Randomish Metal Thoughts

[HavokBlue]

I feel like the city-states probably have reasonable amounts of metal in storage, considering they can afford to use it on things like doorbells and dragon statues.

[Patuk]

I feel like the real power behind either city-state is supernatural anyway, and that metal is largely inconsequential in the end.

[Fujikoma]

I feel like the real power behind either city-state is supernatural anyway, and that metal is largely inconsequential in the end.

Old stories and legends often impart supernatural-negating attributes to certain metals.

[Erythil]

I personally would like to see metal be considerably more common than it is now -- I'd like to see probably at least a half-dozen metal objects of varying rarity circulating through the game world at any given time.  Their very existence creates interesting conflict and plot.

Rarity is good, but I've seen a non-ring metal item once EVER and it was on a Valika NPC.  It seems a little silly when a precious metal like silver is common enough that it can be found to adorn the fingers of a few thousand people, but common metals like copper and bronze seem not to exist at all.


Also, let's not forget that if a templar ruins everyone's party by confiscating all of it, it's actually not too hard to kill templar.

Or the staff can use their scarier NPC templar to confiscate it right back.

[Patuk]

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, templars and nobles and such are likely to just stuff their rarities in a cabinet o' oddments. Killing the meanie adult who took away your toys just means it's gonna gather more dust.

[RogueGunslinger]

Maybe spineless northern Templars would.

[Patuk]

RogueGunslinger! There is a time and a place for everything, and this is neither!

/professoroak

[Molten Heart]

I think the staff reasoning behind not adding more unique shit to the game went that every such item invariably ends up gathering dust in a noble's cabinet o' oddities anyway.

Or so I've been told. It does sound plausible.

It'd stand to reason that noble's cabinets aren't impervious to theft.

[Patuk]

An object is a safer storage space than any locked apartment or even ten layers of bags, for the sheer reason that alas, steal does not work when getting items from containers. They may as well be banished into oblivion

[RogueGunslinger]

An object is a safer storage space than any locked apartment or even ten layers of bags, for the sheer reason that alas, steal does not work when getting items from containers. They may as well be banished into oblivion

Except more classes get slight of hand than get steal.

[Patuk]

What kind of elves do you play, RGS?

[genmaicha]

Expecting every single noble ever has at least one metal ring, considering the number of nobles, there's a lot of damn metal going around, from my point of view.

I had a sibling who owned gold, a long time ago. I was dead by that point but it was pretty cool. I bet he was the first Stormer to own gold and the security to keep it in real life years. You hear about people having thousands of sids in the bank, droves of important friends, twenty salt worm hides in their apartment, a badass bastard sword shaped like a dragon, but you don't hear of them owning metal, and I like how that is.

[MeTekillot]

I wouldn't doubt that some nobles are probably wearing the rings of other, dead nobles.

[little chicken woman]

Whatever happened to that steel dagger that was being given out as a contest prize in Tuluk, I wonder.

[HavokBlue]

I think I remember some largely useless metal objects relatively easily available in a location just about any PC could access with enough time and effort a few years ago.

I wonder what happened to them.

[Molten Heart]

I wouldn't doubt that some nobles are probably wearing the rings of other, dead nobles.

That's where gypsies and raiders and other bad guy types get their metal rings. But are they the bad guys or the good guys?

[Kol]

Muk Utep has a pretty bad-ass sword.

I think getting metal items IG is possible, it just takes a long time to achieve.

So, according to timescale and weaponry, Zalanthas should look something like this...
                                      ||
                                      V
Stone age----------------------copper age------------------iron age-------------steel---------------modern

We should be around where the arrow is, or just after. That's not to say that metal doesn't exist, or is incredibly rare, but as modern day people, we know you have to heat that funny looking rock to extract the metals inside. Your average zalanthian will look at that rock and see it as a lower quality piece of jasper, or a low quality piece of sandstone hardly worth noticing.

Unless you're familiar with ores, smelting, and the forming of ingots, you're incredibly likely to overlook them as just lower quality rocks of the kind you're looking for. Because you've never been in a position to learn about those things.

I'm terrible with history, I can hardly remember what I did yesterday, let alone what I was taught 11+ years ago, but I imagine the copper age didn't happen overnight, and in fact took several hundred years before it was widespread enough that it could be called an age. By which point, someone else had figured out how to make steel. During all of these ages, you could probably find someone who could craft tougher and more durable materials, but their knowledge would be closely guarded, and they'd b treated well enough that they wouldn't want to share their knowledge outside of accepted channels.

[HavokBlue]

There's evidently enough metal for Salarr to maintain crafters who know how to work it into weapons/armor, or for Allanak to be skilled enough to make a giant dragon.

[Fujikoma]

Making a sword that's effective that doesn't fall apart in combat actually takes a bit of advancement, or so I've heard. Axes, clubs, and knives, on the other hand...

[Zoan]

I once went probably a whole year trying to make a metal thing out of a metal thing. Staff threw roadblocks in my way (in a good, fun way in which I realize I should have appreciated more - I didn't fully understand what was happening until retrospect) but it eventually happened. When I was stored.

BUT I DID IT.

[valeria]

The thing with comparing Zalanthan technology to Earth ages is that the technology levels don't match up.  Zalanthas basically has a high level of social technology (extensive bureaucracy and centralized government) and agricultural technology (large-scale surplus plantation farming) without an appropriate level of hardware.  Probably because of magick.  So I'm not sure I'd call Zalanthas "stone age" because, with the except of stone tools, it doesn't have any other hallmarks of the stone age.

[BadSkeelz]

Zalanthas is also post-apocalyptic. Technology has regressed and not evenly. Combine that with magick doing things like sucking the resources out of the land, yeah, mapping where Zalantahs "should" be is difficult.

The best you can do is look at what we actually have, and try and thing what we can do with that.