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Tim Ar military technology—and a significant proportion of Tim Ar domestic technology in general—has a very frequent kind of old-school feel, and by that I mean dieselpunk-ish and analog. There are, of course, plenty of computer and digital devices used therein—no modern army could do without it—but the Tim Ar thinking is that a) in the event of nuclear detonations or EMPs [which the adasar are much less shy of deploying in a military capacity in general], recovery is easier; b) the old saw about how Kalashnikovs are reliable and NATO weapons aren't? that's basically the official policy; b) a soldier ought to get to know one's machine(s) and/or weapon(s) both generally and specifically, as it will give him advantage and help him get a "gut sense" or intuition that a computer might never achieve; and c) it creates jobs.
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Ironically, for being so dieselpunk-heavy, they're actually pretty much the leaders in clean energy.
Tralphium1 is their biggest trump card over the Tlar Canà and the CVS: They have a monopoly on the substance. Xi Boö B has a very large, close-in substellar companion. It is being interpreted as a helium planet due to how it seems to match the expected characteristics of one (helium planets are close-in giants whose hydrogen has all been blasted away by stellar wind, leaving just the helium), and it is just far enough from Xi Boö A (and Íröd) to be reachable in person within a reasonable timeframe, meaning it was exploitable. The Tim Ar managed to get there first (one of the titles in the imperial style is "Conqueror of the Second Sun"). Incidentally, a lot of the lower castes (and prisoners) get sent here, or rather to the smaller iceball that also orbits Xi Boö B (here; I don't know if we can detect such a planet in that system with our current capabilities).
They have a remarkably advanced geothermal regime. This was sort of spawned of secondary knowledge that was acquired on the way to making the Empire safer from volcanic events (q.v.). It's feasible to use geothermal power much more so than on Earth due to Íröd's higher volcanism; the empire of the Tim Ar itself has as its backbone the Burning Mountains (q.v., but pretty much exactly what they sound like).
There is also a considerable usage of biofuels. This is due, in part, to the caste system, of all things—you couldn't have a bunch of farmers growing things that never get sold due to oversupply, could you?—with the environmental benefits having been a secondary concern.
Nuclear fission is largely superseded in the Empire (though outside of it it does see much more use), though it was formerly in relatively widespread use2.
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The Burning Mountains are the largest mountain range on Íröd, running over 10'000 km by some measures. The biggest, the baddest, the highest, the most perilous…all are within it3,4. As you could imagine, there are a lot of volcanoes there. These would periodically cause huge problems and devastating losses of life and destruction of property and land. Naturally, many parties had vested interests in studying and dealing with this threat.
The Magmadrome (CT: Adag signa ü Kandá Éden Guíł signa 'Lava Management Complex') is the crowning geological achievement of the Tim Ar. Through decades of effort, study, and design, they have developed and built out a largely subterranean system of monitoring and, to some extent, controlling the volcanic activity endemic to the mountains. There are a number of patches of otherwise inhospitable terrain with pipes coming out, through which geothermal vapor buildup is outgassed, and there are methods for distributing and managing actual magma and lava flows. They can't always prevent eruptions (sometimes they can but it's still a matter of intense research and experimentation), but they can at least lessen the effects.
- /dág
- route.PL
- signa
- RE:
- ü
- DEF
- kandá
- AG
- éden
- drive
- guíł
- lava
- signa
- RE:
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- Helium-3.
- Thanks in part to Oqsh and their tradition of rad-priests.
- In fact, the dahsar Urheimat—where the species originated and fanned out from—was a massive riverine complex in the thick of them. It's currently kind of held as an off-limits, all-hope-abandon-ye-who-enter-here free-for-all zone. It's much like New Guinea with having a bunch of uncontacted peoples (and language families), for much the same reasons. It is incredibly hard to get through.
- Incidentally, Oqsh is located in it.
