Treesilver/Ghostwater

Research Summary and Proposal for Further Study of Treesilver
First Draft by Easa Orenaith, Kinsathan of Vall, Primary Researcher of Restorer Initiative Fourteen, Scholar of Nature and Alchemy
Let me explain what we know about treesilver to date.
It comes from only one place, as remote and deadly a source as one can imagine: a single (and singular) forest in the Roughlands to the south. The locals, Coast Roughlanders from the settlement of Cold Harbor, call it "ghostwater." In its raw liquid form it comes from the knotted black trees of the forest surrounding Cold Harbor, extracted in a similar way to the sap we harvest to make syrup. Although there is where the similarities end, for it is certainly not ingestible.
That is, we wouldn't recommend trying it, for it is both hallucinogenic and deadly. Ask us how we know.
(No, its value does not come from any recreational drug potential, I promise you.)
In appearance, at the source, it resembles the name the locals have given it, being both watery and ghostly. A faint glow supposedly emanates from it, though only visible at night due to being dull and almost "dirty"--I admit I have difficulty picturing the "brown" glow that the local guide described to our contact. The "ghostwater" itself is cloudy, suspended with some sort of swirling muted silver that moves of its own accord...if accounts are to be believed (and I believe our source).
But as much as I long to see this raw form, it cannot be shipped as such--it completely loses its unique properties in short order, unless the locals first extract the silvery parts, distilling everything into a viscous liquid strongly resembling quicksilver. (Hence, treesilver.)
Its properties in treesilver form are still in the process of being discovered, but the most important: it proves to be an anti-magic substance far more potent than water. Where you would have to submerge your magical item (or person) in the ocean to nullify arcane power, a small splash of treesilver will do the same job.
But, although that is certainly a near-priceless property in its own right (and yes, we are taking it into account when considering the funding of our research), we are more interested in knowing why.
Let me explain something about the accounts we have heard of Cold Harbor, and in particular its unnamed and terrible forest. We all know the Roughlands to be intemperate, inhospitable, and largely impassible, growing worse the further into the cold south one goes. How anyone continues to live there...well, I'll say no more on that. But even by Roughlander standards, Cold Harbor enjoys some of the worst luck of any settlement in recorded history. The lore from that place is sparse, as the locals prefer to keep their stories to themselves, but certain accounts have been corroborated by scouts from our own Free Kingdoms, so what I tell you now is true enough.
The Cold Harbor folk consider the forest to be cursed. It behaves in no way resembling the natural order. The trees, hard as iron but gnarled and black and thorny, form a nearly-impassable barrier around all sides of the town except the coastal cliffs. Some brave and knowledgeable folks can move within it, I've heard, including the ones who discovered "ghostwater" in the first place, but the flora and fauna of the forest are rare, deadly, and exceedingly strange. Whole treatises can (and will) be written on them elsewhere.
And the rain! It eats away at cloth, flesh, any wood that is not its own iron-like trees...like alchemist's acid, but the source clouds seem to rise from the forest itself. It also seems to possess magic-dampening properties greater than normal rain, although it still doesn't come close to treesilver's potency. Nothing else from the forest is quite like treesilver.
You see now why this bears studying. With our own continuing research into the death of Darei's lands--with the loss of its magic, the loss of the Kinsfolk who once spoke to the land, a Free Kingdom that now lies fallow, broken, and ghostly--how can we not begin to draw parallels? And the magic-nullifying effects of this so-called natural substance harvested from the forest itself--how can the mind not begin to wonder? But this is why I must insist on being able to travel there myself, because without seeing the "cursed" forest, how can we truly glean any clues about what became of our own dead sister Kingdom?
This, then, is my proposal. Excuse me from my Kinsfolk duties for a time and let me travel to Cold Harbor as part of a larger team of researchers. Without seeing the "ghostwater" in context, how can we ever understand the true properties of treesilver?
Because one more thing seems increasingly clear to me about this substance the more I study it, and I don't know what it means. I believe that something about this substance was once alive, and now it is dead. Not in the way of plant matter, or sap becoming syrup. Something more, something different. But I fear I will never know in what capacity unless I am able to see it at the source. Call it the intuition of a Kinsathan, but as surely as I know the Dead Kingdom once thrived as Darei, this treesilver lived, and while its properties and potency remain, the life does not.
And I need to know why.

Type

Biomaterial