Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Kittenykat]

Anyways, the idea of an elven super-wood is nice but don't call it mithril. Seriously. That's only going to cause arguments about the word until the end of time.

(Ex.: In most RPGs and books I know of Mithril and Adamantine are considered seperate kinds of super-METALS. Mithril for it's resilience and flexibility, adamantine for it's indestructibility and inflexibility, granting it extreme difficulty to forge.)

A better name for an elven tree-based material would be maybe Ironwood or Yggdrasil.

[Axe of Agor]

quote:Originally posted by Tamren:
<STRONG>The light weight is still a disadvantage for msot weapons. To apply force you need mass to back it up.</STRONG>

In all actuality excess weight of a weapon is something to be avoided, not sought after. Most medieval swords weighed only a few pounds, at most; anything heavier would be all but useless in combat. You might be able to swing a heavy blade down at your enemy, but good luck using the thing to parry, or changing the direction of your swing in mid attack. It was even common practice to have long grooves embedded in swords, called "fullers", to make the blades even lighter.

In reality, the true measure of a blade's worth was how well it could hold an edge, and how much punishment it could take without breaking (hard steel could be sharpened to a finer edge, but was much more brittle than softer, duller alloys). The force from an attack came from how fast and with how much power a combatant swung his blade, not from how heavy the thing happened to be. Fifty-pound broadswords and other such monstrosities are generally only found in "Eye of Argon" type fantasy novels, and should generally be kept there, IMHO.

I don't think "mithril" has any place in Dwarf Fortress, however. Or, at least, it's nothing I'd like to see. We already have adamantine, which serves much the same purpose as mithril served in "The Lord of the Rings", and besides, I think that Tolkien's work has been ripped-off enough times in the past forty years; let us try and come up with something at least a little more original, please.   (Even elves using swords made out of "iron-wood" would be more original than mithril.  )

[mickel]

Fullers actually increase the strength of the blade as well, due to some distribution of tension thing that goes over my head...

It seems the general consensus is that whatever it is we give the elves, it should not be called "mithril" since that name is very closely connected to a particular metal of Tolkien's Middle Earth mythos.

It also seems a lot of people are loath to give the elves a super metal for various reasons, which I happen to agree with. Elves only using wood (and other plant material) is too interesting to give up.

Someone suggested tree sap and I think that's an excellent idea. Tree sap may be harvested without killing the tree (though it hurts it - rituals to beg forgiveness of the tree in this process are part of folklore in many cultures) and perhaps elven alchemists know a way to harden this to supermetal strengths?

You could imagine the elves forming clay casts, pouring the sap in, adding the reagent, and allowing it a couple of hours (days? months?) to set, and when the cast is removed - presto! Adamantium strength amber armor! (or sword, or arrowhead...)

[mickel]

quote:Originally posted by Felix the Cat:
<STRONG>
So, essentially, DF must be a rebel?
</STRONG>

No, but it's nice to have something that's not a Middle Earth/AD&D clone...

quote:<STRONG>
I dunno, but I always thought that elves are considered naturally magical because that is the role that they have always held in the mythos of magic, all the way back to the Middle Ages.</STRONG>

Naturally magical yes, but this magic is usually not very organised, and neither are the elves of folklore. Magic to elves tends to be like birdsong is to birds. It comes naturally and they don't consider it supernatural at all.

In contrast, singing to humans comes with a lot of training and not everyone can do it, but on the other hand, a properly trained human can sing anything from "The Wild Rover" to "Ein Hölles Rachen" and knock the socks off any birdsong out there.

[Axe of Agor]

quote:Originally posted by mickel:
<STRONG>It also seems a lot of people are loath to give the elves a super metal for various reasons, which I happen to agree with. Elves only using wood (and other plant material) is too interesting to give up.

Someone suggested tree sap and I think that's an excellent idea. Tree sap may be harvested without killing the tree (though it hurts it - rituals to beg forgiveness of the tree in this process are part of folklore in many cultures) and perhaps elven alchemists know a way to harden this to supermetal strengths?

You could imagine the elves forming clay casts, pouring the sap in, adding the reagent, and allowing it a couple of hours (days? months?) to set, and when the cast is removed - presto! Adamantium strength amber armor! (or sword, or arrowhead...)</STRONG>

I like the idea of moulding sap into amber armour. Lots of things could be made out of amber, like statues, weapons, gems, blocks and buildings. Sap could also have various uses on its own; elves could cultivated different kinds of sap for different reasons. For making  torches and fire there could be combustible sap; for making crafts, adhesive sap; there could be healing sap that, when put in wounds,
regenerates them. Food could also be made from sap (like maple syrup).

Other tree parts could have various uses. Wood, for an obvious example. Special kinds of wood could be as hard as steel, and could be used to make weapons and armour, as in common in many fantasy worlds. Some have suggested that elves could grow armour from trees, instead of carving it. I like this idea. Elves could grow leaves right onto a suit of wooden armour, which would allow them to more easily camouflage themselves (the leaves could also have medical properties to them, so that an injured elf can break them off and eat them to gain back a little of his strength). Perhaps things like thorns could be grown onto armour, to use in grappling.

Things grown in such a fashion could also retain some element of life to them, like a living sword of suit of armour. Living weapons and armour could possibly be sentient, and aid their wearer, but would need to be kept healthy in order to function correctly. Different types of living weapons would have different needs. Some might only need water. Others might need lots of sunlight (a trade-off could be that they can absorb solar energy and unleash it in battle). A particularly fierce living weapon might need to drink lots of blood to stay healthy (the trade-off being that it is quite a deadly weapon; but if you don't feed it enough, it could go mad and turn on you, draining you of your blood).

Living armour could change colour to conceal its wearer in battle. It could also slowly repair itself of injury, in time, as well as possibly help heal some of its wearer's injury. A suit of living armour could possibly drag an unconscious wearer to safety, or release a cloud of invigorating gas to rouse him (or a cloud of noxious gas to ward off foes).

Living items could develop loyalties to certain people. If you kill someone and put on his living armour, it could exact its revenge by strangling you.

The trade-off for having such living items is that they would take longer to manufacture than ordinary implements, and require a lot more maintenance. It might also be that such things can only be grown from certain rare and uncommon plants, that take many seasons to ripen to maturity. They could also have special weaknesses not shared by non-living items (e.g. poison wouldn't do much to hurt an inanimate spear, but it could kill a living one).

As for other plant products, pitch could lend itself to many uses. Pitch has often been used for water-proofing things. A night-black pitch (much like the Fuligin cloth from Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun") that reflects no light of any kind, could make whatever is coated with it (including living beings) invisible in the dark, blending in seamlessly with the shadows. A poisonous pitch that can be used to coat arrows, weapons, et cetera.

What of razor-sharp, dagger-like leaves? Acorn shells filled with a kind of combustible plant extract that explode when stepped on? Grenades that explode in a shower of armour-piercing pine needles? The possibilities are nearly endless, and when other non-metal substances, such as bone, fur, skins, fungus, coral, and clay are factored into the mix, I don't think that elves (or any other race for that matter) will have a hard time finding materials to make stuff out of.  

(As a side-note, I also think it would be fun if items could be made from tangible forms of immaterial realities. A sword forged from moon-beams, a spear cast from frozen fire, a cloak spun from shadows might seem surreal, but I think therein lies their appeal; and when I drive my rainbow-wrought sword down a giant's throat, I can let out a mighty cry of: "Skittles -- Taste the rainbow, bitch!")

[mickel]

quote:Originally posted by Axe of Agor:
<STRONG>
(As a side-note, I also think it would be fun if items could be made from tangible forms of immaterial realities. A sword forged from moon-beams, a spear cast from frozen fire, a cloak spun from shadows might seem surreal, but I think therein lies their appeal; and when I drive my rainbow-wrought sword down a giant's throat, I can let out a mighty cry of: "Skittles -- Taste the rainbow, bitch!")</STRONG>

Or a sword which is actually the physical manifestation of the soul of an imagined person from a city that exists only in the memories of long-dead stars. It can only be wielded by a troubled youth struggling to recover the memories of his dark past together with his band of unlikely friends, one of which is actually the princess of a faraway land in a dimension ruled by a fallen angel, genetically re-engineered by crazed scientists, another of which is a stuffed animal given life by the tears of the moon. They struggle to save the world from the ultimate dark evil of nothingness, who, it turns out, is the twin brother of the hero, who it turns out does not actually exist, except as the shadow of the evil thoughts of a lost generation of miners.  

Oh, and there has to be an engineer called Cid in there somewhere, and a fantastic vehicle of some sort that the heroes use as a mobile base.  

I am probably sounding rather sarcastic, so I'll apologise right here and now. What I really wanted to say is that a sword made of rainbows feels a little "far out" to me. Then again I don't want to piss on anyone's ideas, and what's this forum for if not for ideas and speculation?

Dwarf Fortress has always (well, not like I've played it for years and years) felt very down to earth to me - the grim, gory, dirty reality of trying to make a living in a world full of bad things.

Swords made of rainbows remind me of Final Fantasy and that sends shudders down to my very core, because then we're on the path to dwarves who can wade unscathed through lava flows, cleave mountains with a blow of their hammers, and who come back from the dead completely rejuvenated within seconds of an application of the overabundant Phoenix Down...

[Tamren]

quote: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>

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  

 

quote: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>

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.

 

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

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 ]

[Dreamer]

We could also have three, similar 'metal-types' that the elves use: One coming from the idea of the Mithral Veins in trees (a hard but fragile object that requires years of training to use without shattering the object, if it is a weapon or armor; think of the Japanese Katana), the Amber substance (Soft, but very strong; almost useless for weapons, but as an armor it's invaluable; maybe it could be woven into a thread, but that's stretching it), and the Iron Wood (Used for both armor and weapons, holds some mithral, giving it resiliency; it can be sentient, and regenerate, unlike any other weapons or armor - This seems more like the stuff the super-elite use; a great warrior knows the limits of his wooden weapons and can deflect blows rather than taking them straight on, preserving his weapons and armor).

This gives the elves a nice variety of things to work with, rather like how the dwarves have several metals and rocks to use.  Giving the objects unique names could be as simple as looking up the Elven language files (I think someone did that previously); Sap is Fimere, for example.  It doesn't have to be exact: Elves could call their Mithral "Steel", and the steel from other races "Dwarf-Steel", or something.  Other races could refere to Mithral similarly, as "Elf-Steel" and such.

I rather like the idea of Mithral having a Teal color, too.  Silver is a little cliched.  I'm not sure about it using existing metals, though - It seems strange that if Gold, Silver, and Iron made Mithral, that dwarves couldn't make it on a whim.  I'd rather Mithral be something that is obtainable by other means, but the only conventional method is harvesting it from trees and their leaves, or some such.

Interesting ideas, so far - I'm glad this didn't collapse into an argument.  

[Greiger]

I do like the ideas of the elves getting thier metal substitutes from thier trees.  Just need to say that. The elves need something, that would do nicely.

I don't think dwarves should be able to make the same product as the trees do. I mean, natural stuff seem to be able to mess with things on a molecular level.  Plants somehow take carbon monoxide(dioxide? Been awhile since I was studying biology/chemistry) and turn it into oxygen naturally, so I would assume the elves' special trees would do something similar with those ores to produce the metal. Which wouldn't be able to be duplicated by the other races, or at least be too difficult to make usable amounts of.

Anyway just my two cents. (do people still use that phrase anymore, or did I just horribly date myself?)

[mickel]

The sentient wood thing seems pretty outlandish to me, but why not? I'm with you all the way on the other stuff though. Wood, tree-sap and bizarrely tree-generated metal. Along with superior techniques of weaving blades to amazing strength, and maybe pottery as well, we'll have the elves playable in no time.

Oh, and a katana is as basic a sword as you can get it, you can pick one up and use it with no problem, and even get quite good with it. Using it elegantly however is another matter. But that's true with any weapon.

[Tamren]

quote:Originally posted by Greiger:
<STRONG>Anyway just my two cents. (do people still use that phrase anymore, or did I just horribly date myself?)</STRONG>

Most of the time people here say "thats my two coppers worth"

@Dreamer
Giving different uses for each state of Mithral would be interesting. The "softer" state would be very good for armour if mithral was "springy". That way it would absorb a lot of force and bounce back instead of deforming.

You can turn nearly anything into a thread if you can make it thin enough. Mithral laced cloth would be very strong. Clothing woven entirely out of mithral would be comparable to chainmail. And of course you could just make chainmail out of solid metal.

The solid state would have by far the most uses though. Wood laced with mithral would be very strong, but it would not hold an edge. To get around that you can make weapons out of mithral wood and craft the edge out of solid mithral. That way you can get a killing edge without having to use a lot.

Ironwood would be a good addition. There should be different special woods that only grow in elven forests. Each could have different properties when laced with mithril and when left plain. One tree could be flexible and used for bows. On the other end of the spectrum, the ironwood would be used for furniture and when laced with mithral, weapons and armour.

--
I was giving the idea some more thought and i realized that trees do not do much more than absorb water from the ground. It would make more sense then, if the tree did not PRODUCE the mithril but only collected it and condensed it into useful quantities.

What if there was a special plant only available to elves (initially). It would have deep roots and draw minerals out of the soil to recombine them chemically. Those minerals do not HAVE to be iron/gold/silver. If these plants grew in the open they would slowly saturate the ground with tiny mithral particles. At this point you can not harvest anything. It would be even worse than finding needles in a haystack. More like trying to find rust in a bucket of sand. If however the plants grew around a trees roots, or they occupied an area of soil and a tree grew there later on. The tree would start to absorb all this mithral and condense it inside the tree.

This way it makes a lot more sense. The plant that produces the mithral could iself be harvested for some mithral, but to get large quantities and mithril laced wood, you have to combine the plant with a tree.

[ September 04, 2007: Message edited by: Tamren ]

[Goran]

Elves and mithril dont mix.

Give elves a specially treated wood.

IE. Ebony cured with gyps...umm...elvish tears or starlight enriched mountainspring watter.

[I3erent]

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

Give elves a specially treated wood.

IE. Ebony cured with gyps...umm...elvish tears or starlight enriched mountainspring watter.</STRONG>

That depends on what toady decides and he said roots need to be in anyway so maybe...

[Tamren]

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

Give elves a specially treated wood.</STRONG>

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 ]

[mickel]

Why does it have to be called mithr*l at all? I'm sure we can come up with a better name than that.