Shiverstone
Shiverstone. The name strikes fear into the heart of even the most hardy cave delver. The material is known to occur naturally in deep caverns, and is a deadly threat to any living thing nearby. The stone is mostly unremarkable, appearing as simply a vein or mass of smooth grey rock. When disturbed, however, the stone is extremely unpredictable. Sometimes a mighty blow from rock hammer or pick will do nothing at all. Sometimes the slightest vibration from a whisper twenty feet away will cause it to explode violently. When shiverstone does explode, it is a terrifying event as the mass of stone instantly shatters into incredibly sharp-edged needle-like shards with a rhomboidal cross-section. This produces a blast of deadly shrapnel, and even a small quantity can kill at short range, a large mass can shred a dragon, leaving nothing intact.
First discovered during the Lost Years in a mine in the Korth Wall, the stone has been encountered in many places since, and it is thought that the entire Korth Steppe may have a solid layer of shiverstone deep beneath the land, perhaps hundreds of feet thick. As one might expect, the discovery of this material was shortly followed by the development of techniques to harvest and work the stone into weapons. By the end of the Korth wars, it was common for well fortified cities and keeps to have a small quantity of catapult or trebuchet ammunition made from shiverstone available for emergencies. The first, and most common, use of shiverstone, however, is in sling bullets, which explode on impact and can be devastating in massed combat.
A single block of shiverstone is extremely valuable, if recovered intact; the shards left after it explodes are generally considered worthless, however. A single ball sized for a sling is worth 200-300 gold coin. A ten pound mass might be worth five or ten thousand gold coin, and a hundred pound boulder would sell, at a large fortified city where it could be added to the arsenal, for up to ten thousand platinum crowns. Given the value, and danger, few survive the effort to obtain and transport such things, and often a noble will agree to the price, then tax away ninety percent or more, so there is very little trade in larger stones.
It is said that, with the proper magics, one can manufacture all manner of items from shiverstone, and stabilize them so that they are safely constructed and function entirely normally, until the magic is released, turning innocuous walls, flagstones, even park benches into terrible destructive devices. Some even claim, that in the magical fortress citadel of Linibithia, the heart of the Linibian States, every tenth stone in the outer wall, and much of the cobblestone and flagstone streets, is made of shiverstone to be used to destroy invaders.
Comments