Exspheres are lifeless gemstones which, when attached to living flesh, can increase all of the wearer's abilities manifold. Ar Siance currently leads the world in research on exspheres, and controls wide swaths of underground mines to retrieve new stones.
Exspheres are dormant when first mined, and therefore must be awakened. For this reason, there are several manufacturing plants operating across the world in order to bring out the potential of each stone. Prisoners are often sent to work in the plants, and in fact are the largest employers of denera among any other industry.
Due to their parasitic nature, exspheres cannot be attached directly to the skin for risk of allowing the stone to feed on the host body's soul. In order to mitigate these effects, a mount known as a key crest must act as a barrier between the exsphere and the host.
Key crests are forged from inhibitor ore, which must be mined and processed in a special way in order to act as a proper mount for the gemstones. Once processed, a particular spell is impressed into the ore in order to fully inhibit the parasitic qualities of the exsphere. While key crests do not require magic to function, only a select few specialists in the world are capable of crafting high-quality crests, and it is the skill of the artisan which determines the strength and power the crest holds.
Without a key crest mount, exspheres will slowly bond with the host's soul. Sudden removal of an exsphere which lacks a key crest will cause the host body's manna to go out of control due to the soul of the host being torn out of the body. This process will result in the host body morphing into a monstrous being known as an exbelua, which is a massive, deformed, mindless creature whose only instinct is survival.
An evolved form of exsphere, high exspheres allow their wearers to undergo the angel transformation, which turns the body into a near-indestructible lifeless organism that no longer requires nourishment, sleep, or other basic necessities. An angel can fly using retractable wings made from the host's manna and can use light-based magic, such as healing magic. This is one of the very few ways the lequera can utilize magic.
High exspheres also require a key crest to mitigate the parasitic effects, but the strength of the exspheres is largely too powerful for the crest, and therefore the bonding of the stones with the host body's soul will happen regardless and cannot be prevented or slowed. Because of this, the angel transformation cannot be reversed.
Chronic Angelus Crystallus Inofficium (CACI) is an extremely volatile disease which can develop from improper use of exspheres. The nominal symptom of the disease is the slow, painful crystallization of the skin, which can result in death once the disease overtakes the body's organs. In a way, the crystallization process results in the body becoming a giant exsphere, itself.
CACI is caused by a key crest interacting with an improperly created exsphere, wherein the exsphere does not undergo the full awakening process and is therefore incomplete. This creates a volatile instability within the exsphere which can lead to many side effects, including CACI. The crystallization effect is produced when the incomplete exsphere attempts to parasitize its host body and is subsequently deterred by the host's key crest. This causes a reaction that projects its essence outward in order to encompass the host's soul, as a sort of workaround the key crest's effects.
Because the crystallization is caused by the exsphere, removal of the stone will therefore halt the process, as the stone no longer has dominion over the host. However, removal will not reverse the crystallization. The only known way to cure CACI is through the use of a special key crest known as a rune crest.
An ancient weapon known only by myth. Legend says that it's capable of wiping out half a nation in a single fire of its barrel. Supposedly, the cannon concentrates massive amounts of elemental manna into a thin beam, which can then be controlled and fired at will. Though details about its construction have been lost to time, it's rumored to work by harnassing the power of summon spirits.
Spiritech is technology which employs the direct power of the summon spirits. While it is rare and largely inaccessible, it's also the most powerful technology available to date. Ar Titia has become the world leader in spiritech, and through harnassing the summon spirits' power, they've been able to bring convenience and a higher quality of life to its citizens.
A recent breakthrough in magitechnology, manna seals are a magically-aided engraving on a person's skin which binds the manna in one's body and prevents it from being used. The seal is typically applied by a second party, implanting the seal into the target's skin to bind their manna, and is often used in master-servant relationships to keep denera servants from using their magic against their masters.
A manna seal can only be removed by the person who applied it. This acts as a failsafe to prevent servants from undoing their own seals, and to prevent third parties from interfering with the magitechnology unjustly.
Once a seal is applied, it strips its target of all their magic, which renders them nearly perfectly akin to lequera in strength and power because they are no longer aided by the manna in their bodies. However, a seal cannot prevent someone with maya blood from their passive inclination toward manna. They are still long-lived and can sense the manna of others around them; they are just unable to control or manipulate their own bodily manna or the manna in the atmosphere around them.