Immaterial Matter

Unstable Foundations

When the universe was young, when the Gods were younger still, they spoke to the enigmatic and capricious Gods of the Fae - each God came, in turn, to offer a gift to the Queen of Cats and the Horned King, in return for this precious thing - the Immaterial Matter of the Faewyld. It is the stuff of the universe, unshaped and uncertain, with infinite potential. It is reality, as of yet unreal. It is matter, as of yet unmade. With but thought and enough will, it can become anything one's mind can conceive, anything that can exist. With their Immaterial Matter, the Gods shaped the otherwise barren rock of Iocrade into a unique world of magic and mystery, a world for them to rule, and realms outside of this reality for them to reside in. They would return in a million years to find the world's oceans thriving with life - and native Gods ruling that life. For better or worse, they set the events of the world of Iocrade into motion.
This is not the end of the Immaterial Matter in Iocrade - if the world is not maintained, it shall one day melt away into the Immaterial once more. The Immaterial appears in Iocrade from time to time, and it is never truly possible to predict what the effects will be when it does. The great potential hidden in every mote of the Immaterial Matter promises both miracles and chaos, depending on the hands that reach it first - and failing that, blind luck.

Properties

Immaterial Matter is defined by inconsistency - however, certain properties of this matter are consistent between observations. Immaterial Matter floats in midair and does not seem to be affected by gravity. Motes of the matter coalesce naturally into floating blobs of matter, and it generally appears as a mass of shifting colours, though patterns of the colours are not predictable. Furthermore, Immaterial Matter dissipates into non-existence given enough time in the material plane - while it remains stable and intact in the Faewyld and First World, it cannot persist indefinitely in other, more stable and consistent planes.
Immaterial Matter is controlled and shaped by thought - when focusing on Immaterial Matter, an observer can alter the pulsating movement and changes of colour through concentrated thought. Furthermore, a strong enough will with an understanding of how the matter works can spontaneously alter its shape, even creating new life and powerful magical items. However, most will trained to do this that are not attuned to the Immaterial by nature - as the higher Fae are - can only force it to maintain shape for a short time. The ease of altering Immaterial Matter is inversely proportional to its quantity, as shaped material interferes with the transfer of thought to Matter, and the more pervasive the Immaterial Matter is, the less substantial this interference can be. In the Faewyld itself, one can change the environment with mere perception, the mind shaping the world into what the observer expects as long as a stronger will does not take control of the situation. Intentionally choosing a shape for the matter, however, requires a very strong will, concentration, and training, even in this circumstance.
The dissipation of Immaterial Matter, in small quantities, has very few noticeable effects. Typically speaking, it will typically only create a small, brief magical anomaly that only someone using Detect Magic would notice. Larger sums can leave small but distinct alterations to the environment, like turning the surface of a smooth stone into a fractal pattern or causing a few living twigs to sprout from lumber or wooden planks. Larger sums than that can even create life - or a twisted mockery thereof. Australis Men, bizarre multicoloured mockeries of sapient living beings, can often be created when larger sums - or rarely, even small sums - of Immaterial Matter annihilate themselves. These creatures are subject to inverse gravity and walk on ceilings, or fall towards the sky. They hunt sapient beings to try and steal their personality and ego, to become intelligent living, thinking beings rather than mindless aberrations. Very large sums dissipating could do essentially anything, with scarcely any ability to predict the exact results.
Contact with Immaterial Matter is typically quite harmless - it merely parts around one's hand and fingers and quickly reforms. It is impossible to grip or move by hand but can be magically influenced as if it were a magical gaseous substance. Immaterial Matter is denser than air and still floats, however, and thus immersing one's head into the matter risks suffocation from extended exposure. One should, however, avoid close contact with Immaterial Matter, as it dissipation can alter one's body, rarely fatally but still unpredictably.
Powerful magical influences can shape Immaterial Matter semi-permanently, requiring a small effort to refresh depending on the power of the shaper and the scale of the shaping itself.

Applications

Immaterial Matter is difficult to use - it can be used to shape almost anything, in theory, but it must be immersed in itself to shape any quantity of it significantly, and significant magical power is needed to make the changes permanent. The large sums of Immaterial Matter needed to create powerful magical items also risk reality distortions or the creation of Australis Men, which can include larger and more powerful variations if the sum is large enough. The most viable solution to this would be to find a source of Immaterium that's naturally magically charged to the extent that its own magic could be harnessed to shape it and force it to hold. A source for such magic is not forthcoming, and likely only exists in the "blood" of the Fae divinities - that is to say, if one could draw what's in the bodies of such creatures, the party responsible would be able to create powerful magical items in huge sums.
In theory, Immaterial Matter can be used as a weapon - creating such matter in enemy locales would force them to contend with aggressive Australis Men if the sums were large and concentrated enough. However, the same creatures would show no love to their creators. Alterations of the environment may also prove helpful, but are impossible to predict or select, and can only be altered in their scale. Considering the effort that goes into acquiring or creating even a single mote of Immaterial Matter, this is ultimately pointless and inefficient.
A creature sufficiently Fae-Touched and powerful, or empowered by the Gods, may be able to freely shape Immaterial Matter to an extent based on their own level of power. Such a creature would be frightfully dangerous, able to create almost anything anywhere they can bring Immaterial Matter. Presumably, anyone so powerful would have means of gaining such matter in useful sums. A fragment of this can be found in the spell, the rare and frightful spell Reconstitute at Random, which transmutes the body of a living creature into a random shape, ranging from a life-sized statue of themselves made of bread, to a sapient flintlock pistol, to a Star Archon, to an artifact sword, to simply turning a sum of their potential energy into heat and kinetic energy - in other words, an explosion.
When Immaterial Matter turns into an Australis Man, that Australis Man can fuse with another through a sufficiently fast and powerful impact. This fused Australis Man is more powerful and dangerous, but when killed will drop an Australis Gem. This Australis Gem can capture the soul of the dead once, and infuse that soul into a physical object, creating sapient objects. They are, however, single-use. This is one of the most reliable and efficient ways of making a sapient item if the materials are available - however, it's not always possible to create large numbers of relatively weak Australis Men and ensure that they fuse before killing them. There is also the issue of not being able to shape or craft the personality of the machine - the identity of the soul used persists in the new item.
Bizarrely, Immaterial Matter is edible. Its taste is shaped by what people would expect it to taste like, and often tastes sickly sweet and slimy. However, with good discipline, the taste and texture can easily be changed. Consuming Immaterial Matter can allow mages of all kinds to cast additional spells - however, spells cast based on this magical influx are unreliable and unpredictable, as if in a zone of Wild Magic. For better or worse, a cast of a spell powered by Immaterial Matter will likely change the course of a battle.

Information

Type: Elemental, Supernatural
Plane of Origin: Faewyld
Frequency: Ubiquitous (Faewyld), Extremely Rare (Other Planes)
Danger Level: Low (Faewyld), Very High (Other Planes)
Uses: Shaped by Cognition, Foundational Element of the Planes, Magic Booster

Type

Elemental / Molecular