Matter is generally considered the second-most straightforward branch of drucraft (Light being the first). Long associated with craft and industry, it is perhaps the best-understood of all the branches.
Capabilities
Matter drucraft is focused around altering matter by changing its physical properties. The properties that Matter drucraft can alter include, but are not limited to:
- Hardness
- Mass
- Density
- Melting point
- Boiling point
- Strength
- Brittleness
- Plasticity
- Reactivity
- Conductivity
- Transparency
The more powerful the Matter sigl, the larger the volume of matter that it can affect, and the greater the magnitude of the change to the physical property that it can produce. Some Matter sigls are designed to only affect a part of the object in question, but most are designed to be ‘conducted’, so that they spread their effect out over the entire object.
The change produced by a Matter effect is temporary. A Matter sigl can’t truly double the mass of an object – to do so, it would have to create the mass out of essentia, which would take an absolutely enormous amount of energy. Instead it ‘boosts’ the physical property in question – it doesn’t actually make the object heavier, it just makes it behave as though it’s heavier. Some drucrafters describe this as ‘tricking’ the universe into thinking that a substance isn’t what it is; others view it as more like creating a small localised field within which the laws of physics behave slightly differently. Still others view it as like ‘lending’ or ‘borrowing’, where an aspect of an object is temporarily swapped out. In any case, a Matter effect is best viewed as a sort of temporary aberration that is sustained only by the drucrafter continuing to pour essentia into it. As soon as the supply of essentia ceases, the Matter effect fades.
Despite this limitation, Matter drucraft is enormously useful in industry. There are many industrial processes that work after a fashion, but would work much better if only the material in question was just a little more malleable, or a little lighter, or conducted electricity more easily. Matter drucraft can fix all of these problems – only temporarily, of course, but with a little ingenuity, a temporary change can go a long way. As such, Matter drucraft is in great demand in industry, particularly in processes involving small amounts of high-value materials.
Although Matter and Life are separate branches, Matter drucraft can affect living matter – it just does so in a very different way than Life drucraft does. Still, Matter drucraft does have some very useful medical applications (particularly in surgical procedures involving teeth and bones) and it’s common for medical drucrafters to have a few Matter sigls alongside their Life ones.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The main drawback of Matter essentia is its temporary nature. Note however, that while a Matter effect may be temporary, its consequences aren’t. A hardness-reduction effect may only last for a minute, but if that minute is used to sculpt the object into a different shape, the effective consequences last forever.
A less-well-known drawback to Matter effects is their speed. Most Matter effects take a while to permeate through the matter in question, and the change that they produce is gradual rather than instant – less like a light switching on, more like a piece of metal heating up when thrust into a fire. This can, however, be circumvented if the target is sufficiently suffused with the wielder’s personal essentia. As such, while Matter effects targeted on objects or on other people are slow, Matter effects targeted on items carried or worn by the wielder are significantly faster, and effects targeting the wielder’s own body are fastest of all.
This slowness also applies to Matter shaping. Crafting Matter sigls is a notoriously slow process, far more so than any other branch. This is rarely a problem for an experienced Matter shaper, but does cause issues when drucrafters who learned to shape on other branches move to Matter, often leading to numerous botched sigls until they adapt.
Associations
Matter essentia is associated with craftsmanship, engineering, agriculture, the earth, metal (especially iron), industry, and war. Its associated celestial body is Mars.
Distribution
The countries most known for Matter Wells are Germany and China – China produces by far the greater volume, but the very strongest Matter Wells are found in Germany. Other countries with strong showings in Matter include Taiwan, the UK, the USA, Russia, Switzerland, and Mauritius.