Khenal
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Peek: Learning Damanascus
🕑 Added 2024-11-25 01:18:07 +0000 UTCHrunter can admit when he lets his passion get away from him. Running around the town yelling about mythril and orichalcum in just his forgeclothes was not his most dignified moment. If he was drunk, he might have had an excuse, but he was stone sober at the time.
Luckily, most of the town doesn't care too much, and his skill as a smith affords him a bit of eccentric leeway. People will tolerate a lot of weirdness if you have solid skill to offer. It's probably why everyone is fine with how weird Thedeim is.
The latest bit of weirdness he's been given from the dungeon is this damanascus stuff. The first adventurer to offer it to him, he gave raw rates for steel and orichalcum. He'd never seen someone forge weld the two materials like that, and at the time, he was convinced it'd fall apart under a bit of forging.
The bands of steel and orichalcum are too distinct for it to be an alloy, or even a solid solution! Yet it behaves in every way like an alloy, which makes him grumble about dungeon nonsense. He should definitely pursue the process of its creation later, but first, he needs to figure out just how useful it is!
He could probably manage a smithing breakthrough if he figures out how its made, but nobody will care if the damanascus isn't actually useful. With his tests so far, it has a lot of promise.
Orichalcum on its own can be incredibly difficult to work with. It needs high temperatures to be worked, but the range between malleable and burnt is rather narrow. He burnt the first sample while chasing that sweet spot. It's a lot wider than ordinary orichalcum, but the burning phase is at a much lower temperature, thanks to the steel.
But just because the strength is compromised doesn't mean he can't still experiment with it. Orichalcum is notoriously difficult to enchant. While this makes it a great foil against magical attacks, the metal on its own can be rather brittle. It makes it great for carving runes, thanks to the hardness and magical resistance, but it makes it difficult to make weapons and armor.
This damanscus, however, isn't too bad for enchanting. He'd rate it a little worse than ordinary steel at accepting runes. If that was it, he'd still have a worthwhile material on his hands. It's significantly lighter than steel, yet has very similar physical properties for hardness and durability. It's not the top of the line, but Hrunter might have a perfect stepping stone for adventurer armor.
And as he gets more, the material shows it has great potential for blades in particular. It's a bit light for a good hammer or axe, but daggers, short swords, and rapiers look like natural fits for the metal. Further experiments tell him a rapier is probably a bit too ambitious. While the metal is strong and hard, a proper rapier needs a certain amount of flex to it. The damanascus will flex some, but it's definitely more rigid than ordinary steel.
Spears and arrows should work well though, in addition to the smaller blades of daggers and shorter shortswords. He smirks as he starts working on a series of blades, confident enough in knowing how the material works to make some pieces for sale. Sometimes the difference between a spear and a dagger is just a really long handle. And sometimes the difference between a dagger and a shortsword is marketing.
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Inspired by Blake McGowan, who wanted to see the crafters making use of Thedeim's unique nodes and materials. There's certainly more than metal on offer, so we might see other professions adjusting to their new toys eventually, too. Thanks for the suggestion, Blake, and I hope everyone has a good day.
Khenal
Comments
Blake McGowan
Yoooo my comment has put damascus into the hands of fourdock I donβt care how we get there but I would kill to see katanas come around
Istyatur Elestel
I did get the wordplay; what irks me is the famed Damascus steel of history was wootz steel, not pattern welded. That people now accept Damascus steel as another term for pattern welded renders the term ambiguous (annoyance) and I I feel like it's gotta be a little insulting to the original Damascus smiths to refer to a completely separate technology by their name.
Raufgar
My apologies for correcting you, it is actually called Damanacus (but that's ok, even Khenal got it wrong once in this Peek), a wordplay between your favourite pattern welding and Mana, probably for Oricalcum's mana affinity.
Demonlord
Thanks for the nice peek π Damanascus sounds cool π
Herakilla
Thanks for the peek!
Juno Tubolino
Thank you for the peek, I love seeing this kind of layman's perspective!
Istyatur Elestel
Good old pattern welding. It really shouldn't bother me as much as it does to hear it called Damascus.
Cordell Patrick
Wonder what will happen when the composite armor makes it to the crafters
Ben Bass
TYFTP! Oooh, new semi-alloys, and another thing Thediem bring out that screams βIt doesnβt work like that!β I really enjoy these peeks filling and rounding out the world!
AbyssalIceLord
I just caught up with last weeks chapters and this peek as well. Solid as ever, Khenal! Never stops amazing me how well youre able to paint a very clear and easy to imagine picture of whats going on without over compensating. Excellent work.
chris Bell
TYFTC
Eriach
Yay
Ethan Barrow
TFTP!!
