On the Origin of Voltron and Voltridium

Hello there, all ye denizens of the netlands. I bet like many of the more dastardly competitors in the Aruso-Doom war, you wonder just what makes Voltron tick. I'd like to know that too so I could consider whether or not to post the information. No, I can't tell you exactly what schematics would tell you, but I can tell you what Voltron's made of. Of what Voltron is made. Anyway. Looking through my information, I've been unable to divorce the historical from the technical, so bear with me here.

I've shown you before pictures of the Castle of Lions during an attack from Doom, showing huge deposits of ore which light up like Dalmatian-spotted novas when charged with enormous amounts of electricity. Yeah, good times. Well, that's Voltridium ore. It's impure with other metals, certain minerals, and a very interesting form of glass which will be revisited later in the post. These impurities make the dark spots in the novas. The reason for the brightness when charged was described in my short essay on mechanical systems, summed up a little ways below. Anyway, Voltridium is found on Arus and so far only three other planets. The facsimile Voltron, "Vehicle Voltron," is made from alloys of Arusian Voltridium, titanium, and Voltridium from a planet discovered by the Vehicle Voltron's crew before they actually were the Vehicle Voltron crew. Voltridium ore mining is a process best left to the Golden Age of Arus and very large equipment. It is unpleasant, and I think there are fumes which cause each Voltrium ore miner to think the job is somehow glorious. Or it's just good ole Arusian nationalism (jingoism?) at work.

Voltridium is incredibly hard to work with in bulk, which is one of the contributing reasons why Voltron is in five separate parts. In small amounts, which is to say about the volume of your standard carbon brick, the ore melts at the same heat as steel. Unfortunately, that statistic only applies in small amounts. The more Voltridium there is, the higher the melting point. The ratios for mass-related rising melting points are fixed, and are equivalent to the ratios of the Golden Rectangle (I hate real geometry, by the way), and the square root of two is in the equation somewhere. Gotta love golden recatangles and root-two, right? I'm sorry to tell you I had a scientist, not an engineer, explaining this to me, and he couldn't dumb it down enough (and there's no way in heck that was the 5th grader's lesson).

One of the crowning glories of Arus' Golden Age isn't necessarily that they built Voltron, but that they harnessed and refined the materials. It was an incredible feat of engineering that the scientists were distracted long enough for a real genius, which is to say an engineer, was able to get some properly functioning schematics on the table while they were focused by the colossal amounts of calculus involved in making their flawed design work. Sources tell me that the original blueprints were similar to the complete Voltron (with much large arms, shoulders, and arsenals), but the components would have been massive and under incredible strain. It was originally designed with one pilot in mind and the beginning of a semi-sentient AI program, which is still said to live as the "soul" of Voltron, that little extra good luck that the pilots reference in their regular "…thanks to Voltron!" after a risky battle. Creepy? Well, it's not as scary as that conspiracy back on Earth, thank you very much Galaxy Garrison. But you didn't just read that, and as far as has been proved, there is no artificial intelligence operating the robot in battles.

Anyway, due to those flaws in the original design (flaws which the scientists explained away with numbers while the engineers solved the flaws with common sense), there arose the five-lion concept. The lion avatar was favored as the royal symbol of the Arusian Royal Family, which was a big deal back when Voltron was created. It was Arus' Golden Age, they were making amazing things, and the people were staunchly royalist. The number five was complimentary—four compass points, plus the right direction (Arusian philosophy); four elements (Arusian myth has the four primary elements as water, fire, barren land [typically sand, the parallel of living soil as dead soil], and living land [typically forest, but also valleys and other farmlands, parallel of dead soil as living soil), plus the fifth (Arusian myth saving Air or Sky as the final element, that which is reserves as the last frontier for the hometown-type farming people of Arus); four limbs, plus the center (they look at the torso and the head philosophically the same, being farmers predominantly who depended on the strength of their limbs to do work they would see, and strength of organs and mind to deal with problems they couldn't see). Yep, they loved the number five. And it just so happened that cutting each operation down to one-fifth the size saved the manufacturers and engineers about 50x the amount of effort (no one cares about the scientists—they were just puzzling how to make cool weapons on their butchered budget).

So Voltron was manufactured on a design of shifting, interlocking parts which operated famously by themselves. See THE ENVIRONMENTS OF THE LIONS for information on the individual lions.

Now, why use Voltridium to make Voltron? Well, although the Golden Age Arusians were fantastic engineers, craftsmen, and scientists, they weren't always that bright, so using Voltridium at least saved them the effort of having to think up an original name. But Voltridium was a huge challenge to work with , and conquering a challenge like that in order to face the challenge of making their great protector and symbol of greatness was just the sort of thing Golden Age Arusians were nuts for. But also there's the fact that Voltridium is the best metal that ever there was for making a giant fighting robot. It absorbs the kinetic energy of attacks, taking some to batteries and sloughing off the rest in a brilliant glow (the reason for Voltron, the access tunnels, and ore deposits glowing so intensely when charged with electricity). Voltridium never loses its temper, not even when cracked, or put under massive pressures or lack of pressure in the vacuum of space, extreme heat or cold, or just being beaten ruthlessly in battle. As hinted at earlier, Voltridium is stronger the more of it there is at once. This is why Voltron is more than the sum of its parts—five lions can do so much, but five times the Voltridium is always more than five times the Voltridium.

Now, think about the battles the Voltron Force has taken part in: they always start in the lions, try to fight it out that way (strength in numbers, yeah right), but always end up in Voltron to fight the Robeast of the Day. What I have to wonder is this: why not take the lions out before they have a chance to form Voltron? Not even plural lions—target one, attack one mercilessly. That way they don't have the option of forming Voltron.

Of course, now Arus will either design proper countermeasures or bring such maneuvers out of the "until needed" file. As for Doom, well, with your record, could it hurt you to try? And if you were looking for the Hephaestus type "single fatal flaw" in the machine, don't look for it in the materials. As far as design goes, Voltridium can do no wrong.

But Voltridium is not a transparent metal, and no alloy can make it so. Remember that glass I mentioned before? It is formed by sand trapped in Voltridium ore as it develops. Don't ask how, because I wasn't about to talk to a geologist after my "Golden Rectangle to the square-root-of-two power!" experience. I shudder just thinking about it. Anywho, the glass develops in awkward, jaggedy lumps. They melt before Voltridium does, in any quantity and size, and manage to sweat through the softening ore into collection pans during the first stage of ore preparation. This glass used to be used in jewelry, but during the massive undertaking of Voltron it was all used in the cockpit glasses, protection around the power core, and throughout the systems to protect power junctions. The cockpit glass is probably the most important because this special Voltridium-Glass has to withstand all the abuse that Voltridium itself has to, and never scuff, scar, warp, leak, break, or otherwise do anything but exactly what it's supposed to. But those lovely Arusian engineers did count on the glass deforming somewhat, and the cockpit seal is not totally static—there's actually quite a lot in the way of compensators and micrometal flex. It's fascinating. So I'm told.

As far as the power cores, they are more heavily involved with the environments of the lions. And I get a feeling that the Arus DOD is going to sue me for posting all that I have so far.

So everyone, this is Starre Smith, giving you what isn't going to happen in the Aruso-Doom war first.