it’s known that there are three forms of mana: water, nix, and air. water is the mana of flowing, and is the only one that can be directly controlled by people. nix is the mana of gravity. air is the mana of energy. in practice, these three mana and their interactions are taken as physical axioms. efforts to break them down further have not been successful.

the following information has not been discovered by anyone in nix yet, but it is how the world works.

mana

water mana is just a pair of fundamental particles, called suitons and neritons. it has mass similar to a neutrino. it is mostly governed by a fifth fundamental force (in addition to gravity, electriomagnetism, etc.), called sulury. suitons and neritons have have no electric charge, but do have suluric charge (-1 and +1). they cannot be created or destroyed. the suluric attractive force follows an inverse square law, which is about 200 times stronger than the electromagnetic, and in practice must be balanced at all times. suitons and neritons are fermions so they experience pauli repulsion. if suitons and neritons are found together, they tend to form hexagonal lattices, or at higher temperatures, square lattices.

quarks and leptons also have a suluric charge equal to their electromagnetic charge. in our world most of chemistry arises from the fact that only so many electrons are allowed to fit into each shell, and the shells come from spherical symmetry and the inverse square law of the electrostatic force. suiton force and electromagnetism are sort of the same in these respects. so a configuration of a nix atom must satisfy both the normal electromagnetic rules as well as the parallel suluric rules. in the absence of suitons, this is satisfied since electrons and protons and neutrons have proportional charges in both forces. but if there is a suiton present, it actually has the potential to take the place of an electron, causing the atom to be positively charged and for there to be a loose electron. on the other hand, neritons don’t have the same suluric charge as an electron so they can’t replace them. they can, however, join an atom along with an extra electron (if there is space for 2 free fermions in the valence shell), in which case it has a similar effect.

how to manipulate suitons and neritons? atoms with singular electrons in valence shells will readily undergo suitonic ionization. alkali metals, copper group metals, and hydrogen (especially in acids!). all other atoms can also be suitonically ionized (since the number of fermions will be the same) but it’ll just take a much higher activation energy, so in practice it’s just hydrogen and certain metals.

atoms with two low energy vacancies in their valence shells will readily accept neriton - electron pairs. so chalcogens, nickel group. to a much lesser extent, nitrogen/carbon/boron group. note that chalcogens need to be unbound (like O2 needs to split into free oxygen atoms) so in practice they don’t absorb neritons easily.

suitons can be found - bound with neritons as an invisible (but tangible!) suluric crystal - bound with free protons in acids (suterium), giving a positive charge that is likely cancelled by oxygen bound neritons - bound in metals, granting a positive charge - increases conductivity neritons can be found - in suluric crystals - bound in chalcogens, forming a negatively charged inert gas. this can be used to conduct electricity through pipes. - neritonically bound chalcogens can also enter suitonic acids and metals to balance them out. they can be flushed out with physical pressure. suluric water (sarap) is formed of - suterium (suiton + proton), neritium (neriton + oxygen), nerium (neriton + electron), and plain water and proton and hydroxide - corrosive, especially at higher concentrations

suluric crystals are less stable at higher pressures, because of the fermion exclusion principle keeping the particles apart. they can be separated by mixing with sulurically active metals, or acids, or burning chalcogens.

to extract the suluric crystal back out of the infused substance, the pressure needs to be below about 0.005 atmospheres, so that the crystals can form. higher temperatures facilitate this. by leaving sarap in such a vacuum for a few hours, the crystals will dissolve out. in nature, they form in the upper atmosphere.

glass is sulurically inert, with the oxygen being very bound. it can be used to store sarap and other sulurically active substances.

suluric crystals are tangible because their local suluric charge variations are enough to repel variations in any atoms. but they are invisible because they don’t interact electromagnetically. they are almost massless, and so float upward very quickly.

when burnt, suluric crystals are very toxic and thus can be used as projectiles in weapons. crystals can be ground into dust too, increasing reactivity.

people in sulurically active areas have evolved to tolerate low levels of sarap and other suluric material. their lifespans are typically shorter but the increased conductivity in the nervous system helps them think and respond more quickly than others.

small amounts of dust sprinkled on plants can improve nutrient uptake, especially of metallic ions.

some other sort of mana that’s attracted to certain crystal types?

gameplaywise, crystals should be used as converters (catalysts?) between different forms of energy.

list of substances - suterium: suiton and proton, + charge aqueous - neritium: neriton and oxygen, - charge aqueous, can be burnt into gas - sarap: suterium + neritium - aluminum neritide: Al Nr O2 - sulfutate: S Nr - - sulfuteric acid: H S Nr - so far nothing that corresponds to like “fire mana?” but maybe thats ok. - some sort of fertilizer nix mana is a localized area of hyperbolic space. this means that things travelling through areas dense in nix mana will take longer to travel. in practice this is hard to observe since the scale at which space folds is much smaller than atoms. but if you try to move your hand through nix mana it will feel more resistance than usual. nix mana also has weird lensing effects on light, you can effectively get it to have arbitrarily high refractive index, and you can sort of make fiber optics cables this way. it cannot be created or destroyed, but it can be pushed around by suitons. on earth, only gravity shapes spacetime, but on nix, suiton force also shapes it. i’m not sure if that really makes sense but yeah.

very high concentrations of nix mana will form small black holes that stuff can be thrown into and not taken out.