MATERIALS GUIDE / HELP / LORE / MATERIALS In play: help materials. Also synfuel, fabrics, textiles, crystals, pneumatikon. IN THIS TOPIC 6 Power Fuel Chemicals Cloth Furniture Stone and MetalWhat Deshret runs on and is made of: crystal power, synfuel, synthetic cloth, and slum woodwork.
A society like Deshret depends on very different materials from ours, in industry, fashion, and transport alike. Efficiency is the watchword of underground life, and reuse and recycling keep so many people alive.
Power
The city runs on the Pneumatikon, a huge geothermal steam engine and pressure grid. Geothermal heat boils water, the steam drives enormous mechanical presses, and the presses squeeze banks of the mysterious power crystals that House Qamarat supplies. Under pressure, a crystal releases an electric charge. Its structure slowly breaks down as it does, so the city needs a constant supply.
Fuel
Vehicles run on neither electricity nor fossil fuel. They run on synfuel, a standard liquid fuel distilled from recycled carbon, waste oils, fungal and algal biomass, and other organic feedstock. Most ground vehicles have combustion engines and aircraft have turbines, but whatever the engine, it burns synfuel.
Chemicals
Plastics, lubricants, and industrial solvents are grown by the same alchemical industry that makes synfuel. The Kolkhos can make the simpler compounds. The complex ones are grown or fermented mostly by Mythos, with its own secret methods.
Cloth
Nearly all cloth in Deshret is synthetic. Only the very richest might afford real plant fibres.
Cotton, a synthetic imitation of the real thing, is what most people wear: light, cheap, and fairly tough. Polyester and polycot, a polyester-cotton blend, are for clothes that need to resist wrinkles or stains. Twistle is a synthetic wool, extremely tough, flexible, and almost impossible to tear. It looks and wears like heavy tweed, and is good for jackets and hats. The wealthy wear synth-velvet and synth-silk, far beyond the average budget.
Furniture
Wooden furniture rules in Suburba. Slummers lack the technology to make good mouldable plastics, but anyone can build with an axe, a chisel, and a hammer, and House Amari's large timber stocks keep wood affordable. The upper classes have far more options, made in very different ways.
Stone and Metal
Deshret is mined for stone, metal ores, minerals, and gems, from marble and iron to sulfur, opal, and diamond. Smiths turn them into a range of alloys for armour, weapons, and electronics. Finding out what goes into what is part of the craft.
Read next: help house qamarat, help technology, and help life in deshret.
NEARBY [P] LIFE IN DESHRET [N] MYTHOS LORE 36 Abkal Cabiri Coterie Deshret Districts Diving Glossary Great Houses Guilds House Amari House Drepane House Kadesh House Morcant House Qamarat House Rook House Valcora House Varga House Vesalius Kolkhos Languages Law Life In Deshret Materials Mythos Ophirian League Outriders Pegasus Religion Saints Seals Sepulchre Splicers Symphony Technology The Hum Vulcani
The full lists of minerals and alloys are on the Agora: https://agora.underspire.net/t/materials/60