The key ingredient to the light Elysian hulls is the organic flesh of the ship organisms. The ‘skin’ of the Lilaea and Panopteles is covered with thousands upon thousands of ultra-hard organic 'scales', overlapping and each consisting of a super-durable plate based in a regenerative base. If these plates are hit with a highly concentrated energy attack or projectile they ‘ablate’ by actually ejecting this plate, largely nullifying the force of the attack. The scales grow back fairly quickly outside of combat, meaning an Elysian ship could completely rescale itself in a little over an hour. The hull itself is also composed almost entirely of a single enormous organism, extremely tough and capable of both regenerating itself but to ‘grow’, sealing off damaged areas.