Anisaratha

Anisaratha, sometimes called Aratha for short, is a rare and valuable substance in Etalyr. It’s primary purpose is in diluting the gloom and keeping communities safe from its influence.

Properties

Material Characteristics

At room temperature, anisaratha is a clear blue-white liquid, its surface resembling a warm day’s sky with a few clouds of white dispersed through its surface. Unusual for a liquid, it bears no reflection from its surface, instead being entirely opaque. It is quite viscous, twice as much as a syrup or honey of the same amount. It has a sweet aroma of fresh bergamot and aloe. While it may taste quite sweet, it is far too valuable for its other properties to use as a foodstuff, not to mention its starkly bitter aftertaste. It provides little nutritional value anyways. When chilled just below room temperature, anisaratha crystalizes into small clusters. These crystals are jagged, like small, sharp starbursts. They are sticky to the touch and melt in your hand. It is quite common to find anisaratha in this state. It freezes overnight as temperatures lower, and is almost exclusively found in small crystals as you travel further north. When brought to extremely warm temperatures (far above the boiling point of water), anisaratha forms a vapor carrying the same scent as its liquid and solid forms. This vapor is invisible to the naked eye. When present in the air, it reacts with the gloom to neutralize it entirely. Only a small amount of aratha is required in the atmospheric mixture to neutralize vast areas of the gloom.

Physical & Chemical Properties

Anisaratha is quite cold to the touch in any of its forms - it absorbs heat around it at quite an alarming rate. It is often not safe to handle it with bare hands for more than a few seconds, leaving serious frostbite and even frost burn on the skin. Thick layers of cloth or leather insulation are required to handle it for long periods safely. It can be burned as a liquid, like oil, but only in flashes or under a constant and extreme influx of heat and some kind of spark. Doing so can remove any impurities that have combined with the liquid at rest. Often times this process results in a reduction by half its volume, but removing impurities in this way is a necessary step towards using the anisaratha for its primary purpose.
Just past its burning point, it can be boiled safely into a vapor. This vapor mixes with the atmosphere and dilutes the Gloom. A single liquid ounce of this substance, after purification, can cleanse the atmosphere of gloom around a small village (100 people or less) for a week, meaning small villages like these require about a gallon of impure anisaratha each year to sustain themselves. In order to gather this anisaratha safely, Caravaneers are sent out by cities and villages with portable arathafiers to keep the gloom at bay as they travel, though most villages have now simply contracted with larger settlements to trade aratha in exchange for other natural resources and labor.

Geology & Geography

Anisaratha is a natural substance that can be found almost anywhere, though it is always exposed to open air in some manner. It is fairly rare, and limited in supply. It replenishes itself naturally, but at a much slower rate than it is currently being consumed.
There are only two signs that anisaratha is possibly nearby - its sweet aroma, which is quite pungent, and the monsters that this aroma draws towards it.

Origin & Source

Anisaratha is created as natural molecules in the atmosphere sink to the earth under the weight of the gloom. It finds itself as deposits much like water does, only in much less abundant supply. It is a naturally formed compound.

Life & Expiration

While anisaratha is stable and retains its properties once formed, it forms very slowly. The natural processes that create anisaratha take years to produce even a gallon of it in a single location. Eventually, the deposits of it dry out after a few months of harvesting, and it does not form in the same place twice without more than a year or two in between. This makes it extremely difficult to find a consistent supply, and its endless shelf life lends itself towards storing reserves of it for troubled times.

Odor

Luscious Bergamot and Aloe

Taste

Sweet, like honeydew and syrup

Color

Blue with white clouds textured throughout

Boiling / Condensation Point

350^• Celius, or ~670^• Fahrenheit.

Melting / Freezing Point

15^• Celsius, or ~60^• Fahrenheit

Density

More dense than water

Common State

Liquid