Steam and Science

Science in Daleth is important. It is the engine behind it's development, the key to the wealthy state of the Empire. Scientists are respected citizens, universities are supported by the government. Older inventions have made life easy and form a base to reach out to new discoveries. Newer inventions are frowned upon, well criticised and thoroughly tested, and then lovingly embraced by the establishment.

However, modern inventions did not make it throughout the whole of the Empire. Many rural regions still function the same as in the past centuries, growing crops and herding cattle as many generations before the current one did. Where scientists in the academic cities don't even notice the benefits of the modern science anymore, the rural population is still stunned by it when they are confronted with it on Foors or on the rare occasion they go to the big city.

But not all like the science as it is today. Some malicious groups rebel against the machines, against the insights of the scientists, against the future developments they fear so much. Whether they are right in their doomed visions or not is not yet clear, even if some scientists might agree with some of the hapless expectations.

During the last decades, the steam engine made its entrance into Dalethian society. Starting as a doomed experiment that killed a generation of steam scientists, it has become safer to work with the engines, and now the civilisation is looking for clever ways of exploiting the enormous powers of steam. Dreams and illusions clashed upon physical limits in the past, but steam has the power to break these boundaries and to set the Empire on the right track to a glorious future.


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