Gaiaterra: Elysea's Conflict/Bohr Wavefunction Adjuster

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The Bohr Wavefunction Adjuster is one of the Alliance of Hawke's Experimental vehicles. Planned to be voiced by Francesca Marie Smith

History
"It's tougher than it looks, eh?"

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When the Alliance first saw the Voshkod Iron Curtain device in action, Alliance Command was flabbergasted. First seen towards the end of WWII, the device allowed the Voshkod to impose the "Will of Garlean" on a unit, rendering them invulnerable for a length of time.

A small team of experts was put together in order to try and understand how the Iron Curtain functioned, and potentially find some flaw in it that they could exploit. The group was based at the Imperial College in Kirkwall, a location chosen for its scientific and engineering expertise, as well as its relative proximity to the headquarters of Alliance intelligence gathering operations in Ferelden. With intelligence reports coming in from spies all over Eorzea, it was hoped that it would only be a matter of time before an agent stumbled upon information that allowed the scientists to theorise how the Iron Curtain worked.

Unfortunately, the Voshkod were better at hiding their secrets than the Alliance gave them credit for. Research in the inter-war period focused heavily on the uncovered concepts of so-called "Iron Energy" and molecular harmonic resonance. These proved to simply be misinformation by the Voshkod, or misunderstandings by Alliance spies. However, the research did result in some interesting spin-offs.

Niels Bohr, an ageing Gallian physicist who had fled Eozora towards the end of GVAW, was attached to the project in 1959 V.C. His insights into quantum mechanics allowed one of the more promising spin-offs involving wavefunction harmonics to be expanded upon into a workable concept. The idea involved using a complex system of ultra-cold Bose-Einstein condensates and oscillating electromagnetic fields to alter the stability of the wavefunctions that describe an atomic nucleus. Effectively, an atomic nucleus made up of a given number of particles behaves the way it does because the configuration it is in is the most stable configuration it can occupy. By altering the fundamental wavefunctions of the system, a different stable configuration can be induced.

Although Bohr never lived to see the end result of his work, the Bohr Wavefunction Adjuster was the outcome. Produced in collaboration with United Armour, the Adjuster is capable of generating a field that alters material stability. In its Hard Armour mode of operation, the field is tweaked so that the most stable material is high-strength steel. Materials in the field would remain entirely unchanged, until their stability is disturbed by a destabilizing event, normally an incoming enemy round. The kinetic energy of the round destabilizes the present material, causing it to temporarily transmute into a new, more stable state. The effect would be that a small, thin patch of the original material (in this case, usually flesh, or clothing) would transmute into steel for fraction of a second, just long enough to resist the impact of a bullet. Troops whom this effect was tested on were able to be shot many times by standard anti-personnel weaponry, with only mild bruising. Unfortunately, this effect would not stand up to heavier ordnance, and troops that would otherwise have been taking cover from such weapons would be quickly dispatched. Likewise, lighter vehicles exposed to the field have been shown to be resistant to autocannons and light energy weapons, but less able to manoeuvre around anti-tank and energy-based weaponry.

Its Soft Armour mode instead alters the most stable state to be that of a gloopy gel-like substance. Heavier ordnance passes straight through the material on contact, with little damage, and the material reforms after the impact. However, the multiple hydrostatic shock-fronts caused by massed small arms fire have been known to seriously distort and damage the gel.