Magical Economies: Adamant and Orichalcum

[AlexanderHowl]

While magical economies tend to focus on the availability of magical items or the productivity of agrarian magic, one of the most overlooked factors in magical economies is the availability of adamant and orichalcum. Mages are capable of creating Essential Earth for 8 FP/cubic yard and may transform it into an equivalent volume of adamant for 3 FP/cubic yard or an equivalent volume of orichalcum for 6 FP/cubic yard with Earth to Stone. With Shape Earth, they can even shape the essential earth into useful shapes before transforming it into adamant or orichalcum.

If we assume that orichalcum possesses the same density of bronze, a cubic yard would weigh around 6,000 pounds, meaning that a mage with Essential Earth and Earth to Stone can potentially create 24,000 pounds of orichalcum per day. With orichalcum, a society does not need to develop iron working because orichalcum is better than iron or steel, as it is three times tougher than steel, so the society probably diverges at TL1 to become TL1+X, as iron is nothing more than a curiosity. The same applies to adamant and, with each mage potentially create 20,000 pounds of adamant per day.

What type of society do you think would evolve in a fantasy would with as much adamant and orichalcum available as implied by Magic? How do you think that the production of that much adamant and orichalcum would influence the economy? Other than luxury items like marble and gold, would there be any reason to quarry stone or mine metals?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

While magical economies tend to focus on the availability of magical items or the productivity of agrarian magic, one of the most overlooked factors in magical economies is the availability of adamant and orichalcum. .

In what book?

[Anthony]

It is generally accepted that earth to metal is broken; using essential earth and then earth to metal is equally broken.

[Tyneras]

Imagine an orichalcum coin the size of a truck tire, 2 to 4 of those is a days wages for a common laborer.

Money would likely be something else, like power stones, since all metals and stones, even essential versions, would be dirt cheap.

[(E)]

Assumptions
- critical failures happen
- other earth spells will be more common as a result.
- If earth spells become a critical part of society then powerstones and other means of enhancing or protecting a societies ability to use earth magic become valuable and political.

Questions
- Does shape earth have enough precision for engineering?

Food production
Farms maybe twice as efficient or more.
Farming not limited to fertile land.

Transport
Excellent roads or possibly canals.
Metal hulls in boats.

Mining
Gems, Coal, other decorative metals
Deeper more accurate mines

Weapons
More defensive strategies, big walls are easy, cities able to produce more food inside the walls
Many of the unsuccessful weapon ideas may now be feasible, solar mirrors, tanks, steam etc

Other thoughts
Demon resistant casting areas
No paper, shaped metal instead
Metal roofs
Transporting heavy materials becomes more important.

[Dalin]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

What type of society do you think would evolve in a fantasy would with as much adamant and orichalcum available as implied by Magic? How do you think that the production of that much adamant and orichalcum would influence the economy? Other than luxury items like marble and gold, would there be any reason to quarry stone or mine metals?

This raises a historical/philosophical question: how much of a limiting factor is the quality of stone or metal in terms of the development of architecture, engineering, and other sciences that depend on these substances? I do not have an answer in mind, but am simply curious. I assume the development of math and engineering principles will still take time, even if mages can create unusually strong materials. Indeed, I wonder if you skip the steps involved in figuring out how to make these substances, if your theoretical foundations might be hampered in some way; all the work involved in figuring out how to make steel may help develop an understanding of metallurgy that would be lacking if you could just conjure steel out of thin air.

I'm out of my depth on this topic, but I'm guessing that lots of historical cultures, for example, had all the stuff (bricks?) they needed to make true arches, but didn't make the leap to arch building.

If this makes sense, then it could be a rationale for why a civilization that has access to plentiful orichalcum and adamant might not have enormous suspension bridges, sky scrapers, and other engineering marvels. This allows you to pick and choose a bit based on your vision of the culture. Maybe they build adamant roads, walls, and ceremonial pyramids, but they haven't gotten to the techniques required for arches, flying buttresses, and whatever cleverness is required to build tall, slender towers that don't tip over in the first rain storm.

[AlexanderHowl]

I agree. Why use advanced building techniques when adamant is plentiful and three times as strong as granite? Why bother with iron when oricalchum is available and three times stronger then steel?

[Tyneras]

These materials will also be cheaper than anything you can mine out of the ground. Forget improved mining techniques, they wont even know what mining is!

Essential Earth + Earth to Metal is 14 energy, or $14 using Quick and Dirty enchantment prices. That's 7.5 tons of orichalcum for $14.

[AlexanderHowl]

Even if you charged $33 per point of energy, it would still be equivalent to the price of iron right now, when we benefit from contemporary mining technologies and economies of scale and scope. Our civilization would abandon iron in mass if we could produce orichalcum for around $60 per ton. I wonder why that has not happened in Technomancer?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Even if you charged $33 per point of energy, it would still be equivalent to the price of iron right now, when we benefit from contemporary mining technologies and economies of scale and scope. Our civilization would abandon iron in mass if we could produce orichalcum for around $60 per ton. I wonder why that has not happened in Technomancer?

One possible reason is Technomancer has a lot of mana level variability. What happens to something that's structurally possible only because of the ridiculous strength of adamant if it hits a no mana area? If it collapses, well you probably don't want to use adamant in anything really safety critical then.