Moonblood Ore
It's a wonderful thing, this ore. Despite being very simple-looking at first, it takes a practiced eye to find the details. It's dull color hides one of the most precious and lustrous metals of Erisdaire. Don't look at me like that, it's not my fault you weren't taught properly.One of the more famous features of the Moonblood Islands lies in their chief export: platinum. While platinum ores exist elsewhere on Erisdaire, the moonblood ore excavated from mines on the islands has a significantly higher concentration of platinum. This means the mines and their associated refineries achieve a higher yield than other locations, and those in charge of trade can easily grow rich. There are perhaps four mines on the islands, producing several dozens of tons of ore per year; despite this sounding like a great deal, this yields very little usable metal in comparison. Most of this metal is purchased by customers who wish to continue minting coins, though a significant fraction of the yield is quickly purchased by artisans who look for quality material. Moonblood ore, and the refineries which work on the islands, yield a resultant purity of anywhere between ninety and ninety-five percent. The nearest comparison are the dwarven refineries inside Gilvonnaie's borders, with a mostly-stable purity of eighty-seven percent.
When refined, a single ton of ore yields about a hundred and thirty pounds of usable metal. Like most precious metals, it is shaped into trade bars weighing one quarter of a pound each. Thus it can be easier to transport than ingots of iron or steel, and significantly easier for artisans to work without fearing for waste by starting from large bars. Such bars are crafted at the refineries, stamped with a simple sigil to show the point of origin, and etched with the batch of ore they were smelted from.. The date is considered important in cases where purity is desired, as there is always a variance of purity from batch to batch.
There is not much interest in the raw ore across Erisdaire, except for alchemists and arcanists who want to conduct experiments on unrefined material. Some projects of note are in calibrating magical devices meant to detect precious metals, or testing new methods of extracting the precious metal from the ore. Occasionally a minor noble may acquire a piece of ore to serve as a decorative fixture in their home, before realizing the refined metal was far more interesting and appealing to look at.
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