Ichor

"Use my folly as an example, I care not. Look close enough in the mirror, each of you, and you'll see the same man, I'm sure of it. I simply had the dignity to wear my opulence with a prouder face. To be honest, my corporate friends, I truly wish the best for you. I wish you live your lives of luxury, it would be a shame not to enjoy it while it lasts. Indeed, all of us are the heirs of the oil-barons of old, are we not? Each of us, an inter-astral Ozymandias? Our lives are destined to be ones of shameless, heedless luxury, and, to borrow the words of our precursors: Our fathers lived as aristocrats, we, as Kings, but our sons, why, they will live as peasants."

— Director Zeke Cossack, speaking to the Brontestar treaty delegation before being exiled.

While the divine engines of the lancers were the first and most stable method of wielding currents, their use comes at the cost of surviving Arbitration. And yet, the wielding of currents is commonplace among the entire cosmos, despite only a select few being lancers. This fact illuminates the importance of Ichor, the interastral commodity that allows the wielding of currents for most people.

The Blood of Arbiters

The Arbiters, for the first half-millennium of the Rebirth Age, were regarded as saviors, who would protect humanity with their divine knowledge in times of crisis. And, while that still holds true to a degree, that perception was heavily shaken by the revelation of what they had apparently hid from humanity. The exact time and place of these revelations is unknown, but the story is as follows:

"On an isolated system, far outside Interplanetary Shipping's network, a dying world was making its last gasps for air before asphyxiation. A combination of an unstable star and a runaway greenhouse effect caused by a failed terraforming experiment had caused a rapid rise, and now, contraction of the planets oceans. Deserts of salt covered the planet's surface, and most of its population had died of starvation long before the evaporation. However, a few wanderers still walked, treading aimlessly across the planets surface, and, among them, one wandered into the deepest of valleys, the former home of the planet's Arbiters. There, he saw something not of this world: a gargantuan amalgamation of rended tentacles and dehydrated flesh. He dared not to travel further and almost turned back, but he stopped as he saw a beautiful, golden liquid flowing from what seemed to be the heart of the corpse. He continued on, scaling the mass and bathing in the golden substance, and as he did, he felt the power of his faith wrapping around him, the substance giving him the ability to tap into his current. Soon enough, it overwhelmed him, making him a wellspring of Preservation leaking out into the planet around him. The oceans began to rise once again as the planet was restored from the divine magic leaking into the world."

Now, it's very unlikely that this actually happened, but the power of the Arbiter's blood was certainly real. Ichor, as it was called, was discovered simultaneously in different systems across the cosmos. It alone possessed the power to grant non-Lancers the ability to tap into currents, and, with manipulation of the substance itself, could be integrated into technology and machinery to further amplify the manipulation of currents.

Black Gold to Golden Oil

The discovery of this, of course, made Ichor the most sought-after commodity. Massive extraction sites, reminiscent of the oil-wells of the past, were developed at the bottom of the oceans, with the theory being that the cores of planets where Arbiters resided would hold the Ichor from those that had deceased. As it turns out, the hypothesis was right, to a certain extent. The extraction of Ichor was a much more unpredictable and dangerous task than once thought, and many worlds simply lack a significant supply of Ichor in their cores. As such, some planetary governments quickly became rich off of the harvesting of Ichor. It's no coincidence that the initial five systems that formed the Blueshift Confederacy all had significant Ichor stored within their system's planets.

The trade of Ichor is arguably what saved Interastral Shipping during the chaos before the formation of Blueshift, as they were the only entity capable of handling the transportation of Ichor. Indeed, in order for the substance to be transported across blink space it has to be manipulated and compressed in a process called relegation. This fact gave IPS (and future corpro-states like SSC and HA) a monopoly on the substance after it had been extracted, making them even richer than they already were.

That wealth is, and was, highly sought after, bringing some to extreme measures. For example, the system of Soteria, now a regional semi-independent system in Blueshift, deliberately boiled its oceans to kill the planets Arbiters in the hopes of creating a wellspring of Ichor. The plan was made in secret, and, when revealed, met with interastral condemnation--but none intervened. In fact, the plan worked, and the Ichor-barons of Soteria-C have remained an influential force in Blueshift politics due to their immense Ichor reserved. (In fact, it's believed that were the inspiration behind the mythological retelling of the discovery of Ichor.)

In addition, most significant conflicts have had a not-insignificant undercurrent in relation to the Ichor trade. While Director Cossack (see: Age of Rebirth) was making his plea to the IPS board of directors, many common people looked at him with confusion as to the importance of two seemingly-random SSC systems. Of course, a decade into the eventual war, it was revealed that both Bronte and Astrape had Ichor reserves that were much more substantial than previously estimated. It was the same for both Alecto and Megaera in the Synthesis War shortly before they were selected as the new industrial heartland of IPS.

All of this made the extraction process of Ichor and incredibly important part of economic and scientific advancement. However, even in the modern era, the extraction process is extremely dangerous for those involved due to the extreme pressure in the deepest parts of the ocean. This is has been the main point of contention in the Ichor trade, and Blueshift has endlessly been in debate on how/if to regulate the extraction process.

...Another Source

Luckily, there's another source for Ichor!

Starting out as a conspiracy from anti-piracy operations, the second source for Ichor was confirmed with the Brontestar Trade War. As Lancers made war in full for the first time, with currents weaving and intertwining in holy duels above IPS and SSC systems, a strange occurrence began to occur. Lancers would defeat their opponents, see their foes rended and defeated next to their destroyed mech, and, to their surprise, spot a glowing, golden substance flowing from their corpse.

Indeed, to the bewilderment of nearly every scientist then (and now), Ichor can, occasionally, be produced by the bodies of Lancers. The process as to how this occurs is very poorly understood, but the general hypothesis is that Lancers will wield their current in the process of piloting their mechs, and, due to being the chosen of the Arbiters, will produce Ichor within their body.

Of course, this lead to chaos within nearly every faction involved with the war as to how to deal with this. Each developed a unique response, but at the end of the Brontestar war one of the terms of the peace was that the forceful harvesting of Lancers for Ichor would be considered a war crime and punishable by death. This broke down though, at the start of the Synthesis War, the nature of the Bio-Apperatums and the brutality of the conflict making the previous edict null and void. As such, it was not an uncommon sight to see IPS Lancers breaking apart Apperatum bodies (which could also produce Ichor) and drenching themselves in Ichor harvested from them in order to continue fighting. The nature of Ichor harvesting from Lancers as a war crime was reinforced in the Tau Ceti Accords, but it is unknown if it will actually be enforced or not.

Harnessing Ichor

Ichor, in the centuries since its discovery, has found use across various sectors in interastral society. With the integration into tech applications, it can be used to tap into currents, usually with the additional use of some kind of catalyst. Some examples of Ichor's use are as follows:

The OmniNET is powered by the use of Ichor-infused servers and networks that allow the tapping of the Reminiscence. The tapping of the Reminiscence, in turn, allows for the OmniNET's vast storage of information and seamless connection through Blinkspace. However, this comes at the cost of an excessive need for power, with the OmniNET Stability Authority managing multiple Dyson-swarms to power the servers.

Most modern mech chassis have Ichor integrated into the Divine Engines held within them. While Divine Engines can run without the substance, their efficiency and power-output is greatly enhanced by the use of Ichor. The substance allows mechs to be much more maneuverable than they would be otherwise, letting them carry much heavier payloads.

And, most viscerally, mortals can consume or drench themselves in the substance to allow the direct channeling of their current. This allows a wide variety of unnatural powers to manipulate reality, from waterwalkers of Utalia rapidly healing wounds, those of Aspecta creating vast illusions and deceptions, and those of Cross spontaneously locating their prey.