Magical/Mystical Substances

What are some magical substances, compounds, or elements in your stories?

I have one that basically acts like very solid jello, and another that's a sentient and mobile rock.

What do you mean, like a physical plot device?

I had a thing where a certain type of dried leaf would, when combined with the correct ratio of vinegar in a ovoid sealed container, produce several hundred lumens of light for a few hours.

I've also had a building material that's basically solid magic, and is cheaper than actual building materials. (This make a The Magic Goes Away story a catastrophe...)

Mana crystals, basically mana in crystal form. Can be created by the lead female's solid creation powers.

There's also liquid mana, which is like the stuff in mana potions except even more concentrated. Created by a girl with powers over liquid.

Both substances can be used as Magitek batteries.

edited 2nd Sep '14 11:44:43 AM by ironcommando

There's also a form of ice that's constantly cold and never melts, and water that never freezes or evaporates.

The blood of Gifted (especially females, due to their much higher magical capabilities) tends to have strange magical properties:

"Calia's blood", blood that when exposed to air, turns into a ruby-like crystal. If kept in airtight container, the liquid stays extremely cold for years. Primarily used in the construction of magic-powered matter generators, as well as golem cores.

"Amber's blood", blood that when exposed to air, burns with a white-hot flame. If kept in airtight container, it releases a good amount of heat for years. If said container is waved, it produces gusts of wind. Can be used as a heat energy source. Used in the construction of magic-powered matter generators.

"Melanie's blood", blood that emits shadowy wisps if exposed to air. If strained through a gauze, it produces an unnaturally large amount of mana-rich water. Used in the construction of magic-powered matter generators, as well as magical cloaking devices.

The problem with getting these materials is that they're taken from the bloodstream of walking nukes who won't be happy if it's taken forcefully. As such, they're only obtainable if consent is given. Thankfully, technology allows painless, non-messy drawing of blood.

In my (uncompleted) story, you needed an object or item that was somehow conceptually connected to the target of your spell to have a decent chance to succeed. This often took the form of physical objects that had been in close association with the target- some of their hair or blood would be perfect. You also needed a symbolic representation of the effect you wanted to produce. So if you wanted your target to fly, you used a bird's feather, and if you wanted your target to die you used a diseased corpse.

My story was obviously based heavily on ritual magic.

I'm curious: how flexible is the requirement for a conceptual connection? Can one employ logical twistiness to get just about anything to work? For example, wanting to cast a spell on a specific individual, could one pick up an arbitrary stone from the road and use it on the basis that it's the stone that you're going to use for this specific spell and that specific target, and thus (for you) conceptually connected to the target?

And wouldn't it be a lot easier to just turn your target into stone (with a statue) or compost (with a human-shaped wooden box and 100-200 lbs of coffee grounds from your neighborhood cafe)?

A gem that facilitates near-perfect helium-3 fusion, that is a link to a pocket universe and is thus a power source on its own.

An orbiting network of satellites that act as gravity lenses, which can warp sunlight around to the dark side of Earth and focus it on ...let's call it a "vampire" who thinks he's hot sh*t in a champagne glass but is really cold diarrhea in a styrofoam cup. (And soon becomes exactly that! ) Well, the three-foot radius of ground he's standing on, anyway.

This one isn't magical as it's made by extra-dimensional Energy Beings that govern the laws of physics, but it's Magic from Technology

Multi-proof: One of the toughest substances ever, it's incompressible and more than 10 times harder than diamond.

• It's actually made of Hard Light, and prevents spells from passing through (so somebody in a room made with this stuff is safe).
• The only materials that break it are Multi-proof and Omni-proof, which cause it to crack and shatter on hard impact. Unfortunately this means that it's near-impossible to mine, and is usually manufactured by the energy aliens.

Omni-proof: Similar to Multi-proof, except this is the invincible substance, tougher than any fictional substance and is able to cut all of them.

• It can be sliced by a blade that Ret Gones, thrown into the middle of a sun, a black hole, or even a collapsing dimension and come out 100% intact!
• It will instantly shatter Deflector Shields of any kind on a hard hit.
• The only known way to destroy Omni-proof is to hit it with Omni-proof, which will cause it to crack and shatter. It is usually manufactured by the energy aliens.
• Many late-game Heavily Armored Mooks will use this, allowing them to No-Sell anything unless Omni-proof weapons are used to break the armor. Also, enemies with drills have their drills made of this, which usually instagib the poor sod who gets hit.

edited 4th Sep '14 11:36:54 PM by ironcommando

A lot of "traditional" magical materials exist in my The Magic Comes Back setting, but the fact that earth's scientific community has started to get involved in magical research has led to a few interesting variations. Through applied alchemy (defined in-universe as the study of the metaphysical properties of matter), traits of one substance can be "grafted" into another, leading to easily-produced plastics with the tensile strength of carbon nanotubes, magical room-temperature superconductors and electrolyte solutions infused with elemental lightning (producing some pretty impressive high-density batteries). A whole new materials-science branch of Magitek has sprung up around this fusion of alchemy and traditional science, and it's one of the main money-makers for the city-state of New Sanctuary (another being daemon-based computing...).

There's a strong For Science! attitude in the research labs, where the various teams create all sorts of crazy combinations, effectively throwing science at the wall to see what sticks. All parties involved agree, however, that grafting the metaphysical traits of Plutonium onto anything else was a really, really bad idea.

High-Mana Steel, which is basically magical nuclear waste. Cold Iron reactor control rods absolutely saturated with magic; which can be forged easily as regular steel and can be ensorcelled far more easily than regular steel. It can also be recycled into Orichalcum by alloying it with gold. The spent coolant-liquid magical waste-can be heavily diluted and forms the basis of Mana Potions.

edited 5th Sep '14 9:22:45 PM by dvorak

damn, you pretty much say the same thing i planned for my series

in my series magics was so strong in pre history, that cover the whole planet, afecet plant,animals and humans, so there is many variants of mineral, like moonsilver or thundergold, so a normal metals with magic aplied to them

but as rule in my setting, when do you magic, magic changes you(mages call this "gaze the abyss") found doing magictek is very difficult thing to do, also explain why many magic thing are relics, because they inner magic shape the object

so if anyone ask about, i will you godsbone, is growing material who let the magic flow with easy

@Ars: Not very flexible at all. It has to be a specific object or class of object more closely associated with the target than anyone else. Think of it as looking for emotional residue on the object itself.

On the other hand, it doesnt have to be a physical object. Their true name would work too. Or you could paint a picture of them, or frame them in a mirror or a gem. In combat you would rely on physical contact. Simply looking at someone could work if you were especially powerful. But in my world, most magicians use summoned creatures to fight for them anyway, so...

@Dues: You could certainly do any of those things, but it wouldn't be easier, no. The rule is "The less change you cause, the less power it takes" so converting a living thing into a dead version of that same thing is actually a lot easier than turning it into something completely unnatural like a statue.

On the other hand, it's also easier for a friendly magician to change back- resurrecting someone is easier than reconverting a statue back to flesh. So there's that.

@demarquis: Aah, fair enough; that's quite an interesting system, actually. ^_^

Shadowglass is completely intangible if no light shines on it.

Quicksilver is a mercurial liquid that only solidifies in the presence of an electric current.

@demarquis: Neat!

A form of 'snow' which retains its thermal properties for far longer than regular water. That is, it will stay as snow or ice in hot places, and stay at or near boiling temperature as a liquid in cool places, though you still have to warm or cool it externally. It is mainly used as a heating/cooling source; food is cooked this way and kettles are essentially a bottle of 'snow' inside a pot.

A form of "Earth" that absorbs more water without becoming sodden, and a form of "Water" that will eventually dissolve things with only a single drop.

The latter sounds less like water than it does alkahest.

"Water is the universal solvent." Real water will dissolve practically anything, given sufficient quantity and time.

edited 18th Sep '14 9:10:06 PM by demarquis

Artificially created, I assume? It'd be difficult to capture and study such a sample if it was naturally occurring.

A set of jewelry that provide immense power to their wearer, but at the cost of draining the life out of everything around them as a power source. (I had Space Runaway Ideon in mind, but scaled down to human size.)

A grueling physical competition in which the winner receives an original idea, one that has never been thought of before. (That story was something of a really sarcastic take on Teen!Dystopias and the copyright notices young writers throw around.)

edited 19th Sep '14 8:25:48 AM by DeusDenuo

The magic version yes. Real water, is, of course, pretty easy to contain.