Halfite

The strange crystal found in Casm and named halfite after the founder of its largest miner permanently glows red-hot. This unique trait permits it to be used in many different new devices, some revolutionary and some no more than novelties.

Until 1489, halfite was found deeper than about 500 metres in and around Casm, and seemed to get more common the deeper one dug. Deep inside the mines, one usually found about a tenth of a kilogram of halfite per cubic metre of stone mined. In July 1489, all impure traces of halfite and halfite ore disappeared from the ground, leaving only halfite in its pure, processed form. This event coincided with the Hellfighters killing Satan.

What was unusual about halfite is that, in the Earthplane, it was only found below Casm. This lead several groups (including the Cult of the Deep Canna) to believe that something supernatural had created the hole and somehow caused halfite to be there. This belief was rooted in truth, as halfite is common in some layers of hell, and the Casm was created by Satan as a doorway to the Earthplane for Satan's demonic troops.

Value
Halfite is extremely pricey because of its huge commercial demand. One gramme of the mineral is usuallly worth about six copper beads, but sellers will usually be able to tell when a foreigner or inexperienced buyer is trying to get there hands on some halfite, and the seller will almost always get over three gold rings for a gramme.

Applications
The mineral, with its everlasting heat, has many uses. Tinkerers and and entrepreneurs come up with new ones almost daily.

Campfires
Possibly the most obvious application for halfite, there are several designs of halfite-powered campfire commercially available. Only a small amount of halfite is needed in them (about half a gramme) to produce copious amounts of heat. Designs include a core with five narrow ‘heat tubes’ coming out of the sides and one thirty centimetre-wide ‘cooking tube’ coming out of the top. Campfires range in price and quality, the cheapest selling for about seven copper beads and the most expensive going for 30.

Prank paper
A very amusing thing to use and popular with children, prank paper consists of a small amount of halfite alloy beaten into a paper-thin pocket-sized slice. One can usually buy a pack of six sheets for a copper bead. The method is to use tweezers to drop a sheet into your victim’s underclothes and wait for them to put them on. Results are often disastrous and many a poor miner has found themself with a rectangular burn mark on their buttocks once or twice.

Mouth warmers
When about a thousandth of a gram of the Mineral is mixed in with steel, a ‘mouth warmer’ is produced. These are popular with people who sleep with their mouths open, especially in the cold winters of Casm’s thereabouts. Mouth warmers are usually cheap, at about 2 coppers apiece.

Lights
Because of the heat, and by extension, light, that emanates from the mineral, it can be used in tungsten containers in quantities of one gramme to make lanterns.

Specifications
Pure halfite consistently glows at a temperature of six hundred and sixteen degrees celcius (616˚C), and halfite ore perpetually maintains a temperature 5˚C warmer than its surroundings, no matter the temperature. Chunks of impure halfite extracted from their ore keep a temperature of 10˚C*mass of halfite in grammes. Halfite in its pure form should not be stored anywhere near anything flammable, or the material would be set fire to.

While being a stone-type material, halfite has a similar melting temperature to iron (1600˚C whereas iron melts at 1538˚C) and becomes mostly homogenous with iron if both are heated in a container at more than 2000˚C.