For Steve: Cold Iron

[Markdoc]

Bits of coconut shell set in jewelry? There may be more to the story than "It's exotic." Before the discovery of the Seychelles Islands where they grow, the Coco de Mer was one of the rarest and most mysterious commodities of the Indian Ocean -- and consequently believed to possess nigh-magical powers. (The nut's resemblance to a woman's midsection probably added to its supernatural reputation.) The Wikipedia page "Legends of the Coco de Mer notes:

 

"In the Maldives, any Coco de Mer nuts that were found in the ocean or on the beaches were supposed to be given to the king, and keeping a nut for yourself or selling it could have resulted in the death penalty.[2] However, Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor was able to purchase one of these nuts for 4,000 gold florins. The Dutch Admiral Wolfert Hermanssen also received a nut as a gift for his services, from the Sultan of Bantam in 1602, for fighting the Portuguese and protecting the capital of Bantam. However, the nut that the admiral was given was missing the top part; apparently the Sultan had ordered the top of the nut to be cut off, in order not to upset the noble admiral’s modesty.[3][4] João de Barros believed that Coco de Mer possessed amazing healing powers, superior even to those of "the precious stone Bezoar".[4] In one of his books, Dr. Berthold Carl Seemann mentioned that many believed the nuts to be an antidote to all poisons.[2]"

 

There's no way of knowing without the full provenance of the jewelry, but if the shell is coco de mer it might have been amuletic, just as if it were set with a bezoar or a bit of supposed unicorn's horn.

 

Dean Shomshak

 

 Huh. I didn't know that. I knew that coconut shell was rare (and therefore prized and expensive) in the renaissance, because it had to be traded from East Africa, but I hadn't read that it was magico-medicinal: I guess that's because I never looked. Now that I do, there's lots of evidence, which explains all those gold and silver-mounted coconut cups! Thanks for that!

 

cheers, Mark

 

Edit: for those interested, you can read a quick summary online in the article Mounted Bezoar Stones, Seychelles Nuts, and Rhinoceros Horns: Decorative Objects as Antidotes in Early Modern Europe

[Christopher]

So the legendary metal out of which Elves forged incredibly light coats of mail was aluminum, extracted from ore via a secret magical process and probably alloyed with other nonferrous metals?

The one thing the modern Aluminium extraction process needs is tons of electricity (I was once told that an average plant use per day more power the whole cities use in a year).

Magic can easily produce a lot of electricity (lightning via weahter manipulation, if everything else fails).

 

Alluminium was widely used by the navies of the world due to it's lightness - until they realied it was just not durable enough to be the superstructure of a battleship, so they switched to all steel.

So in a non-magical world durability is the biggest problem. In a magical world, the right metal and process might make it into "mythril".

 

Alluminium is also very often alloyed with other metals.

 

Regarding Corosion: Actually Alluminium is super corosive - it reacts stronger with oxygen then carbon does* - but the resulting allumnium oxide is highly durable against further oxydation. It's almost like a armor against oxydation and similar environmental effects.

 

*One of the reasons it is so hard to produce, you cannot just "burn" the oxygen out via carbonsiation like with iron.

[Tom Carman]

 

I remember that! "The Dagger of Burning," from Three Hearts and Three Lions. One of my two favorite Anderson novels, along with The Broken Sword (which covers very similar subject matter).

And it had a fully opaque basket hilt. With the hilt protecting the hand and a heavy cloak protecting the face and head, it was possible for elves to use the magnesium dagger against other elves.

[Steve]

Enchanted aluminum as the famed mithral armor is an amusing concept. Perhaps it is alloyed with other things. What could you alloy aluminum with to bring it up to a decent armor strength?

[Lord Liaden]

Copper and zinc yield the strongest alloys with aluminum, rivaling high-quality steel. Aluminum has a lower melting point than steel, and is more subject to fatigue under repeated stress, so isn't substitutable under all circumstances.

 

In one of my fantasy games I used adamant, which most modern scholars believe is what the Greeks called diamond. My dwarves and cyclopes used magic furnaces to render diamond the consistency of molten glass, which they could then mold or blow, or repeatedly fold like pattern-welded steel to make weapons that wouldn't shatter due to crystal cleavage lines.

[Markdoc]

In addition, sintering aluminium at high temperatures via directional electric pulsing yields a crystalline structure that rivals high grade steel for strength but is significantly lighter: the US military is experimenting with it as a possibility for vehicle armour.

 

Cheers, Mark

[Steve]

Pure aluminum armor forged to be as strong as steel does fit the notion of mitral, but it sounds like the method described would only produce plates rather than something suitable for chainmail.

[DShomshak]

We're talking about mithril as if it were a standard feature of faerie folklore, but I'm pretty sure it's Tolkien's invention. I've never seen it in folklore; the wikipedia article doesn't mention any prior source except Heidrek's Saga. The Saga article says it contributed many names and tropes to LotR, including "a mithril shirt" -- but the translation I downloaded does not seem to include this. At least, I found nothing similar in a simple word search for "mail," "silver," "steel," "shirt," etc.

 

There's a magical shirt, but it's made of silk:

 

"Then Hjorvard went forward and he and Odd had a hard exchange of blows. And Odd’s silk shirt was so reliable that no weapon could get a grip on it, and he had a sword so good it bit mail like cloth. And he hadn’t dealt many cuts before Hjorvard fell dead."

 

Steve still might want to include mithril because players will expect it in the narrative: It wasn't part of faerie folklore before Tolkien, but it has become so.

 

Instead of technobabbling about sintered aluminum, though, I suggest simply saying, "It's magic." Perhaps the weakened faerie magic can make protective garb that's lighter and stronger than any mundane gear, but the Fae still need something genuinely damage-resistant to work upon: aluminum mail, silk, kevlar, whatever.

 

"Like a riot shield in form was the shield of Lieutenant Soames, and like them of plexiglas wrought; but chased around the edge with gold and struck with runes of power. For Soames had saved the life of the dwarf Vindalf, who made the shield in gratitude. And though clear as glass, the shield was stronger than the armor of tanks and battleships, for no weapon wrought by Man could pierce or crack it."

 

In their full power, the Fae don't worry about maintaining plausibility. Maybe take a page from Exalted's Fair Folk: armor of pure glamour. It can look like bronze or silvered steel -- or it can appear to be made of spun glass and peacock feathers, the bones of infants, or moonlight on running water.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Steve]

That's a good point, Dean. I like the example of the riot shield you give.

 

During the years when magic was stronger, glamour could be used in more ways than it can after the gates closed.

 

"Dwarves" are a form of Fae on this Earth, and I should probably go back to more pagan roots like Norse mythology for them, maybe basing them on the Dvergr.

 

Named examples from mythology like Durinn might more properly fit as the new class of beings on this Earth I've started posting about: Mythics.

[Lord Liaden]

If you're bringing in mithril, you should at least consider orichalcum.

[Steve]

Orichalcum is already part of this world. Uranium and transuranic elements experienced a spontaneous transmutation into orichalcum during the fluctuations of mana. After discovery, it is still being studied to determine its properties.

 

Meteoric iron has proven to be effective against the Unseelie, who remain closer to what they were like before than the Seelie, who descended to more mortal forms. Some Seelie still get a rash from touching it, but it doesn't burn them.