Bay 12 Games Forum

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Originally posted by mickel:
<STRONG>Elfwood? Isn't that an Internet site? Ambrium? Ambra? Ironsap? Elvensap... Tree-steel... Faerysteel... Hmm.</STRONG>

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Give me an elvish sounding word for "wet steel".

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Originally posted by Solara:
<STRONG>Seeing a lot of great ideas here so far, but I've got to say I'd actually prefer the material (whatever name is eventually decided on) to be represented by orange instead of teal. Simply because it's a little more similar to gold and brown and easier to accept as some sort of magical treesap.</STRONG>

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If we go with the idea of mithral having multiple states it would be a simple matter to give each state a different colour. Most tree ambers are orange or yellow in colour so orange for the springy mithral used to make armour and such would work. For mithril imbued wood, teal would make the most sense for sure, it has a more "organic" feel to it. That still leaves out the superhard "metallic" state, but i still like to think of that one as teal.

This is already done in-game. Copper ore is green but of course, copper bars are not.

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Originally posted by Goran:
<STRONG>Elves and mithril dont mix.

Give elves a specially treated wood.</STRONG>

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Erhm, didnt you read the post? Thats exactly what we did. Wood laced with mithral, which is not a shiny valuable metal but a teal coloured "super amber".

[ September 06, 2007: Message edited by: Tamren ]

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Originally posted by Nick K:
<STRONG>I'm not arguing directly with your idea in that point, but with the use of the name mithril.</STRONG>

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Okay then from now on lets call it "Mithral" instead, a better name might even pop up later.

You guys just came up with the idea of mithral as a type of amber, which is awesome! And it makes perfect sense as well. The process would go like this:
1. A tree takes root over ground laced with gold/silver and iron ore.
2. The tree (and possibly plants too) would leech the minerals out of the soil. Convert that into mithral which at this stage flows around the tree like blood cells.
3. As the tree gets older these particles of mithral build up and harden inside the tree and form "veins" or "blood vessels" of mithral in all parts of the tree.
4. The leaves that are shed every year from the tree fall to the ground and carry a small amount of mithral with them, which is them mixed into the soil to form deposits. Same goes for branches.

What you end up with is a tree with a mithral skeleton, this does not harm the tree in any way and makes it very strong.

This "skeleton" would explain why elven tree houses are so strong and why elven wood is so strong as well. Most of it is laced with mithril! Cool huh?  

The sum of the ideas we have come up here makes perfect sense and is afaik completetly unique!
1. For furniture and other stuff, elves would use plain wood which they presumably obtain without harming the tree.
2. For weapons and armour elves would mithral laced wood which would make comparable gear to the iron equipment of other races.
3. To gear up elven elites the elves would distill large quantities of mithral and use it to make solid "metal" armour.

Now, that does leave a few questions.
1. How is mithril shaped and formed, and in what category do we put it? In this i think mithril should have metallic properties:
a. It should have a state where it is liquid and can be molded into shape.
b. It should have a "soft" shape where it can be shaped and formed.
c. And of course it has a superhard state where it can be presumably used as a weapon, sharpened and whatnot.
For convenience, lets just call refined mithral a "metal". Bars of it would go into metal stockpiles and be used by smithing workshops. Mithril laced wood on the other hand would end up at the wood stockpile and be shaped at the boyers/carpenters table. Anything else would only add confusion.

2. What colour is mithral? We are aiming to break the mold as mentioned earlier. So it should definitly not be bright silver. We also need to make sure its colour is unique in the actual game. Gold/silver/white/cyan and such are already taken. Personally id pick navy blue, but adamantine is cyan and that is too similar. Yellow is also too similar to gold.

That leaves us with: Purple, Red, Orange, Bright or dark green, Teal and whatever else you guys can think up. Personally i would pick Teal because it fits with the forest theme and i like the colour period  

 

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Originally posted by mickel:
<STRONG>Fullers actually increase the strength of the blade as well, due to some distribution of tension thing that goes over my head...</STRONG>

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The reason it works that way is the fullers shape the sword into something that vaguely resembles an I-beam. This changes the force applied from shearing to compression/tension. Or something like that, my physics is rusty.

 

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Originally posted by Axe of Agor:
<STRONG>In all actuality excess weight of a weapon is something to be avoided, not sought after. </STRONG>

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For most weapons yeah, the edge is the most important part of slashing and stabbing weapons. I was thinking more of axes, halberds, maces and other such "can openers". For those kinds of weapons the edge (if it has one at all) is much less important. The focus shifts towards applying sheer force, most of the time concentrating it somehow like an ax blade or a spiked mace. Lighter materials would still work for this but more of the force would have to come from the user.

[ September 03, 2007: Message edited by: Tamren ]

The light weight is still a disadvantage for msot weapons. To apply force you need mass to back it up. A piece of string will not have the same effect as a steel chain if you hit something with both.

It also becomes a factor when parrying. A wooden stick can parry another wooden stick. But it would not have enough mass to deflect a tire iron and would probably break anyway.

If the material will not help you apply force with its inherent potential energy, the user will have to pick up the slack. Meaning it is easier to drive nails using a lead hammer than it would be to use a mithril one.

All of these factors would probably not need to be dealt with unless combat gets a significant reqrite.

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Originally posted by Azeral:
<STRONG>It's a done-to-death fantasy cliche, we already have our better-than-steel magical metal, and the whole 'mithril grows on trees' idea is an absurd amount of shoehorning to try to work it in.</STRONG>

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Magical stuff growing on trees is a cliche. Mithril harvested from "tree blood" is not. This is a fantasy game, get over it. We are in no way obliged to explain or justify anything. In fact that is the whole point.

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Originally posted by Azeral:
<STRONG> it was already argued that elves would have great difficulty forging it - no, the fact that they have 'plenty of dead wood to power their forges' would not help. You don't smith things over a campfire, you don't smith things in wooden buildings (DF elves have shown no talents for masonry, either)
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Wrong. It is safe to assume that any elf stupid enough to light a fire in a wooden house has been burned from the gene pool. Darwin is never wrong. I have no experience whatsoever at bricklaying or masonry but I can still pile a circle of stones around a campfire to stop the sparks from escaping.

You do not need a forge and bellows to forge metal. People have done it with less for millenia. You do not even need wood or charcoal. There are types of coal that can be dug out of bogs which the DF landscape is hardly lacking.

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Originally posted by Azeral:
<STRONG>you don't smith things without plenty of metal already for tools, and you don't learn even the very basics of smithing without something that isn't a magical ubermetal to smith.</STRONG>

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Stone can be used to work metal. Blacksmiths preffered metal anvils because they had a different "bounce" whatever that means. Your forgetting that the elves in DF live in a social landscape. All the races have regular contact and trade with each other. Its easy to imagine that one or two elves would decide to learn metalsmithing.

Because of the current trade mechanics only the humans demand anything, and you do not even have to fill those orders. Later on i would imagine the elves would trade for metal from you in large quanities. Seeing as you have a lot and they have a need. Basic supply and demand.

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Originally posted by Azeral:
<STRONG> As for growing the mithril trees into weapon shapes...that is even more outlandish.</STRONG>

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So is making drawbridges out of nothing but round boulders  . Oh wait...

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Originally posted by Azeral:
<STRONG>It sounds to me as if people are working from the assumption that mithril should be in-game and are struggling to find even the most convoluted solutions and justifications for it, rather than starting with the basic question, "Should we add mithril?"</STRONG>

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Why not? Give me a good reason why we should not add mithril to the game. Other than it sounds like a stupid idea to you. We already asked that question, I said yes.

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Originally posted by Solara:
<STRONG>Funny it sounds to me like people are just tossing around some interesting ideas that might balance out the elves...I admit I don't really understand why it's a such a sensitive subject for you.</STRONG>

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Put it this way. A game you win every time will get boring instantly. Right now elves are only powerful because they have a lot of archers and missiles are too powerful. Eventually that will change and it will be steel and adamantine versus wood. Now I have nothing against burning elf villages to the ground, but it would be more fun if i have to attack them armed to the teeth instead of wearing bandit masks and throwing torches.

This way, it will be steel and adamantine versus mithril and possibly other metals. Bigger fight and at the end you get to keep the mithril! Whats not to like!

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Originally posted by irmo:
<STRONG>No, what it requires is a giant source of electrical power.</STRONG>

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If we attached a lightning rod to a pile of aluminium ore, what would happen?  

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Originally posted by Vendetta:
<STRONG>There are small amounts of naturally occurring metallic aluminium, usually found in volcanic mud, but rather than a functional metal at these tech levels it should be a precious metal more expensive than platinum, (as it was on Earth until the mid 19th century).</STRONG>

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DF could easily have volcanos but having them erupt would take even more code than the tornado i would say. Awesome as that would be

Even if its tiny amounts that would be fine. Im all for alternate ways of procuring materials. I gave the example of bog coal but we could also pan for gold!

[ August 30, 2007: Message edited by: Tamren ]

Well for one thing elves live IN a forest, so there is a lot of dead wood around whenever a storm knocks some down. It should be enough for smithing a few items every now and then if they do not use it for anything else. Keep in mind mithril is supposedly a rare metal so you would not see it on every elf or in every elf town.

Seeing as burning stuff to create heat is the only way to make stuff out of metal, elves seem to let it pass. If you trade metal items to the elves they will not complain even though you used charcoal to make them.

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Originally posted by berent:
[QB] Mithril as defined by tolkien is true silver harder than steel and lighter, thats why i suggested an electrum and steel alloy or as the suggestion came up Perhaps a certain tree could absord mithril throught their roots, naturally the dwarves would say screw tree farming and dig down to the source. The tree serving as a marker or hint of mithril for them.[QB]

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The problem is melting electrum and steel together would just weaken the steel. If mithril in DF could be dug out of the ground in large ore veins it would be just like any other metal. There has to be some special process to it, thats where the tree comes in.

Electrum + steel would be the base formula. You would need ground that has all 3 ores present in it. The tree would leech the minerals out of the ground and slowly convert it into mithril. The mithril would eventually form large veins inside the tree. This could explain how elven trees are so strong.

Small deposits of mithril are present in shed branches and leaves. Since the tree sheds branches year round and all of its leaves annually, this could add up to a considerable mithril supply as some trees can reach massive size. If the mithril is not harvested, it simply mixes into the dead matter at the base of the tree and forms large deposits under and around the tree roots.

So how does that sound? It gives the elves a good material to work with, making them an actual challenge instead of a snooty annoyance.

While elves would get mithril the "organic" way, dwarves would up production as much as they could. This would mean grinding up the required ore in balanced quantities and seeding the soil with it. The mithril would build up and then be harvested by cutting down and burning the tree in a charcoal furnace, what you end up is a lot of charcoal, some ash and a puddle of mithril.