Enchanting

Enchanting is an art of anchoring certain active spells or passive magical effects in material objects, which allows the object in question to manifest them while using its internal power, not even requiring (in most cases) its user to be a sorcerer. That's an art limited to magicians and specialized sorcerers, serving as a basis of technomatugy and an important pillar of modern technomagical industrial revolution.
While it is widespread today, its origins predate modern magic and Imperium of Karadia as a whole, with even First Empire leaving its own share of enchanted items, sometimes unearthed in magical anomalies. This makes enchanters one of the oldest jobs in the world.

Enchantment Bases

No, Evan. You can't enchant your 'rod' to work better. Yes, I heard you. Now, come here and write one hundred times 'I can't enchant my rod.' on the blackboard.

Teacher during first lesson about enchantments.

Theoretically speaking the basis of process of enchanting is filling material objects with Aether. This is, coincidentally, one of the first things that aspiring magicians learn, although not knowing it to be a part of enchanting as a whole.
Filling objects in aether allows the anchored spell (which will be described later) to use this power to work. Materials vary heavily in their aether storage abilities. Lowest tier is organic matter, dirt, sand, peat and liquids as a whole – they are literrally worthless in terms of enchanting, barely able to store enough aether for a singular, weak spell, after which they will (depending on how much they were overcharged) break, combust explode or implode.
The middle tier are stone, wood, glass, metal and furs/leather. They are internally divided, of course – certain types of fur for example can be either barely better than dirt, or at very top of the second tier. Generally speaking the more elusive material the better it is as aether conduit, with certain anomalies existing surprisingly often.
The third tier are certain types of precious metals (silver, gold, platinum, black gold etc.) that are known to be abnormally good conduits, jewels, mana crystal and variety of rather elusive enchantment materials like soulstones or darkshards. Lower third tier (mana crystals of small size, silver and gold) are used for industrial scale enchanting, the rest are for special orders, for example wealthy adventurers, Imperium,, archmages and so on.
Ex aqueo with this list of tiers are so called relics, category that includes both body parts of saints (especially in monotheism religions) and items that were somewhat historically significant, like a sword that was used to slain some powerful creatures. Or, on smaller scale, family heirlooms like a signet with hundred years of history. Such items automaticaly become an aether conduits via the belief in their special qualities. Their quality depends – a finger of a some barely known martyr will be around early tier 2, while part of Inri's Cross surpasses third tier by a long shot.

Enchanting Process

Alright, now put magic inside. Yes. Now, weave the spell you inside, try to cast in on this item while thinking of 'weaving' it, part by part, into it. Carefully, slowly and as delicate as possible. Like kissing sister. sounds of explosion YOUR OWN SISTER!

Advanced lessons on enchanting..

Putting enough aether in an material object is only a first part of the process – one that in case of sufficiently advanced enchanters can actually be skipped. Then the enchanter has to 'weave' the spell he choses into an item, doing it as delicately as possible. The exact details of the process vary slightly between cultures and magical organizations.
The problem is that the ammount of stored magic is tantamount to ammount of uses you have left, before you will need to resupply. Most enchanters can install a certain enhantment (or rather a combination of them) that allows the item to draw ambient aether from the atmosphere (while also putting a spell that will stop it from working if the power reaches max to prevent overcharging). But only true masters can make the recharging spell strong enough that it actually regenerates the power as fast as the item is used. This is a domain of artifacts and similar items.
Typical way of recharging is using liquid aether to fill the item again (which requires a person with knowledge of how enchanting works). There are also items (mostly – weapons) that recharge by stealing life force of enemies, but that is a relative rarity.
Running out of aether can mean few things, and none of them good. If user is lucky, the anchored spell will simply dissolve, leaving behind a now mundane object that and be reenchanted. If he is unlucky, the effect will be magical explosion and irradiating the people around with aether. Many – but unfortunately not all – enchanted objects are specially enchanted to disenchant if the power runs too low, though.
Enchantments can be divided into two main groups, simple and complex. Simple can be summed up by pointing towards Codex Artificiorum, a list of categorized magical effects of known artifacts, with all of them having their own, non-artifact grade versions usable to enchant simple weapons, armors, jewelery and so on. They are used mainly in mass-produced items that does not need complexicity, with resilience, being easy to use and versatility being the most important traits – for example for adventurers, soldiers, average magicians and so on. There is also smaller library of more industrial simple enchantments including standarized enchantments used in things like modern toilets.
Complex enchantments are, well, complex. Used when a very precise function is needed, with every mana crystal divided into many smaller enchantment bases, with complexly wraapped spells that intertwine with each other to produce the desired effect. If simple enchantments are crafts, complex ones are an art, capable of achieving many wonderful things but also incredibly expensive.

Items to use as a bases

Enchanting a black magic spell in white mana crystal is like playing a quiz with your dog. Theoretically you can do it, but the question is – why?

Unnamed enchanter.

Paradoxically speaking majority of enchantments are based not on widespread things like silver or jewels (especially those of lesser value are quite easy to obtain), but on more specialized objects. Mana crystals, for example, can be mined en masse in several areas of the world – with them being at least equal in ability to store aether to garnets or jades, why bother using anything else?
Mana crystals exist in many sizes. Of course, the bigger the more it can store but its less handy to use, with biggest mana crystals being more useful in industrial machines than to for example adventurers and magicians. They also have many colors, with most of them being a symbol of type of magic they are most attuned for. For example orange mana crystals are best attuned with fire magic, red with blood magic, black with death magic, and so on. They are also some of them with other characteristics than colour – for example shadow mana crystals tend to cast unnatural shadows while being otherwise impossible to discern from black mana crystals.
There also exist a so called rainbow mana crystal, attuned to theurgies of White Pantheon, monochromatic mana crystal for Black Pantheon, and the so called unstable mana crystals that work for Elemental Pantheon. They are, however, possible to be found only in areas where Imperial Religion exists.
Problem with mana crystals is that they are generally average. They, simply speaking, possess better, but rarer and more expensive, competitors. For example:
Soulstones are grey and irregular in size and form stones that tend to manifest during death in bodies of really evil creatures. The place they are found varies, sometimes forcing the victors to launch a rather expansive autopsy. They are great as enchantment bases for all types of dark magic.
Darkshards are 'shard-like' crystals believed to be a crystalized form of aether, sometimes found in the bodies of aether-manifested daemons and Ascendents. They are very good enchantment bases for elemental, paraelemental and transmutation magic spells, surpassing mana crystals by a large degree.
Elemental Stones are sometimes mined in areas heavily warped by certain magicks or found in bodies of stronger elementals. They can be described as colorful stones, that after melting while adding aether change into certain elementally charged liquid that can be then absorbed by objects, charging them elementally. They can be considered a better version of unstable mana crystals.
Abyssal Crystals are a strange crystals, tending to form in a places heavily touched by Pandaemonium, especially deep beneath the ground and in creatures under enigmas' rule. They are often described as dark violet/black crystalline formations often formed into strange forms.
Golem Hearts are a spherical objects used especially as the cores of staffs, found in the bodies of golems. In several versions, depending on the type of golem assembled by the elemental. Strong, but tend to lose a lot of their power when cut, which makes them a rather bad replacement for smaller enhantment bases.
Aether Reactors are a power cores used by ancient civilization (Xyls, Kraads, Mechanics, Kivanths) to power up their warmachines. It is unknown how they managed to achieve that. That lack of knowledge is main cause of setbacks in Imperium's program to make their own warmachines, forcing its techmaturgists to assemble their creation around scavenged reactors. They can also be used as a powerful staff-core.