Sama - Thought-Metal

Like moths to a flame, we gather to the gleam.

— Aldara, Kaia

Sama, or thought-metal, is a iridescent, smooth metal found only in Patala. Though unyielding to the blacksmith's hammer, Sama bends and moves to thought and memory, allowing artisans to twist it into impossibly intricate shapes. With such rarity and beauty, Sama has become highly prized, yet highly feared. There is a song within the metal that only grows as it gathers in a hoard. Some whisper that the metal steals the thoughts and dreams that those who work it pour into it, but no one has yet decided that would be to steep a price to pay.

Description

Like a dream made manifest.

— Sundarata, Patala Artisan

Raw Sama come in long, thin slivers and spikes, ranging in size from a nail to a javelin. Impossibly smooth and unblemished, it never seem to suffer nicks or cuts by its journey from the deep. It has a brilliant prismatic hue that dances in the light, shifting between a brilliant gold to a dark silver as it is worked. Despite its resistance to disfigurement, it yields as readily as any other metal to repeated blows, and shatters into shards that behave almost as droplets of water.

Even in pitch darkness, thought-metal emits a faint glow when thought is put into it - a fact most Kaia consider a warning sign.

by Midjourney

Sama's most remarkable quality is its response to thought. When held, thought-metal shifts and warps in accordance to the thought, even if sub-conscious. Artisans have found that they can guide the changes by deep concentration, creating works of breath-taking beauty and complexity.
It is a slow process, measured in hours or even days, where every distraction or errant daydream can twist the final work far from its intended design. Others find it easy to get carried away, and create things too fragile to support its own weight, with delicate constructs collapsing on themselves. When thought-metal comes apart, it has been impossible to put them back together again, and so artisans are limited by whatever size the piece they can find.

A few become mesmerized, lost in the reflection of their own thoughts in the changing metal and lose all track of time - sometimes for days.

Sama sings to those who hold it, a quiet toneless noise in their thoughts. It is a telepathic echo that only grows stronger the more of the metal is nearby, drowning the mind in its chorus. In such cacophony, some find peace, or even a sense of something distant and divine. A few become convinced they heard something call them, and soon abandon their lives in Patala to travel somewhere into the dark, searching for a source to the singing summons.

If they've ever found it, none have returned to speak of it.

Most of the Sama dredged from the abyssal depths become works of art, either kept as trophies and symbols of power by local Merchant-Prince or traded to far-away city-states like Mharaji. Weapons or armor made of thought-metal are vanishingly rare, reserved for the most ostentatious displays of wealth.
Some find the song within the metal to be soothing and centering, using them as meditative aids. A few enterprising souls have tried to blend the thought-metal with cages of iron or chitin to create simple prosthetics, with mixed results.
More extreme members of the Called hammer slivers and nails of Sama into their flesh or bone.

by Midjourney

To the Called, Sama is a sacred thing, and its telepathic song a divine choir. In it, they have heard the secrets of the world, and listen to whispered commands - real or imagined.

A Plague of Dreams

A small price to pay. We're still alive, aren't we?

— Sundarata, Patala Artisan

When the shared dreams begun, Vicitra was thrown in turmoil. The gleaming hoards of thought-metal kept in Vicitra had grown until their song bled into the slumber of the city's citizen. Indistinct at first but sharpening in focus, people found themselves all inside the same dreamscape, night after night. There, secrets and feuds were laid bare, and people's psyches lay naked before all to see.

Those without secrets in Vicitra can be counted on one hand after it's been mauled by a Suryō Spider

It took the combined effort of the city's Kaia and several prominent Merchant-Princes to stop the chaos before it threatened to unravel the city entirely. Lead by Aldara the Dream-Eater, an uneasy peace have settled in the region, but vengeful murders and reprisal continue sporadically. Everyone keep their blades sharp.
Although the exact cause is still unclear, enough blame has been placed on thought-metal to see most of it locked away when not in use or sold. Despite the pleading by Aldara and her allies, Sama is still sold abroad. With it, Aldara fears, the Shrikes have distant beacons to follow, able to sate their hunger in distant lands.

by Midjourney

Even as the worst of the plague has passed, Vicitra still feels the telepathic aftershocks. Strange things and living nightmares step out of slumbering minds to haunt the city, while the Thought-Eating Shrikes infect the minds of ever more people.

Perhaps, some say, Patala had been sealed for a reason - to open it has invited doom to all who entered.

Patala
Sama is unique to Patala, a recently breached region in the Inner Shell. Within its vast, grey canyon halls and steep abyssal descent, a singing wind sometimes screams out of the Far Deep beneath it, carrying with it shards of Sama.
Such scarcity makes the thought-metal as valuable as it is difficult to collect, usually hanging precipitiously over miles deep chasms.
Read More About Patala

by Midjourney

Beyond 'somewhere in the Far Deep', no one knows where Sama comes from, or how it's made.
Its true source is an endless source of speculation, and greedy daydreams.

Summon the Shrike

The thought-eating Shrikes are drawn to the song of thought-metal, like blood in the air to a hungry predator. It is a danger only recently discovered and still denied by most owners, reluctant to lose such a valuable thing over a matter as slight as nightmarish predators.
Existing somewhere between thought and reality, Shrikes devour dreams and memories of those it encounter, making a lair in the shadows of their mind. Only when there is nothing left does the Shrike depart, emerging from their unfortunate victim's skull in a explosion of bone.

The Sphere

With so many similarities to the Quicksilver Sphere, some wonder if there is a pattern or connection. With Patala so recently open to the world and the thought-metal still so rare, most dismiss it as possible... But no one is entirely certain, and no one who makes one of the spheres have ever shared her secrets.

Mind-Killer

As unearthly doom threaten Patala, some have turned to the very metal that invited it. Under great secrecy, smiths and theurgs toil to create blades that cut nightmares, spears to skewer thoughts, and hammers that can crush unreality to a bloody pulp.
Their success might provide humanity with a vital weapon against the coming darkness, but failure may well create another gateway for horrors beyond imagining.

by Midjourney