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No Resurrections in the Bronze Age
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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9064466" data-attributes="member: 6790260"><p>In fact, not only was it not meaningfully mined, when the Conquistadors found large amounts of it in South America, they <em>tossed it overboard</em>, deriding it as "little silver" (<em>platina</em>) when they wanted silver proper.</p><p></p><p>One of my favorite factoids is that there actually is an IRL material that might meet the stringent mechanical description of Tolkien's mithril: the intermetallic compound yttrium silver. (This differs from an alloy because it's actually yttrium atoms <em>bonded</em> to silver atoms, not just the two mixed together.) No known natural sources of yttrium silver exist, but given we know there have been multiple vast deposits of silver on Earth (e.g. the Comstock Lode and Cerro Rico aka Cerro Potosí), it's entirely possible that one or two fictional places could've had just the right conditions to naturally produce such an intermetallic compound--and we do know that mithril was incredibly rare, with Moria being the only reliable source (though Numenor and Aman may also have had sources.)</p><p></p><p>But yeah. "Mithril<em>! All folk desired it. It could be beaten like copper, and polished like glass; and the Dwarves could make of it a metal, light and yet harder than tempered steel. Its beauty was like to that of common silver, but the beauty of</em> mithril <em>did not tarnish or grow dim.</em>" The cool thing with YtAg is, you actually do need to "make of it a metal," because it remains ductile until you quench-harden it, at which point it develops a beautiful, glittering sheen; the exterior becomes extremely hard, while the interior remains ductile, so it keeps an edge but is resistant to shattering. And until you do that, it is in fact quite ductile (not <em>quite</em> as much as copper but damned close) and, of course, should polish beautifully if allowed to cool normally rather than quenching it. IIRC, it does not make the martensitic transition on its own unfortunately (but perhaps it would if alloyed with titanium, another metal essentially unknown to the medieval world that might be a magical/mystical thing or "dug up by dwarves" etc.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9064466, member: 6790260"] In fact, not only was it not meaningfully mined, when the Conquistadors found large amounts of it in South America, they [I]tossed it overboard[/I], deriding it as "little silver" ([I]platina[/I]) when they wanted silver proper. One of my favorite factoids is that there actually is an IRL material that might meet the stringent mechanical description of Tolkien's mithril: the intermetallic compound yttrium silver. (This differs from an alloy because it's actually yttrium atoms [I]bonded[/I] to silver atoms, not just the two mixed together.) No known natural sources of yttrium silver exist, but given we know there have been multiple vast deposits of silver on Earth (e.g. the Comstock Lode and Cerro Rico aka Cerro Potosí), it's entirely possible that one or two fictional places could've had just the right conditions to naturally produce such an intermetallic compound--and we do know that mithril was incredibly rare, with Moria being the only reliable source (though Numenor and Aman may also have had sources.) But yeah. "Mithril[I]! All folk desired it. It could be beaten like copper, and polished like glass; and the Dwarves could make of it a metal, light and yet harder than tempered steel. Its beauty was like to that of common silver, but the beauty of[/I] mithril [I]did not tarnish or grow dim.[/I]" The cool thing with YtAg is, you actually do need to "make of it a metal," because it remains ductile until you quench-harden it, at which point it develops a beautiful, glittering sheen; the exterior becomes extremely hard, while the interior remains ductile, so it keeps an edge but is resistant to shattering. And until you do that, it is in fact quite ductile (not [I]quite[/I] as much as copper but damned close) and, of course, should polish beautifully if allowed to cool normally rather than quenching it. IIRC, it does not make the martensitic transition on its own unfortunately (but perhaps it would if alloyed with titanium, another metal essentially unknown to the medieval world that might be a magical/mystical thing or "dug up by dwarves" etc.) [/QUOTE]
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