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Truefrost
Truefrost is neither stone nor mineral, but a magical substance created by the frost giants of the White Keep, and seldom encountered outside that domain.
It is nearly impossible for an untrained eye to distinguish from ice by sight. Touch, however, quickly reveals its nature: truefrost is far colder than ice, nearly as cold as dragonsbreath. It freezes flesh solid in an instant, and will freeze living bones hard enough to shatter within moments. Thus, creatures who would make use of truefrost and are not naturally resistant to cold must find some way of handling it safely.
This is usually managed by means of "ice lanterns," which are created by dipping a handle into a jar of liquid water, dropping the truefrost into the vessel to freeze the water solid, and breaking the jar to release the globe of ice with the handle attached (while the jar could just as easily be left intact, people who can afford truefrost generally want to display it). It can then be carried safely or hung in a cellar to provide cold storage. Ice lanterns are frequently made larger than necessary so that the exterior ice can be carved into elaborate ornamental shapes.
Outside the White Seas region, truefrost is extraordinarily rare and therefore extraordinarily expensive, particularly as a piece of it rarely lasts more than ten to thirty years.
The Imperial Court of Ardashir once held a set of ice lanterns that were considered among the greatest of the emperor's treasures, and sent delegations all the way to the White Keep to seek replacements whenever one failed. Poets of the age often drew comparisons between the journeys to replace ice lanterns and the throne's need to continually renew its power and prestige by undertaking public works, military campaigns and other demanding endeavors; when the Imperial Court was finally unable to mount that expedition and the last of the lanterns melted, historians considered it a harbinger of the empire's final decline.
In Pelos three hundred years ago, there was for several seasons a fashionable craze for hollowed ice lanterns to serve semi-frozen fruit juices at summer parties. Competition for the available supply led to several society murders, a small army of elementalists making fraudulent imitations, a minor war between two lords, and an eventual Imperial decree banning possession of truefrost without the Emperor's personal approval -- which only increased its prestige, since it came to mark Imperial favor as well as great wealth.
Other, similar, tales abound. The most prominent of them, however, is that told by all the goodly temples, who often use truefrost in their sermons as a metaphor for the way in which greed and frivolity lure the unwise into sin.
It is a poorly kept secret that the creation of truefrost requires the death of a sentient creature. The commonfolk claim that truefrost is actually the victim's dying breath, frozen into crystal, and that it lasts only so many years as the victim had left to live. The frost giants, of course, will reveal nothing of their secrets; but it has been noted that when they buy slaves from the less scrupulous traders on the White Seas, they will sometimes purchase children far too young to work or even survive in their icy castle, and that these children are never again seen alive.
Because of this, the goodly faiths argue that truefrost represents the purest form of vanity, for it puts a fashionable indulgence above the life of whoever died to create it. Seldom, if ever, is truefrost necessary to anyone's survival; it is a luxury and no more. Yet for all the priests' thundering, the market continues to demand it, and even the smallest, weakest shard on the verge of melting is worth twice its weight in gold.
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