Adlanthea’s wealth is built on more than coin.
Beneath its cities, forests, mountains, marshes, and old estates lie materials valuable enough to shape politics, industry, warfare, and marriage contracts.
Some are mundane.
Others absolutely are not.
Aetherglass
Aetherglass is one of the most valuable materials in modern Adlanthea.
It is produced from rare mineral deposits that naturally interact with magical energy. When properly refined, aetherglass can conduct, focus, stabilize, or contain aether far more safely than ordinary glass or crystal.
It is used in:
Arcane lenses and laboratory equipment
Aether conduits
Airship navigation instruments
Communication devices
Precision machinery
Enchanted windows and architectural fixtures
Medical instruments
High-end magical weapons and technology
The finest private aetherglass operations are controlled by House Craide, whose deposits and refinement methods have made the family extraordinarily wealthy.
Poor-quality aetherglass can fracture under magical stress.
Excellent aetherglass can make an invention possible.
This distinction is worth a great deal of money.
Refined Aether
Raw aether is dangerous, unstable, and difficult to transport.
Once refined, it becomes the principal magical fuel of Adlanthea’s industrial age.
Refined aether powers engines, rail systems, lighting networks, laboratories, airship mechanisms, and countless specialized devices.
The Brass Consortium controls much of the continent’s large-scale refinement and distribution.
The exact value of refined aether fluctuates constantly due to new discoveries, damaged extraction sites, political disputes, and the inconvenient tendency of aether facilities to occasionally explode.
Iron & Steel
Iron remains the skeleton of modern Adlanthea.
Railways, firearms, factories, bridges, machinery, armor, and city infrastructure consume enormous quantities of metal every year.
House Calder controls major iron and coal holdings around Emberholt, while House Strake possesses important northern mines and steelworks near Ironveil.
The two houses have maintained a perfectly respectable commercial rivalry involving contracts, tariffs, political pressure, and absolutely no petty behavior whatsoever.
According to both houses.
Aerium
Aerium is a rare lightweight mineral found primarily in high-altitude regions near Aerwyn Reach.
When properly treated, it responds unusually well to aetheric lift systems and is highly prized in airship construction.
It is not capable of making a vessel fly on its own, but its low weight and magical compatibility make it invaluable for frames, stabilizers, navigation assemblies, and specialized engines.
House Aurelian controls many of Adlanthea’s most productive aerium deposits.
Airship builders dislike the resulting prices.
House Aurelian seems able to endure their disappointment.
Skywood
Several forests in the highlands surrounding Aerwyn Reach produce unusually light but durable timber collectively called skywood.
It is prized for airship hulls, interior structures, propeller systems, and luxury carriage construction.
Overharvesting has led to increasingly strict logging charters, although illegal cutting remains profitable.
Mourning Silver
The silver mined around Mourningvale has developed a reputation beyond ordinary precious metal.
Known colloquially as Mourning Silver, it is unusually receptive to enchantment and is commonly used in ritual implements, surgical tools, protective charms, specialized ammunition, and weapons intended for certain supernatural creatures.
House Morcant controls several of the oldest producing mines.
Scholars debate whether the silver itself is unusual or whether centuries of burial rites and spiritual activity changed the surrounding deposits.
Mourningvale considers both possibilities equally charming.
Gloamfen Reeds
The marshes surrounding Gloamfen produce medicinal reeds, luminous fungi, poisonous flowers, and alchemical plants difficult to cultivate elsewhere.
These materials are used in medicines, antidotes, sedatives, poisons, dyes, perfumes, and magical reagents.
Local harvesters possess generations of knowledge about which plants heal and which merely make the patient stop complaining permanently.
Most reputable buyers prefer the former.
Emberstone
Found near geothermal and aether-active regions surrounding Emberholt, emberstone is a dark mineral capable of retaining extraordinary amounts of heat.
It is used in industrial furnaces, heating systems, specialized engines, forge equipment, and some weapons.
Cindren communities have worked with emberstone longer than most industrial companies and frequently possess techniques manufacturers would very much like to acquire.
Preferably without paying for them.
Ley Crystals
Ley crystals form naturally where magical currents remain concentrated over long periods.
Unlike aetherglass, which is refined for controlled use, ley crystals often contain active magical energy of their own.
They are coveted by researchers, spellcasters, collectors, and illegal experimenters.
Extraction is heavily regulated near known ley sites because removing too many crystals can destabilize local magical conditions.
The Ashen Hand argues that they should not be extracted at all.
Resource Rights
Ownership of valuable resources is one of the foundations of noble power.
Great Houses rarely control an entire industry outright. Instead, they possess mines, land rights, extraction charters, forests, processing facilities, patents, or trade agreements that make other organizations dependent upon them.
This creates a tangled economy in which industry needs nobility, nobility needs industry, and everyone needs the Aetheric Collegium whenever something starts glowing incorrectly.
In Adlanthea, wars are no longer fought only over land.
Sometimes they are fought over what lies beneath it.