A/N: Random conversation in the discord about materials caught my eye after work, so I figured maybe a break from bad things for Mr. Valthez would be in order, no?

Lieutenant Valthez stood at attention as Admiral Vandefar flipped through the report on her desk, trying his very best not to fidget. After a few seconds, her lips curved very faintly. "Sit down, Lieutenant."

He did so, glancing at the rack of heavy pistols on the wall before fixing his gaze on his commanding officer. She continued to page through the report on the padd, the faint smile gone now. "There's a few things that aren't clear in this analysis, especially regarding the material strength of the recovered fragments of hull material from the GOI-545 wreck."

Valthez nodded slowly. "Yes, ma'am. I was supposed to meet with Colonel Sahu to discuss that, but she's still in recovery...and the other engineers were shipped out with the mission you sent Captain Holden and his team on, studying that possible Prothean scanner array."

Vandefar's lips pursed. "Ah. An oversight. Well, there isn't much to be done. The material is anomalous, basically, from what you have recorded here. The lattice of energy transfer points on the inside is a curious functionality, as are the incredibly dense networks of graviton nodes. Do you have any theories as to the purpose of such, Lieutenant?"

Valthez sighed. "The only thing that I can fit needing that much gravity adjustment is to assume the GOI-545 material we have is just an outer coating, designed to contain and adjust to a thin layer of degenerate material – neutronium, most likely. It would explain why despite their vast speed the Reaper we saw at the Battle of the Citadel wasn't nimble...and why almost none of our weapons did anything to it until our own degenerate matter warheads blasted a hole through it."

She nodded, a pleased expression flickering across the aged features. "Good. That was my own conclusion as well. It raises a great many concerns about how advanced their graviton control – and energy production – is to use neutronium as armor, a concept so outlandish you only see it in truly bad science fiction."

She shut off the padd. "Our own material science, sadly, is no where up to snuff. We'll see what we find out from the latest HERMES mission – they found something in the Jeremiah System that my niece is reporting is of startling antiquity and possible pre-Pentafar in origin."

For what had to be the hundredth time, Valthez thanked Jesus and Victor silently for not dropping him into the HERMES workgroup, a pack of scientists and soldiers dispatched to conduct shady smash-and-grabs from xenoarchological sites before the Citadel – or in some cases, the proper Systems Alliance authorities – could get onsite. Sooner or later that group was going to run into something ugly and come back in body bags, or more likely, as a vague energy reading.

He shrugged, instead of sharing his thoughts. "Material science wasn't my strong point, but I've had to pick up a lot in the past few months. That being said, the Dahaka-class Reapers are a bit too dangerous to poke around in for long. Still better than dealing with the geth, though."

She eyed the scar over his left eye and chuckled. "No doubt." She placed the padd to one side. "For now, go ahead and prep a formal report for myself and the High Lords – Reginald will most likely want to have a spectrography analysis done, which is about as useful as harsh language against it, but ours isn't to question but obey."

He rose and saluted. "Yes, ma'am. I can have it done by the end of the week."

She nodded. "Very good. You may want to review the Engineering Guide on the existing material science language and technologies to phrase it in a similar manner. Dismissed."

He left, entering his own tiny office a few minutes later. Little more than an oversized closet, it had what he needed – desk, chair, multifunction scan array, microprocessor stack and dataterminal, and commlink with display flimsi.

He pulled up the SA Engineering Guide on his main screen and scrolled through it to the chapter on materials.

MATERIALS AND CONSTRUCTION CONSIDERATIONS:

The Systems Alliance has four 'tiers' of construction and material classifications.

Unprocessed materials are basically raw or single-forged substances. Basic steel, concrete, aluminum, glass, plastics, etc. No real process has been conducted to harden, toughen or temper these materials.

Forged Materials have been processed either by duraforging or armorforging. These processes are described below, but basically they are one step 'up' from a baseline. These materials possess similar chemical and physical traits to the baseline, but have much higher melting temperatures and typically are anywhere from two to four times as strong/tough and half as brittle.

Augmented Materials have been remade (resmelted/arraigned) using a molecular furnace with laser-cut folding and the use of specialized mass effect fields to remove impurities and compress the metal. Both the SA standard 'battle steel' and the salarian 'laser steel' are examples of these materials, as is the ultra high end Silaris. All augmented materials tend to be anywhere from five to fifteen or even twenty times stronger, more flexible, and less brittle than baseline materials and almost all of them are simply too hard and tough to take temperature damage.

Anomalous class materials are those created by poorly understood processes, or by machinery we can operate but not replicate. The only known types of anomalous materials in wide use are Prothean Steelweave and Inusannon smart-metal – the latter only found in power stars. Anomalous materials have properties that are poorly understood, such as steelweave being utterly non-conductive, that may fly in the face of our understanding of material science or in some cases, basic physics.

Most of the Systems Alliance's building, construction and armor materials fall into the unprocessed and forged categories.

UNPROCESSED MATERIAL CONSIDERATIONS:

The stock material base for most Alliance construction is omni-gel reinforced concrete, High-Strength Low Alloy steel (HSLA), 10-88 watered steel, and conventional rebar. Rare components can include omni-processed scrap, various plastics, and cement.

Unprocessed materials are usually chosen for tensile and stress strength, not combat or armor hardness. The frameworks of colony towers, for example, use alloyed 10-88 and 15N20 for flexibility in seismic zones, while hotter worlds use omni-bricks from sludge rather than more sturdy materials that retain too much heat.

As such, an officer needs to take into consideration the construction qualities of a settlement or building before staging or operating nearby.

FORGED MATERALS PROCESSES:

There are several different kinds of forging processes. Traditionally, forging is the manufacturing process of hammering, pressing or rolling metal into shape. This is either delivered from a hammer, press or die.

Modern forging techniques still do this, but additional techniques have come into play with the advent of learning advanced material sciences after the First Contact War. Additionally, some new materials such as ceramics, plastics, and even powdered mixes such as concrete can also be affected by these 'forging' processes.

The two processes that the Alliance tends to use and has mastered to a high degree of success are Dura-forge Restructuring and Armorforge Compression.

Dura-forge is a process created initially by the Palavanus of the Turian Hierarchy and exported far and wide. The dura-forge process is either a three or four step method, depending on the materials. First, materials put into a nanotech processing chamber, where millions of microscopic channels are created throughout the material in a heptagonic pattern in three dimensions. For concrete, plastic, and other non-metallic substances, an additional step is added, using nanotech to 'bond' the surface of the material very tightly. The nanotech then injects formulated stiffening and shock absorbing omnigel into the channels, and this is heated and allowed to harden. Finally, the material is 'glazed' with an omnigel coating that is heat and impact resistant.

Dura-forging is very common in making reinforced building materials of a pre-designed shape. Slabs, beams, and sheets of material can be easily processed by this method, although it does not work as well with curves or organic materials (coral, wood, resin, or bone).

Armorforging, on the other hand, was created by the asari as a precursor to more advanced techniques. Armorforging involves using mass effect fields and heat to liquefy metals and press them into hyperthin sheets, sandwiched between omnigel binding layers that have channels for stress control. Ten layers can be sandwiched at a time,and then these are compressed a second time under almost ten thousand gravities of force and magnetic compression until the materials surface is bonded together at an atomic level.

Armorforged materials are extremely impact and shock resistant and, by their nature, also have immense heat resistance to both conventional thermal radiation and plasma. However, such materials have to be shaped at creation, and cannot be reshaped after forge-casting. Additionally, this process requires immense amounts of energy and special equipment.

FORGED MATERALS CONSIDERATIONS:

The various kinds of materials are:

Duraplast: Duraplast are plastics that are processed in dura-forging. Typically a dark black or grey coloration, duraplast is a structural and support component with good flexibility and excellent tensile and flexile strength, but poor resistance to high heat. Duraplast is notable for 'flaking' and not shattering or splintering when destroyed, which is why most Alliance and civilian ships use duraplast for interior paneling. Cheap civilian body armors are usually a mixture of ballistic cloth and duraplast. Such armor is good only at repelling civilian or light pistol rounds – an Avenger rifle will go right through it.

Durasteel: Durasteel is typically high-strength steel alloys, processed via the dura-forge method. As with duraplast, the process darkens the steel to a very dark gray. Durasteel is extremely hard, with even low grade products having over 1800 MPa, and some of the more highly processed variants exhibiting an MPa of over 2200, over four times stronger than most steels. Durasteel is mostly utilized in vehicle construction, spaceframes, spaceship armor bands, as well as the heavy combat plates found in more heavy personal combat armor. The base ammo block of all Alliance weapons that are not modded is a durasteel alloy of chromium steel.

Duracrete: Duracrete is the most common building material in the galaxy, produced in long sheets and pre-shaped segments by vast furnaces on dozens of industrial worlds. The aggregate in duracrete is specially formulated omnigel 'grains' in a suspension of copper, along side dura-forged asphalt layered together. Due to the structure, it can incorporate a host of features that are usually mutally exclusive, such as both corrosion resistance and plastizers, and it is flexible enough to resist most cracking from light sesmic events. However, duracrete is not good at resistance to direct damage or explosives and should be looked at as a civilian building material.

Armaplast: Armaplast was another asari invention, basically using layers of plastic instead of metal, sandwiched between honeycombed sections of thin metal 'framing elements' and with channels between the layers to stiffen them. Armaplast is slightly stronger than most case-hardened alloy steels, and more importantly due to the channels it 'crumbles' rather than splinters under heavy kinetic impacts. This makes it a good material in clear varieties for windows and cockpits as well as for reinforced interior bracing, light armor paneling, and the like. Armaplast remains, ultimately, plastic however – it will not hold up well to prolonged laser or plasma fire.

Armacrete: Created by scientists at Ashland/Eldfell five years after the FCW, Armacrete is a fortified and stronger building material than duracrete designed for use in heavy bunkers, arcologies, and other structures that require damage and environmental resistance. Similar to armaplast, armacrete is layered 'flats' of reinforced concrete with crossing micro channels of hardened omnigel, sandwiched between thin layers of chromium steel and shock absorbent graphine. Armacrete is excellent for any kind of defensive bunker's basic construction, as a foot of armacrete can resist even shots from most anti-material rifles. It it resistant to acid and corrosion, and has very high thermal resistance and resilience against temperature factors. However, it is extremely heavy, and most has to be produced in long sheets and shipped using heavy freight meaning it is not as easily to configure as duracrete.

Battle / Ballistic Steel: the most common form of armorforged materals, battle steel is sandwiched compressed layers of metals, high-strength ceramics, and shock-resistant graphine linked with stress-defraying micro-channeling that also helps disperse heat. Almost all modern battle armor, be it on ships, mechs, vehicles, or personal, use some mixture of battle steel and durasteel. Battle steel has both high flexion and tremendous cohesion and toughness, with good resistances to heat, cold, plasma, shock, and most corrosives. The drawback it the price – a section of battle steel enough to produce a set of body armor costs ten times as much as an equal volume of durasteel. It is also bulky and heavy.

AUGMENTED METAL PROCESSES:

There are really only two known processes that fall into this category – the salarian laser steel process, and the asari Silaris forging process.

Both the Turian Hierarchy and our own Alliance R&D are working to try to mimic these processes or come up with something new, with little effect so far. As such, our understandings of how these processes actually work is lacking.

Laser Steel forging uses some method of gravitic compression on regular metallic alloys along with M/AM fed furnaces with temperatures so high to reduce the metals inside to gasses, which are then rapidly recondensed using some kind of cryogenic chamber. The metals are 'cut and folded' using a VI-controlled laser cutting process that some how cuts in microscopic holes or channels which are reinforced with a lattice of chromium and molybdenum in a crystalline shape. The resulting metal, known as 'laser steel', is a dark glossy blue-black color and is both incredibly tough and hard as well as having incredible flexation – a rod of laser steel can be bent over a hundred and fifty degrees and come back to true.

The salarians have only built laser forges on Sur'kesh itself – even their core colonies do not have such. All fifteen known factories are guarded by battalions of salarian troops, STG units, Shieldbreakers, and mechs.

Silaris forging is even more draped in mystery. The asari method of Silaris production is almost completely obfuscated to us, but we can make some inferences from the material itself.

Silaris appears to be made of several stages of different transforms of materials. Based on some footage from Thessia itself, the base starting material for Silaris seems to be a kind of nacre-like film sheeting, similar to aragonite, but native we think to the Thessian seascape. It is formed of tablets of what seem to be accreted biominerals embedded into a matrix of organic polymers. The asari use gravitics and biotics to manipulate these tablets into diamonoid microstructures, laying them down in extremely thin sheets in beds of clay to stabilize them. From there, various molecules are bonded to the sheets in sequence over time, then compressed with biotics and mass effect fields in water to a degree that results in molecular interlocation.

The resulting 'raw sheet' is then moved to another nanotech facility where more processes affect the grain, shape, and bonds of the material. This means that, unlike all other materials so far, Silaris can be customized – as a building material, an armor material, a support or structural component, even as a thin sheet or film.

The main mystery is the binding polymers and the construction of the base materials, which almost look organically grown. It's not clear if the asari bond metallurgic components to whatever makes the nacre-like substances or not, and as the factories are all underneath the oceans getting a clearer picture is very difficult.

AUGMENTED METAL CONSIDERATIONS:

There are a few things to keep in mind about both types of augmented materials.

Laser Steel: Laser steel is very flexible, tough, and is dense enough to dampen shock, but unlike some other materials has no special resistances to certain hostile conditions, such as heat, plasma, acid, or corrosives.

Laser steel is only used as an armoring element – it has a rather low shearing resistance, making it unsuited to being used for building structures, and it is only a supportive element in airframes of spacecraft for this reason. The process also makes the metal completely non-magnetic, which is good for some purposes and not others.

Laser steel armor is very tough, but has one weakness. While direct temperature damage is not a concern by itself, rapid temperature fluctuations between high heat and high cold can disrupt the nano-crystal lattice that gives it so much strength. And at that point you have, basically, laminated alloy steel that is no more effective than durasteel, and much more fragile.

Silaris might as well be magic, by comparison. It is almost impossible to compromise – the material laughs off all known acids and bases, has a melting point of twice that of even hafnium carbonitride, and has more shearing, flexation and intergumentary strength than any other material known. In some ways it even rivals outright anomalous materials in an area or two.

Thus, Silaris's weaknesses are important – it is very, very heavy and it is very, very expensive. Silaris is tougher, pound for pound, than any other material, and silaris armor can take an incredible beating, but it is not indestructible. Silaris is just as resistant to anti-matter as an equal amount of balsa wood, and while it is very strong in tensile and shearing strength, sufficiently powerful anti-material rifles will crack the lattice matrix sooner or later and it will fail.

That being said, officers and engineers should look for alternative methods for neutralizing enemies with silaris armor. Most armor using silaris has it in very thin layers and it cannot cover the entire area – snipers should look for spots without coverage, and the use of acidic gas mines is helpful.

ANOMALOUS MATERIALS SUMMARY:

There are a host of various anomalous materials known to the Alliance. Some of these are workable, others are basically little more than curiosities. What they share is that the Alliance (and the Citadel star nations) have no clues how to work, create or make the substances, and they all seem to break the rules of physics and material science as we understand them.

For most purposes, all anomalous materials found in the field by standard Alliance personnel MUST be considered 'dangerous' and hostile. Upon discovery, the unit commander should contact Alliance R&D, who will route a hazardous control team to the site to pick the materials up. Under no circumstance should Alliance officers, engineers or troops attempt to move such themselves.

If forced to do so, either mechs or, preferable, penals should be used to do such.

The five most 'common' materials are:

Prothean Steelweave: This is a shiny silvery-gray metal that comes in fabric like sheets. It can be stiffened to an increidble degree by running an eezo current through it, or locked in place by heating it while doing so. It can be freely reshaped and reconfigured, but only until locked into phase. Steelweave can be made from rare Forges that have been identified, but the process itself is completely opaque. Steelweave is slightly stronger and much harder than Silaris.

Inusannon Living Metal: Almost always found in Inusannon power stars, this silvery reflective metal looks almost exactly like liquid mercury. It can be hardened into shape with specific electrical charges, and liquified back with a different one. The metal is not that tough – roughly on par with durasteel in terms of hardness and flexation – but is nearly indestructble. If a fixed shape is damaged, the metal slowly reforms and reshapes itself to that form once again. There is no known way to produce more of this material, but it is chemically and magnetically inert and has a high content of chromium and ytrrium.

Arcann Flow-metal: A pale white metal, usually found in long heavy sheets in some ruined Arcann industrial sites. Flow-metal is samed as such because it more like a programmable ferrofluid than an alloy or metallurgic component. Doing such programming requires an Arcann interface, something that is not easily found or restored to working order.

At least one pile of Flow-metal was also inhabited by an Arcann AI, which means the material is best described as mad, bad, and dangerous to mess wtih. From limited tests, flow-metal is roughly on par with steelweave in tensile strength.

Arcann Solar-Metal: a much safer material, this dark orange/yellow metal does not correspond to anything on the periodic table. Always cold to the touch, solar-metal was used primarily in Arcann solar installations. No amount of heat – even vast amounts of energy – have ever raised the temperature of this material above 4 C. When it is damaged, it seems to somehow sap ambient heat from an area to 'repair' itself.

As it is immune to heat, which includes lasers, all attempts to forge this material have failed.

Pentafar Omnimaterials: The Alliance has never encountered any of this material, but the asari and turians have on a few occasions. The material is a sort of omni-type material, that can mimic ceramics, metals, or liquids as needed on the fly. It is not entirely clear if this is a 'material' or an active collection of picotech. No known force aside from direct anti-matter application damaged it at all.

MATERIALS CONSTRUCTION CONSIDERATIONS:

Duraplast and Armaplast are good for support elements – doors, windows, light frameworks, field camp structures where combat is not expected, etc. They have the advantage of being fairly cheap and light, as well as patchable with omnigel. Be aware, however, that they are not designed for fortification or heavy combat and that armaplast in particular is very sensative to heat.

Field fortifcations should be made out of armacrete with durasteel reinforcements whereever possible. Armacrete can easily have channels dug into it for wiring and pipes, preventing such infrastructural elements from direct damage.

A plasma fuser and a bit of duracrete will make functional roads out of dirt, sand, or most tundra and grassland terrains.

Additional shrapnel casings of durasteel can increase the amount of damage and penetration frags cause by more than two hundred percent.