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How? Bargaining with spirits is the definition of Mysticism. There's no manipulation of natural forces there.

Well, not always, but sometimes you have to help the spirit get there, build a portal with shaped magic. Sometimes you're dealing with an unintelligent thing that requires a spell to control.

In order to be more useful than a mundane animal, an entity would have to be intelligent enough to take orders or too powerful to control with any spell anyway.

Ahem. Not to be a pain in the ass, but anybody who's going to vote in the Project Definitions and hasn't done so yet please do so ASAP, so I can then proceed with the update.

• Say so and Contribute
• Say so or fail to vote for a month and be allowed to come back easily
• Decision can be retconned by majority vote
• By current majority
• Edit

Anywho, I can imagine some useful critters that could require control and could get it.

To become a DS member you must announce your desire AND contribute.

To stop being a member, say so or fail to vote twice. (That is, either works, and you're out on the second missed vote.)

Decisions already taken (ex. about the natures of elves) can be changed later by a majority vote. (This is called "editing, " and not allowing it would be bloody stupid.)

Vote minimum: by current membership number

Vote options- Y/N/Edit

edited 23rd Jul '12 11:27:01 PM by IraTheSquire

I do have a wariness of the 'Edit' option, it gives an utter finality to 'No'.

Not necessarily; an idea can always be resubmitted, if properly reworked. An 'edit' would just mean that the voter would like to see that worked on soon.

Cheaper Magic Metals

Corinthiacum

A brass like metal derived from a magically treated alloy of copper with trace amounts of gold and silver. It shares properties with orichalcum and mithril both, conducting and amplifying magic, but to largely lesser degree. When magic flows through it, it thrums and glows.

Thoksha

Also known as Thunderbolt Iron, it forms naturally in places rich in iron and favored by lightning strikes. Natural lightning strikes do better then induced ones, but enough induced ones can be used in artificial manufacturing. It shares properties with orichalcum and adamant, amplifying and reinforcing magic, albeit to a lesser degree. It will display any magic power inherent to it as faux-electrical sparking.

Damascus

A steel "characterized by distinctive patterns of banding and mottling reminiscent of flowing water." The secrets of manufacturing it are being lost and attempts to recover them are being made. It shares properties with adamant and mithril, reinforcing and conducting magic. When magic is made to actively flow through it, the patterns on it will shift and move like running water.

Arc of Youth

A duplicable artifact of immense power, a work of greater bioturgic power applied to destructive causes. It's outer shell is a work of intricate wizardry and alchemy meant to compliment a mystical core. It is a casket wrought from an alloy mostly made of corinthiacum and spiked through with mithril and orichalcum as appropriate, creating a matrix of magic that magnify and shape the mystical core towards destructive purposes and safely cradle it.

The core is a newborn baby. The one small fortune is that in the deployment of the weapon, the infant is actually unharmed. When opened, usually after dropped on a city, the casket takes the bursting life of the child and amplified it over the whole city. Building are unharmed and no one immediately dies. Physically, in fact, youth and years are restored to everyone, revealing the original intent of this weapon was that of immortality. However, varying on actual age, it's only a few years up to a decade for the eldest and the horrible side effect is that it effects the mind more, regressing the subject down to an infantile state. So after that, the invading army simply marches in and deals with the degenerated populace however it pleases, after recovering the baby.

We actually know how to make Damascene steel. It's just folding iron from the Damascus region.

edited 24th Jul '12 3:36:57 PM by Exelixi

The steel exist but we have no idea how it was forged the way it was blades and items were actually made from Wootz steel, but the Damascus steel was forged in a way that made it tougher and sharper then regular wootz and that was lost to time sometime between 1750 and 1800.

edited 24th Jul '12 4:20:23 PM by Vyctorian

Ah, right. We don't have "true" Damascene swords, rather, we have better results using similar techniques.

If it came up between an original Damascus blade with a good hilt and some modern factory (even hand) forged blade, I'd put my money on the Damascus.

edited 24th Jul '12 4:24:36 PM by Vyctorian

You and everyone else who doesn't actually spend 50+ % of their free time studying swords.

Modern forging techniques produce sturdier, lighter, and all-around superior steel to anything that was around when Damascene steel was still around.

Care to recommended me a good material/technique then?

I just thought it looked cool.

Rooted fiber wood-

The rooted fiber wood is a special kind of a tree that only grows in nodes. It is a rather large tree and the tree itself as normal properties to it. It's roots however have blue to light green fibers within them which conduct magic the way metal conducts a current. The fibers are encased by the root itself which is hard and thick but can be easily pealed off.

The fibers are fragile however so the root is often taken as a whole, only very skilled druids and nature mystics can work with the material. Items made of the roots however tend to conduct magic very well, making it great for staffs and wands.

Even while the tree is still alive a spell can be shot into it and dispersed through the earth. Many theorize that it is this way as a form of defense from the sometimes volatile magic of a node.

edited 24th Jul '12 4:52:22 PM by Vyctorian

Try heat-treated high-carbon steel, which is what Albion uses for many of its designs.

For the steel?

Actually, the reason why people used to fold steel into something like Damascene steel was that back then we didn't have good means of producing high-quality steels: the steel that came out of the furnace back then had too much carbon in them. That was the reason why they folded steel with iron to decrease the carbon content. Once people learnt how to make steel properly you see that folded steel began to fall out of flavour just because properly smelted steel are just so much better. This is also why the Japanese used folded steel while the Chinese didn't: China had good quality steel and Japan didn't.

All that "this steel has been folded over 9000 times and therefore stronger" is misleading crap. Steel is steel is steel. Steel of equal quality will look the same under TEM regardless of how they are made with exactly the same microstructure because that is what give materials their mechanical properties. It is how the microstructure impedes atoms moving around that gives metals and alloys their strength.

edited 24th Jul '12 5:07:48 PM by IraTheSquire

I just thought it looked and sounded cool.

Oh, don't get me wrong, pattern-welding is gorgeous. But it's nothing special as far as steel goes.

Ira: Fechtmeister brofist?

-brofist-

TFA assemble!

edited 24th Jul '12 5:41:09 PM by IraTheSquire

I contend that making a reference to ancient unused and pretty much lost metal material with some properties and qualities blown up throw myth and hearsay in a magic metal material is still legit.