Alloy

In a dagger hilt, the alloy is the dull gray, rune-decorated medallion set into the weapon.

Felix’s conduit uses an upright alloy medallion inside a glass orb, showing alloy can also be mounted in a device rather than a weapon hilt.

Xaden’s group and the Poromish fliers rely on runed, alloy-hilted daggers in the field, and the supply is valuable enough that losing or wasting the weapons is treated as a serious battlefield risk.

Navarrian outposts keep armories of alloy pieces to strengthen and extend ward support.

Aaric’s reference to special daggers with small metal discs connects at least some royal protection equipment to the same alloy-disc weapon pattern Violet recognizes.

Alloy in a dagger hilt can carry a noticeable hum of power, and the material used to power wards is forged into weapons for fighting venin.

Alloy holds only a finite amount of stored power. Once that power is used, the alloy has to be imbued again, and making usable alloy forms requires smelting with dragonfire intensified by a luminary.

Xaden gives alloy’s composition as an amalgamation of Talladium, several other ores, and dragon egg shells. Imbued alloy can be transported as charged cargo before delivery or use.

A runed mechanism can draw a rider’s channeled power into alloy; Felix originally made his conduit as a simpler way to imbue alloy with power.

Alloy houses power, while runes are tempered with power to perform specific actions. Violet’s dagger hilt carries a rune similar to Trissa’s illustration, linking alloy-hilted weapons to rune geometry without fully explaining that dagger’s designed action.

Unimbued alloy feels empty to Violet, much like the dormant wardstone before it receives power.

Alloy is not the only material that can be imbued; Violet contrasts it with maorsite, an ore that is not used to make alloy.

Violet uses two alloy-hilted blades to pin a venin’s boots and feet to a flooded arena floor so her lightning can kill him through the charged water.