The Historical Metallurgy Manifesto

Bronze: Bronze is harder to produce than iron, the resources to make it are more rare than iron/steel. Bronze is heavily resistant to corrosion, it carries very little friction, it is a good conductor, it expands before setting making it fill the finest details within molds for sculptures, it is perhaps the perfect ‘bell’ metal, and it will not generate sparks when struck against a hard surface.

Iron: Three Types: Wrought Iron, Cast Iron, Pig Iron.

Wrought Iron This is what you think of when you think Iron. Iron heated just under the melting point to refine it. Wrought iron has some hardness, is non-brittle, is heavy, substantially susceptible to rusting, and the lack of carbon in the metal will disable any hardening due to heat treatment, so it can be hammered when hot; it is the only metal you do this with.

Cast Iron: Made from pouring molten iron ore into a mold, and allowing it to cool. This results in a high carbon content in comparison to steel or other iron alloys. This metal has a substantial amount of hardness, but is brittle. Just as well, cast iron is quite heavy. Cast irons have good fluidity, low melting point, great wear resistance, deformation resistance, oxidation resistance, and potent usage in machines. Cast Iron is honed through sawing, filing, and other techniques.

Pig Iron: Pig iron is the byproduct created when iron is smelted with a high carbon fuel, such as charcoal or coke, resulting in a wasteful state of iron. To make steel, pig iron would be remelted to rid the simple of impurities, then hammer the rest from the metal, then shape it by repeatedly heating and hammering.

Steel: Steel has an excellent strength-to-weight ratio, and stands difficult to produce, but with its main ingredient being iron, steel is very plentiful. Steel being an alloy, there are many different kinds of steel; many of these alloys play upon the amount of carbon in the blade. The higher the carbon content, the sharper the blade can be, but also more brittle. Steel can perhaps occur naturally in the Earth, but not in this usable form. Steel has a myriad of purposes away from just arms and armor.

Mithril: Properties similar to steel, it can be derived into several alloys, however, it is a particularly hard metal to work due to the high temperature required to render it workable. Even in its natural state, it is very hard, excellent strength to weight ratio, but also, able to hold a keen edge.

White Iron: Not really iron. Mithril worked into an alloy with Iron to spread the Mithril out to a larger number of weapons and armor. If used with Wrought Iron, its sturdy and heavy, if used with Cast Iron, its brittle, sharp, and heavy

Noxious Mithril: Mithril in an alloy with Bronze hardened by Arsenic treatment. You need special state of the art equipment to make it without dying from the fumes. Like White Iron, it spreads the Mithril content over a larger number of items. While weaker than White Iron, serious wounds can spread toxicity through the body.

Zinc: Called Spelter, it has a low melting point, and is hard while also brittle; not so much so as iron, but useful in harder decorative items.

Lead: A soft, but heavy metal, lead quickly rusts into its dark gray color. Lead is poisonous when it comes into contact with the bloodstream, causing a variety of maladies. It is easy to extract and smelt, soft, and easy to work, great for plumbing, and a securing fixture architecture.

Alum: Aluminum in powdered form, pre-Industrial people did not have large pieces of solid aluminum; super small pieces of aluminum worth more than gold due to rarity shows this. Usefulness in dyes, astringents, medicinal salt in a magnitude of functions, primary ingredient in the production of philospher's wool, and is able to treat items and make them more flame resistant.

Corundum: An incredibly hard mineral, occurring with varying shades, but on rare occasion occurring as a clear crystalline shape, Corundum is used as an abrasive, able to scratch almost any other mineral.

Copper: Copper is a soft, conductive, reddish metal when met in its natural state. Some of its compounds are turquoise . Copper can make lovely decorative pieces. Just as well, copper can be used in medicinal treatments.

Tin: Very rare in some places, more common in others, Tin is a primary component of pewter, the flatware of medieval society. Just as well, it can be used to provide a corrosion resistant coating on items, as well as give a pleasant luster. HOWEVER, tin can also be found containing Arsenic, which would make smelting it unpleasant.

Brass: An alloy of copper and zinc, used in decoration and low friction utility, such as doorknobs and hinges. As well, it has lovely acoustic properties, making it a go to metal for musical instruments.

Antimony: Almost the same as lead, antimony is a lighter grey metal bearing many similar qualities. It is toxic, but carries pigment in a way that allows it to be used as a cosmetic product.

Cobalt: A somewhat hard, lustrous gray metal, Cobalt is a metal used for paints, jewelry, and in glass staining (giving a particular blue color); however, it is not very practical to smelt or to derive into an alloy, for it does emit very lethal arsenic gas when smelted.

Arsenic: The Poison of Kings and the King of Poisons; this sample of metal is HIGHLY toxic and is very hard to detect. As well, it can be used to strengthen the hardness of bronze alloys, if you can develop some way to smelt it without dying from the fumes.

Bismuth: Though easily confusable with lead, antimony, and tin; Bismuth oxidizes with a slight pink tinge. Bismuth is soft, brittle, and is the metal with the greatest ability to generate a magnetic field opposite of one subjected to it. For a heavy metal, it has a remarkably low toxicity, it is used in some healing mixtures, as well as cosmetics and pigments. Bismuth can often be used as a non-toxic replacement for lead.

Silver: Soft, white, lustrous metal is often found in its native state, allowing for easy identification, and does not tarnish easily. Sterling Silver is easy to make, and gives silver enough hardness to stand the wear of life as jewelry. Just as well as this, silver is the best conductor known.

Gold: A dense, soft, lustrious, and pure metal; Gold is very stable and does not decay, as well, it occurs in its native form in the majority. In addition to its vast uses in decoration, currency, and monuments; gold is a powerful conductor, and reflects heat in the form of infrared light.

Platinum: The least reactive element, and it usually will not bond or decay; it is a dense, remarkably corrosion resistant, ductile, lustrous metal. In addition to its lovely luster and its robustness, it is exceptionally rare. Just as well, Platinum will never tarnish nor oxidize.

This seems similar, if not identical, to the thread of the same name in Olden. My issue with this is the same as it was then (although I haven't voiced it until now) - way, way too long. I respect the amount of time and effort you put into this, you're clearly very knowledgeable and passionate about the subject. But not everyone shares that. I fear that very few people will read this in its entirety, let alone recall everything it says. And the last thing I'd want is for LOOC to get cluttered with lengthy debates about the properties of various metals.

This exhaustive level of detail is only going to hinder creativity and intimidate new members. Lore should be brief, simple, and engaging. Let that be your goal when writing something like this. And don't be afraid to divert from reality a little bit. Do some fantastical metals, give them unusual properties. Approach it like writing fiction instead of writing an encyclopedia. Speaking of which, an encyclopedia is where members should go to look up needed information on real-world metals. Not Advent's lore.

My suggestion? Take your "summary" section and do some streamlining. Remove unnecessary entries, refine each sentence, make it as short and to-the-point as you possibly can. Then go from there. Don't feel like you have to include every tiny detail, that's for the more inquisitive people to research on their own (or by asking you).

I agree with Munroe entirely, and also don't forget to add special metals like Astanian White Steel, which is used to forge the weapons for their knights.

I concur with the two before me. Whilst this could help with the roleplay, extensive reading for the most part is going to hinder the ability of people to play blacksmiths due to the fear of reading the rather large thread. Also my only fear is that whilst I am sure you have written a lot of this up to be new, you may have taken some from the old universe that Olden used to run, and I would love it if we had a more diverse, different experience, not only for the returning old members of Olden but for the new people coming to Advent.

I like this, though.

As detailed as this is, it is plainly too long. It's also pretty much a direct copy-paste from the Olden forums, so I don't know how I feel about just dredging that along with us - even if it is you that originally wrote it.

Munroe put it perfectly, we're aiming to make the lore here as succinct and to the point as possible. I'd say go with his advice, and we may well have something to work with. :3

I removed the detailed entries, leaving the summarized version. I don't see a way to further streamline this, but I'm still open to suggestion. I'll also work on adding metals created by others, and maybe throwing in some I think of myself. An article like this should never truly be finished.

If I might offer my own opinion on the matter; having the detailed description of advanced elements in the roleplay for players who are deeply interested in the matter is far greater than not writing them at all. This is not to say I don't see the point of intimidating newer members, so such ideas probably belong somewhere else, in an advanced guide perhaps. A detailed guide separate from this one likely wouldn't cause any additional cluttering of LOOC than what is duly inevitable.

As for its use in Olden, I suppose I just don't see the issue. Of course having something different and unique would be lovely, but all that would really change is the format. The facts don't change unless we change the qualities of the real world. I've used this guide across many communities, though I've only ever posted it on Olden and on Advent. They are two very different things, particularly now with the removal of detailed descriptions. As long as Iron is Iron, then it all still applies. If someone else would like to rewrite the guide, and provide maintenance, then I suppose it would no longer be my place to do so.

EDIT: Also, inform me about the metals / materials I need to add; I don't know what Astanian White Steel is, nor why their knights would use it. I'll try to find it until then.

I like that the metals have been used mostly how reality dictates, but I would suggest (with a grain of salt) that they be put into a format that is more user-friendly. For instance, instead of saying that one metal is harder than another in some vague manner, you give a tangible value. Like a table with the relative hardness of all the metals according to the moh's hardness scale, but rounded to easy numbers so that similar things can be said to be equal. If steel hypothetically is as hard as bronze, they should be equally viable for the same function and don't raise much debate on the ability of some person using a steel sword to cut through a bronze sword. It just doesn't happen because they are the same (in this hypothetical situation.) However a copper sword would easily be cut through because its relative value is two lower than the given steel value. Not hard stuff. Also, puns.

To put it simply, I can and will compile all of this data, with the various information types like Carbon? Hardness? Durability? Ease to forge? Ingredient availability? ETC if asked to... The point is, a simple table is much less intimidating if everything is outlined, which leaves more to RP because numbers don't lie and can't be confused unless someone reads the table wrong. It also allows things like special properties to be the sole info for the various entries that Dom provided. If there is none, you lump things together, so iron doesn't have to be in three forms, for instance. It is just iron. This can also help to make things like mixing metals easier because you can math better. Math. Better. On top of that, you aren't jumping around looking for the relative hardness of one metal that references another metal that references another metal... You can see where I'm going with this.

TL;DR Tables with numbers for various attributes of the different metals will help keep this concise and clean. I know people don't like numbers because 'MATH BAD!' but that's something that is only to be considered for those referencing the attributes and people making new metals. If they want to make new metals, they also have a neat set of numbers to play with! Wootwoot!

And that's my 2 cookies. Cents require sense and I ain't got none.

Math!

There's a problem with what Phoenix suggested with the steel sword cutting the copper sword because it's unlikely. A hard metal can also be brittle and easily broken. A copper sword could break a sword made of a harder metal because the harder sword is more brittle. In the case you provided the copper sword would bend rather than break because it's softer.

PhoenixRhapsody wrote:

TL;DR Tables with numbers for various attributes of the different metals will help keep this concise and clean. I know people don't like numbers because 'MATH BAD!' but that's something that is only to be considered for those referencing the attributes and people making new metals. If they want to make new metals, they also have a neat set of numbers to play with! Wootwoot!

One of the things I pointed out in my post is that Advent's lore is not the place for a table of real world metals and their statistics. Players have other resources to find that information. It's unnecessary here.

I don't know if a number table would help, anyways. Look at some of the other lore entries here and use those as a guideline of how this should look. This thread is OCD enough as it is.

@Phoenix:

I personally don't like the "make a table of numbers for the different metals" idea. I think that's going so far into detail that you're missing the big picture. Simply comparing the numbers of two different metals doesn't offer you anything. You might be able to determine which metal is harder or softer, or other such properties. But there's too many variables other than just the base numbers. You'd have to account for velocity, trajectory, bio-mechanics. You'd have to go into such niggling detail with everything involved that it'd just end up being a physics simulation.
So yes, math really is bad in this case. It'd just end up over-complicating such a simple concept.


Your way of thinking too closely resembles game mechanics, which makes it feel like we're here to play a game against each-other. Remember that we're here to write a story and develop characters together, not play avatars and overpower others.


@Dominator:

Personally I think this page seems like it'd be useless, if I'm allowed to be perfectly honest.
It will either be too big, and scare people away. Or it'll be too small, and only contain a short summary as to what a metal is, which most people know already.

If someone wants to play a smith or needs information on real-world metals for other purpose, then they can easily find in-depth information about whatever metal they're interested in online. Everything from where it's found to how ancient smiths used to temper it.

What you could do, as suggested before, is rework it to feature the fictional metals that exist in Advent's universe.

As for re-using it from Olden, it just doesn't feel right. Everything else is completely original and new. It'd be like building a wall out of 99 brand new bricks and 1 old worn one that used to sit in another wall.
It simply doesn't have that new lore smell.

@Mack - I see how that can be a 'bad' thing. I do. I just suggested it because it gives something concrete to the roleplay for me to grasp. Some people have used my lack of knowledge on a subject to screw me over in the past, so I wanted the opportunity to put to rest any of those future opportunities for myself and any other people that may attempt to use the lack of specifics to their advantage. I've done it before, so I know it can happen.

If anything, numbers is comfortable for me. I don't know about you, but even if we restricted it to the mythical metals, I feel it would be better than nothing at all.

However, since my opinion has been said, I would rather like to add some metals to the list. If none of them are wanted, feel free to tell me. I'm just trying to make some helpful suggestions of things I think would give good analogues to modern objects. Like streetlights in Gildren made with ilumium, havernium, and tantras in a jar that has to be replaced once a month. Expensive, but easy to replace for the richer folk.

Orsite - A metal that is renowned for both its resemblance to orckin skin and its near immunity to magical flames or electricity. It is very dense, making for good heavy weapons, but much too heavy for good plate armor.

Dracinium - Very light, this metal is universally accepted as the best material for making chainmail beside mithril. It is also so hard to craft with due to its temperamental nature that only individuals with either a lot of money or the best of smithies work with it. It isn't rare, though. With a good eye, anyone could find it pretty easily in the mountain Estavyr is set into.

Ilumium - A metal that glows incredibly bright when exposed to a little heat. It tarnishes very rapidly when exposed to air, so it has to be kept sealed away.

Havernium - A metal with a crystalline structure, this is tantamount to natural mana in function. It isn't possible to find in large quantities in nature, but a geomancer can 'grow' it by channeling a portion of his soul into the crystal, causing it to increase in size at an incredibly slow rate. This can later be used by other magic users as a source of quickly exhaustible mana. It is mildly combustible, being quickly consumed by fires in the same way as paper.

Auras - False gold. It doesn't have any of the conductive properties of real gold, but doesn't tarnish. It also weighs less and is more brittle than real gold, making fake coins or jewelry easily identifiable when composed from this substance. When treated with an acid bath, it can make a leafing useful for making armor decorations.

Tantras - A metal that heats up when exposed to magic, this material is most commonly used to create quick fires for mages without pyromancy, who merely have to cast magic in the nearby vicinity of the metal to get it heated up. It is also really rare, only coming in small chunks no bigger than an acorn.

@Mack
By this point, it actually is 'new lore', with the edits I've made. The similarities from before have been removed, and what is in its place is an entirely reworked description of metals, with its own formatting and stylus. The only thing that largely remains the same at this point is the fact that I give credit in a quote towards the beginning. The information is the same roughly, but that's because the information doesn't change. Some sentences have been reused, as... well, they're simple sentences.

White Iron, and Noxious Mithril are roughly the same from Olden, as they are fantasy metals that -I- have designed personally before joining that community, and wished to contribute here; even so, they are still different, as I've discarded Olden aspects of Mithril in exchange for traditional Tolkienian Mithril.

@Phoenix
I don't know so much of using a 'number' system, but perhaps using the interesting meter system (that I've never learned how to do) that people use for skills might be applicable.

@Munroe
The addition of real world metals alongside the server-specific metals is just to make it a one stop shop, making it more user friendly and approachable for people who want to learn.

@Mack again
A short summary is still helpful, I suppose if too much information is a bad thing (and it can be, in terms of being overwhelming), a small amount of information is not. Just simple things like Aluminum not existing in Medieval time periods as a functional metal is a small factoid that can help someone who wants to build something. I would rather provide a small amount of something possibly helpful, than run the chance of removing everything for the sake of feeling that it might not hold sway. I'd provide an analogy, but I'm feeling a bit creatively-challenged today.

@Everyone
This suggestion seems to have roused some issues that were generally unintended. This was intended to be something informational, and constructive. I am pleased to see the detailed reviews of several users, like Mack and Phoenix; however, some of the reviews I've seen don't seem to reflect the nature of this thread. I meant to contribute something to help players, not to add some new paradigm to the roleplay.

Help me improve it, give me insight on how you feel this might succeed, as my only goal in making this was to contribute to the community and assist the admins in providing informational material to people interested.

EDIT:

An addition to that final line: If this suggestion is largely undesired, it may be removed. As per it being renovated into a mythical metals directory, or a custom / magical metal directory, that might work as well; HOWEVER, I would suggest an Administrator take the helm in making such a page, and remove this one. I can try to keep up with the additions to lore and material that people would pose, but that would be something the Administrators would be more keen on.

The page would've been easier for me to handle with being able to answer questions and provide comparison to real world metals, and allow for wordy descriptions. However, none of those seem to be desirable qualities in a page, so it might just be that this page might not be something I am capable of providing.

I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong impression. I'm not trying to berate you or degrade this thread. It's just that taking a lore page from Olden and trying to apply it to Advent is putting a square peg into a round hole. The setting, tone, and expectations are different. I think that's a big part of why this thread got off to a bad start.

Realism is important, but so is a little artistic license. The main focus is to RP and develop characters, not to debate minutiae. It's a player's responsibility to do his or her research before taking on a role that requires it. So if they want to find facts having to do with the real world, they can go online or (gasp) open a book. If they want facts about Advent's setting, that's what the lore is supposed to provide, quickly and easily.

In conclusion: If you sincerely want to give this up, that's your decision, but I would encourage you to take the advice given in this thread and not be discouraged by some of the harsher criticisms you've received.

Blue wrote:

If they want facts about Advent's setting, that's what the lore is supposed to provide, quickly and easily.

This post sums it up, truly.

I really wouldn't want you to give up if you want to write the lore on metals and the such, but it'd certainly have to be written with the intention of being concise and informative both. Writing as much as possible with much fewer words, really.

This might be repeating what's been said, but to be honest it's all that needs to be.