Tyranny of Steel

The sun shone through the glass windows of a large conference room within the Industrial District of the city of Kufstein. Various men dressed in work clothes were gathered around the table, stained with the various fluids that an engineer would commonly encounter. At the head of this table was a familiar young man, the eldest son of the legendary engineer Ludwig Schmidt.

Jakob was designing a new weapon, and the men surrounding him were the Research and Development team assigned to the Austrian National Armory. Usually, Ludwig would be at this meeting, but the man was getting on in years and had many other tasks to work on. With this in mind, he placed his eldest son as the head of the Research and Development department.

At the moment, Jakob and his engineers were working together to design a replacement for the old cast iron grenades that were essentially nothing more than a hollow iron ball filled with black powder and utilized a slow-burning match to detonate.

While the mighty King of Austria, Berengar von Kufstein, had laid the groundwork for the development of arms and munitions, a certain amount of responsibility had fallen to these men, and it was with this in mind that they fervently worked to live up to the standards of their respective positions.

The rudimentary design on the table was akin to a Stielhandgranate or stick grenade from Berengar ’s past life. Much like the Chinese variant of the stick grenade from the 20th century, they had opted to use TNT as the explosive compound contained within. However, where they were struggling to finalize the design was in regards to the ignition system; for the time being, they could not think of a way to ignite the grenade safely.

Right when they were about to give up on the design altogether, a knock resounded throughout the room, which originated from the doors of the conference room. Shortly after this, the doors crept open to reveal the elegant figure of the young King of Austria.

Upon seeing their Monarch enter the room, the engineers all became dead silent, as they were not expecting his arrival and did not know how to react appropriately. Berengar had a dignified expression on his face as he explained his reasoning for stopping by.