Sama - Thought-Metal

Like moths to a flame, we gather to the gleam.
 

— Aldara, Kaia

Sama, or thought-metal, is a iridescent, smooth metal found only in Patala. Though unyielding to the blacksmith's hammer, Sama bends and moves to thought and memory, allowing artisans to twist it into impossibly intricate shapes. With such rarity and beauty, Sama has become highly prized, yet highly feared. There is a song within the metal that only grows as it gathers in a hoard. Some whisper that the metal steals the thoughts and dreams that those who work it pour into it, but no one has yet decided that would be to steep a price to pay.
 
 

Like a dream made manifest.
 

— Sundarata, Patala Artisan

  Raw Sama come in long, thin slivers and spikes, ranging in size from a nail to a javelin. Impossibly smooth and unblemished, it never seem to suffer nicks or cuts by its journey from the deep. It has a brilliant prismatic hue that dances in the light, shifting between a brilliant gold to a dark silver as it is worked. Despite its resistance to disfigurement, it yields as readily as any other metal to repeated blows, and shatters into shards that behave almost as droplets of water.
 

Even in pitch darkness, thought-metal emits a faint glow when thought is put into it - a fact most Kaia consider a warning sign.

 

A few become mesmerized, lost in the reflection of their own thoughts in the changing metal and lose all track of time - sometimes for days.

  Sama sings to those who hold it, a quiet toneless noise in their thoughts. It is a telepathic echo that only grows stronger the more of the metal is nearby, drowning the mind in its chorus. In such cacophony, some find peace, or even a sense of something distant and divine. A few become convinced they heard something call them, and soon abandon their lives in Patala to travel somewhere into the dark, searching for a source to the singing summons.
 

If they've ever found it, none have returned to speak of it.

 

To the Called, Sama is a sacred thing, and its telepathic song a divine choir. In it, they have heard the secrets of the world, and listen to whispered commands - real or imagined.

 
 

A small price to pay. We're still alive, aren't we?
 

— Sundarata, Patala Artisan

  When the shared dreams begun, Vicitra was thrown in turmoil. The gleaming hoards of thought-metal kept in Vicitra had grown until their song bled into the slumber of the city's citizen. Indistinct at first but sharpening in focus, people found themselves all inside the same dreamscape, night after night. There, secrets and feuds were laid bare, and people's psyches lay naked before all to see.
 

Those without secrets in Vicitra can be counted on one hand after it's been mauled by a Suryō Spider

  Even as the worst of the plague has passed, Vicitra still feels the telepathic aftershocks. Strange things and living nightmares step out of slumbering minds to haunt the city, while the Thought-Eating Shrikes infect the minds of ever more people.
 

Perhaps, some say, Patala had been sealed for a reason - to open it has invited doom to all who entered.