This one has been a long time coming. Had to wait for props to develop, or alter products to meet my needs. Even spent WAY more than I intended to get a genuine Albatros C3 model. I created the flare gun myself (Kinda proud of that) This is the opening scene as I imagined it when I wrote the first chapter, found here: https://www.tomtinney.com/manatech-series/chapter-1-in-the-trenches/. Still not entirely happy with the atmospherics, but it makes me happy. In this scene, John and Jarlath (Sidhe protector) have unmasked Mata Hari's mana-enhanced spy plane over the trenches in 1918. ManaTech is the beginning of the alternate history starts in 1895, around the date Nikola Tesla's original New York Lab burnt down under mysterious circumstances. Some believed that his rival, Thomas Edison, had sent a crew to slow Tesla's next big break-through. But, for our story, the lab doesn't burn down and Tesla builds his working model of the Volt-Hammer. He builds the full-scale unit out at Wardenclyffe, on Long Island, Around May, 1908. This works in congruence with his tower that can transmit power through the air. Tesla, to show off his new invention,"Invites" notable people of the time to his lab, as part of the experiment. Henry Ford, Guglielmo Marconi,  an older Alexander Graham Bell, German arms maker Georg a Luger, Television pioneer Hovannes Adamian, biologic mastermind George Washington Carver, a young rocket maker named Robert Goddard. He also invited some women to the demonstration, like biologist Ida Henrietta Hyde, columnist/suffrage leader Elizabeth Jane Cochrane (Nellie Bly) and Margaretha Geertruida "Margreet" MacLeod better known as "Mata Hari". And of course...his rival Thomas Edison. Edison goaded Tesla into doing something "bigger" with the machine and "ManaTech" was born. The thirteenth person to round out the attendees was Tesla's manservant, John O'Neil. An ordinary man that had been a young adventurer, but plays a pivotal role in the world of ManaTech.