DMing Chemistry

Occasionally one can happen upon gigantic humanoid remains when wandering the world. These corpses, dead for untold thousands of years, lean against mountains, lay in riverbeds with only a hand poking out, or curled up, become mountains themselves. For most the cause of death is impossible to determine, but at least some seem to have met a violent end. These corpses are colloquially known as the corpses of titans. They are usually left alone by people living in the area, as something that gigantic must hold some power even in death and whatever power remains is sure to not look kindly upon those who would disturb its rest. The real value such a corpse has, actually lays under it. Whatever minerals lay under the corpse often become tainted with its blood, becoming blood red in the process. Metals made from such ores retain a bit of this red coloring, and accept and retain enchantment much better than the common variant of the metal does. In order to commemorate their victory against s...

As discussed before, steel holds enchantments like no other, and copper is useful for channeling magical energies, but what about other materials? Wood in and of itself is not supremely good at either holding enchantment or channeling magic, but it has the curious property of taking on the enchantment capacity of other materials it is joined with. For example a spear with a steel tip and a wooden haft can act as it it was entirely made out of steel. The better quality the wood, the closer its enchantment capacity is to the other material. Good cedar is especially prized for this reason. Skin and bones adsorb enchantments readily if they relate to death, decay, or the Underworld , and are quite tricky to enchant otherwise. They also constrict the flow of magical energy, so using them as a casting implement is not recommended. They are still used in this capacity if a sorcerer is trying to show off, or is trying to fine-tune their spells to have very small effects. This of course onl...

In this post I tried to balance basic real world information with the more fantasy-oriented details, because I don't want to leave readers with absolutely no idea about metallurgy without any idea of what the different metals might be used for, but I also don't want folks who have watched multiple hours of youtube videos on the topic to have to slog through a bunch of stuff they already heard a hundred times. Copper: probably the first metal to see large-scale use. It’s not very good for weapons or armor, and is rather hard to enchant with magic. What it is good for, however is it can be made into catalysts, that help a sorcerer channel magical energies. Most use staves or plate-sized tablets, although smaller, hand-sized sheets are sometimes used by the less affluent sorcerers. Iron: plentiful, relatively useful for tools, arms and armor. The problem is its brittleness, which means unlike bronze, it breaks instead of bending, which makes iron items much costlier to repair. ...