Urnon
| Urnon | |
|---|---|
| |
| Use | Weapons |
| Bonus | +20 |
| ST/DU | 20/70 |
| Rarity | Extremely Rare |
| Weight Modifier | 100% |
| Special Properties | Morphing |
| Primary Color | Changing |
| Dyeable | Unknown |
Urnon is a very rare metal, crystalline in form when found in its natural solid state in some of the most remote mountain caves of Elanthia. Urnon is a highly magical metal, with an inherently chaotic nature. Pure urnon will shift its shape randomly, changing from crystal-form to any number of shapes, be they liquid, over thousands of geometric forms, many different abstract forms, and at times into the forms of nearby objects. This has led to legends that it may possess some strange form of sentience, though the more realistic explanation is that it somehow stems from its identity as chaos made metal. Urnon only appears to shapeshift when exposed to sentient life. The group of dwarves who first discovered it reported that within hours the clusters they brought back began to "change its dern face more'n a Nalfein elflin!"
The hue of urnon can range through the full spectrum of color, often changing as much as its ever-shifting shapes. At times it can pulse as if it were a living rainbow, but this is quite a rare event. Like all metals, there are less-pure forms of it, and these are most often uniformly dark in color, and cannot change shape. The poorer quality the urnon, the more stable it appears to be. An interesting effect of lower-quality urnon is that when used as a weapon, it will usually retain one of its powers - the ability to release a very corrosive substance, much like acid, when hitting a foe. Granted, the power of the magic is far less potent than that of pure urnon's, but this makes it even more valuable, since even the poorest quality urnon will still be of some use. Most urnon naturally holds an enchantment equal to that of vultite.
Urnon often must be worked upon by skilled mages before it is forged so that the chaos imbued in the material can be used to the wielder's advantage, otherwise it will simply not hold the form a smith attempts to pound it into. There are stories that shards of pure urnon were once given as playthings to children from wealthy families of some cultures, but the practice was soon abandoned when it was found that one of its forms was that of a sphere studded with razor-sharp spikes.