Soul Metal

The Incar, which are more commonly called Soul Metal, are one of the greatest creations from the age of dwarven magic. It was created by Nathan Truestrike during the time of the Firstborn War. Its creation directly lead to the Brothers' War and the near destruction of the dwarves. The secret for creating Soul Metal was lost with Nathan when him and his brother were killed at the start of the war.

The Soul Metal are intelligent and capable of changing its shape to fit what it wanted to do. The dwarves employed them to power and control vast machines in the dwarven lands as they can store a great deal of magical power.

Even the hope of re-creating them was lost when the dwarven god, the Earthmother Raoghnaild, tore magic away from the dwarves and drove them from her.

Age of Heroes

There has been one case of Soul Metal appearing during the Age of Heroes. An itinerant wanderer found enough of it that a dark wizard was able to activate one of the dwarven war machines and nearly destroyed a town before he was stopped. The current location of the soul metal is unknown.

What truly sets the Incar apart from all other magical creations is that it possess true life. To this end it can reproduce itself and produce viable off-spring. Nathan Truestrike proved that at his demonstration before his fellow Masters of the Forge. It takes a great deal of magical power, but each individual is able to store a great deal of magical power such that only a score of them are needed to produce a single off-spring.

Self Awareness

It is unknown if the Incar possess any sort of self-awareness. They can communicate, learn, adapt, and reproduce - but they do not appear to have the knowledge of self. Instead it seems that each individual Incar possesses some form of self-awareness only of the whole. All Incar are simply The Incar. Each Incar can produce viable offspring, but even the new offspring only think of the whole as aware.

As the Incar seem to possess only a very limited range of telepathy between each other. It is possible that their awareness of the Incar only extends to the range of their current group. An Incar on its own would just assume it is The Incar, but when it comes within range of other Incar it would believe that all are The Incar with no belief in any other.

Intelligence

An individual incar is slightly more intelligent than a dog. It can feed and care for itself and although it is more difficult, it can reproduce. Win individual incar come together and bond as The Incar its intelligence increases. A score of incar acting as The Incar are as intelligent as any sentient higher order being (human, dwarf, elf, etc.). An Incar comprised of a hundred incar could challenge the intelligence if the smartest beings on Miranda.

An incar is like a very simply machine. If there is only one then the incar must do all of the work. If there are thousands then each incar can contribute to the whole. This works because an incar that stays within The Incar can work in parallel to accomplish tasks. It can operate on many problems at once and reach a conclusion very quickly.

Reproduction

The Incar are fashioned from an alloy of Palladium, Silver, and Gold that nobody has been able to reproduce - even when the Grand Forge Masters watched Nathan make the alloy they could not duplicate his alloy. The Incar themselves can create the alloy; although it requires a great deal of magical energy for them to do so and they use their own body as a catalyst. This is how they reproduce.

When The Incar have enough magical energy they will begin to search for the necessary materials to increase The Incar. As most of an individual incar is fashioned from Palladium, The Incar must find sufficient quantities of the metal to reproduce. The remaining metals within the alloy all come from the existing Incar. When they gather enough of the metal many of the individual incar will form together, each giving magical energy and metal for the alloy. When it is done a new incar will be formed - and immediately become part of The Incar.

Death

An incar cannot truly die, but they can reach a state where they do not have a sufficient amount of magical energy to keep themselves mobile. Without enough magical energy each incar will enter a torpor state as cold-blooded animals do when they do not have enough sun. If the magical energy continues to fade then individual incar will begin absorbing other individuals so that The Incar may survive.

The only method to kill an individual incar is to cut it completely off from any source of magic. This would eventually starve the incar until it enters a complete hibernation, instead of the torpor state. Once the incar is hibernating the allow of their body would have to be destroyed - unmade in a very high heat furnace.