Leviathan Steel

**Leviathan steel**, also known as **Albionite steel** and variations thereof, is a metallic material manufactured within the Thaumatarchy of Albion. It has exceptional durability and ductility, with applications in construction, transportation and military hardware. It is an extremely durable structural material as well, although its prohibitive cost precludes its use as such. The substance is extremely difficult to manufacture and Albion has a monopoly on its production, limiting widespread application of the substance. It has the unique ability to partially mitigate incoming energy and to convert it into further mass.

The purified version of leviathan steel is known as **leviathan flux**, which possesses substantially more impressive mechanical properties and which can almost completely dampen incoming force. However, even a single kilogram of the material would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, meaning that there are no reasonable industrial or military applications of leviathan flux.

Leviathan steel costs $3,052 per gram and 8,250 kg are manufactured per year, making for annual profits of approximately 25.2 billion USD. One gram of leviathan flux accounts for $381,500 although flux is not sold in its pure form.

## Production

Leviathan flux is a blackbody material, absorbing >99.9995% of incoming radiation and force. Effectively, one gram of flux is as resistant to being accelerated and heated as two kilograms of another form of matter. Large sheets of flux with an extremely low thickness are placed in shielding chambers and bombarded with energy, typically heat produced by electrical resistors. It takes approximately 8.99 \* 10^16 Joules of energy to produce a single kilogram of flux, compared to the United Kingdom's real annual energy production of 5.94 \* 10^18 Joules. Thus, even with the substantial resources at the disposal of the Thaumatarchy of Albion, they are barely capable of producing 66 kilograms of flux every year, even with all of their energy being dedicated to the process.

Thankfully, leviathan steel is extremely impure, and incorporates only a miniscule quantity of flux. Grains of flux are melted down at extremely high temperatures (>19,200°K) and mixed with other metals; typically aluminium, whose density is around 2,710kg/m^3. The resulting alloy is light, extremely resilient, difficult to melt and ductile without being flimsy. At 0.8% purity by mass, around 8,250 kilograms of leviathan steel can be produced from 66 kilograms of flux, Albion's average annual production of the material.

Atomic amounts of leviathan flux were originally produced via controlled reactions between the abilities of several different metahumans and anomalies at the same time. On the microscopic level, flux resembles human neural tissue.

## Properties

Leviathan steel is not actually a metal, although it strongly resembles one both in appearance and texture. It is, however, non-conductive and unresponsive to magnetic force. It is completely impermeable to radiation and absorbs all incoming light outside of a very thin sliver of the visible spectrum corresponding to light blue. The metal feels cold to the touch regardless of ambient temperature and dampens incoming noises. While the material has a nominal density of 2710 kilograms per cubic metre, it has an inertia which would indicate a density about 16.992 times as great (calculated from the 2000x dampening effect of flux). Effectively, any force imparted onto a block of leviathan steel produces an acceleration and deformation corresponding with a seventeenth of its real value. This effect can be bypassed by forming a rigid interface with the object; leviathan steel's damping properties become desensitised to localised, repetitive stimulus, such as that produced by a handle.

Leviathan steel is capable of mitigating incoming energy. Kinetic, electrical, thermal, electromagnetic, et cetera. Said energy is converted into crystalline outgrowths of leviathan flux, although these growths are so small that they rarely ever impede a device's functionality. Destroying objects made out of the 'metal' requires an overwhelming application of force, enough to overcome its absorptive properties all at once. Temperatures of 5,600°K are generally sufficient to perforate and denature it, causing the solvent to dissociate and leaving behind an extremely thin matrix of leviathan flux. Projectiles made out of the material can absorb electrical impulses within organisms' nervous systems, resulting in a rapid shutdown of all neural processes.

Leviathan steel's most prominent quality is its complete impermeability to all forms of attack, whether supernatural or otherwise. Leviathan shielding provides protection against radiation, teleportation, psionics and more. Leviathan steel projectiles are also unaffected by telekinetic manipulation and cleave through energy fields (as well as planar portals), allowing them to bypass the protection of specific metahumans.

 High Performance Maraging Steel (grade 350)
 Leviathan Steel (0.8% purity by mass)
 Leviathan Flux (pure)