Ghost Iron

White ingots giving off an eerie glow of evaporating bluish mist with a green tint. The color is constantly organically shifting between scales of blue and green, and the metal is cold to touch. Long exposure to ghost iron ingots slowly burns through flesh and it decays plant life. One of the worst abilities of ghost iron is its ability to animate inanimate objects.
A good example of this are trees that are killed due to a deposit of ghost iron ingots. Should the deposit be large enough, it can create horrifying wood-wraiths that has a voracious hunger for any creature with a heartbeat. Wood-wraiths are often mistaken for ents. Structures with large deposits of ghost iron ingots can also come to life, with potentially disastrous results. There are rumors of entire villages turning into an amalgamated mass, preying for the unwary. Luckily, it is possible to temper ghost iron, borrowing some of its more useful properties to rest of the armor, while sealing off the negative attributes.
Ghost Iron has a very poor thermal conductivity and strong mana conductivity. It is a powerful metal for spell-casters for defense against both apparitions and physical assailants. On its own it is vulnerable to magic. This weakness can be changed into a strength by taking advantage of the mana conductivity and weaving in some defensive spells. The only drawback to ghost iron is that this form of defense, requires active concentration from the spell-caster.
Ingots of ghost iron often appear few decades after a battle. Often appearing seemingly over night like mushrooms. There is very little logic as to how they appear. Places that are haunted don't always have ghost iron appear in them. However, if you are able to find ghost iron in the wild, you know for sure that you are on haunted grounds.
For the unprepared, picking up an ingot of ghost iron is often a bad luck. Superstition has it that the stones bring bad luck, and it is a bad omen even picking one up. Ghosts and nearly all forms of undead are attracted towards these ingots, some even preferring to eat them and growing more powerful in the process. Picking one of these ingots up will mark you for an attack, if no safety measures are taken.
Placing ghost iron ingots in a box of purified silver, is one way to mitigate the risk collecting ghost iron brings. Meanwhile, placing ghost iron ingots inside a lead box, amplifies its influence on the undead.
Ghost Iron weighs roughly ten parts equal to nine iron ingots of comparable density. Making the alloy slightly lighter than metal. Yet it is still rather cumbersome for spell-casters to wield as a full-body plate-armor. The most common use cases are chain-shirts, weapons and shields. Additionally, raw ghost iron is also sometimes used in alchemy and in spell-casting as a reagent.

Crows and Ghost Iron

For some reason, crows are attracted to small chunks of ghost iron. When this was first discovered, it raised a concern on whether the birds were proliferating ghost iron or not. Afraid of the potential ramifications of this, scholars of various magical organizations set out to study the behavior of crows.
They soon learned that ghost iron, after being handled by the crows, quickly loses its powers. The scholars have found that pieces of ghost iron collected by the crows in its nest were just regular rocks. The question still remains on how the crows are able to neutralize ghost iron and turn it into regular stones. All attempts of spying and following crows behavior have been unfruitful. However, it has raised some relief on the potential dangers of the ghost iron to its surrounding environment.
Example, where to find: Haunted Crag

Type

Metal