What if Atlantis fell…but left behind liquid metal that could heal any wound, steel that defies gravity, and an energy source that could power engines for millennia?

Three thousand years ago, when Thule sank beneath the waves, the Stormcrows escaped with more than just their lives. They carried the secrets of three mysterious metals, created during the first Immortal War before mortals walked the earth. These metals, known as floatsteel, quicksteel, and burnsteel, are the backbone of this world’s technology.

Airships fly because of floatsteel. Dr. Maxim os Storm heals the wounded with quicksteel. And burnsteel powers steam engines that can run for centuries without fuel.

This is the lost technology of Thule, and it’s everywhere in the Hunter Healer King trilogy…once you know where to look.

Floatsteel: Defying Gravity

Refined floatsteel looks like silver with a hint of sky-blue in its color, polished to a mirror finish. It has one extraordinary property: it neutralizes gravity unless shielded by lead.

This is what allows Stormcrow airships to fly. Engineers enclose bars of floatsteel in frameworks of lead (or lead-coated steel) with mechanical shutters. Open enough shutters to offset the weight of the vessel, and the airship rises. Close the shutters, and it descends. It’s elegant, reliable, and requires no fuel, just careful engineering.

Floatsteel also powers the Armor of Arent, the forty-foot-tall mecha that can only be piloted by the King of the Stormcrows. The armor can walk because floatsteel neutralizes most of its massive weight. It can fly, after a fashion, using gliding wings for directional control while floatsteel provides the lift.

For a very long time, floatsteel was only found in artifacts and machines salvaged from the Fall of Thule. But by the time of the Hunter Healer King trilogy, there’s finally enough of an industrial base to attempt mining and refining new floatsteel. The process is difficult and dangerous, but it means airships are becoming more common in Noricum.

In Undead Flight, Maxim’s coronation takes place aboard a luxury airship floating hundreds of feet above the ground. Floatsteel makes that journey possible. It also makes the vessel a very difficult place to escape if something goes wrong.

Quicksteel: The Healing Metal

Quicksteel is a transparent metal, liquid at room temperature, with a blue-purple sheen. In the right hands, it can heal injured flesh when used by someone who understands the human body well enough to visualize what the “fixed” body part should look like.

This is why Maxim’s medical degree matters. Quicksteel responds to the healer’s knowledge and intent. Pour it on a wound without understanding what you’re doing, and nothing happens. Use it with precise anatomical knowledge, visualizing the healed state clearly, and quicksteel will reshape damaged tissue, and close wounds. It can’t do much fir broken bones except speed up the process slightly.

It was greatly prized on Thule and on the Continent in the first centuries after the Fall. But as the medical knowledge needed to use it effectively faded away, quicksteel became comparatively useless. Most people didn’t know enough anatomy to direct its healing properties.

That changed when Maxim’s cousin Victor put enormous effort into dissecting and diagramming the human body, at a time when the dissection of cadavers was still illegal. Victor’s anatomical knowledge, combined with preserved Thulean medical texts, means the Stormcrows can once again use quicksteel effectively.

This is how Maxim saves lives that would be lost to any other healer. And in Wolf’s Trail, quicksteel plays a crucial role in removing the lupomancer’s mark from his slaves.

There’s a darker side to quicksteel’s history. Some sorcerers and ambitious individuals have tried to use it to enhance their bodies to superhuman levels by adding strength, speed, or other abilities beyond normal human limits. These experiments rarely end well.

Quacks and con artists sometimes try to pass off poisonous mercury (quicksilver) as quicksteel, which has contributed to the Stormcrows’ shady reputation in certain circles. Real quicksteel is rare and precious. Fake quicksteel damages the nervous system and can cause insanity.

Burnsteel: Magical Uranium

Refined burnsteel resembles iron glowing dull red, and at close range it burns flesh unless shielded by lead or quicksteel. Think of it as magical uranium: an energy source of extraordinary power and danger.

Burnsteel is primarily used as an alternative to wood or coal in the steam-powered world of the Hunter Healer King trilogy. Seal it up properly in a shielded reactor, run water in pipes through the chamber to heat it into steam, and you have an engine that can run for millennia unless damaged. This is what powers the most advanced Stormcrow airships and the great steam engines that drive Noricum’s industrial revolution.

The Thuleans used quicksteel as a coolant in burnsteel reactors, apparently to have a source of the healing metal on hand in case of a reactor accident. This suggests they understood the dangers quite well.

There have been few attempts at weaponizing burnsteel, though the weapon that destabilized Thule and sent it to the bottom of the sea almost certainly used burnsteel as its core component. Whether burnsteel weapons would produce long-term contamination like our world’s nuclear fallout remains unclear. The Stormcrows treat burnsteel with extreme caution and have no interest in testing its destructive potential. They remember what happened to Thule.

The Legacy of the First Immortal War

The Stormcrows believe these three metals were created during the first Immortal War, in the clashes between the forces of good and evil, before mortals walked the earth. Whether they were forged by divine powers, discovered in the ruins of an even older civilization, or created through means now lost to time, no one knows for certain.

What matters is that these metals work. They can be found and used, even if it’s difficult and sometimes dangerous to mine and refine them. They’re what make the technological level of the Hunter Healer King trilogy possible.

Without floatsteel, there would be no airships crossing the skies. Without quicksteel, Maxim couldn’t save the people he does. Without burnsteel, Noricum would still be burning wood and coal for every steam engine.

These three metals are the legacy of Thule, the remnant of divine warfare, and the foundation of everything Maxim uses to hunt monsters in a world that’s slowly rediscovering its own lost potential.

Why the Stormcrows Keep Secrets

For a long time, the Stormcrows didn’t advertise the existence of these metals too widely. The knowledge was dangerous. Burnsteel in the wrong hands could level cities. Quicksteel experiments gone wrong created monsters. And floatsteel technology could shift the balance of power between nations.

But that’s changing. The Stormcrows are sharing some of their Thulean knowledge to advance steam power, medicine, and airship design throughout Noricum. They’re trying to rebuild trust after the Empress Inquisitor’s reign of terror. And they’re accepting that they can’t keep these secrets forever; not if they want their knowledge to survive beyond their dying bloodline.

Maxim represents this new generation of Stormcrows: willing to work with mundane humans, willing to share knowledge when it serves the greater good, and willing to trust that not everyone will misuse what they’re taught.

Want to see these metals in action? Check out the Hunter Healer King trilogy, where floatsteel carries Maxim and Chloe above the clouds, quicksteel saves lives that would be lost, and burnsteel powers the engines of a changing world.

Read the Hunter Healer King Trilogy today!