Feystone

When a being - be it plant or animal - that can wield mana dies, it's mana gathers in a single spot, crystalizes and turns into a gem-like object.

Depending on which mana-source was turned into a feystone, their specific characteristics can differ. Different stones can be used to drain, transfer and store mana, can be turned into magical objects via a spell like a Highbeast or Ordonanz or be used to create magic tools.

By dyeing the feystone with one's own mana, it can be morphed into the shape of an animal, that will move according to the user's will and fly through the air. The changes are according to the user's imagination. Nobles generally change it into a mount reminding of animals like pegasus', griffins or some other animal with wings. A few of the more eccentric individuals also use feybeasts like shumil or Bahelm with wings as their mount. Since the banner animal of Ehrenfest is the Lion, only members of the archduke's family are allowed to model their highbeast after the regal animals. Generally the Archduke's family created winged but otherwise regular lions, with the Aub using a three-headed one.

Despite what many nobles believe, the wings are not actually part of the mechanics that lift a highbeast into the air. Rozemyne was the first person known to create a wingless beast, in her case an automobile with the head and tail of a red panda, often mistaken for the feybeast species Grun. She calls her beast a pandabus and gave it the name Lessy. Apart from being wingless, which allows use in tighter spaces than traditional winged highbeasts, Rozemyne's highbeast was also revolutionary because it could be ridden on the inside, protecting the rider from bad weather and allowing other comforts and the ability to more easily transport other people and luggage. This practicality though does not come entirely free, since such a highbeast requries more mana than a more traditional one.

When Rozemyne showed her pandabus at the Royal Academy, it's practicality and particularly the fact that women could keep wearing their regular clothes rather than having to change into riding gear made professors and students alike very interested in the concept. It was Professor Hirschur who was the first person to successfully change her highbest into a driveable one inspired by Rozemyne's Pandabus, though modelled after a shumil instead of a panda. Since she was already used to the more traditional way of controlling a highbeast, she replaced the steering wheel seen in Lessy with reigns and was able to successfully control her new drivable shumil highbeast with ease.

With several of the female students attempting to create drivable highbeasts of their own, mostly modelled after shumils like the one Hirschur made, there are signs for these kind of highbeasts to become a new trend among those with a suffciently high mana capacity to sustain them. They are however ill suited for knights, who need to use their weapons in airborne combat.

Feystones can be used to store mana and can be used when needed in the future. If you exceed the feystone's capacity, it turns into gold dust. The feystones come in different qualities, which means they can store different amounts of mana; the higher the quality, the more expensive a feystone is.

In the same sense, feystones, usually in the form of a magic tool, are used to drain any overflowing mana from noble children that can not yet contain or compress their mana. This was seen when the overflowing mana from Dirk was drained with a feystone.

Black feystones drain mana of any source they come into contact with. The draining will only stop if the target is completely empty, the contact is severed or the stone is fully saturated, at which point the stone is destroyed. Unlike with other feystones, it is not possible for a mana wielding being to cut off the mana-flow on their own, without severing physical contact with the stone or stopping whichever ranged application of mana they are performing, like the Crushing. Only by incorporating them into a magic tool can black feystone be made to only drain excess mana and thus completely save for use, even by children. Among other things they are used to create the magic tools that drain noble children's excess mana to prevent it from harming their young bodies.

It is possible to create thread that is a conductor for mana. This thread is used in the creation of cloth-based magic tools, like stitching or weaving magic cicles directly into the clothing.

These fabrics look like regular cloth, but have the ability to conduct mana. One example of such a tool can be found during the Dedication Ritual.

During the ceremony, the priests do not touch the Divine Instruments directly. The instruments are put on top of a red carpet which extends in front of the altar. It is this carpet that the priests touch and pour their mana into, which then passes it on to the Divine Instruments.

Magic tools can be created either by embedding feystones in other constructs or altering an existing feystone to fulfill a specific task without changing it's outward appearance.

Most magic tools require mana to be used and thus can only be employed by nobles. There are ways to create magic items usable by commoners, but most nobles won't bother with such trivial concerns as the needs of commoners. Generally only laynobles deal with the construction, maintanance and charging of magic items for commoners to earn money. see Commoner Magic Utilities

This magic tool is used to melt snow that is blown into the entry halls by the wind and dry the places it fell to.

This magic tool keeps the humidity of the air at a constant level. The Royal Academy's Library was fitted with such tools to help preserve the stored books and documents.

The armour that members of the Knight's Order wear are magic tools. Like highbeasts these kinds of armour can be turned into feystone for easy storage and quick changing into and out of it. They can contain a variety of wards against different kind of attacks as well as comfort funcitons like enchantments that keep a constant temperature within the armour, regardless of outside conditions or preventing snow from touching the armour. These armours can not just be reverted into feystone-shape, but also manipulated in other ways, like reshaping parts of it or altering the hardness and elasticity of the material. These wards and enchantments can be customized and added to by the wearer in accordance to their personal style, wealth, skill and mana capacity.

Broadly speaking there are three types of armours employed by knights:
 * Heavy Armour: A full-body suit of armour that covers the body from neck to toe in solid plates. Once the acompanying helmet is donned, the only exposed parts of the body are the eyes and mouth. This is the most protective, but also the most ristrictive of the armours, though even this heavy varient is still far lighter than equivalent pieces made out of regular metals.
 * Light Armour: A lighter varient of the magical armour that provides less protection, but has less weights, consumes less mana and allows a wider range of motion than he heavy varient. The light armour is worn when knights do not expect any trouble, for example on guard duty within secured buildings, or on missions where mobility is expected to be more important than protection.
 * Bodyglove: This skintight suit is flexible and can easily be worn underneath any kind of clothing, even ballroom dresses. Knights wear them practically at all waking hours, so to never be completely without protection, even when participating in social events seemingly unarmoured.

Manablades are enchanted swords.

see Manablade

This magic tools is used to look into someone else's memories. Since nobles value their privacy so highly, this tool is usually reserved for only those suspected of the most grave of crimes. It comes in the shape of a paired set of circlets that can change their size to fit the wearer perfectly with big, red feystone at their front.

For use the person to be interrogated is made to drink a potion made with the mana of the interrogator. If the two have very similar mana, the potion tastes sweet, but the more their affinities and capacity diverge, the worse it tastes. Once the potion puts the criminal to sleep, a connection between the two circlets is established and the interrogator synchronizes with the criminal, which allows them to experience the memories and even emotions of the criminal.

The only known case where this tool was used on someone who did not commit a severe crime was when Ferdinand used it to explore Myne's memories due to the exceptionally unusual events surrounding the girl.

While sharing the appearance of a raw feystone, the stones used for Ordonnanz spells are actually magic tools that have been created for this specific task.

This magic tool can read words from a piece of paper and project it onto a piece of cloth. When Professor Hirschur grew frustrated with having to repeat instructions to her students, Ferdinand ended up inventing this tool and gifting several of them to her.

Spoiler for Part 4 Volume 3

This magic tool can record moving images like Earth's cameras and later display the recorded scenes. It takes some time to reconfigure between recording and display mode, but once it is reset, anyone can easily use it by pouring their mana into it, or alternatively using mana stored in feystones. Recorded scenes are displayed on a smooth metal-board that looks similar to a Guild Card, but is about the size of an A4 sheet. The device can only record visuals and has a somewhat poor resolution.

Unfortunately in it's current form both recording and replaying uses up so much mana that it is inpractical for the vast majority of nobles.

see Schwartz and Weiss

These tools were created to protect important conversations from being eavesdropped on. They come in two varients. One is a set of tools that need to be held and supplied with mana, which will make anything spoken by a holder only audible to people holding tools linked into theirs and is widely used among the nobility. Ferdinand at one point also uses such a tool to prevent Myne from saying anything out of turn, by having her hold on to one, but not holding his paired one, thus rendering the girl effectively mute for the duration of the conversation.

The other varient created a sound-blocking shield. Sicne the hand-held sound-blocking tools are more practical and discreet, this area-of-effect version is much rarer and generally only used when communicating with commoners, like high-level business discussions with merchants for example, who don't have the required mana to use the hand-held variant.

This magic tool protects books and scrolls from being damanged by bright light sources. It is employed in the Royal Academy's Library.

There are two kinds of teleportation circles, those constructed in a fixed position with the feystones built into their structure or they can be drawn surfaces (usually parchament) and fuelled by putting the feystones on top at the specified points.

The same kind of circle can teleport living beings and inanimate objects, but the former takes much more mana than the latter.

The magic circles connecting Ehrenfest Castle with the Royal Academy can only transport three people at once. It is unclear whether this is a limitation of only this specific pair of circles, or a limitation of teleportation circles in general.

This magic tools is causes coloured lights to stream down the Royal Academy's Library whenever the bells toll. This system was created to make sure that students too emersed in their reading or work would don't just miss the sound of the bells and thus fail to arrive at their respective lessons on time.

These green stones have the appearance of a raw feystone, but are actually magic tools most commonly used for converting mana to water. One of their uses is to put them into the bottom of a pitcher. Once the stone is charged via a Schtappe, the pitcher can endlessly pour out water until the mana in the stone is depleted.

Divine Instruments are powerful items used in the temples of every duchy. It is unclear whether there is any real difference between them and regular magic tools. Even some nobles consider them to be nothing more than regular magic tools, albeit of rare quality.

see Divine Instruments

Feystones can be acquired by slaying feybeasts or feyplants, as well as infusing certain fruits or eggs from these beings with your mana. One such example are Riesefalke eggs, which can be turned into feystones rich in Leidenschaft's blue mana. Even commoners can acquire feystones by slaying weak feybeasts like Shumil. There is a store on the west side in Ehrenfest's lower city which buys feystones. There is also a way to turn mana-wielding Humans into feystones.


 * Rozemyne - when she was given a feystone and started to learn to expand the feystone, makes it into a balloon and as it grows bigger and bigger, she imagines it popping which it does . Ferdinand is quite annoyed as the stone is very valuable but to his surprise she changes what she has in hands in to clay and goes around picking up the bits back together, which shocks him and he calls a halt to the lesson.