Torsten Hewson
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BOC World Building: On Bowu and the Steam Furnace
🕑 Added 2025-11-16 22:54:58 +0000 UTCI saw some discussion about the steam furnace in the comments, so decided clarify some things about it, and the way it came to be. Some people seem to think that they are a direct 1-1 with some 1800s steam engine. They are not. They are explicitely partially magical, and right now most of their fuel is magical as well.
The Steam Furnace was first conceptualized by Bowu when he was fairly young. He was reading out of a scroll on formations Xianghua had smuggled out from the Sect Library, a transcript of some of the Lord of the Lake (an Imperial Realm with mastery over mist and steam, and Bowu’s ancestor). He thought it was largely useless at first. Then he noticed steam moving a pinwheel.
He had been looking through some ancestors’ notes on mist. Some kind of channeling array. It was old and out of use, but it was kind of interesting. He was fiddling with the pinwheel his sister had brought him back and leaning back in his seat when his water for tea came to a boil. In the cramped shack, when he leaned back, his hand was nearly over the firepit.
And the pinwheel was over the pot. He stared idly at it as it spun, faster and faster, over the boiling pot.
Steam turned into force. Force was power.
He looked back to the channeling array. Mist was gentle and quiet. It whispered. Steam was harsh, violent almost . . . and both were water, suspended in air.
He could not channel Qi himself. But the steam, combined with the channeling array . . .
He sketched out a prototype, explicitly using somebody else’s design with a few minor tweaks. He used already existing materials: A Xianxia pill furnace, when properly made, can withstand heavy internal pressures. It has to. Normally cultivators also use their Qi to help stabilize it, but just base furnaces are pretty durable. Otherwise they would explode way more often.
The ones cultivators use are technically magical artifacts. They have formations inside and a whole load of channeling properties, but are so ubiquitous that even the Azure Hills can buy a “standard” version. The big ones in big Sects can even be the size of apartment buildings.
Bowu also used to be the Young Master of the Sect; he already had instruction on how to make formations and change them, as well as how to use pill furnaces; Xianghua also smuggled him into the sect library whenever she could.
He later studied blacksmithing and how to make pill furnaces in order to use the Steam Furnace for himself, but after a couple of years of work, he realized that he would never really be able to use it. He kept up with the smithing because it was lucrative making screws and other little fiddly bits, and he was genuinely good at it; Bowu himself also does have a bit of the same thing Xianghua has, but his is nearly entirely benign—as it originally was. His simply lends itself to hyperfocus, instead of hyperfocus, face blindness, and emotional issues. Their condition is from the Draconic part of their lineage. What was originally wholly good for a cultivator (the extreme hyperfocus and being able to deaden their emotions.) has been degraded by genetic drift and The Breaking into what Xianghua, her brother, and her father all have.
Bowu then left the idea fallow until Xianghua got beaten by Xiulan several years later, about 6 months before the dueling peaks tournament.
She came back in a rage, going full bore on cultivation to challenge her rival, and Bowu thought of his old idea.
He told Xianghua what he was intending. She then thought it was a good idea and bankrolled him.
During this point in time Bowu is ~15-16. Bowu is 2 years younger than Gou Ren, but seems a bit childish and clingy at times because hes affection starved. So he rides on Gou’s shoulders and acts young with them.
It was 6+ months of nonstop work that amounted to add another formation to a Pill Furnace, extend its smoke stack. They went through like 37? Pill furnaces to get that far
Yes, it was extremely fiddly, and Bowu is quite smart for figuring it out, but he did not figure everything out by himself. He was relying on ancestral knowledge and was effectively bankrolled by the sect. He just figured out how to apply the teachings of an Imperial Realm Master of Water.
During the tournament, Bowu is still worried about it overloading and exploding. Which it eventually does, as Xianghua pushes it beyond its limits.
After that, Bowu gets the invite from Jin. Who goes “this is great, come with me and make stuff!”
Xianghua buys a bunch of pill furnaces for him, and off Bowu goes.
Now onto the full steam engines: Bowu has a lot less work to do on the pressure vessel, because it's already kind of done for him. He learns the parts of blacksmithing he neglected from Yao Che, and fully creates his first own Pill furnaces.
Then he transitioned to Jin. Jin has told him 1: its possible
2: This is approximately how to do it.
So hes been told “this is how this works, this is why it works, here's a prototype drawing of most of the parts. I think this is how you fill in the gaps..”
He then made friends with Miantiao and Yin.
Yin is a portable forge who can spot weld things if he needs assistance, and she was invaluable for the early prototyping phase. Miantiao has some control over temperatures as well, and is used to extremely fine and delicate work: he can also sand things extremely quickly by using crushed up pieces of pottery. He's basically an extremely precise sandblaster.
So now he has a sanding belt and better than modern welding for a good portion of the year.
The Empire also already has windmill and watermill powered industry; everything for them also forms the basis for making a steam engine, which at its core is using steam to spin a wheel, instead of water or wind.
It takes him a full year of nonstop work going from Xianghua’s version to the other prototypes. He has access to a lot of modern conveniences, and nearly modern tools through magic, and hes working 16 hour days because this is his life, and hes loving it.
He gets the piston to function, and thus he can now turn wheels.
But all of these are still fairly low power and pressure. Even the Azure Express is super “low powered” and struggles quite badly to haul much weight. The metallurgy and materials science is NOT where it needs to be at the moment, as showcased by the fact that when you start pushing his creations, they start breaking down.
The Azure Express and trains in general need a lot more work before they go beyond the Smoky River-Hong Yaowu route, but it's good for testing.
That said, even if its “mundane” by Xianxia standard… its Xianxia standard. Theres still quite a bit of magic that goes into the creation of a Steam Furnace.
Here are the magical components of the Steam Furnace:
1: a Pill Furnace, a magical artifact tweaked with the Lord Of the Lake’s formation to more efficiently channel steam. Can take quite a lot of pressure. Can also be made by Mortals with sufficient training. Can be used by mortals in limited ways. So ubiquitous that even mortals largely consider the simple ones “mundane”.
2:The other small formation channels. These are the most basal form of the ones used in Combat Steam Furnaces. The ones in combat Steam furnaces are generally uncompromised if somebody reverse engineers the formation because it's basically all internal.
3: water and fire crystals to have an enormous fuel supply. When properly attuned by a crystal carver, these power the trains and reapers instead of coal, and those that are run on these crystals are completely clean energy. Might attract Spirit Beasts due to the presence of Qi.
While trying to be as mortal as possible, the key is “as possible” the pill furnaces can be made by mortals, the formations carved by mortals, and the crystals mined and attuned by mortals.
Those are the most solid parts of the engine. It's everything else that needs a lot of work. He needs better iron, he needs steel, he needs copper, he needs brass… they need a whole load of things before it goes beyond a single line thats been set up by cultivators.
They’re also dangerous if you try and run them too hard, and will explode, something that's slightly mitigated, again, by the steam control formation.
They’re maintenance hogs, they’re slow, and they need at least some magic to function.
But it's magic that your average man can use. Magic that's understandable.
And that makes all the difference.
Comments
Gwyn
Anyone see Archer? Bowu reminds me of Cheryl with the railroads. In like 100 years, "Have you ever heard of railroads? They criss-cross the empire and his family built them ALL."
Beggar of Freedom
Divines bless your kind heart!
Idan tal
While the only new thing here for me was the original scroll that sparked the initial mix of mist and steam (I thought it was due to seeing the formation at the show room at the sect, or a copy of it) it was great world building, so thank you very much on that.
My
I always appreciated the neuro divergent representation in this story. The misty siblings are well written and them being neurospicy is naturally a part of their characters. I just didn't know that it was because of dragon seasoning before now. I don't hate it! Makes me wonder which mythical creature is hiding in my ancestry
