TL 1+x - the never ending bronze age

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

I think it was actually the bones of the gods.

...makes me wonder what the hell the time of myths was like in Glorantha that that was an industrially useful material.

Originally Posted by maximara

I like this as it mirrors the idea of Faerie magic which had problems with iron. If all magic if along Faerie lines then this makes a lot of sense. Of course it will make alloys that don't contain iron a focus of research.

Actually, that might fix the lore - more specifically, the traditional Elven hegemony. If you give elves their iron-bane back, there would be an excellent reason for iron smithing to be suppressed...

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Anders

And when would this be, approximately?

The La Tene Celts had spring steel swords. The best reference is Pleiner's The Celtic Sword.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by maximara

One of the theories of the Bronze age collapse was the Sea People had iron weapons and I can't see any local cooperation with those guys.

This has been debunked many times. For starters, The so-called Sea People were just raiders, not invaders. Secondly, iron is inferior to bronze. Thirdly, better weapons and armour have a negligible influence on the outcome of a battle.

Think rationally about what exactly you are getting from a steel blade that you don't get from a bronze or iron one. The main two factors are (1) it is less likely to bend and (2) you have to sharpen it less often. How do you think this supposed to win a battle for you?

[pawsplay]

Until you have moderately advanced steel-making, iron and bronze weapons have the same problem of bending and not having the physical structure for keeping a shearing edge.
In my non-expert view, and vastly generalizing over many geographies, you are looking at about 500 BCE for iron weapons to start defeating bronze. Over the next century, the Iron Age will be over in a number of regions.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

The La Tene Celts had spring steel swords. The best reference is Pleiner's The Celtic Sword.

Originally Posted by pawsplay

In my non-expert view, and vastly generalizing over many geographies, you are looking at about 500 BCE for iron weapons to start defeating bronze. Over the next century, the Iron Age will be over in a number of regions.

Yeah, La Tene Celts are from 450 BC onwards (according to Wikipedia, so grain of salt). The question is - would people have experimented with iron if there was plenty of bronze? I suppose there would be that one guy who said "one day my iron swords will beat all of your bronze swords", but at a large scale?

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by maximara

I like this as it mirrors the idea of Faerie magic which had problems with iron. If all magic if along Faerie lines then this makes a lot of sense. Of course it will make alloys that don't contain iron a focus of research.

You may end up with an odd dichotomy, with bronze being used for magic purposes and iron being used for mundane purposes. Since enchantments only target the enchanted object, enchanted armor would still resist iron weapons and enchanted weapons would still pierce iron armor, they just could not deflect iron weapons (since that would be a magical effect on iron) or circumvent iron armor (as that would be an attempt to pas through iron). In that case, spells like Missile Shield and Reverse Missiles, would likely be useless in combat, as iron arrows, iron bolts, and iron bullets would be a cheap counter.

Since bronze is already expensive (when compared to iron), it may be worthwhile to grant bronze other considerations when it comes to magic. Perhaps bronze items automatically gain one point of magical energy every season, which magicians could use to create magical items, or one CP every five years, which magicians could use to create magical gadgets. For example, a four thousand year old bronze sword could have 16,000 energy available for conversion into magical items or 800 CP available for conversion into magical gadgets. In either case, the sword would be a priceless artifact that people would destroy nations to possess.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Anders

Yeah, La Tene Celts are from 450 BC onwards (according to Wikipedia, so grain of salt). The question is - would people have experimented with iron if there was plenty of bronze? I suppose there would be that one guy who said "one day my iron swords will beat all of your bronze swords", but at a large scale?

Large scale? You are looking at the Renaissance and the development of blast furnaces and industrial trip hammer mills. The Romans started to do it after the reforms of Diocletian. Roman metallurgy and arms standardization during this time was better than any earlier time in Roman history.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Large scale? You are looking at the Renaissance and the development of blast furnaces and industrial trip hammer mills. The Romans started to do it after the reforms of Diocletian. Roman metallurgy and arms standardization during this time was better than any earlier time in Roman history.

I mean at a larger scale than "for the funzies." Every time a smith makes an iron object, it's an experiment and information diffuses through the community. So if people start making iron objects to e.g. equip an army (like the Assyrians) that's a lot of experimentation. In this world, you could equip armies with bronze items, so there would be no need to make large quantities of iron scale armor, etc.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by cptbutton;b2335867

I think it was actually the bones of the gods.

Yeah, and that's the usual source for most cultures. The component metals can also mined and alloyed into bronze the traditional way, although it's best to note that they are all fantasy analogues of RW metals :)

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

This has been debunked many times. For starters, The so-called Sea People were just raiders, not invaders. Secondly, iron is inferior to bronze. Thirdly, better weapons and armour have a negligible influence on the outcome of a battle.

The whole reason for iron overtaking bronze was because iron was cheaper, so you could have more men under arms. Part of the reason that it was cheaper was because it was one pretty common metal, not an allow made from one common-ish metal (copper) and one rare and expensive metal that doesn't tend to be found in the same places (tin). As long as your kingdom had a decent enough iron mine, you were far less dependent on international trade than the Bronze Age kingdoms were.

If the Sea Peoples were using iron weapons, they would have been dangerous due to there being so many of them with weapons, not because they had better ones. I do agree that they were a contributing factor, not the cause, though, either way.

If you have about a half-hour to spare (a little less, more like twenty-four minutes), Historia Civilis has a pretty good video on the subject, which notes that the Sea Peoples were most likely refugees, due to there having been various famines before the Collapse, along with numerous earthquakes in the Mediterranean region, and environmental changes (that likely caused the famines), a collapse of the international trade that they needed to get the tin and copper together to make bronze (brought on by the other problems), which all contributed to things being bad enough for a full systemic collapse everywhere by Egypt, which weathered the storm, even if greatly weakened by it.

EDIT: If we posit a world where tin is as abundant and as widely available as copper (or even just a much larger fraction as abundant and widely available), there is far less reason to do much with iron tools and weapons, and thus less chance of iron developing to the point of being better than bronze.