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Old 05-12-2018, 08:45 AM   #1
Dalin
 
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Default Decomposition rates?

Does anyone know of some good rules of thumb when it comes to decomposition rates of different materials over time? How long does wooden furniture last in a dungeon? Leather boots? Clothing? Books? Flesh? Bones? Teeth? Exposure to the elements (humidity, air flow, sunlight) would change things, of course, but I'm just looking for ballpark figures as a baseline. It's useful when thinking about both room descriptions and potential loot (e.g., luxury items, antiques, objets d'art, writings, maps, etc. from Exploits, p. 74-76).
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Old 05-12-2018, 09:18 AM   #2
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Default Re: Decomposition rates?

(Puts on Very Serious Archaeologist Indeed hat)

There is no plausible rule of thumb. This really, really, really varies enormously by environment. Things can become overgrown and uselessly moldy and mildewed within months if not kept clean and otherwise deliberately preserved in a hot and humid environment (say, the Amazon or West Africa) or be preserved more or less intact for thousands of years in a desert (we've recently recovered some papyri dealing with accounting issues around the construction of the Great Pyramid some 4500 years ago) or freezing conditions. Places like the body farm are set up to study just how decomposition happens in various conditions, and any given farm only covers a single climate and environmental regime.

I would suggest, then, that this is ultimately very much up to the GM. Edibles plausibly only survive in a useful form for months, maybe a year or two, in any given environment, and usually far less. Bones and teeth last longer than wood, which lasts longer than paper/parchment and paintings and writing. Copper alloys last longer than iron. How long any given one of those lasts, though, is very thoroughly dependent on the conditions in which any given artifact is preserved.

Moreover, the dungeon fantasy genre being what it is, ancient artifacts seem to survive implausible periods of time specifically so that adventures can find them.
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Old 05-12-2018, 10:45 AM   #3
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Default Re: Decomposition rates?

Another way to look at the question: we don't know how long most of these things could last, because we only know how long they have existed from the oldest surviving example:

Wooden spear: 900,000 ya
Bark sandals: 9,300 ya
Metal tools: 7,000 ya
Clothing: 5,900 ya
Leather shoe: 5,500 ya
Book: 1,700 ya

Additional finds will only push the date backward, so these are lower bounds.

Favorably for Dungeon Fantasy, many of the best preserved examples of soft goods have been found in caves or other dungeon-like settings.
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Old 05-12-2018, 12:29 PM   #4
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Default Re: Decomposition rates?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company View Post
Edibles plausibly only survive in a useful form for months, maybe a year or two, in any given environment, and usually far less.
A notable, if terribly odd exception, is bog "butter", which is a couple of thousand years old - some of the bog butter is actual milk fat (aka butter), but some of it is fat from animal flesh (I don't think they identified whether it was actual beef suet or some other animal).

It's not the same food as it was 1.7k 2 to 2k years ago when it was buried in the bog, but it is still food, and periodically someone decides to cook with it to no particular ill effect.

I believe parched grain sealed in airtight containers in desert conditions can last years, but usually still small numbers of years. They've got extremely lucky with germinating some seeds from Egyptian tombs, but considering the amount of grain that got stored, the small handful of successes really proves how highly unlikely it is to succeed, even in what appears to be ideal conditions.
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Old 05-12-2018, 12:32 PM   #5
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Default Re: Decomposition rates?

Quote:
Originally Posted by thrash View Post
Additional finds will only push the date backward, so these are lower bounds.
This Does Not Follow in two respects.

Additional finds might push the date backwards, but only if you assume that these are not the longest they can survive. You can't prove that this isn't the longest they could survive, but that's not the same thing as knowing future finds will be older.

Second, the lower bounds are known, and they're known to be much lower than those dates - it only takes a few weeks in the rain forest to reduce those bark sandals to dirt, presuming they don't just get eaten by an elephant or other in-discriminant eater in the first day.
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Old 05-12-2018, 03:58 PM   #6
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Default Re: Decomposition rates?

Quote:
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Additional finds might push the date backwards, ...
Additional finds that are younger don't change the oldest date. Any find that is older pushes the date backward. QED.

Quote:
Second, the lower bounds are known,...
Lower bound for the oldest date -- the limit may be higher.

In practice, it's odd on some level that (e.g.) the oldest known cloth object is older than the oldest known leather object, since our experience tells us that leather is generally more durable. It also stands to reason that leather has been used as a material far longer than cloth. It would not be surprising to find older examples.
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Old 05-12-2018, 05:00 PM   #7
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Default Re: Decomposition rates?

I love the amount of knowledge represented on these boards!

I accept that a rule of thumb is unreasonable. And that a GM can do as the story dictates; it will likely be plausible and certainly within genre conventions. And my players would never call me on a pedantic detail like this (especially in a DF game).

But, because I'm still curious, indulge me in a few more specifics. (I have done a bit of poking around on the internet, but most data seems focused on compost, landfills, and body farms.)

It seems to me that although dungeons contain a plethora of environmental conditions, there is a baseline standard that would be somewhat kind to organic matter. The part of a dungeon inhabited by sentient mammals — bandits, Goblin-Kin, Minotaurs, cultists, devious alchemists etc. — is often relatively dry, well ventilated (all the brazier and torch smoke goes somewhere and nobody suffocates), and at a comfortable temperature.

Within those conditions, are there any very rough figures available? I know that more durable stuff would last longer, but how long does a wardrobe stay standing? How long do the heavy cotton robes inside remain wearable? 100 years? 500 years? 1000 years?

I can always think of ways to have stuff rot earlier or later (moths, moisture, dry sealed tomb, etc.) but I just don't have a clue what the top of the bell curve might indicate.

Last edited by Dalin; 05-12-2018 at 06:05 PM. Reason: wonky spacing
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Old 05-12-2018, 09:45 PM   #8
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Default Re: Decomposition rates?

OK, here's your rule of thumb. Forget about the humidity and all that kind of thing. They aren't as important as one other factor you've mentioned.

If a part of your dungeon is occupied by intelligent life (cultists, bandits, etc.), preservation is indefinite. Items may be arbitrarily old.

If a part of your dungeon is occupied by unintelligent life (evil snakes, giant insects, venomous hedgehogs, etc.), organic materials will last perhaps as little as a few weeks, certainly no more than a few years.

The key factor here, as it is in a number of environments, is life. If a cave is the lair of various critters, they'll be breathing a lot, exhaling water vapor, which is pretty damaging to anything organic over the long run. Far more importantly, though, they'll be living in it. Garments and books find themselves used as nesting material, leather gets eaten, wood gets gnawed on, and there are secondary attacks by lesser vermin living in the environment along with the big monsters.

On the other hand, if there are people living there, for broad definitions of "people," then they tend to take care of the place. If they care in the slightest about the books of spells, they'll look after them, keeping them dusted and doing whatever they need to to prevent mold from growing and bookworms from gnawing into them. The furniture gets polished and, if need be, mended. They actively fight off potential damage from the ravages of time. Now, it's certainly the case that routine wear and tear will destroy items from time to time, but that's another one of those "too many variables" things. If the Grand High Poobah's vestments are worn to services every Saturday, then maybe they wear out after a few years. However, if they're only worn from time to time and meticulous care is taken to stop potential rents and tears before they start, they can stick around for an absurdly long time.
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Old 05-12-2018, 10:02 PM   #9
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Default Re: Decomposition rates?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dalin View Post
Within those conditions, are there any very rough figures available? I know that more durable stuff would last longer, but how long does a wardrobe stay standing? How long do the heavy cotton robes inside remain wearable? 100 years? 500 years? 1000 years?
If the environment is dry, sterile and free of ultraviolet (or higher energy) radiation, most stuff could easily last multiple thousands of years.

The big issue there is "sterile". Even leaving aside the question what sort of micro-organisms might be running around in the seriously alien ecologies of DF worlds, stuff in an *inhabited* dungeon is not often going to be left undisturbed for years, let alone millennia. Most things in regular use wear out in decades at best.
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Old 05-13-2018, 05:20 AM   #10
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Default Re: Decomposition rates?

How long might a sword last, if it saw regular but not constant use, near-exclusively against opponents without metal tools? (some opponents may have e.g. unnaturally hard scales/carapaces though)
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