Oxi

Overview

Oxi is the basis for life on Soros, Beross, and Serpentis. It is as critical to life as water. Taking the place of salt, oxi regulates fluids and blood pressure in oxi-based organisms. It is often referred to as "Serpentian salt" by off-worlders.

Properties

Oxi is a translucent, crystalline substance that naturally occurs only throughout Shyrofor but exists in great concentrations within the Shyrofor solar system. It can be found illuminating subterranean locations with its brilliant array of colors, encrusting beaches and the banks of rivers, lakes, and ponds, as well as dissolved in water which inherents the substance's glow.
There are two forms of oxi: beroxi and soroxi. One is charged with dark energy and the other with light energy, respectively. There is no way to distinguish them beyond the energy signature they emit. When oxi initially forms, it is extremely reactive and so stabilizes itself by binding to the raw energy that flows through the planet. It is an excellent indicator of that flow in that the energy it binds to does not change throughout its lifetime. Oxi does not bind to the passive neutral energy. This orientation, relative to the other two, is rarely observed in nature.

Repulsion Forces

It's a well known fact that dark and light energy repel each other. The same is true for beroxi and soroxi. The two can and do form adjacent to each other and are the sculptors of the most dramatic geolocial formations to be found in Shyrofor. The most spectacular are the entire contintental shelves that remain suspended well above the surface of Soros at varying altitudes. Thus creating the distinction between the lowlands, midlands, and highlands.
Serpentis has a more mild version of this with its sporadic floating islands, mountains, and ever-changing array of levitating rock. Unlike Soros, Serpentis has to draft a new map yearly to account for the shuffle of floating landmasses. The seasonal high winds regularly bring suspended material crashing down or cause floating islands to migrate, shrink, or grow. And as more oxi forms or is disturbed, new material always takes its place in the sky throughout the year.
Beross has no floating material. Instead, it sports rolling hills lifted gently by seroxi trapped in the caverns beneath.
This repulsion force has been exploited for all manor of applications, most notably for the elevators within the Divo tree on Ethiea. It fortunately doesn't affect organisms.

Sentience

A quirk of oxi as it builds up into large quantities is its alleged "sentience." Upon reaching a critical mass, oxi begins to exhibit a sort of "aggressive behavior." Should a creature draw too close, the oxi subsequently releases a narrow current of concentrated energy which produces a hum. Much like tesla coils. Others claim to hear whispers when near an abundance of crystals even of small size. Appropriately, deposits of solid oxi crystals are called societies.
Locals often attribute the sentience to the globally accepted history of Serpentis' creation by the first Ancient, Shyr Sheruui, who is said to have become one with the planet to ward off a great evil. Many believe it to be a myth however. Scientists of course have explained the whispering as energy fluctuations and the "aggressive attacks" as volatile energy following a discharge channel. Bolts of raw energy have been observed striking animals, people, or neighboring oxi crystals.
Nonetheless, this presents a danger to passing wildlife and the large-scale oxi harvesting industry.

Water Chemistry

Oxi permeates land and water alike. Given that all their water has oxi present, ableit in different concentrations, the people of Beross, Soros, and Serpentis have no distinction between "salt water" and "fresh water."
The floor of Soros and Serpentis' oceans are largely encrusted with oxi crystals. And those that form around hydrothermal vents grow to titanic sizes. These crystals steadily dissolve, releasing oxi into the water, raising the salinity. The ocean depths have a far greater concentration than that of the uppermost surface. All of Serpentis' riverways are extensions of its ocean as are lakes, ponds, and other bodies of water. The glow of the water is visible from space and can be observed on all three worlds.
Wherever water becomes stagnant or evaporates, oxi crystals readily take shape. Swamps are especially frought with large oxi "societies" that often harbor large, pristine crystalline pillars. The mother trees of Serpentis are able to exist thanks to these oxi societies.

History and Influence

Oxi forms and crystallizes at a very slow rate. Historically, relatively small quantities have been accessible to organisms at any given time. This is true for all three planets. It's no wonder the races of these worlds had once used oxi as a form of currency given its high value.
Beross has comparatively scarce amounts of readily accessible oxi. Being nearly entirely frozen over, most of life on the planet depends on patches of volcanic oases for this precious substance. Oxi encrusts the borders of geysers, boiling lakes and pools, permeates fertile volcanic soil, and dissolves into heated riverways. And while there are oxi-rich caves beneath rolling hills, nearly all are out of reach given the permafrost locked beneath the tens-of-meters-thick snow pack that covers the planet. This snow unfortunately contains zero or only trace amounts oxi. Consequently, Berossian life lives in close proximity to the geothermal hot spots with very few outliers. And with virtually no practical means of extracting oxi at scale, Beross has become dependent on shipments it recieves from Serpentis.
Soros plays a delicate game of balance. While beroxi is comfortably plentiful in the lowlands, it is less so in the midlands and highlands. Unlike the lowlands, the continental shelves above are inhabited almost entirely by light-core organisms. Beroxi would be of little use. These floating landmases are constantly being eroded away by winds and rain. Over time, soroxi particles drift upward to collect beneath or at the edges of landmasses above. Or it falls away in chunks of rock and soil to crash down upon the continent below. Sometimes it will instead collect beneath the continent it broke away from. Soroxi is constantly reshuffling and often rising more than it falls. It also forms at an astronomically slow rate. As a result, creatures on the lowest midlands have to travel to higher ranges to collect oxi in lakes and pools.
The massive crystalline deposits beneath the continental shelves are much too dangerous to collect from without specialized equipment. The High Seren -- with little care for their influence on the environment or other people -- use explosive methods to shatter large crystals into more manageable and safer chunks. They do this exlusively on the midland shelves where less privileged individuals are forced to live. This way the elevation of their own highland continents remain uncompromised. Consequently, with less and less soroxi to hold them up, the midlands are showing signs of destabilization in recent years. More and more surface area is falling away at a faster rate. Some masses are even tilted, but more alarmingly the midlands as a whole are steadily losing altitude with each passing year. Rockfalls upon the lowlands are more prevalent than they ever were. Wildlife caught in these areas suffer as a result.
Serpentis touts the largest amount of accessible oxi in comparison to its siblings. With comparitively more liquid water planetwide, there is more area and opportunities for oxi to dissolve or crystallize. When Serpentians first developed more advanced methods than the early ways of smashing crystals with rocks or evaporation of water, there was a boom in oxi harvesting. The more oxi an individual had, especially if they were solid crystals, the greater their status. But with so little accessible crystalline oxi to begin with, it was quickly wiped out. And while oxi permeates all life -- soil, plants, water, animals -- some places on the planet are scarce in the substance altogether. The crystal fields and rich pools were key oases for animals and peoples to supplement their diets. The loss of these oases had devastating impacts on ecosystems and people. Some more than others.
In time, Serpentians wisened. The use of oxi as a currency was outlawed, much to the chagrin of many. Most of the oxi collected during the harvest boom was confiscated, sometimes violently, or willingly relinquished. Efforts by a group to return the planet's state back to its former glory were massively successful. And they would later form the Serpentis Environmental Preservation Bureau (SEPB).

Precious Mineral

Because of its foundational importance to life and limited accessibility, the governing bodies of Beross, Soros, and Serpentis separately installed stringent regulations to ensure oxi maintains a sustainable future for eras to come. These apply to both natives and non-natives alike. Serpentis is the sole exporter of oxi throughout the known universe and has the strictest regulations. From careful monitoring and protection of exposed deposits to steady rations for the populous, every aspect of oxi is meticulously overseen by a department within the SEPB.
Through careful farming, Serpentis is able to produce enough oxi to supply the global population, its sibling planets, and Shyrofor natives beyond the galaxy. All with plenty to spare. Oxi is a prized commodity by those who don't need it to survive. Fortunately, smuggling is largely a non-issue given the generous surplus provided by Serpentis beyond Shyrofor to those who wish to obtain it.

Applications

Oxi is routinely used in a number of industrial and technological applications. It functions well as an efficient, zero-emission fuel source for ships (both sea and space-ferring) and municipal power plants. It's also the primary fuel source for the Skyway and UV Barriers. When the THRU Rings were first powered on several eras ago, gargantuan oxi crystals grown in a secure lab off-planet were the original power cores. However, the oxi had to be replaced every decade as it disintegrated overtime. Advances in technology have created mekhos on an equally massive scale and all THRU Rings now run on a feedback loop between mekhos and oxi. Power cores today need only be refreshed every few centuries.
There was a time when oxi was used for batteries in consumer products, but this practice has long since been left behind with the tightening restrictions and automation of oxi reclamation. Instead, consumer-grade batteries are made of kyrilic crystals which are far easier to grow and access, safer, and more cost effective.

Additional Remarks

It's called Serpentian Salt because Serpentis is the face of Shyrofor. Very few people travel anywhere else within this system and so are less familiar with the other worlds.
Shyr have to eat oxi that matches their kor orientation whereas sefora do not. Sefora have kor duality or neutral kors so they can process either soroxi or beroxi all the same.