Cordium

Cordium extraction facilities
Part of	Cascadia Pacific Federation Magadan Sawaiiki
Designation	Unknown
Commander(s)	Facility chiefs
Members	Staff engineers
Equipment/Vehicle	Neutralizing agents
Deployment	Unknown
Base AI HP	10 (container) 30 (extractor/chimney) 55 (refinery)
Creation	Unknown

Cordium is a valuable natural resource that emerged on Earth following the Calamity, used as an energy and fuel source that can also be weaponized.

Characteristics

Cordium is a crystalline compound produced in Earth's deep mantle, a mixture of dielectric materials, native metals, and anomalous compositions still poorly understood over 400 years later. They exist in the form of dangerously reactive rocks and formations, somehow, as if supernaturally, powering abandoned surviving facilities all on their own according to various tales in the immediate post-apocalypse. The element can emit radiative smog which in large amounts obscures thermal vision. On contact with white phosphorus munitions and material, cordium in gaseous form makes a potent compound.

Cordium can be extracted from geothermal and magma fields, most efficiently using derivations of deep oil drilling such as lava-based extractors, but is difficult and dangerous to mine due to its volatile nature. For instance, a mishandled cordium shipment led to the destruction of the major Cascadian city of Solstitium, killing thousands and displacing countless more, leading to strict mining regulations imposed by both the Pacific Federation and Cascadia. The lost city became inhospitable for 40 years, the Cascadian National Guard closing off the city. The above regulations lead to methods such as reducing refinery conduit pressure, inert cordium being secured inside containers, and cordium neutralizer agents being developed and dumped into pipelines. These have the effect of stalling cordium production for an implicitly long time, however.

Within transport, the compound's overall flow can be altered at will, so as to demonstrate its ability to power machines significantly larger than itself while taking long to die out as an energy source. Partly as a consequence, it is difficult and perhaps impractical to reduce its size to household or personal use. Furthermore, attempts to create a synthetic supply along with (until at least AC 432) further weaponization have been failures, being limited to railgun slugs. Below is the three-part generation method:

• The cordium is placed/absorbed in a secure engine.
• A catalyst is introduced into the cordium, provoking a reaction which is contained by the engine.
• The cascade takes short time to settle into safer and manageable levels.

The destruction of geothermal facilities processing cordium peaks geothermal signatures, creating signatures visible from miles away, to the extent of climate change and soil erosion that disrupts permafrost. For this, crucial warning should be taken to the reaction itself, which if left uncontrolled (i.e. outside an engine) will ignite the cordium without restraint. However, up until the Prospero Disaster, this kind of active reaction was merely a theory explaining away the destruction caused by the Calamity. Cordium reacting on itself and other geothermal deposits can cause devastating tectonic disasters that can alter weather in areas to an uninhabitable degree; anomalous storms scorching the earth underneath to massive earthquakes of ancient history (that can cover over half a continent) are part of them.

The Federation issues safety masks rated a minimum Level-6 for weather conditions containing high traces of cordium. In the event of latent atmospheric reaction, the population of the affected areas is advised to take indoor shelter as soon as possible, and it is believed inactive geothermal hotspots can be triggered by traffic contamination and randomly igniting inert cordium deposits.

History

Slim historical data states the uncovering of cordium caused a global tectonic disaster which erased human civilization from existence, the mineral itself only being repurposed for the species' use by the start of the After Calamity Era. The first new AC Era relationships were based around geothermal energy producers who also possess cordium reserves. Relatably, the material made its way to human vocabulary; "cordium-lined skull" is a casual insult to a person's tact or intelligence.

Hundreds of years passed for cordium to receive defining discoveries, either through new transportation methods, disasters/accidents, or deliberate weaponization. During the Cascadian Conflict, the Federation was successful in weaponizing cordium to the next stage, but its deployment resulted in the Cascadian Calamity Event and the Presidian Disaster.

Behind the scenes

Cordium was originally named "cordite." It was changed after while Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, Matthew Nguyen discovered the existence of a weapon named such.

On part of the narrative position of cordium, Nguyen said it sets the World on Fire's tone by existing as the fantasy element backdrop.

Trivia

"Cordium" is likely a play on corium, a highly radioactive substance produced as a result of a nuclear reactor meltdown. Both also contain fuel and can be obtained from cataclysmic events.