Thread by @rdonoghue

I like to think that most of Duskvol’s material needs that cannot be met in a logical way are addressed with the by-products of leviathan blood. Like Petroleum, it’s critical uses are for things far beyond food. #BITD

That it’s ultimate waste can be used as a growing medium for meatlike mushrooms is something I’ve talked about before, but tonight I’m thinking about all the interim steps between energy and that.

Now, the single biggest material issue to sort out in Duskvol is probably wood. Fibrous material (cloth, rope, paper) is also an issue, but wool and hair can fill some of that niche, so we’ll get to them in a bit.

In my mind, once the energy has been pulled from the blood, what’s left behind it a somewhat more viscous liquid. With a bit of work, a fair amount of that can be extracted as an even thicker red syrup which can harden into a light, durable form called “bloodwood”

Now, used in its pure form, it makes something that looks like blood red plexiglass which also tends to attract ghosts and bad luck. More often it’s mixed with other materials to alter the color as well as other properties like density and hardness. Brown is easy to make.

It’s flammable, but expensive as a fuel, though if you cut it with enough filler, it makes for serviceable burn logs. More often, though, it’s used for production. Factories roll out and cut boards of bloodwood like oversized candy bars.

It *can* be used in moulds, of course, and for certain things it is, but the drying and setting process is not great for fine details, and tends to be time consuming. There are sailor crafts made with blood, but they’re probably cursed.

But since it can be extruded, certain shapes (cylinders and twists, especially) are easier to achieve with bloodwood than with traditional carpentry, which in turn has fueled numerous fairly baroque styles of decoration.

it is, in fact, a bit of known wisdom among craftsmen that bloodwood has an aversion to being *too* plumb, which leads to hidden flaws or strange curving designs as common themes. Surely it is just superstition, though.

Most carriages and wagons in the city are made of bloodwood, as are many of the boats that ply the canals. Large ships have been made of the stuff, but every one of them has met a bad enough fate that it’s accepted that it’s Just Not Done.

Bloodwood “mix ins” - the chemicals and materials used to alter appearances and properties - are some of the most hotly contested secrets in the city. Every few years, someone discovers a way to make a new color, and that bloodwood become a hot commodity and wealth indicator.

As modern observers, we might recognize other materials the bloodwood acts like (Plastics, melamine etc.) but Duskvol has no context for that. It’s all just bloodwood.

Now, interestingly, if heated and treated properly, the material that makes bloodwood can also be spun into a grey, airy fibrous mass, which can in turn be spun into fine thread and cloth with properties akin to cotton.

Someone, somewhere had enough self awareness not to call this “Bloodthread” and it’s commonly just referred to as “Greyspun”. As with bloodwood, different compositions can be used for different properties, though there is less variation in color.

Of course, greyspun is also a newer technology than bloodwood, so it may just be a function of time. Also, greyspun requires MUCH more infrastructure - the spinners are huge machines. Where bloodwood can be artisanal or industrial, greyspun is exclusively industrial.

Initially, greyspun mills were exclusively for the creation of the material, but it’s more cost-effective to distill the blood waste, create spun, spin thread and weave (and sometimes dye) on cloth site. Many of the mills are their own hellacious little cities.

As a result of these costs, there has been less experimentation with greyspun, but in theory it could be used to produce materials with wider varieties of properties.

One persistent rumor is that the ministry of preservation holds the recipe for “Ironspun”, a cloth strong enough to stop blades and bullets, which their agents wear as concealed protection.

Greyspun is reasonably durable, but not incredibly so, and it breaks down over time, giving ragpickers something to pick, as well as a material to make paper out of.

Now, these bulk materials are where the majority of the blood goes (about 70%) because the energy extraction itself has very little impact on the actual mass of the blood. About 15% is fertilizer.

Which leaves a 15% slice of OTHER, which contains dyes, poisons, medicines & more

The bottom line being that while the common view that the fleet is necessary because it’s the source of the city’s power is true, it’s also incomplete. Leviathan blood is the foundation of much that allows for civilization in a broken world.

This is largely taken for granted because the threat of the dead is so obvious, but beings of a certain age remember the walls of lightning going up as less of an end to one problem as the beginning of many other question of *how* people might live.

OH! @presenteric reminds me of something.

In that other 15%? METAL

In you and me that might be iron, but these are demonic hellbeasts so when I say metal, I mean metal that is TOTALLY METAL

@presenteric Which is to say, it offers the list of every alchemical or magical metal you have ever considered as a possibility if you know how to distill it just so. Quicksilver? Ghost Iron? Mithril? Orichalcum? Adamantite? Screaming Lead? IT’S IN THERE

@presenteric These applications do not loan themselves well to industrial use. The costs and scales don’t align well, save for a few edge cases, like that magical metal Aluminum. But for alchemists and scholars, this is hotly contested space.