Siberium

Siberium is a mineral with unusual and supernatural properties that is found in the northern areas of the world. Despite extensive research, not much is currently known about its origins or exact composition, though it is believed to be the source of the world's natural thaumic field and appears to have an organic origin.

Contents:
• Properties
• Uses
• Geology

Properties

Siberium naturally occurs in the form of rough colourful semi-opaque crystals. Their colour is predominantly shades of magenta and pink, with large dark areas of purple and deep violet and smaller light areas of orange and yellow. Siberium has a hardness between 9 and 10 on the mohs scale, but is known to change its properties under certain conditions.

While Siberium emits a faint thaumic field that may disrupt operation of technological devices, by itself the mineral is completely inert. However, it becomes increasingly dangerous when inside a stronger thaumic field due to its ability to absorb thaumic energy and may react violently and unpredictably when directly acted upon. For this reason, inexperienced mages are discouraged from directly handling rough Siberium crystals and untreated minerals are usually kept separate from others to avoid thaumic energy buildup.

Uses

On its own, Siberium's main property is its ability to absorb and release thaumic energy, allowing it to act like a vessel. However, due to unpredictable nature of rough crystals, they need to be cut and treated first to be used more efficiently.

The way a Siberium crystal is cut affects what kind of energy it will release or transfer and how. Similarly to how light is reflected inside a gemstone, so will thaumic energy be altered by a specific shape of a crystal due to how it will travel inside it. A perfectly polished spherical cut will create a completely inert crystal that will simply absorb and release thaumic energy without altering it, making it popular for either energy storage, or for decoration purposes.

While being thaumically treated, a Siberium crystal might gradually change colour, with one of its regular colours becoming the most dominant (or even the sole) one. The most common colours are shades of magenta and pink at ~65%, shades of purple and violet at ~15%, shades of orange and yellow at ~10%, and a deep violet or a bright yellow colour at ~5% each. While Siberium cutting is a very precise process, mages are encouraged to preemptively manually prepare and treat the crystal to give it a desired colour and create a certain bond with it before handing it over for further polish and cutting. An untreated cut Siberium crystal will retain its multi-coloured appearance on each of its facets.

Siberium-infused alloys are able to stop thaumic energy, effectively creating magic shielding. Such alloys are most often used for Siberium storage containers, inside of which a Siberium crystal will harmlessly radiate and reabsorb the same amount of its own energy, protective thaumic shields for testing areas and anti-thaumic armour, and Siberium-infused casing for technology that either needs to operate within thaumic fields, or is actually powered by a Siberium crystal.

Siberium is edible, or at the very least non-toxic and digestible if treated in a specific fashion, allowing it to be used in potions (a specific brew that is able to dissolve Siberium but is safe for consumption) and giving them their supernatural effects, with the exact effects of the potion depending on what was used in the brew. Siberium is noted as havng a sweetish taste, though usually overpowered by the potion brew. Raw, untreated Siberium powder has psychedelic properties and has historically been used in rituals and as a hard drug.

Geology

Siberium's highest currently known reserves can be found in the northern regions of Belsev and Glacia, with Siberium getting its name from a region in Belsev where it was first discovered and documented. While there are large theoretical caches of Siberium in polar regions due to Siberium's increasing frequency further to the north, the extremely hostile conditions there make any kind of large-scale extraction operations unfeasible at a current time.

Currently, nearly all of the official Siberium research and extraction is conducted by Hyperborea, a Belsevian-based company.