Written by
@Reynal
@Durin
-----------
Red Iron Charm
It was funny, mused Ophelia as she drew blood from her arm in what had quickly become a daily ritual (albeit a small r ritual as opposed to a Ritual ritual), just how much and how quickly a project could grow. Sure, it made sense when you thought about it. A single discovery or positive result could easily open up several new avenues of research, while failing to make a breakthrough generally meant the project would be continued so long as it was judged promising enough. As both success and failure would often result in either the project continuing or a continuation project, expansion was all but inevitable. Still, that explanation alone failed to capture or explain the speed at which the rate of expansion could balloon.
Take her current work, for instance. It had actually started as an initial investigation of the psychic and Warp-reactive properties of common materials, to form a baseline and give direction for future investigation (and hopefully implementation) for projects like Ridcully's Warp Echo research and the ongoing probing into conceptual bonding. See, for practical purposes materials were relatively neatly divided into Warp-reactive, Warp-transducing and inert (with the word relatively being key, as nothing seemed like it could be that easy for practical application of psychic phenomena), but in reality there was damn near nothing that didn't react in some way to Warp energy. The best easily understood analogy she could come up with (useful for explanation purposes only, naturally) was that it was like electrical conductivity. Materials could be divided into superconductors, conductors, and insulators fairly easily, and knowing which one it was told you a fair amount about how good an idea it was to route a few megawatts through it or use it to poke a high voltage contact. That said, every (known) superconductor had a breakdown threshold, and even the best insulators were not impermeable to electricity. While Warp-reactive materials had far more variables to account for in their use, the same principles held true in that nothing was totally unreactive—at least to the best of their knowledge—even if a lot of stuff seemed that way, some materials were identifiably but not massively affected by the Warp, and some materials had massive and obvious reactions and interactions with Warp exposure.
For obvious reasons most prior interest (and thus research) by the Telepathica was focused on the Warp-reactive materials. While it wasn't impossible per se to enhance useful traits to a useable level in less reactive materials with currently known techniques, generally speaking it was far from economical to do so—especially given the plethora of novel Warp-reactive materials on Avernus to work with. Of course, if the other research bore the expected fruits, the cost-benefit analysis there was going to change drastically. Having preliminary research done on more of the effects and traits of the slightly Warp-reactive materials would then drastically reduce the timeline for turning those advancements into more tangible improvements for the many psykers fielded by the Trust. And, as it turns out, an Alpha level psyker with good control, an affinity for all of the practiced disciplines, and a solid theoretical base is invaluable for such a project. By flooding a sample with massive quantities of undifferentiated energies even minor Warp-mediated effects would become obvious. Well, obvious for a certain value of obvious.
Nothing with the Warp was simple or easy. The fact that Ridcully had discovered that the latter was literally a law hadn't surprised anyone one bit.
That had been the project. Technically it was still the project. It had just spawned a new project when the properties of iron had been tested (simple materials accessible to low technology civilizations were prioritized for testing, as the research into the power of belief suggested they were most likely to have gained meaningful resonances).
Iron was interesting. That is, it had an interesting set of Warp-mediated effects. It had a grounding effect on free Warp energy, it impeded directive flow effects (for the mind-blind, think of it as acting like a rock in the middle of a stream. Except due to the grounding effect, it was a rock that ate water), and was (unsurprisingly given the previous) a minor Bane towards creatures formed solely of the Immaterium. All potentially useful in isolation, and even more potentially useful in conjunction. The problem, though, was that all the effects were extremely minor.
There was one last effect, though, that was a potential game changer. It was a meta-effect of sorts, a type very rarely found, which increased its 'iron-ness' in response to increasing Warp saturation. Not by very much, but it opened possibilities. By pulling every compatible and not horribly stupid trick in the book, it should be possible to make an iron amulet that would be able to bootstrap its otherwise minor effects to a useful level with enough Warp saturation.
The key word was, of course, 'should'. A proof of concept was needed to justify any further development without a compatible breakthrough of some sort. Ordinarily not something she would be too concerned with, as that could be passed along to someone else, but the particular combination of properties made it look like a good amulet for her to have, especially as there was currently no one in the Trust able to provide the kind of Warp saturation she could.
Normally the gear used by psykers of her level was manufactured by artisans of higher skill than her. However, gear made with the proper type of techniques by an artisan for themselves more than bridged that gap. For most items. Mostly.
Psyker stuff was complicated.
Anyway, between this fact, her research interests, the practical considerations, and the need to get something of the sort done regardless (for SCIENCE!), the bulk of the task of putting together a functional proof of concept fell to her. And, in what she was willing to admit was fairly typical for herself, she took the task and went more than a bit overboard with it. If she was going to spend the time on it anyway, she might as well do it to the best of her abilities and practice some relevant skills, right?
The key to the series of techniques she was putting together to both strengthen the effects of the natural Warp properties of iron and to maximize the benefit she would gain from the amulet as its creator was in tying the narrative of its creation as closely to herself as possible. It had taken a fair amount of planning, as well as pestering Areatha for advice (you could learn an awful lot from her experience as long as you chose your questions carefully and she remained unaware she was actually teaching you something. One hair of instruction on her part though was all it took to send it spiraling into incoherence), but she'd put together a process that would hopefully accomplish said goal. Hopefully. Otherwise this was going to be a huge amount of bother for nothing.
The focal point of the working was the source of the iron to be used. Her blood. Drawn willingly from herself, by herself each day, a bit over ten milliliters in volume each time. Low enough that her natural regeneration could keep up, high enough that over the course of a year and a day she would have gathered as much blood as would normally be present in her body. At the end of each week she with her own power would pull the water from the blood, leaving behind a solid mess. Each month she burned down the collected and dried blood to ashes, and through her arts pulled the iron from them. And when the year was done the metal would melted for the first time since being drawn out and be used to form the amulet she had made. Drawn daily, condensed weekly, purified monthly, and completed into unity as the year is born anew. It had a heavy weight of symbolism, as much a component of a properly crafted psychic artifact as was the design itself.
Sure, she was a biomancer, she could have cheated and sped her healing. Gathered blood would have dried on its own, and the Mechanicus had countless easier techniques born of their technological and scientific prowess to refine the iron from the blood. Each would have extracted a cost on the final product, though—too impersonal, too passive, too easy. The reduced vitality, the involvement, the effort, for all that none had required them, the unasked sacrifice lent weight to the actions, weight which enhanced the slight effects of the iron and deepened the connection between it and her as its creator. At the end of the year she would have several precious grams of virgin iron drawn from her body and cleansed of further connections by flame (a very important step given the existence of an extremely hostile God of Blood).
Compared to all this the design of the pendant itself was almost an afterthought. Key word being 'almost'. The full plan was yet to be finalized, but was coming along nicely. Some mindbending and headache-inducing conversations with Areatha had given her a very promising lead on how she might eventually be able to incorporate a bridged Rune of Warding and Rune of Protection, at least once her mother finished her study on those. A pain to implement in the future, sure, but likely to synergize extremely well with the more general negation/grounding properties of the iron. Until then, a more simple Rune of Protection grouped with lesser runic script, designed to provide framework, support, and enhancement for the identified properties of the iron would suffice, with a few carefully curated supplemental materials to aid in bringing out the full potential of the iron itself. Unless she got a better idea before build time, in which case all bets were off.
Far from just a potential proof of concept for the properties of iron being harnessable with current techniques in psychic crafting, this would be a psychic masterwork to match any that has yet been produced by mankind on Avernus to this day!
Hopefully she wouldn't burn it out. So many things were just so fragile when it came to the full might of her powers, and molten metal infused with crystalline shards stung pretty badly when they exploded.
