Oreichal

The vault in the basement of the Association building was rarely used, and the mechanism was rusty. It took some effort for Mellitus to get the lock wheels to rotate into place. Rigana glanced around the basement; dusty boxes of books, jars with illegible labels, and paperwork scattered everywhere, a bookkeeper's nightmare.
"There." With a grunt, the lock clicked into place, revealing a small keyhole; the Master Wizard of the Association drew the matching key from his pocket and gave it a twist. The door of the vault opened with a sharp creak, and the two magi stepped inside. The vault itself was tiny, with only a small table opposite a number of boxes inset in the vault wall. Mellitus pulled one out and pulled off its clasp, revealing a small glass vial filled with grey powder. He picked it out and held it to the dim light.
"One year's allocation of oreichal." He uncorked the vial and produced a small square of paper from his robe, tapping out a tiny amount of powder into the paper and folding it. "Here you go, two doses."
Rigana took the paper and tucked it away. "Will this be enough? For raising the dam, I mean."
"Should be, if you're careful." Mellitus gingerly replaced the vial. "That's five years of skilled labor and ten years of unskilled labor I just gave you, along with the ability to level a block of the Capital. Don't use it all at once."

Properties

Material Characteristics

Oreichal is a powdered form of a metal known to pre-historical societies as Orichalcum, but is known in the modern era as titanite. Titanite is a heavy, strong, and impact-resistant grey metal, nearly impossible to work by blacksmiths due to none having successfully melting it in a crucible for shaping. In its powdered form, it is a dull grey, but reflects flashes of light when in sunlight.

Geology & Geography

Titanite is an extremely rare metal, found only with deposits of high quality iron and occasionally with that of silver, and never on its own. It appears in roughly one ten-thousandth ratio to the host metal.

History & Usage

History

The discovery of the properties of oreichal predates written history; the earliest pharmacological texts describe powdered orichalcum as a drug and reagent. Its social prominence, however, only comes about with the discovery of magic and the founding of the Wizard's Association of Etoile, when it was discovered that consuming oreichal amplifies magical power to an enormous degree. Demonstrations to that effect have caused the price of titanite and oreichal to skyrocket, and oreichal has entered the common imagination as a 'magical doomsday powder'.

Discovery

It was well known in antiquity that oreichal quickens thought. After the discovery of magic in 715 and its conception as 'weaponized thought', the testing of oreichal's effect on magic was inevitable. The first test laid bare the truth; the sight of a magus casting a spinning vortex of flame hundreds of feet into the air prompted a drastic reappraisal of oreichal's uses and value.

Everyday use

While a useful mental supplement to non-wizards (with few downsides unlike Clarity, which is addictive and fatal over time), the vast majority of oreichal is marked for the use of wizards. Oreichal makes incredible magical feats temporarily possible. For example, a skilled and experienced wizard can divert a river after an oreichal dose, or redirect the wind, or carve a road into a hill. Such use is significantly taxing to the magic-user, but can save enormous amounts of time and effort.
Doses of oreichal are safely ingested orally with water.

Cultural Significance and Usage

The first public demonstration of oreichal's potential occurred in the first season of 716; an iceberg had somehow floated into the main locks of the Grand Canal in the Etoile Capital City and a number of magic-users were attempting to dislodge it. A wizard from Patino, the Machine City took a dose of oreichal and projected flame on the iceberg to melt it. While she succeeded in her goal, the explosive torrent of flame overflowed the canal locks and set Piers 41 through 33 alight, burning and sinking a number of Principality Siege-sails. It was clearly an accident, and the iceberg was incinerated into wisps of steam, so the job was technically accomplished.
As a result of the journals reporting on this incident (notably, with the Etoile Monitor relentlessly harping on the 'dangers' of amplified magic), oreichal entered the public sphere as a substance of great destructive potential, as opposed to simply being the powdered form of a rare and somewhat useless metal. While it remains unrestricted in trade (due to the only potential users of it being state-sanctioned wizards of the Association), its extreme price now makes it by far the most expensive substance that can be bought and traded, pound for pound. As such, the most 'prestigious' display of wealth in any given noble's manse is a single glass vial on a plinth, filled with grey dust; a full vial (representing well over a hundred individual doses of oreichal) can be worth more than the rest of the entire estate. Within the ranks of the financially ambitious, oreichal has become a shorthand for unbridled wealth, and 'chasing oreichal' has become lexicon for the pursuit of wealth and power at any cost.

Industrial Use

Principality sanctioned megaprojects will typically authorize the use of oreichal by wizards of the archmagus rank who have been assigned to the project. This is to save time; instead of a Constructor team cutting and reinforcing a hill in preparation for laying a road in a month, a wizard can accomplish the same task in a few minutes. The cost of oreichal is prohibitive enough to restrict this to only the most valuable and time-sensitive projects.

Refinement

Titanite is refined from the slag produced by the furnaces in iron and steel production. "Refined" is a somewhat difficult phrase to apply; what actually occurs is that the slag is heated to an extraordinary degree such that every other base metal melts away from the heap, and everything else incinerated, leaving only the unmolten (some say unmelting) titanite remaining as small nodules. These nodules are ground down to oreichal powder for further use.

Distribution

Trade & Market

The Copperheads (formally the Copper and Ironworker's Brotherhood) have a state-granted monopoly on the refinement of base metals. Titanite is not a base metal, but the vast majority of it is produced in iron and steel refinement; the Copperheads control nearly all production. The Principality has first allocation rights to any oreichal produced, but surplus may be sold on the open market, commanding vast premiums.

Storage

Oreichal is a nonvolatile substance that is easily and safely transported and stored. The preferred method of storage is in marked vials, in order to easily determine the quantity of oreichal present. This allows their easy use as public displays of wealth.

Law & Regulation

Other than the Principality exercising its right of first purchase, Oreichal is unrestricted in trade. It's extreme value, however, makes it a prime target for thievery, with all of the consequences that follow stealing millions of florin.

Type

Metal

Value

A full vial of Oreichal (8oz) has been recently priced at 7.5 million F.

Rarity

Rare

Odor

None

Taste

Metallic

Color

Grey

Melting / Freezing Point

Unknown

Common State

Powdered solid