Essentium

Essentium, or simply Essence as it is colloquially known, is the closest phenomenon known by contemporary science and arcana to being the soul or consciousness of sapient beings.

Attributes

Essentium is a wispy, light blue energy that dissipates quickly after it escapes from its host unless magically contained. It is believed to be the primordial breath that all life was shaped from by the Progenitor and its Companion so very long ago.

This ethereal substance is weightless, odorless and tasteless and the only thing that changes with it between the real Nascindor and the Tapestrum Arcanum is its coloration. As mentioned earlier, Essentium is bluish-white in the regular world, while it takes on a greenish hue in the Tapestrum. This is believed to be a simple hue shift that happens to many other substances when viewed in the tapestry.

Uses

It is perhaps somewhat morbid to imply that the very core of one's being has some kind of use beyond just being that but there are those who can use such energies towards great, often nefarious, purposes.

Essentium is at the core of the Ashen Baron's unholy rituals with which he creates his Faltered. Using the supernatural disease he has created, the Grey Pox, he collects the Essentium of the Fringe Folk to lure their withering physical forms into the Funereal Manor where he brands their skull with a Glyph of Subjugation, turning them into skeletal warriors to do his bidding.

Remembrancers, mages that deal with memories, also take advantage of residual Essentium that lingers in the Tapestrum in all the places where living, thinking beings have made their homes. They harvest the substance and use it to re-knit past events into coherent wholes that can be presented to their clients.

Market value

Essentium, being quite literally the life force of sapient beings, is naturally a quite sought out resource even despite the fact that it has very limited uses. It is not unusual for a single vial of Essentium to sell for equally as much as an entire ships worth of other, more common cargo.

This demand is compounded even further by the fact that the sale and distribution of Essentium is considered a crime everywhere except Druvenia, where smugglers and thieves make preposterous profits selling the stuff.

Especially cruel warlords and kingpins often pay exorbitant sums to have their enemies and dissidents assassinated and their Essentium delivered to them to keep as a memento of their conquest over them.

Death is not the end.

It is merely the opening of a new door.

–A Remembrancer to his client, at the start of their session together

by Midjourney

_{A part of the higher tiers of Glarithia in its tapestral glory. When viewed through the Tapestrum like this, population centers are often awash with Essentium.}

by Midjourney

_{Essentium escaping the corporeal form of a sufferer of the Grey Pox, starting on its way to the Funereal Manor.}