Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman
Iron could not be actually melted, and thus not cast, in historical Europe until the 1400s, because appropriate furnaces weren't developed. Can your blacksmiths do it? If not, hand-forging shells in pieces and joining them will be quite expensive. |
TL4 (advanced) craftsmen do it, yes. The PCs are importing all they can of such experts, but frankly, they already have a list of tasks longer than a really long thing that they want from them.
On the other hand, the magical furnace chamber on the newly conquered Isle of Tan allows the fire elementalist PC to cavort with fire elementals and melt iron all he wants. I'm guessing he could develop a method of doing this. But, again, he could also produce steel arrowheads, spearheads, armour and a lot of other useful things.
The local infrastructure near where these would actually be deployed, as opposed to the PCs' home base, is only barely TL3 and fairly backward in blacksmithing, with a lot of TL2 aesthetic and remnants. Maybe fair to call it TL 1+1 or TL2 through TL1+2 or TL2+1, with the neighbours/enemy having discovered all the theory necessary to be TL1+3 centuries ago, but being stuck at TL1+2 or TL2+1 due to social and religious factors.*
They are more likely to cast bronze shells, frankly. How would that work?
Given that they have enormous reserves of ancient loot made from the stuff, it might not be all that expensive if you can melt old bronze items into useful material. About which I have no idea.
*Being ruled by immortal gods can suck for progress, because being divine actually makes them sort of like autistic monomaniacs for their portfolios. The priesthood of Thoth is allowed to experiment with what they want as long as they keep it a secret from the populace at large and so have access to a lot of cool stuff, but are extremely marginalised in politics and few of their inventions are used in warfare or on any large scale. Smokepowder was discouraged, with prejudice, after some events a few centuries ago. The PCs have caused a lot of young priests to start asking questions and dig up old scrolls and measurements... as well as their seniors to start quietly preparing mystic keys to certain safeholds.