The Miraculous Lives of Arcane Cores

Hello, I'm Vedrov Sarkonof, and today I am writing from the beautiful shallows of the Kufiri Coast. These warm ocean waters stretch across hundreds of kilometers of coastline and rarely run deeper than the height of a dwarf. The Kufiri shallows are home to an incredible variety of sealife whose particulars could fill a library of libraries, but today we will be focusing on one fascinating species that many of my readers will recognize, but perhaps not in the form they take here among the reefs. I've been offered an amazing opportunity by the water primordians of the region, who are allowing me a glimpse into the industry behind Arcane Cores.

Arcane Cores begin their lives as a creature known in Common as "shiverworms," but this is actually a bit of a misnomer. What at a glance appears to be a sort of maggot is actually a stack of flat, cylindrical larvae with a single "tooth" at one end, secreted using the same material that they will eventually use to craft a shell. This tooth serves two purposes: first, the shiverworm uses it to burrow out of their parent's body. Then, after drifting along currents from the polar seas into these tropical waters, the tooth is used once again to burrow into a suitable boulder. As I stand here today I bear witness to hundreds of thousands of such burrows just below the surface of the water, and the shiverworms are more than happy to save energy by making use of any vacant properties they come across from seasons passed. Once the larvae are safe within their new homes, they excrete sticky threads that will catch even tinier sea life for consumption.

Aquians and their seasonal beach-gnome hirelings patrol these waters regularly, dumping additional worm-feed onto the burrows and warding off the shiverworms' many predators. It is vital to the caretakers that as many shiverworms as possible survive to reach the next stage of their lifecycle, and when resources are plentiful the worms have an amazing ability to split into their constituent larvae, which can then clone themselves into entirely new shiverworm stacks.

The end of the season is marked by falling water temperatures, which is a signal to both the shiverworms and their ranchers. The beach-gnomes and the water primordians will part ways; the gnomes swapping to salt farming and the aquians following the worms as they depart for the polar currents once again. Indeed, determining the exact timing of this departure is absolutely vital, as missing it by even an hour could mean the loss of tens or hundreds of thousands of gold in revenue. This is due to the unique strategy employed by the shiverworms to ensure their safety in the open ocean.

When the shiverworms evacuate their burrows they extend their sticky nets so as to better catch the currents as well as their colleagues. The larvae will bunch together into spherical masses before secreting a rocky shell around themselves similar to coral. Fishermen dredging up these stones and watching them vibrate in their nets are where the name "shiverstone" originates. They range in size from a few centimeters to a meter depending on the number of individual larvae contained within, and they have complete control over their own buoyancy, forming vast and level fields of gravel at their preferred depths in the frigid polar seas. The shiverstones continue to filter feed and, depending on their starting size, will do so for hundreds or thousands of years before reaching a critical mass. That is, if a predator doesn't crack their shells open first for the fibrous jelly contained within. If such a thing were to happen, that predator would be subject to a small but forceful eruption of quiver from within the shiverstone, potentially injuring or even killing the unprepared.

The shiverstones will produce a new generation of shiverworms once per year, usually in Denpelicanus. On the night of the first new moon after their waters reach a specific temperature, every individual stone in a colony will give birth at once. These infants will burrow their way out of their parents, dislodging any parasites they encounter on the way. This is a vulnerable time for the shiverstones, as the tiny holes opened up by their young will take time to seal. Many of the larvae will become food for the multitude of species that shelter within the shiverstone beds, but their overwhelming numbers ensure that at least a few will survive to clone themselves once the currents return them to the shallows.

When enough time has passed and the shiverstones grow to be around the size of a horse-dawn carriage, something incredible happens. The creature develops a *soul,* or something akin to a soul, at its center. Now, with the ability to magically conjure all the nutrients it requires, the shiverstone seals itself off completely from the outside world, becoming what you might be familiar with as an Arcane Core. The quiver contained within the shell becomes astronomical at this point, and an impact powerful enough to significantly damage the shell could spell disaster for any living beings within viewing distance. The core, as well as anything attached to it, will slowly ascend to the surface of the ocean and then into the sky, where it will be safe from the many dangers of the briny depths. Using the temperature of the air as a guide the core will affix itself to its preferred altitude. Here it will continue to reproduce, but only rarely. After the core's young dig through their shell and any other obstacles affixed to it, the long threads of the shiverworms will allow them to parachute safely into the sea.

At this stage the arcane core is ready to be drilled for temperature regulation bores and secured to an airship, but wild arcane cores become rarer by the year. The water primordians of this region have developed an ingenious strategy to speed up the process by giving the cores a jump-start on their growth. When the time comes for the shiverworms to leave the shores of Kufiri, the Aquians collect as many as they are able and bring them to their deep-sea growth beds. By bundling thousands of larvae together and forcing them into much deeper water than they prefer, the resulting shiverstones achieve a much larger size much more quickly than is possible in the wild. The exact nature of this practice is a closely guarded secret so I will unfortunately not be allowed to see for myself, but I've been told that the force required to keep a shiverstone at such depths is absolutely titanic. Here they will be fed a fat-rich diet of troll shrimp eggs for about five years leading up to their final metamorphosis. Using these methods the Kufiri water primordians can produce about twelve arcane cores per year which are auctioned off to the highest bidders. Aquian jellyships will fly them to their new owners.

While I have definitely enjoyed my time here, I would caution my erudite readers against visiting the Kufiri shallows uninvited. Both the beach-gnomes and water primordians are fiercely protective of this fragile and highly profitable ecosystem. If I've stoked a dire within you to wade through warm, crystal clear saltwater, I would recommend the coast of Saecoto along the Chrysocolla Sea instead, so long as you don't suffer from arachnophobia.

This has been Vedrov Sarkonof. Until next time.