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Old 02-16-2021, 01:20 PM   #2441
Flyndaran
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Default Re: Real-Life Weirdness

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Originally Posted by Dalillama View Post
Does it have to be human blood? Perhaps not as good for necromancy, but harpoons made of whale blood could have some strong hunting magic on them, while a dragon's blood sword is suitable for fire related enchantments.
Cow blood could make for a perfect sword with which to kill a King, Clown, or Redhead woman.
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Old 02-16-2021, 01:22 PM   #2442
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Is dragon blood iron-based? I mean, a lobster the size of a man might have as much blood, but the copper in it wouldn't make a very good blade, I wouldn't think. And if dragon blood uses, say, cobalt (or maybe uranium?), that could be even worse.
Ah, but now you made me wonder how many lobsters it would take to create a bronze sword.
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Old 02-16-2021, 06:08 PM   #2443
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Default Re: Real-Life Weirdness

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Uhmmm..Do you need blood to forge a sword?
No but it's cool and gruesome sounding. Basically you need to carbonize it and different smiths had their own recipe some of which sound a bit occult but have some scientific validity. The urine of a red haired boy was one Ewart Oakeshott mentioned, though I suspect the smith's thrall just had red hair and he did not check out other hair colors.

Blood would be a perfectly useful thing for it. In fact given how thick it is it might work better. It does not have to be human blood, any blood would work. And dragon's blood sounds impressive though I don't know it's composition.

However the article is off. The blood does not supply the iron (that has to be mined). It supplies the carbon. What you do is twist hot bars together while forging and hammer them flat and pour the blood on. This was what we now call pattern wielding and it is sometimes still used to make decorative blades, except for the blood (hey that would make a great mystery-horror). I did not look up how they do the carbon now but I am sure there are more sophisticated means.

Forging from the blood of one's enemies is not practical if you killed them on a battlefield. Of course if you wish to line up prisoners and whack them at leisure like some Ninevite king that would work.
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Old 02-17-2021, 05:38 AM   #2444
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What you do is twist hot bars together while forging and hammer them flat and pour the blood on. This was what we now call pattern wielding and it is sometimes still used to make decorative blades, except for the blood (hey that would make a great mystery-horror). I did not look up how they do the carbon now but I am sure there are more sophisticated means.

Forging from the blood of one's enemies is not practical if you killed them on a battlefield. Of course if you wish to line up prisoners and whack them at leisure like some Ninevite king that would work.
How much blood do you need at a time?

Because a modern day smith might know you can take a pint at least (possibly more) from your bound enemy and then put them back in a cage for a while to recover so they can contribute to many, many blades before they die.

And for a mystery-horror it would have the advantage that the kidnapped red-head your PCs are looking for might still be alive by the time they figure out who has them.
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Old 02-17-2021, 08:29 AM   #2445
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How much blood do you need at a time?

Because a modern day smith might know you can take a pint at least (possibly more) from your bound enemy and then put them back in a cage for a while to recover so they can contribute to many, many blades before they die.

And for a mystery-horror it would have the advantage that the kidnapped red-head your PCs are looking for might still be alive by the time they figure out who has them.
Oooh! He keeps a captured virgin in his basement just for that of course. Until the intrepid detective tracks him down.

Actually it can't be much if urine will do the job. Though I understand from Oakeshott better methods came to be toward the end of the earliest part of the Middle Ages.

Also I'm pretty sure you can refine the carbon out to a more pure form by now.
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Old 02-17-2021, 06:50 PM   #2446
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Blue World by Jack Vance the people are descendants of a crashed spaceship who have the problem that there is no land at least as far as they know. They live on giant floating plants and lost most tech because the ship sank shortly after crashing. They get metal back by using blood as the source which makes for a very limited supply even after they develop methods to kill large sea life and drain them.
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Old 02-27-2021, 11:09 AM   #2447
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One of the challenges of designing deep-world settings, like underground ecologies, is the lack of sunlight as an energy source. This is more of a challenge in hard-science settings than it is in magical ones, but even in a fantasy world the fewer handwaves necessary the better.

Which is why I think it's neat to give you bacteria photosynthesizing from lava, right in the vicinity of black smokers in the deep ocean. No sunlight -- just the red glow of hot rocks.

In an air-filled cavern with magma flows, the light would penetrate farther, and you could be getting the same thing on a larger scale: the basis of a plant ecology that could support grazers and then predators -- or farming.
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Old 02-28-2021, 02:38 PM   #2448
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I think it's neat to give you bacteria photosynthesizing from lava, right in the vicinity of black smokers in the deep ocean. No sunlight -- just the red glow of hot rocks.
I seem to recall reading that this is now a competitively acceptable theory of how life on earth got started: an energy gradient between the lava smokers deep underwater from geologic sources, and the much cooler water medium. The first self-replicating chemical reactions that eventually became "life" may have developed there and lived off of a sulfur-based chemistry, before undergoing a massive extinction event after too much of the poisonous oxygen waste gas filled the atmosphere.
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Old 03-01-2021, 08:06 AM   #2449
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So much for my villainous plan to defend the library with spiders...

https://www.freep.com/story/news/loc...ed/4555601001/
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Old 03-01-2021, 06:44 PM   #2450
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So much for my villainous plan to defend the library with spiders...

https://www.freep.com/story/news/loc...ed/4555601001/
Depends how many you use. https://media.wired.com/photos/59323...eene_Figs3.png

Wastewater plant here in MD had over a million in 2009.
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