Gaiaterra: Elysea's Conflict/Ambriaric Force

The discovery and application of electricity, is possibly one of modern science's greatest triumphs. From Syndicate railguns, to Voshkod coils, electric power is one of the most convenient ways of providing energy to devices. History tells us that electricity first came under scrutiny in the 1940s V.C., and has been developed steadily since then. Of course, that's just the "official" history...

Initial Discovery
In the early 1930s V.C., it was common practice for newly initiated Forgemasters to be given a ceremonial talisman, as a commemoration into the Order's higher ranks. This order took the form of a golden chain, bearing a small medallion of the Order's coat of arms, with the Eagle cast in polished amber. Many Forgemasters knew that rubbing the amber amulet against their robes could produce a small flash of light accompanied by a painful shock. The phenomenon was largely ignored or treated as an irrelevant curiosity.

This changed one day, when a newly promoted Forgemaster by the name of Pablo de Deize made a discovery. He noted that after a particularly painful jolt, two of the links on the amulet's chain had been fused together. The fused links were easily separated, however, examination of the gold showed that two small patches of the metal had practically melted, and welded together. Pablo had accidentally discovered a process that would not be re-invented for hundreds of years. He had discovered arc welding. Scaling up the principle with larger amber pieces, and belts of cloth resulted in devices that could produce extremely accurate contact welds between pieces of metal. Unfortunately, the welds were too weak to be of any use on metals such as Talon Steel (or even regular steel), and could only be used to produce very small welds in metals such as brass, copper or gold. The discovery would likely have been entirely forgotten, were it not for the fact that the Order was starting its first experiments with crude Clockwork devices at the time. The arc welding process was an ideal tool for attaching the smaller brass gears and springs together.

Due to the process requiring amber as the main component, the effect became known as "Ambiaric Force", a sort of "invisible fluid" that could be collected on certain objects when subjected to friction, and then made to flow through metals, causing them to become heated.

Science Marches On
However, in the wider world, science continued to develop. An Alliance scientist named William Gilbert discovered that amber could produce a "charge" on objects, and named the phenomena "Electricity" after the word "Elektron", meaning amber. As time went by, uses for this phenomena were discovered, such as telegraphy in the (insert date). When the Order discovered that Cult members were sending coded communications via telegraph networks, they were forced to update their knowledge of this growing phenomena. Despite this, the name Ambiaric still stuck in the Order, where the rest of the world would use the word "Electric".

Modern Usage
Ambiaric technology has a number of uses in the modern Order, although many of them are off the battlefield. Telegraphy is used extensively by the Order for long distance communication, with a secure network of cables connecting Order outposts across the globe. The undeniable effectiveness of radio (referred to by some in the Order as "etheric communicators") has also led the Order to adopt it for its military forces, which use it for battlefield communication. The Order also use radio for communication with mobile cells, replacing the heliographs and carrier pigeons they used in earlier times.

Swords made of Talon Steel can easily be heated via the application of an ambiaric flow. It was also discovered that an ambiaric flow strengthened Order Steel, making it even tougher. Unknown to the Order, this was actually the result of the ambiaric flow somehow "enhancing" the underlying micro-structure of the metal. When combined with the fact that the metal can be heated to temperatures well in excess of the melting points of most metals, the Order have access to swords that can easily cleave apart modern armour. Finally, the Order have also been conducting a few experiments with "ambiaric" weapons, which literally fire bursts of ambiaric energy.