The Hundred Before

- Dragon blood: a thick, shimmering dark-red liquid with a honey-like consistency. Appears to maintain a stable temperature roughly equal to the body temperature of a large mammal; does not appear to naturally cool down, but will dry and coagulate if not kept in a hermetically sealed container. Alchemically: a highly potent stimulant. High concentrations of magicka make the raw substance suitable as a component for magical rituals, however ingestion is ill-advised for the same reason, as the overwhelming energy surge may prove dangerous in significant quantities. When diluted for safe consumption, created tonics and elixirs have a marked positive effect on the user’s physical vigor, strength, endurance, and enhanced regenerative capabilities. Often accompanied by feelings of omnipotence and increased heart-rate, similar to other stimulant drugs, with a consequent decrease in energy once the initial “high” expires.

- Dragon bile: a greenish-yellow liquid with watery consistency and a very potent noxious odor, extracted from the gallbladder. Highly alkaline and caustic, causes burns on direct contact with skin and readily dissolves most (untreated) organic textiles as well as several commonly available metals. Thankfully unreactive to glass, thereby making it easier to handle and transport than stomach acid, which currently remains impossible to safely collect. Alchemically: powerful organic solvent. Corrosive properties may prove useful in treatment of materials to remove organic impurities, provided a reliable neutralizing agent is available. Highly variable emulsifier capable of mixing normally incompatible reagents and breaking them down into a digestible form, though the safety of digesting said reagents remains a concern best addressed individually. When reduced to isolated bile salts, it may be used as a core agent for “quickening” substances affecting the user’s digestive health, immune response, and even mental processing speeds.

- Dragon rheum: a transparent, colorless, and odorless mucous discharge collected from the various membranes of a dragon, namely the eyes and nostrils. Often found in coagulated form, in which case it appears as a semi-transparent, yellowish soft crust that can be shaped with bare hands. Alchemically: varies. Functionally inert when solid, though may have potential as a base for magicka-regenerative drugs if matched with an appropriate reactivating agent. Highly soluble in water if harvested in liquid form, producing tonics that enhance all forms of sensory perception, potentially even including the hyperagonal (magical) sense, though results are inconsistent between individuals. Higher concentrations in tinctures appear to positively affect mental focus and reflex response speed, with subjects describing a brief “out-of-body” experience while the substance takes full effect where their body appears to move before they make the conscious decision to do so, with full synchronicity re-achieved several minutes after the ingestion. Further refinement is required.

- Dragon fat: a pale oily semisolid rendered from fat deposits located along the tail and thorax of the dragon, roughly consistent with the biology of some birds and reptiles. The leftover suet is highly nutritious and may be used for cooking, though long-term dietary effects are unknown. Alchemically: medical solvent, disinfectant. By itself, the rendered oil can be used as a topical treatment for abrasions, cuts, and burns, providing a soothing anti-inflammatory effect while also notably speeding up the regeneration process. Best used in combination with other reagents to create short-application plasters and poultices for infection-prone injuries.

- Dragon urine: a white semi-liquid substance, presumably crystalline when isolated from other biological refuse. May have a potential use as a tanning agent according to some orcish craftsmen. Currently impossible to harvest in any usable form, as it is normally found mixed with feces which prove to be highly rancid and potentially poisonous without respiratory protection. Suggestion of further study may be sarcastic.

On the refinement of dragon bones: While Sir Esbern has made considerable progress on the subject of processing dragon-derived materials by researching ancient manuscripts left behind by the Blades’ predecessors, testing and refining those theories required access to capable craftsmen and resources that would be troublesome to procure in the secrecy of Sky Haven Temple. As part of the current arrangement with Dushnikh Yal, the stronghold orcs have been given confidential access to materials and known processing techniques with the aim of improving them, which they have likewise shared:

- Dragon bones have posed the greatest challenge for refinement ever since the dragons’ first emergence in recorded histories. Despite being called “bones”, they hardly resemble the material - impossibly dense and incredibly durable, they appear to have more in common with hewn stone than anything found inside living beings. The few known instances of broken bone were all found to be completely solid on the inside, possessing a natural crystalline structure reminiscent of metamorphic rock formations, with a similar appearance to gemstones or even metals. Despite this, treating them with the same tools has proven to be completely ineffective, as the material bears an anomalous resistance to all temperatures, natural or magical, and no known materials exist that are capable of chipping, shearing, or denting them through application of force.

- Orcish craftsmen facing a similar problem have searched for a solution by comparing dragonbone to another rare and treatment-resistant material: ebony. While notoriously difficult to process in raw form, several cultures throughout history have employed controlled dosages of daedra blood (usually derived directly from the harvested heart of a vanquished specimen before the onset of rapid husk decay) to alter the material’s properties, enhancing its toughness and malleability to levels impossible to achieve with any other form of treatment. Hypotheses abound on what exactly causes the reaction to occur, ranging from the inherent padomaic properties of daedric essence to mythogeological theories on the origins of ebony as the petrified remains of the Missing God rendered inert by his sundering; what remains clear is that the two materials demonstrably interact in a replicable way, which offered a model by which to apply the same principles to dragonbone. Unfortunately, daedra blood failed to produce the same results - though not for a failure in theory, but in available materials.

- Translated manuscripts of Dragonguard hunters and crafters provided the missing link: the fact that dragons appeared capable of not only sustaining damage, but also growing and recovering from it demonstrates that the immutability of their remains is not an inherent property of their skeletal structure, but an acquired one. As the immortal progeny of the Dragon God, dragons are much more akin to nature spirits than they are to mundane fauna, with an “abstracted” anatomy that needs only make as much sense as their magical beings demand, and their continued functioning is owed foremost to the divine nature of their spirits than biological adaptation. Consequently, when a dragon perishes, the hold of their spirit over its physical aspect begins to falter: though their souls cling much more fiercely to their remains than those of mortals, mechanical tampering associated with natural decay processes and practically all harvesting techniques gradually strips the dragon’s carcass of the life force bound up in its more transient components - that is, their flesh, internal organs, bodily fluids, and other biologically-active substances - until all that remains is a skeletal crux of pure, metaphysically inert “earthbone” (a process that can be greatly accelerated by the presence of another specimen capable of absorbing the fallen dragon’s soul, completely stripping the dragon’s corpse of its life force nigh-instantly).

- The logical conclusions of these observations is that dragonbone remains workable so long as it retains the magical potential (or “life force”) required for transformation, with said malleability existing on a curve: ranging from fully and naturally mutable (although still far from effortless to work with) when the dragon is alive and developing, and sharply declining from the moment of its death before reaching a point of complete stasis once the soul is fully separated from its vessel. Conversely, from this information arises the hypothesis that the malleability of dragonbone can be fully or partially restored through “revitalizing” the desired piece of the skeleton with compatible essence - namely, by way of soaking the bone for a prolonged period of time in fresh dragonblood. The resulting increase in workability is still ultimately inferior to freshly harvested bone, and both of the above pale in comparison to the changes a dragon’s skeleton may undergo in life, but flaws notwithstanding, this method provides a reliable - if extremely expensive - way of processing dragonbone into a wide variety of tools and equipment, with the main bottleneck being the accessibility of dragonblood itself, which must be collected very soon (if not immediately) after death to avoid loss of magical properties through ambient radiation, or the consumption of the substance itself by nearby plants and scavenger fauna.

- Predictably, dragonscale and dragonhide appear to work by identical principles to bone, though they are not without their caveats. In particular, dragonscale trades some of its hardness compared to bone in exchange for greater flexibility, granting it some overlap in its range of applications while posing new challenges in the treatment process. Meanwhile, dragonhide remains the most workable material of the three, and is possible to process with conventional leatherworking techniques while boasting far superior durability to all known and available textiles, but consequently demands tools of suitable toughness to avoid frequent maintenance. Finally, the workable nature of these materials signals towards a higher degree of biological activity within the context of the dragon’s anatomy, meaning they must ideally be harvested soon after the dragon’s death and removed from the vicinity, or else risk being permanently lost in the event of another stray specimen absorbing the fallen dragon’s soul.