Warpstone

Warpstone is Uranium-259: an isotope of uranium that, under any standard model of nuclear physics, should not be stable. Uranium's known stable isotopes do not extend beyond uranium-238; anything heavier decays rapidly. Uranium-259 should have a half-life measured in microseconds, yet it does not. Samples recovered from Oceanykan deposits show no measurable decay. Contemporary nuclear physics theory has no satisfactory explanation for this, and the mainstream scientific position in the 1960s, held by the small number of institutions cleared to study the material, is that the standard model is simply missing something.

The effects of warpstone on its environment are consistent and well-documented, even if their mechanism is not. Localised gravitational disturbances, electromagnetic anomalies, and the emission of a form of radiation that passes undetected through every conventional measuring instrument have all been reliably observed. This last phenomenon is believed by Oceanykan scientists to represent a fifth fundamental force, not native to conventional spacetime but leaking through from The Dreamspace, the prevailing theory being that the Enigmatic Impact Event 800,000 years ago deposited warpstone as a kind of Dreamspace anchor, and that its continued stability is maintained by its proximity to that dimension. It is further theorised that Warpstone is responsible for everything that is wrong with the Oceanykan continent as a whole, including its geography, fauna, flora, and variety of hominid cultures. Regardless, one positive result from the study of Warpstone and its properties has been the birth of Psionic Theory as a field of science.

Warpstone is fissile and can theoretically be used as a Nuclear Fuel or as the core component of an atomic bomb, known by the nuclear engineers of the Cold War as a warp bomb or a psi-atomic bomb. Attempts to do so have been uniformly catastrophic; the unpredictable anomalous effects become dramatically amplified during fission, producing results that bear little resemblance to conventional nuclear reactions. The Oceanykan federal government maintains an absolute prohibition on enriched warpstone, a position driven partly by policy and partly by the empirical record of what happens when the prohibition is ignored.

Deposits are found across Oceania, with the highest concentrations in interior Oceanyka and Tasmania. All publicly known deposits are federally controlled, but there exist a few well-hidden deposits in the hands of no-good-doers. The material is not traded commercially; its mining, possession, commercialisation and especially its enrichment are all prohibited by Federal law.

This item must be acquired or sold through the black market using Spielkarten.