst the common populace in the modern age, concerns have been raised over how sustainable it is to keep harvesting the ore and how much ore is left in the Earth, how Jadegas mining might impact the environment, and what processes create this unusual material in the first place.

Various scientific explanations have been attempted for how Jadegas might be created and why it behaves the way it does, but much like the rest of Inecuria's strange features, most people - both at large and in academic circles - are content to simply describe its creation as magical. It has been proposed that Jadegas ore might be a remnant from the Age of Titans, but an equally popular theory is that the ore is created when strong Magestream currents come into contact with certain elements in the right conditions; this has been suggested as an explanation for why more Jadegas ore reserves were suddenly found during the magical resurgence of the Civil War, as the new burst of magical energy could have literally created more ore to be found. This theory is, however, challenged by the non-existence of Jadegas outside of Onshitama and Keloruela.

It may even be possible that Jadegas ore is self-propagating, slowly turning nearby rocks into new ore over a timescale that is yet to be understood. This theory mainly originates from how Jadegas ore does not appear in distinct clumps, but rather tends to "fade in" from nearby rock, with ore particles steadily increasing in frequency until one finds regions comprised entirely of the ore. It may be the cause of the occasional reports of Jadegas ore veins being abandoned for more plentiful reserves, only for the miners to later be surprised by how much was really left when they later returned to the abandoned veins; the self-propagation theory suggests that these abandoned veins literally grew in size. If this theory is true, it would make mining Jadegas ore not only commercially valuable, but a crucial necessity for the long-term geological stability of Inecuria; the consequences of letting the soft ore spread would be disastrous.

In any case, Jadegas ore reserves show no signs of serious depletion even after being mined for so long, and it is so abundant in Onshitama and Keloruela that mining operations do not have to be especially geologically or environmentally disruptive to acquire it; one does not need to dig particularly deep to have a high chance of encountering the ore. The ore is usually harvested as a solid, but can also be extracted in gas form through a process similar to fracking; injecting water into the ore reserves turns it into a gas which is then collected in a mining station. Though much less disruptive to the surface, this method is often criticised for its unpredictable geological effects, as well as the potential for the water injected into the ground for harvesting to seep into groundwater that is collected for drinking.