Valerium

Valerium is a living metal that produces blue mana. Its almost hypnotic blue color hints at the power within it. Like a monster, a drow, or a Jax, it generates new mana every day, but in much greater quantities. Dwarves treat it as an object with a life and personality of its own.

Producing that power and drawing it out are different problems. Valerium releases its energy under conditions the dwarves are still learning to predict. A piece may seem inexhaustible, yet a weapon built around it cannot fire continuously. Entire branches of dwarven mathematics exist to understand its behavior.

Dwarven Engineering

Engineers use Valerium generators to power buildings and entire cities. Smiths build it into portable cannons, pistols, and galleon artillery capable of erasing a hill. Barrier generators protect ships and fortifications against magic. Engineers and smiths work within the boundaries of their castes: knowing how a weapon works does not grant an engineer the right to make it.

The metal's instability limits every new machine. Each device has its own operating rules.

Poison and Regeneration

Valerium slowly poisons those who carry it. Dwarves resist it far better than humans or drows, apparently through something in their blood. That resistance makes their work with the metal possible.

Valerium also suppresses a vampire's regeneration while touching it or lodged in a wound. See Vampire for its interaction with the creature's healing.

Psychic Implants

Dwarven Psychic implants contain a trace of Valerium that supplies blue mana to the bearer. The Granitefist monks of Kaz'Nakaram were the first to survive the procedure.

A dwarf produces no natural red or blue mana. The implant provides the source; the Monk's Wisdom determines how much power they can organize. Their spell slots are called Ki points. The small implanted trace and the Monk's ability to use it determine the usable reserve, while meditation speeds recovery. See Monk of Kaz'Nakaram for the implant's progression and Rest and Recovery for its rates.

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