"Oh, yeah, happy to geek out a bit. You just tell me if I've gone too far." Infodump as distraction is a technique she's very familiar with. She can sympathize with Ness's need for it; Cosima herself isn't entirely thrilled with buried beneath Nevarra with no immediate prospect for a way out when she looks at that aspect of the situation head-on. (At least they've found some water, at this point.)
"Right, so. Raw lyrium is really dangerous for anyone who's not a dwarf. My understanding is that it's dangerous for dwarves too, especially if they're not trained to mine it, but they have a level of natural resistance. So unless you're inside a mountain, you're only ever going to encounter it in some sort of refined state. It can be worked into enchanted weapons or items, of course. Mages can use potions of it to enter the Fade — that's how Harrowings worked in the Circles, as far as I understand. And templars ingest a different form to be able to disrupt magic."
"This stuff..." A brief, low whistle as she glances at the vein nearest them. "We'd worked out that lyrium is kind of alive, for lack of a better word and without getting into the nitty gritty of defining what life is. But it's more alive than, like, granite. That's part of why you can get red lyrium; it gets blighted. But knowing it's alive, seeing the evidence in samples ... it's different from seeing it this way. It makes you wonder whether the pulse is moving something, the way our pulse moves our blood, or if it's something else."
no subject
"Right, so. Raw lyrium is really dangerous for anyone who's not a dwarf. My understanding is that it's dangerous for dwarves too, especially if they're not trained to mine it, but they have a level of natural resistance. So unless you're inside a mountain, you're only ever going to encounter it in some sort of refined state. It can be worked into enchanted weapons or items, of course. Mages can use potions of it to enter the Fade — that's how Harrowings worked in the Circles, as far as I understand. And templars ingest a different form to be able to disrupt magic."
"This stuff..." A brief, low whistle as she glances at the vein nearest them. "We'd worked out that lyrium is kind of alive, for lack of a better word and without getting into the nitty gritty of defining what life is. But it's more alive than, like, granite. That's part of why you can get red lyrium; it gets blighted. But knowing it's alive, seeing the evidence in samples ... it's different from seeing it this way. It makes you wonder whether the pulse is moving something, the way our pulse moves our blood, or if it's something else."