"Of course sir, of course, I merely need to establish what is normal so I can show you that which is abnormal. Now, observe what happens when I strike this prism with this hammer," President Yllmyn says, demonstrating by lightly tapping a small hammer against the prism, causing the rainbow to waver slightly as the crystal glass vibrated. Satisfied that Nokly understood how little had happened, the scholar then had a new object brought forth, the men carrying it clearly afraid of breaking it and handling it with the utmost of care. The object in question was an ugly, malformed block of glass that was an ever so slightly uncanny blue with a flickering tint of green. Looking for all the world a mistake, Nokly watched as it was placed upon the pedestal, causing the beam to split once again, although this time it was not a neat single line of colour but a broken collection of mangled arcs from the malformed structure.
However, this time when the tiny hammer struck it, instead of the reaction from before, this time something truly strange happened. As the glass rang, the broken spectra collapsed. Instead of rainbows, a dozen points of light replaced them, all the colours drained into a limited number of spots, combining in strange ways that made the eyes blink, as if to confirm that they had in fact seen that sort of combination. After a few seconds the chiming tone of the lump began to fade, the separate points of light wobbling wildly, their condensed components fighting to separate once more, before finally they spread back out into their broken rainbow patterns as the vibration died back down.
That IS interference patterns!
"That was literally an accident, and only discovered because the worker dropped it, but was paying attention to know that the pattern it made with the light was strange. However, it gets stranger," Yllmyn said, as another assistant brought forth a bullseye lantern. Replacing the sunlight with candlelight, the experiment was repeated, and this time the light was as reactive as when the first prism had been struck. "It is not just the glass itself, but something within the character of the sunlight that causes this effect. At the moment we are unsure of the full nature of this first sample as it came from a bad batch that had problems during the heating process, so what dopants and heat treatments it underwent are currently unknown, but we have managed to produce a fewer lesser versions of the effect."
Sunlight packs a wider nonvisible spectrum than candlelight. Naturally, the patterns depending on those elements don't get shown.
After a few seconds next to the shrill whine of the high frequency fork, the red light passing through the lens began to waver into strange star patterns before collapsing into a halo of not-red light. Not-red was quite frankly the only way to describe the colour of it, since it was simultaneously closest to red in character and yet most distinctly not red. A few seconds later the pattern broke up as the tuning fork lost energy, but for that briefest of moments Nokly knew that he had been staring at something profound and important, even if ephemeral in application at the moment.
...and that's infrared, which is almost visible to humans under the right circumstances.
And then the Nohon happened.
On the trip back the Nohon had attempted to rather blatantly kidnap Governor Chori under the guise of "taking it from here". Reports indicate that this was probably some sort of last ditch attempt to interfere with the People's attempts - ironic given that their attempts had actually been relatively unsuccessful in getting through to Chori - and it had gone poorly. Not only had they been repulsed, but Chori was suitably outraged at the violation of the People's honour and the attempt on his person. Not only had he been right fit to give the Emperor an earful about how the Nohon had treated him, but he was also somewhat ready to listen to the idea that the Nohon had been actively lying about the outside world for some time. The ships escorting the governor had been forced to put in at a Halvyni port to wait out a typhoon, while the Nohon ship disappeared into the storm.
...fail diplomacy, watch the Nohon suicidebomb themselves on intrige.
They had withdrawn their envoys from the Hung and issued a declaration that they were utterly sick and tired of the Hung's condescension and bullshit, and they called upon all "civilized" nations to denounce the Hung until the backwards nation acknowledged that there were many nations greater than the Hung, Nohon among them. And then they put every Hung ship on the bottom of the ocean.
Every ship. From war junk to fishing boat, the Nohon navy swept the seas around the Hung clean, although they rather pointedly allowed any ship flying a Syffryn flag freedom of passage.
Then they move to hot war while they can.
Kielmyr Offer
[] [Kiel] 0 PW - No thanks
[] [Kiel] 0 PW - Adjust tariffs further for relevant war materials (-1 temp SoL, +1 temp IC)
[] [Kiel] 1 PW - Rework industrial relationship (Gain Low Foreign Investment [Kielmyr], +1 IC, +1 temp IC, Kielmyr Guarantee Against Hespranxer, Depressed Iron Industry Status)
We really want that Guarantee. It'd hurt us bad long term though
Central/Eastern Syffrynite Mercenaries Available
[] [Merc] 0 PW - No thanks
[] [Merc] 0 PW - A few could help (-1 Trust, +1 Armies)
[] [Merc] 1 PW - Everyone you can get (-2 Trust, +2 Armies, Royalists Pleased)
Getting Everyone would drop our Trust to normalcy, but give us enough dudes to engage every front. Note that this is free due to happy Royalists.
Pick a Theater to Focus On
[] [Theater] 1 PW - Kyberi (-4 temp IC, +3 temp Armies, Develop Transport Infrastructure, Gain Invaders Must Die Status)
[] [Theater] 2 PW - Sea (-2 temp IC, +2 temp Navies, better odds of protecting own shipping and breaking Nohon cordon)
[] [Theater] 2 PW - Prepare for all comers (-2 temp IC, +3 temp Armies, +1 temp Navies, worse performance in the East but better prepared in the West)
And we need to note that the Kyberi option will wipe out our IC and trigger faction angery unless we take the Kielmyr deals.
[] [Kiel] 0 PW - Adjust tariffs further for relevant war materials (-1 temp SoL, +1 temp IC)
[] [Merc] 1 PW - Everyone you can get (-2 Trust, +2 Armies, Royalists Pleased)
[] [Theater] 2 PW - Sea (-2 temp IC, +2 temp Navies, better odds of protecting own shipping and breaking Nohon cordon)
Personal combo. Our land forces SHOULD be fine enough with the Mercenaries, but our naval power is weak. We need that shipping protection, since we aren't getting our armies to ANY site without the navy, and Navy 6 is a start to contesting at all.
Remember, we lose SoL if we lose control over our shipping and the Hespranxer know it. Even if we can't win the sea theater we need to not lose.
We can't supply or transport our Army if we lose the sea
