Notes: The Starsteel Sword
The main character here is a Damion/Simon clone. He lives on a planet that was settled by residents of the next planet over in his solar system, which became unstable and eventually broke apart.
The original homeworld, fourth from its sun, was chock-full of a mineral or ore that had psychoreactive properties. When brought into contact with a human mind, a synergy of sorts occurred that enabled the mineral to develop a nascent "intelligence" of its own. The mineral became aware of people it did and didn't like. For those people who the mineral liked, it became active, gave off a bluish-white light and allowed those people to be aware of their surroundings on a deeper level than others. For people the mineral didn't like, it appeared to be just as lifeless as any other metal. A deposit of this metal could go dormant or seemingly dead for centuries, even millennia, waiting for a compatible mind to come near it.
Over millennia an advanced technology developed, using this mineral. Humans learned to harness its properties to a more and more refined degree, to the point of building space-faring vessels out of it. Then war broke out, a war so devastating that the very earth itself fractured, and the people living on this world knew it was only a matter of time before their world tore itself apart.
They knew their neighboring planet, the third from its sun, was habitable, though warmer and drier than they preferred. As many people as could emigrated there and watched their old homeworld crack apart from afar. Then the meteor showers came.
The new settlements were devastated, many of them destroyed as the recurrent falls of meteors from the original homeworld became worse and worse. Newer settlements were built underground, carved out of the bedrock itself when possible.
Unknown to the settlers, they were drawing the meteors to the new planet because the psychoreactive ore calls itself to itself. It goes where more of it is. When it realized that bits of itself were traveling elsewhere, in the form of artifacts carried across space by the settlers, that is where the rest of it went because it did not want to be alone.
By the time the story begins, the third planet now hosts a ring of asteroids, some of which occasionally fall to the planet below.
The planet's residents have begun mining meteor craters and working the metals found there. They call the material derived from these metals starsteel.
The original homeworld, fourth from its sun, was chock-full of a mineral or ore that had psychoreactive properties. When brought into contact with a human mind, a synergy of sorts occurred that enabled the mineral to develop a nascent "intelligence" of its own. The mineral became aware of people it did and didn't like. For those people who the mineral liked, it became active, gave off a bluish-white light and allowed those people to be aware of their surroundings on a deeper level than others. For people the mineral didn't like, it appeared to be just as lifeless as any other metal. A deposit of this metal could go dormant or seemingly dead for centuries, even millennia, waiting for a compatible mind to come near it.
Over millennia an advanced technology developed, using this mineral. Humans learned to harness its properties to a more and more refined degree, to the point of building space-faring vessels out of it. Then war broke out, a war so devastating that the very earth itself fractured, and the people living on this world knew it was only a matter of time before their world tore itself apart.
They knew their neighboring planet, the third from its sun, was habitable, though warmer and drier than they preferred. As many people as could emigrated there and watched their old homeworld crack apart from afar. Then the meteor showers came.
The new settlements were devastated, many of them destroyed as the recurrent falls of meteors from the original homeworld became worse and worse. Newer settlements were built underground, carved out of the bedrock itself when possible.
Unknown to the settlers, they were drawing the meteors to the new planet because the psychoreactive ore calls itself to itself. It goes where more of it is. When it realized that bits of itself were traveling elsewhere, in the form of artifacts carried across space by the settlers, that is where the rest of it went because it did not want to be alone.
By the time the story begins, the third planet now hosts a ring of asteroids, some of which occasionally fall to the planet below.
The planet's residents have begun mining meteor craters and working the metals found there. They call the material derived from these metals starsteel.