Kenostatic Alloy
A rare, dark purple alloy, used mainly by artificers and smiths familiar with working with essences.
Translation: Empty Unchanging Alloy
Κενός: Empty
Static: Pshhhh
Properties
The material is made entirely out of combined raw essence, and it gives it quite the unique properties.
Freshly made, it is as easy to shape as copper; but over the course of the week, it solidifies to a metal as hard as well-tempered steel as it stabilizes. Once fully solidified, it cannot be changed at all; while it is not unbreakable, and fairly brittle, it will attempt to reshape itself back to the shape it remembers, to the point of draining ambient essence to restore itself. The process requires minute amounts of Veil essence above the makeup of the material itself, which is radiated off as waste heat.
The shards broken off break down into ambient essence rapidly as a consequence of no longer being connected to the whole. When broken in half, the material has a tendency to self-restore in the bigger half, the other one fading into non-existence; however, if held by a living being, the material inexplicably tries to reshape itself around the held part instead - however, this process drains the Veil essence directly out of the holding creature.
The material loses coherency and evaporates when it reaches 9.3% structural integrity, regardless of the size of the part.
Magically, the material behaves as if it does not exist - and neither does anything else where it is. This makes it both extremely effective at blocking most combat spells, and conducting certain types of essence; although it is far too brittle to be made into armor, it makes highly effective shields.
Manufacture
Essence requirements:
Veil, 4
Form, 1
Life, 5.2
Dream, 3.5
Mix Veil and Form first; the core of the alloy is the interplay of these essence types.
Then, almost immediately, add Life; the alloy is wildly unstable without it.
And finally, mix in Dream; this will finalize stabilization of the alloy.
As you can see, the essences aren’t perfectly balanced; this, while it would normally be a problem, is not here, as the excess Life turns into Veil and Form, and Dream simply evaporates, turning the alloy into its stable, unchanging form.
Excess of either can go up to 2% over its true value, although it takes the longer time to stabilize the more in excess the essences are - and it already takes a week with the small excess in the base formula. The alloy is also extremely soft in that form, closer to sodium or essence-doped steels in the malleable phase than copper. Any more over that and the alloy does not mix at all, evaporating in a cloud of raw essence.
Once the alloy is stable, it cannot be destabilized by bringing back the excess of Life and Dream, or by adding more of freshly made material; the outer energy level of the alloy is entirely occupied by the Veil at that point.
Excerpt from a Great Work
Upon completion, each hammer was evaluated and graded. The additional properties were tested and verified separately. Results below.
Description
▸A standard blacksmithing hammer without any frills. The hammer is constructed in one piece. Leather is wrapped around the handle for comfort.
Material
▸An unusual alloy made raw Veil, Form, Life and Dream essences named Kenostatic Alloy.
Finish
▸Dark purple, matte, smooth.
Quality
▸Magnificent
Notes:
▸The tool's head not currently in use can shatter on extreme impacts. The impacted material shows the striking head suffers no damage; the head reforms as the hammer is lifted. The smith described the hammer as "heavier" while it's shattered.
▸The hammer is impossible to scratch using standard tools. It is about twenty percent lighter than steel.
▸It stays comfortably cold even after hours of smithing.
▸A small mark of a fleur-de-lis made of Veil lifeforms is inscribed on the bottom of the handle.
