Emerald spaghetti strands tumble and interlock, hardened and hot to the touch. The smell of melted plastic and tiny balls of light, all travelling left to right for some unknown purpose along the frozen pipes. It can be cut from the rocks with a heated serrated edge. When softened under a furnace it becomes pliable enough to tease the strands apart and stitch them into a weave.
Uses -> Armour, walls, electronics
A thick golden liquid bubbles and boils. The miners call it dragon's blood. It springs from the rock without warning. A flighty and ill tempered thing, it needs to be calmed to be useful. But when stored in the correct stone it sits serenely and patiently, reflecting the faces of any curious creatures that draw near to its warmth.
Uses -> Energy
Hairs of darkened glass cover round marbles embedded in rock, making fuzzy hairy balls. Each strand of hair a microscopic hexagonal crystal. When collected, melted and cooled in a furnace they hold the shape of a mould, still covered in tiny hairs. The hairs move in the wind and seem to whisper. They scratch and itch the skin, leaving the toucher feeling weakened and ashamed.
Uses -> Armour, walls, electronics
Tiny cylinders of rust coloured metal are embedded in ugly green rock. Each one has two sharp growths coming from one of the ends. They sit benignly in the hand, but you notice if you bring them close to a power source, like an open flame or a beating heart, a faint sound like a brass horn emits from them. They do not melt, but when heated and pressed together they congeal into a larger unit.
Uses -> Armour, walls, electronics
Coin shaped disks of dull rubbery rock seem to spill and seep from cracks in the rock. They rush out of hands and pockets and through gaps almost as if they're alive, but if you hold one tight enough you can see it's nothing but a lifeless lump of matter. It can be moulded and sharpened by hammer and file, but slowly regains its original shape unless exposed to a large enough shock of energy - a lightning bolt, say - immediately afterwards.
Uses -> Weapons, armour, walls, electronics
Irregular hardened crystals embedded in a purpleish grey rock. The crystals are dark purple. When polished some milky light creeps through. They are chipped out painstakingly and gathered with shaking hands. They smell strongly of eggs when first mined, but the smell fades and turns sweet over time. The crystals can be shaped with painstaking care and a skilled hand. The crystals shrink slightly under heat, so that a master can carve interlocking joints that when cooled hold together stronger than the crystal itself.
Uses -> Alloys
A thick yellow substance like milky honey seeps from the rock. It can be rolled between two boards intro strands, which can be woven and beaten and woven again until the strands become so fine and pliable that they can form an edge. When exposed to high temperatures it hardens into shape. Once it's been hardened it becomes difficult to break or bend, although when it finally is broken it shatters into a million tiny yellow pieces which float in the air and cling to clothes and skin for days.
A golden string, hard and cool to the touch, forms in the gaps between a powdery white rock. The string holds its shape. It can be bent but not snapped, and doesn't react to heat or other forms of energy. It reacts to sunlight, though - when exposed to enough sunlight it emits a loud shrieking whistle which seems to come from everywhere. The sound softens and dies out over the course of a few hours. The string hardens over that time. For this reason the blacksmiths who work coil string are sometimes known as sunweavers, and a common rumour is that they sing to the sun to calm its cries.
Embedded in a pale orange rock are small square tiles of dull black. Their surface seems to be engraved with microscopic golden lines and symbols. Black pill beetles are the culprits for these lines - they leave as a trail as they travel across the surface of the chips for some unknown purpose. The beetles themselves seem to be attached to the tiles, as no person has yet managed to remove one. The tiles can be stitched together and with enough patience their edges can be sharped to a fine point.
A dull grey film seems to cover and coat the rocks. It can be scraped off with a chisel and hammer, or heated until it turns into a liquid and gathered in a crucible. In liquid form it seems more runny than water. It emits a thick noxious black smoke when boiled, which if breathed in turns the worker mad. If boiled long enough the liquid thickens and condenses into plumbpaste, which when forced into moulds and left to cool becomes an extremely versatile and hard black metal.