The Least Interesting Substance
There are many interesting places, many interesting worlds. This world is not one of them. It has an argon atmosphere, and the planet itself is made of a very unreactive, insoluble, extremely difficult to erode, not at all shiny or luminous, monotone grey powder. It is about as dense as sand.
You need not think of how this world came to be, but if you can think of a very good reason why such a planet would come to be, then by all means say it. If necessary, the substance may be synthetic, but avoid anything along the lines of complex or organic molecules.
To eat it would be pointless, but it should not poison you if you did. The alchemists who teleport there babble about the dust having unlimited potential, but then nobody actually takes them seriously. Perhaps it does have such properties.
What is the best candidate for such a material?
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/106057. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
It's deactivated Grey goo, Smartdust, Programmable matter, Computronium, or something like that.
Basically trillions of nano machines that at some point in the past ate the planet and converted it all into more machines, and then when there was nothing left they turned off. Now it's just this inert dust like stuff. After all this time it's probably harmless...
Edit: So something a little simpler.
If you are looking for something like a single element/compound, you could look into most of the transition elements. They are all metal, and non-reactive.
Best possibility I can think of might be powered Aluminium oxide. It's hard, dull grey, and would be extremely interesting to alchemists.
Something like a tungsten dust. It has a dark grey color.
Another possible option is impure carbon. It's very hard, and with the right impurities would be opaque, though possibly not dull.
0 comment threads
0 comment threads