Sand Worm Oil

"The worms we flense and the blubbers we boil, all in a day's silver for the dewdrop oil." - Wormslayer's Cadence

Ambrosia of The Beast

Great Sand Worm Oil is a highly valued commodity throughout Galeria. It's commercial form is a viscious fluid, derived from the blubber of a Great Sand Worm.
Valued for its even flammability and flexible storage stability, Sand Worm Oil is also called Dew Drop oil, or simply 'Dewdrop'. Popularly used as lamp fuel and carriage lubricant, its also one of the few known substances with an ability to power magical mechanisms when paired with a Grimshatter engine. This meant that operations of magical equipment could be maintained without regular need of a Mechanist or Artificer (nor the fragile, expensive crystals and trinkets they use).

A Farmer's Market

Over three quarters of all Dewdrop oil produced currently comes from blubber harvested from farmed, semi-domesticated Sand Worms, cultivated and harvested at more manageable sizes for ease of upkeep and handler safety. As would be expected, these smaller farmed worms typically yield far less dewdrop, and this built-in scarcity tends to keep prices high and product limited, regardless of inconsistencies in quality. Small worm blubber is typically taken from much younger worms, and thus is less dense and considered not as potent.

A Risky Business

The rest of the Dewdrop Oil market is harvested through the rare successful hunt of the few remaining wild Great Sand Worms of the Southron Dunes. The process is considered an extraordinariliy difficult one to successfully accomplish.
Very few railways stretch into the Southron Dunes. Locating the cunning beasts, despite their massive size, is a complicated and arduous task. The succesful downing of them, above ground and in a recoverable condition, with the hunters intact, is often considered miraculous.
Harvesting issues only begin there though.
Great Sand Worm carcasses are typically between one hundred feet (100ft or 30.48m) and one hundred-thirty feet (130ft or 45.72m) in length, and are far too big and heavy to be transported whole, even on the largest Rail Titan. Therefore the Sand Worm blubber must be carved from the carcass in a grueling process known as flensing. Flensing a wild worm in the dunes is incredibly dangerous, laborious work that can take days, and draws the attention of desert scavengers, sandbulls, therapode predators, raiders, rival worm hunters, or even other Great Sand Worms.
Despite the dangers involved and the high failure rate for hunting expeditions, wild Great Sand Worms remain a sought after prize in dewdrop speculation circles - a single successful hunt can let the hunters, or their investors, set the market for months.

History & Usage

History

Boiled worm fat has been in use in the Galeric valley since the time of the Green Vale before the First Pax War, when Arrakisian elven hunters would hunt the beasts in the hills and mountains before the desert took over. Its purification and homogenization into an oil to be used as an accelerant and lubricant has existed since the 2nd century ME.

Discovery

The oil was first produced almost by accident when the fat of the worm, traditionally used as animal feed or bait, was boiled down to keep it from spoiling. After the resulting render was filtered, it yielded a clear fluid that turned amber as cooled and settled. Several different worm hunter clans claimed responsiblity for the discovery. It has since been theorised that different clans likely arrived at the conclusion independently, as the period's new preponderance of worms and the increased worm hunting would've yielded far too much worm blubber to be sold by traditional methods of the time. Boiling it became both a necessity and a reflection of sincere hopes that the resulting tallow would still hold market value. It was simply the luck of the Wormslayer's, or so they would claim, that made the boiled blubber such excellent lamp oil.

Everyday use

Illumination

Carriage and Sail Bogey Lubricant

Cooking

Industrial Use

Machine lubrication

Propellant / accelerant

Explosive compound ingredient

Refinement

Dewdrop Oil is obained from boiling flensed strips of sand worm blubber harvested from dense tissue layers covering the worm's body beneath its skin. This boiling process is also called Trying, or Trying out; specialized furnace pots in which the worm blubber is boiled are called Tryworks.

Manufacturing & Products

Lantern Oil

Machine Lubricant

Engine combustible

Food additive

Hazards

Flammable

Toxic if ingested in large quantities

Great Sand Worm oil is a viscous, shelf stable accelerant that's been in use for over seven centuries.

Type

Biomaterial

Odor

Pungent, oily, notes of earthiness and rot

Taste

Sour with bittersweet notes

Color

Dark amber

Common State

Naturally solid, but sold in liquid form

Dewdrop ought not be confused with the Great Sand Worm's Ambergris, a hard waxy substance harvested from cavities in the walls of its lower ventriculus, a secondary stomach organ.