Blade-Wax

This is free writing nonsense, unedited and unrefined. You have been warned, it's not gonna be great! :D

Soft and pliable when melting, yet hard as steel when solid, Blade Wax is a mystical wax made from the tallow of hanged criminals and the blood of warriors. The process for creating Blade Wax is a closely guarded secret, and the small and secretive Council of Wickers control nearly all production of the stuff. With the wax, they create weapons and armor, automatons out of wicker and wax, all with an eye to some unknowable goals. Few people are fortunate enough to be abe to afford large quantities of the stuff, but some wealthy merchant build entire mansions of the Blade Wax - harder than stone and slow to burn. A few still make candles out of the Blade Wax, but more to show their wealth and influence than anything else.

Appearance

Blade Wax looks like a faintly yellow-ish wax, as if discolored by age. It is generally pressed into the desired shape upon its creation, kept heated until it is in the right shape and then allowed to cool to iron hardness. While Blade Wax feels and behaves much like regular Wax when heated, it is unyielding and hard once cold. It can keep an edge almost indefinitely, though creating a sharp point on wax is a feat only the best wax-smiths are capable off. Most weapons are instead in the shape of bludgeoning weapons, hammer and great mauls. Despite its name, armor is a more popular form for the Blade Wax - hard as steel but many times lighter, it is also simple to repair by heating and reshaping. Almost every guard of the Council of Wickers wear heavy full plate out of wax, many times thicker than what they could ever bear if it were steel.

Creation

Creating Blade Wax is an alchemical process, only known to a rare few. Many criminals are whisked away from a fate at the gallows by the Council, instead rendered down to tallow to make the wax. The race of the victim doesn't matter greatly - all form the wax in equal measure - but some on the Council prefer one type of tallow over the other. Others still say that the kind of tallow used informs the color of the wax, though only the Council knows for sure.
Brewed in great vats, with tallow and blood added to wax and other alchemical compunds, the Wax is heated, stirred and left to cool over several cycles of creation before finally being poured into molds. Specialist craftsmen, known as Wax-Smiths, work with the council to forge the blade wax into its final shapes by heating, moulding and tweaking its shape until its creator are finally pleased.
Criminals fear the tallow-vats, as a common believe holds that those who are rendered down to make the fat are forever trapped within the wax. The Council allows such supersitions, the idly implication used as a threat to make others fear them. It is working.