Jehane Golitle

Jehane Golitle was a member of the Thinkers' Rebellion of 7600 BG and then a political prisoner by Emperor Neweh.

Golitle, who was placed in charge of an understaffed, underfunded, and discouraged team of scientists, and told to earn her team's continued well-being by inventing useful devices which would make a profit for the emperor.

The group discovered many previously unsuspected uses for already existing artifacts, and they scoured Imperial Scientific Archives in a desperate search for inventions which had been discarded as unfit for a computerized society, but which might be made economically feasible if one was clever enough.

Golitle had been looking for some method of constructing a flying machine that could combine the versatility of a bird with the size of an artificial aircraft and she discovered the secret she sought in the Heart Scallop of the Forannis Triad. She petitioned the emperor to allow the entire group to travel to the Forannis Triad. Golitle removed her entire research facility to the triad and began intensive experimentation, culminating in 7580 BG with the test flight of the first true ornithopter.

Emperor Neweh, distressed with the slow acceptance of the ornithopter, directed the scientists who developed it to cease further development work on the device, and instead to concentrate on a unified astrological theory that could be used to detect plots against his life among his courtiers.