DMing Chemistry

 In the far northwest, in the lands of Caeledor, the land overflows with tin. While the frequent storms make it extremely difficult to sail to the island, it is also a very lucrative endeavor, since the tin brought from here can be used to make the highest quality bronze , when combined with an appropriately good grade of copper. A large boatload of the stuff can make a person rich enough to never have to work again in their life, and even just a few ingots can fetch a nice price on the many markets of the southern empires. Of course the locals have begun extensive mining operations, with various kingdoms vying for control of these lucrative mines. As of now king Hebras of Wynnig runs most of them, but with southerner traders coming less and less frequently, he is losing ground to various upstarts, who don't quite know or in some cases care that revenue from the mines just isn't what it was in the days of their fathers and grandfathers. Hebras is looking for allies, but the gr...

Copperbugs, also known as bronzebane bugs, are curious little critters. Growing to about the size of an adult’s fist, the carapace of these beetles is made from the purest copper. While the smaller, younger ones may be able to fly, the adults are too heavy for their wings to actually lift them off the ground. In order to gain the copper necessary for building their carapaces, copperbugs eat raw copper, and copper alloys, neatly depositing any other metals and any impurities in small little piles. This obviously makes them very dangerous for anything made out of bronze, as a dozen or so copperbugs can and will eat render an entire suit of armor unusable in less than an hour. On the other hand, feeding them low quality copper, then harvesting their carapaces is a very cheap, reliable and easy, if quite time-consuming way of getting high quality copper. They can even be used to separate low quality bronze to its component parts, so that a better alloy may be made. Of course military ap...

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...

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. ...