Print

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

[tombthedwarf]

mithril seems to be a fantasy replacement for titanium, as far as I can tell (since it doesn't sound very fantastical to have people using titanium). It's properties mirror titanium very closely- it's as strong as steel while being much lighter than it.

not so much: titanium is a very hard/brittle metal, in Tolkien's mythos mithril is a nigh unbreakable soft-ish metal with a fairly low melting point, so in short the metals are ludicrously different.

lore wise on adamantium: It seems most likely that adamantium was used to imprison the demons, being nearly unbreakable, not meltable even to demon fire, etc. adamantium seems to be the ideal ring to keep your clowns in.

[Jimmy]

On the origins of slade:

http://biography.jrank.org/pages/360/Slade-Arthur-G-regory-1967.html

Possibility? Fantasy author, wrote about draugr.

[cephalo]

I think that if slade was ever allowed to be forged into weapons, there should be terrible long term consequences for doing so. Adamantium serves as a nice valueable, super powerful material that only dwarves can get. ( I kinda wish that it wasn't nerfed for hammers, there should be some magical property that prevents its lightness from making it less valueabe for such things. More magic, less science imo.)

If slade is the material of demons, any weapon made from it should be powerful, but ultimately self defeating in some grotesque way. Edit: I guess that was originally supposed to be the case for adamantium, but it kindof grew away from that. I'm thinking that the consequences of slade should not be defeatable.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I would suggest for the next version that slade could indeed be mined, but only by a Grand Master Miner with an Adamantium Pick. In addition, use of slade, as well as staying in hell after beating down the demons would result in neatby non-demons becoming slowly infected by a new disease: Slade Corruption. SC would cause non-demons to slowly mutate into somthing not qute of this word, and not loyal to the fortress. The doctors should be able to treat SC, but not entirely, so that use of it creates a slow and nigh-unstoppable desent into a doomed fortress, as beings corrupted to the point of treason would likely be wearing slade items; a substance that not even adamantium can properly pierce.

[SkyRender]

 This thread is rapidly turning into a forest of epileptic trees.  I suppose that's inevitable with speculation when no new facts are introduced into the discussion, though (not that they really can be in this case).

 I'll just stick with the basics: Adamantine is relatively scarce, hard to work, and always seems to lead to demon infestations if you dig up too much of it.  Slade is entirely impossible to work and only appears in the depths of the earth (and only in Dwarf Fortress).  Good enough for me.

[puke]

I would suggest for the next version that slade could indeed be mined, but only by a Grand Master Miner with an Adamantium Pick.

are you sure you cant now?  i havent tried colonizing the depths, so I dont know.  someone should forge an adamantine pick and check it out.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

are you sure you cant now?  i havent tried colonizing the depths, so I dont know.  someone should forge an adamantine pick and check it out.

No, it dosent work. Slade has a shatter value of 50000, and this translates into "unmineable". At 49999 shatter value it can be mined, but one more prevents it. Go check the slade disscusion thread, that's where it was discovered.

[Aklyon]

I agree with the evil theory. I think it's some kind of byproduct of the demons' mere existence- their very presence somehow causes it to grow. I also think we need to stop calling it adamantium

Adamantium sounds more metallic. Adamantine, not as much. Thats probably why we keep saying it that way.
Also, how would evil seal evil? some people have found sword-in-the-stone-like Adamantine Upright Swords that unleash hell when removed.

[Toksyuryel]

I agree with the evil theory. I think it's some kind of byproduct of the demons' mere existence- their very presence somehow causes it to grow. I also think we need to stop calling it adamantium

Adamantium sounds more metallic. Adamantine, not as much. Thats probably why we keep saying it that way.
Also, how would evil seal evil? some people have found sword-in-the-stone-like Adamantine Upright Swords that unleash hell when removed.

I don't believe it is sealing them. When the swords are taken it probably just pisses them off.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Perhaps the sword is just a sword holding a release mechanisim back, and is made out of adamantium because it won't decay? It could also be a trap set by the demons to alert them when mortals are in range, and they forged it of adamantium because it was the closest thing on hand.

[Rotten]

I agree with the evil theory. I think it's some kind of byproduct of the demons' mere existence- their very presence somehow causes it to grow. I also think we need to stop calling it adamantium

Adamantium sounds more metallic. Adamantine, not as much. Thats probably why we keep saying it that way.
Also, how would evil seal evil? some people have found sword-in-the-stone-like Adamantine Upright Swords that unleash hell when removed.

I don't believe it is sealing them. When the swords are taken it probably just pisses them off.

"GODAMMIT THAT SWORD COST 2000 SOULS YOU BASTARD"

[KaelGotDwarves]

IMHO I see it as adamantine forcibly keeping the demons sealed in, otherwise they would have made their way to the surface and be killing/exploiting the mortals as the gobbo demons and forgotten beasts already do.

[Mechanoid]

Slade = THE sealing material, since it's stats say it's unminable; that includes demons if you gave them a mining skill and pick.

Dumbass adventurers in a time before time wandered and dug down deep, found the slade cavern and adamantine weapon slade shrines. They thought "I want that shit" and stole the weapon. Told their friends, showed their enemies, then everyone said "Fuck yeah, me too" and spent shitloads of time down below collecting the adamantium equipment. However they spent too much time, got corrupted by the slades' surface effect, and turned into undead gaurds to serve the protection of the adamantium.

Adamantium = Carefully placed on a complex structure? Sounds like a power source of the slades' anti-demon ability.

Too many adventurers came however, and before long there were probably huge battles between the living and the undead. Gradually the adamantium weapons were stolen one by one until so many had been taken, they could no longer power as strongly the slade as they once had, and so few weapons remained the undead formed huge walls of shuffling bone, rotting flesh, and rusting iron. Then, one day, as the power in the slade waned, the demons smashed through in a living battering ram from the glowing pits. Presumably the crash was so great, it caused an earthquake that sealed-up all the direct passages to the underground and redistributed the molten and semi-molten rock evenly over the entire planet. Time before time, or a time before history records? Clearly powerful enough to completely fuck over everything, a planetary reset.

Who was most likely to be effected by this, as surface cities crumbled to ruin? Dwarves. That's why they're the only ones that can make steel, that's why they're the only ones that know about the adamantine. They are the survivors from prior to recorded history.

Adamantine = The result of demons jamming the remnants of 'released' adamantium weapons into the semi-molten stone ceiling in an attempt to escape.

So now, the demons were free from one cage but still stuck in another. But this time they had a tool to escape instead of simple patience, which was the adamantium so many adventurers had taken out from the shrines. Surely there were people still trapped in the cavern when the demons had escaped, still pulling out the weapons. All the demons needed to do was spread out and collect, and build their escape. Of course they couldn't touch the weapons still in the shrines (otherwise they'd be gone, too) but they could touch the ones that were seperated from the slade. They took those weapons, and jammed them in the molten rock. Like a bird building a nest, the flying demons jammed stick after adamantium stick into the unminable semi-molten rock, with such force and repetition the adamantium disintegrated into strands, while the ground-bound ones gathered more. And the adventurers that were trapped? Turned undead, or murdered by demons, likely after they removed yet more adamantium weapons for their demonic masters.

That's why the adamantine spikes are hollow, have branches that reach into the surrounding rock, and have ledges on the inside. The demons are escaping...
And the dwarves are the only ones that know.
/writefaggotry

Smaller text can be ignored if you don't want to read, the bigger text is the basic point of the paragraph below/above, whatever...

epileptic trees

Don't make me link to that site, the one that makes you lose hours looking at mindless trivia, DON'T YOU MAKE ME DO IT.
Oh, what the hell:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EpilepticTrees
WHOO HOOO, YOU JUST LOST 4 HOURS READING MORE USELESS CRAP (i lost 1 writing this, it's only fair)

[Kagus]

I'm not entirely sure what to think of Adamantine...  On the one hand, you've got the commonly-accepted lore of it being some sort of divine "plug" placed by the ancient gods in order to seal away the hordes of hell, but on the other you've got the new version which shows a distinctly less plug-like nature of the stuff.  Plus, the "hell coral" theory is simply too delectable to discount without good cause.

I'll have to meditate on this for a while.


Then we get to the prospect of Slade...   Personally, I'm quite content with it being an impenetrable material.  I don't want to be able to send some dwarf with a blue pick down there to carve up the stuff, I want to have landscapes of a material I have to ruddy well respect.

One possibility is that Slade is the condensed hatred of all of hell's demons.  The pure, undiluted loathing they have felt towards the higher worlds has, over the millenia, transmuted into a vast, barren wasteland that not even the demons themselves can escape from (or, at least, that's what we'd like to think).

As for the temples, they may form up around the sword, not the other way around.  If we do make the assumption that Adamantine is some sort of divine or supernatural energy-turned-matter, then it could be that it was fashioned or "focused" into weapons, which were used to beat back and imprison the demons in the ages before time.

Some of these relics could have been left behind as the forces that wielded them vanished from the world.  The demons would be left with nothing to blame but the leavings of their oppressors, and this focused, concentrated bile would form a vast and chaotic hall around the weapons.


This doesn't really explain the undead though...  Possibly hate-spawned shadows of those mortals who fought in the ancient wars?  But then we're still left with the passageway left behind by the weapon...  Hmm.


Well, it's all rather interesting, but now I'm afraid I need to go smash some things into the lava pit.  Ta ta.

[Virex]

Unobtanium stands for "stuff that doesn't exist but we wish it did".

It can also mean "Stuff we can't get our hands on, but we wish we could". For example, during the cold war, the US needed titanium for it's blackbird spyplanes, but the Soviets had cornered the titanium market, meaning that the US had to jump through so many hoops to get it that it was almost unobtainable (eventualy they managed to get a hold on a large batch through an european company). It has also been used in the semiconductor field (and probably also in catalyst science) to refer to other stuff that's hard to find, like Rhodium and Gallium.

As for what Adamantine actualy is, I don't think it's a metal as we know it. It can actualy be spun into strands. While you can make metal threads and even metal fabric, it's not that easy to do that with medieval technology.
Therefor I think that it is actualy a metalic polymer, forming threads naturaly when it is torn apart, similar to asbestos (though that is technicaly a ceramic). Dwarves can tear the relatively loose structure of raw adamantine apart with simple tools, as shown by the fact that it can be done at a craftsdwarves workshop, instead of requiring a special building or the forge.
Then when it's torn apart, it forms long strands of up to several meters (unlike asbestos, which forms microfibers), maybe more if you've got a good batch. Those fibers can be spun and woven into an almost indestructable mesh, knwon as adamantime wafers, or directly into clothes.
Forming wafers requires a heat treatment and some hammering, which results in a very dense and strong, yet surprisingly light structure, almost like a metalic rubber, which is usualy delivered in the form of very thing wafers. This can then further be processed by minute shaving and hammering under heating to finaly form objects which are very tough and yet also very strong, with an increadably sharp edge, if so desired (things that are not supposed to cut should be rounded off)