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justanotherbirdbrain-blog · 3 months

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A Workshop for Creating Magical/ Fictional Crystals: A Guide from a Geologist

Hi folks, its me, here to talk about fictional writing again! Today I'm just tackling the idea of magical stones/mana stones by looking at existing minerals today and some neat properties that they have, and how you can apply these things to a fictional world. The goal is mainly to help you if you are stuck trying to come up with a unique magic system, or a unique identification/characteristic of your mineral.

First Things First: Mineral Shapes

I am exhausted, petered out, down-right fatigued by seeing every mineral depicted with having the crystal structure of calcite and quartz. There are soooooo many cooler, more interesting crystal structures, don't you think you would stop and take a look at a perfect cube in nature? It is completely unsettling.

Second: Color

Color within minerals can either be really important, or not important at all! It is your choice to decide if color is going to be something that means something to your mineral. But what are some times when the color is important? Well.... there are some elements that are called chromophores, this classification just indicates that these elements, when present, will determine the color of whatever they are in. So, if you wanted to treat mana like a chromophore, you could say, "Oh everything that contains mana turns green!" This could mean that regardless of the mineral, if that mineral is a specific color, it means it contains mana. This concept is exciting because you can just stop here and use minerals that already exist! You can also use it as an indicator for a magical ore! Chromophores are typically metals, so if you are making a new metal weapon, making the ore of that metal a unique color would make a lot of sense!

However, your mineral can also just be every color of the rainbow like quartz and perhaps that's what makes identifying your mana stones elusive and create an illusion of scarcity that your character can solve.

There are other things that can change the colors of minerals, like radiation damage, and electron exchange, but I think that is beyond what would be helpful! So lets talk about some unique color properties that happen in nature that seem magical in the first place! Maybe you don't need to design a mana stone, but you want a unique gemstone that only the royal family passes down or something (IDK).

The first one is the alexandrite effect! This is where a mineral can change color in natural light vs. incandescent light. (the mineral itself is not changing, but the lights contain different amounts of different colors that then get absorbed by the stone). Even if you don't use electricity in your fictional world, you could have the colors change in the presence of light magic. This could create fun misunderstandings about what the mineral is reacting to!

Pleochroism

Pleochroism is something that most minerals have, it is frequently used to help identify minerals in thin sections, however minerals are usually not pleochroic enough for it to be visible to the naked eye! Pleochroism is just a fancy name to describe the change in how light is absorbed based on the angle of the mineral! So if you scroll up to the first image where I showed a lot of crystal shapes, most of them have angles where they are longer and shorter! This will effect the way light travels in the crystal. Tanzanite is a popular mineral that does this.

Photochromism

This is when a mineral will change color (in a reversible way) when exposed to UV light (or sunlight), I am not going to go too into the details of why this is happening because it would require me to read some research papers and I just don't feel like it. The mineral that is best known for this is Hackmanite!

Alright! These are all the really cool color effects that might inspire you or maybe not, but now I am going to talk about how you might find your minerals within a rock!

When I see a lot of magical caves/mines, typically I see them with some variation of a geode honestly, but most minerals are not found like that! Now I am sure most of you guys have seen a geode, so I will not really talk about those, but I will talk briefly about porphyroblasts which is when the mineral grows larger than the minerals around it, this happens in metamorphic minerals!

sorry random stranger, but this is an image of garnets inside a finer-grained rock at gore mountain in New York!

Another way you might find minerals is in a pegmatite! This is when all minerals are really large! This is a formed from really slow crystalizing magma!

But something else to think about is that your mineral might just be massive, it doesn't have to have distinct crystals, it may be similar to jadeite where small grains grow together which leaves it looking smooth and seamless! A note about all of these is that you would have to mine into the rock to find these, there would not be any natural caves in these rocks! Caves are only ever really formed in limestones and maybe marbles (rocks that react with acid).

How can your characters identify these minerals?

Typically when you are out in the field you will look to see what type of rocks the minerals are found in (The overall texture of the rock will tell you how it formed). If you know how the rock formed, it will narrow down the amount of minerals you need to think about by quite a bit! Next, you are going to look closely at it and observe its crystal structure, does it have an obvious crystal? if so what is the general shape? If it is broken, how did it break? Did it fracture like glass or did it break along uniform planes. Some minerals have a thing called cleavage (breaks along planes of weakness). If a mineral exhibits this habit, it will again help narrow this down. Next we can look at color. Color can be misleading, because minerals like quartz can be any color imaginable, but minerals like olivine will always be green! The next thing your character can do is test for hardness, minerals all have a specific hardness that can help identify it as well.

After you go through all of this, your mineral might have some special property! This could be magnetism, fluorescence, reactions to acid, or any of the color changing effects I mentioned above! Other than that, your character can take it back to a lab and do a number of things to identify it, but the most typical thing would be for them to make a thin section (very thin piece of the rock) and observe it under a cross polarized microscope!

On that note folks! I hope this helped in some way in thinking of new magic mineral properties! I have other guides that explore some different fictional worldbuilding issues you might run into, but if you have any topics you would like me to cover please that I haven't mentioned already, let me know!

#geology #rocks #creative writing #fictional world #worldbuilding #dnd #dnd worldbuilding #worldbuilding stuff #writing resources #info post #information #writing

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roach-works · 13 days

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i feel like there's a rich vein of SOME kind of ore to mine with regards to the romantic woes of visibly "freakish" and inhuman superheros, especially in silver age comics. like, because of the comics code, the writers could not in-universe admit that some people are really kinky and would absolutely nut in an instant if a gigantic alligator man or a living rock monster or a ten foot tall woman who's on fire gave them a little smooch on the head. like maybe most people in the 70s and 80s had no idea this was the case, either!

but so you end up with these romantic plot lines where some poor freakish superhero with a heart of gold and the skin of, i don't know, a bunch of octopi, is miserable because they'll never find true love, except for a totally normal woman has the power to see their inner heart (which is normal) and fall in love with them for that (normally). villains can sometimes be like 'yeah this chick is super into the fact that i'm an eight foot tall deathbot, we're both evil like that' but ben grimm can't get a date! even blind women are a little concerned that he's literally made out of rocks. it never works out because the writers either can't imagine or can't admit that no matter the freak, there's a bigger, hornier freak who's praying for a chance to shoot their shot.

i don't know. it's just interesting. obviously modern comics can acknowledge a lot more sexual variance than the stuff from fifty years ago, but it's just kinda neat to consider the bizarre limitations a heteronormative paradigm enforces on a population of very strange characters.

and also i feel like in real life ben grimm's DMs would be full of incredibly horny geologists going PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE all day long.

#superheros

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silkjade · 11 months

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alhaitham x mermaid! reader (3)

⤀ warnings: fem!reader, no pronouns mentioned, reader has hair long enough to be pinned a/n: recommended to read the previous parts first, since this is a direct continuation next ﾉ series masterlist ﾉ bonus (18+) ⋆.ೃ࿔*:･𓇼

When you first step foot into sumeru city’s grand bazaar, you're immediately taken aback by the atmosphere. It's too loud, feels too stifling— a far cry from the vast and silent depths of the ocean, or the peaceful serenity of the forest. Even port ormos, had at least a lovely sea breeze. But you've come so far, it'd be a waste not to experience this lively city to its fullest.

“This necklace should only be worn by someone as beautiful as you!”

“Ditch those drab clothes and come see this new fabric from liyue!”

“I guarantee these sunsettias are sweet like you!”

"Can I buy you a drink tonight?"

It's already a little dizzying to be so far inland, but the way all these humans vie for your attention, on top of the musicians and screaming children in the background… it’s a lot to take in so suddenly. Covering your ears helps a little, but not nearly enough to drown out the cacophony. You don’t even care to react when a strong arm wraps around your waist and leads you away.

Alhaitham guides you towards an isolated corner nearby, shooting a glare at any who dares look your way. He speaks to you in your native tongue; his pronunciation has become near flawless with your help.

“Are you alright?”

Both your head and your heart seem to settle a bit at the familiarity.

"It's a little much is all... just need some time to adjust."

To play it safe, alhaitham removes his soundproof earpieces, placing them on you instead, and switches it on to the lowest setting. He's no fan of the noise either, but he's used to it; he'll be fine.

"Oh isn't this beautiful? And i'm sure it'll look even better on me!"

Alhaitham rolls his eyes. You're gushing over a hairpin while he stands beside you, arms full carrying assorted jewelry, trinkets large and small, a carpet, and a basketful of zaytum peaches. Mermaids and their vanity and their affinity for pretty things… at least you’re helping the local economy.

However, there’s currently only one issue and it isn’t the mora— it's the merchant who has him blacklisted.

"That'll be two million mora for the hairpin."

Now that he cannot justify. It's well crafted and beautifully embedded with crystal ore, but definitely not worth even half of what dori is asking for; only a fool would pay that price. Underhanded as it may be, he manages to swipe a similar hairpin that peaks out from under the large pile of accessories. Besides, all the times lord sangemah bay has overcharged him on information sales is far from a mere two million mora.

Dinner at lambad’s is interrupted by a trio of colorfully clad men who seem to be on familiar terms with alhaitham. You had always read him as more of a loner, and had seemed to be correct in your assumptions until now.

"I have some business to attend to, but I'll be back shortly. In the meantime, these are my... acquaintances. You can trust them."

“Would it kill you to call us your friends?” says the intimidating, purple one.

The blonde one laughs into oblivion when he sees alhaitham leave with his arms full of your many purchases in tow.

…

“Ah, so you’re a diver. There’s a specific deep sea coral I’ve been dying to study, but it’s been impossible to get a sample. Would you be interested in working together? I'll be sure to compensate you well.”

You agree to tighnari’s proposal; it would be no trouble as the dragon bone coral he speaks of is easy to find if you know where to look. Across the table, cyno let's out a chuckle.

“You sea…,” a pause for dramatic effect, “you said ‘sure’ which can also be construed as ‘shore.’ As in, the land along the edge of the sea.”

Kaveh orders a round of firewater shots to drown out the pain of cyno’s terrible sense of humor. Unfortunately, alhaitham returns to find out you’re quite the lightweight.

…

He carries you on his back all the way home, listening to your drunken rambles along the way. You seemed to have had fun with his friends, but there’s a corner of his mind that can’t help but wonder if you now find him boring in comparison.

“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself.”

“Wanna know a secret?” you slur, giggling. “I enjoy the time I spend with you the most.”

With that said, you nuzzle closer into the crook of his neck and alhaitham feels his face heat up all the way to the tips of ears. Mermaids are proud and rarely ever reveal their true feelings, so he counts himself lucky to have heard yours. Your soft breathing tickles his skin. He’s glad you’re asleep now, knowing that you would’ve teased him again otherwise.

Once home, alhaitham sets you on the living room divan before leaving to prepare the bath. The aforementioned business he had to attend to, was purchasing salt. In bulk. He figured you’d need saltwater to rehydrate, as it’s been a few days since you’ve last been in any water. And a saltwater bath would surely be less of a hassle to deal with than a shriveled up mermaid.

The way your legs meld back into a tail is mesmerizing, especially with how your scales shimmer to life in the water. It quickly sobers you up. He’s about to leave but…

“Not even going to keep me company? I stayed with you all night at the cove you know.”

There it is. Alhaitham turns back around just in time to see the little grin on your face, as you rest your arms along the edge of the tub while your long tail hangs over the other end. He doesn’t know much of mermaid physiology but it’s enough to assume the saltwater, makeshift as it may be, has successfully sobered you up.

“I’m going to bed. You should get some sleep as well.”

“But I’m not tired.”

“I am. Goodnight.” And he leaves. Eventually, the man returns with a stack of books and papers.

“These are old studies I pulled from the akademiya regarding the dark sea. Since you’ve got the energy, mind fact checking? Just be careful not to get them wet.”

He sets them down on a nearby stool before a splash of water hits him right in the face.

“How about with some compensation then?” he says, pulling out the hairpin he had swiped from dori.

It’s similar to the one you had previously fawned over, though it’s laid with nagadus emerald instead, which he thought suited you much better than plain crystal ore. Unbeknownst to him, you had liked the first because its cyan stones reminded you of those he would toss in the water upon arriving at the cove. However, you adore this one for the way the emerald gems seem to match the very one sitting on his chest. You think you’ll cherish it forever.

“Will you put it on for me?”

His touch is surprisingly gentle, careful not to accidentally tug too hard. Alhaitham’s seen kaveh put up his hair enough times to replicate a simple style. Easier said than done as it turns out to be less than stellar, sitting slant and loose. At least he tried.

“Well? How does it look?”

Light reflects off the gems in your hair and into the water, casting an iridescent glow that bounces across the room, dancing onto your skin. Anyone could say that even the brightest of jewels dull in the face of your otherworldly beauty. Only he can say that in this moment, in his bathroom, you look more perfect than the moon shining through the window behind you.

“I think it’d look even more flattering if you were reading,” he glances down, “Enigmatic Depths: An Empirical Study of the Ocean and Beyond.”

Another splash of water hits his face.

a/n2: If you're already on the taglist, you'll be tagged for any future parts (just lmk if you'd like to be added/removed) ^^ I also kind of want to do an 18+ bonus part in the future, but no taglist for that since I don't want to jumpscare anyone lmao (unless you guys want one idk but have your age in bio pls) Anyways, thank you for reading ♡

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icantalk710 · 1 month

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Argh, the post-jog energy boost made me drop my phone... phew, there we go 🙂

#ore no kao #gay #it was in the low 40s but gorgeous out so i thought to go jogging a bit further into the park #need to finally visit the Cloisters now that i'm nearby #was also going to squeeze in leg day at the gym but it's gotten too late so i'll just do it after Spin class Tuesday #...might've gone a bit photo-crazy from the endorphins hehe #maybe i'll post another later hmm #[or share with moots either/or]

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yuurei20 · 1 month

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Continuing from a previous ask : what are easier / harder / Malleus-level magics? (easier / vague magics listed here, harder magics listed here, "precision magic" here) Part 4/4

Malleus' Magic

Teleportation:

Malleus seems to be capable of at least two different kinds of teleportation, one that appears identical to Lilia's ability to teleport and one that involves green flames. The only time we have seen him use the green flames was when he brought Silver along with him, so it is possible they are a side effect of having a passenger (or they may have just been for dramatic effect. Crowley comments on Malleus' ability to make a bold entrance in a vignette).

There is also the teleportation spell he uses in his vignette to link the Mirror Chamber to Diasomnia, transporting all the housewardens and Crowley against their will.

Returning to "proper" place/shape/form:

Malleus has used this spell three times now, once to return the coliseum back to how it was before Vil's overblot (which he describes as "even more trifling of a task than re-weaving unraveled fabric") and then again to return Vil to his proper age.

Malleus explains that even he cannot turn back time, and the spell involved him sharing magic with Vil. While a seemingly impressive feat, Malleus later says that it required "a paltry amount of magic" from him.

After the VDC, Ambrose LXIII says that he is "picking up traces of large-scale magic all over the coliseum," but it is never explained if it was Malleus' magic or Vil's overblot (or the combination of both) that he was sensing.

The third time is during Spectral Soiree, when he returns the "Sparkling Hall" to its true form and we learn that he doesn't even need to have seen what the "true form" of a person or thing is in advance.

Weather:

Lilia says that Malleus has been magically controlling the weather since he was a child, breaking boulders with lightning bolts when he threw tantrums.

Malleus threatens Magicam Monsters with lightning when they enrage him, summons thunder at the beginning of Firelit Sky when Jamil is reluctant to allow him to join the group and summons a powerful lightning strike out of rage at Rollo.

He also tells a story about nearly freezing the entire castle in which he lived (and all the people in it) as a child, "back when (he'd) finally started walking on two legs."

All of this combined with how he unconsciously summons a blizzard in Book 7 seem to hint that his weather-based powers may not be entirely under his own control, but during Halloween he consciously summons lightning to frighten Magicam Monsters away.

Attacks:

Malleus will occasionally threaten the use of attack-magic, but what it might entail (Lightning? Fire?) is not shown or explained.

Flight:

Like Lilia, Malleus does not require a broom for flight. He says that he has enough power to fly to anywhere in the world that he wishes.

Other Malleus magics we have seen and/or heard about are: ・Animating the long display at Ramshackle Dorm during Halloween ・Stopping time on campus (using his own power combined with the school's barrier and ghost-magic) and trapping everyone at the school

・Growing enough briar to fill Diasomnia ・Washing clothes

・Dualcasting wind and fire magic simultaneously ("It doesn't have to be be a tornado!" - Deuce) ・Summoning rare ore ・"Fire-breathing magic" (unclear if this is limited to his dragon form or if he can breathe fire all of the time)

・Levitating a truck ("I'm pretty sure only Malleus could pull off a feat like that…" - Epel) ・Using fire magic to light all the lanterns in Briar Valley ・Creating a tuxedo look for Lilia

#twstask #twisted wonderland

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 months

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Electrons, not molecules

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then SAN FRANCISCO (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

When hydrocarbon barons do their damndest to torch the Earth with fossil fuels, they call us dreamers. They insist that there's a hard-nosed reality – humanity needs energy – and they're the ones who live in it, while we live in the fairy land where the world can run on sunshine and virtuous thoughts. Without them making the tough decisions, we'd all be starving in the frigid dark.

Here's the thing: they're full of shit.

Mostly.

Humanity does need energy if we're going to avoid starving in the frigid dark, but that energy doesn't have to come from fossil fuels. Indeed, in the long-term, it can't. Even if you're a rootin' tootin, coal-rollin' climate denier, there's a hard-nosed reality you can't deny: if we keep using fossil fuels, they will someday run out. Remember "peak oil" panic? Fossil fuels are finite, and the future of the human race needn't be. We need more.

Thankfully, we have it. Despite what you may have heard, renewables are more than up to the task. Indeed, it's hard to overstate just how much renewable energy is available to us, here at the bottom of our gravity well. I failed to properly appreciate it until I read Deb Chachra's brilliant 2023 book, How Infrastructure Works:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects

Chachra, an engineering prof and materials scientist, offers a mind-altering reframing of the question of energy: we have a material problem, not an energy problem. If we could capture a mere 0.4% of the sun's rays that strike the Earth, we could give every person on the planet the energy budget of a Canadian (like an American, only colder).

Energy isn't just wildly abundant, though: it's also continuously replenished. For most of human history, we've treated energy as scarce, eking out marginal gains in energy efficiency – even as we treated materials as disposable, using them once and consigning them to a midden or a landfill. That's completely backwards. We get a fresh shipment of energy every time the sun (or the moon) comes up over the horizon. By contrast, new consignments of material are almost unheard of – the few odd ounces of meteoric ore that survive entry through Earth's atmosphere.

A soi-dissant adult concerned with the very serious business of ensuring our species isn't doomed to the freezing, starving darkness of an energy-deprived future would think about nothing save for this fact and its implications. They'd be trying to figure out how to humanely and responsibly gather the materials needed for the harvest, storage and distribution of this nearly limitless and absolutely free energy.

In other words, that Very Serious, Hard-Nosed Grown-Up should be concerned with using as few molecules as possible to harvest as many electrons as possible. They'd be working on things like turning disused coal-mines into giant gravity batteries:

https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/02/06/this-disused-mine-in-finland-is-being-turned-into-a-gravity-battery-to-store-renewable-ene

Not figuring out how to dig or flush more long-dead corpses out of the Earth's mantle to feed them into a furnace. That is a profoundly unserious response to the human need for energy. It's caveman shit: "Ugh, me burn black sticky gunk, make cave warm, cough cough cough."

Enter Exxon CEO Darren Woods, whose interview with Fortune's Michal Lev-Ram and editor Alan Murray contains this telling quote: "we basically focus our technology on transforming molecules and they happen to be hydrogen and carbon molecules":

https://fortune.com/2024/02/28/leadership-next-exxonmobil-ceo-darren-woods/

As Bill McKibben writes, this is a tell. A company that's in the molecule business is not in the electron business. For all that Woods postures about being a clear-eyed realist beating back the fantasies of solarpunk-addled greenies, Woods does not want a future where we have all our energy needs met:

https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/the-most-epic-and-literal-gaslighting

That's because the only way to get that future is to shift from molecules – whose supply can be owned and therefore sold by Exxon – to electrons, which that commie bastard sun just hands out for free to every person on our planet's surface, despite the obvious moral hazard of all those free lunches. As Woods told Fortune, when it comes to renewables, "we don’t see the ability to generate above-average returns for our shareholders."

Woods dresses this up in high-minded seriousness kabuki, saying that Exxon is continuing to invest in burning rotting corpses because our feckless species "waited too long to open the aperture on the solution sets terms of what we need as a society." In other words, it's just too late for solar. Keep shoveling those corpses into the furnace, they're all that stands between you and the freezing, starving dark.

Now, this is self-serving nonsense. The problem of renewables isn't that it's too late – it's that they don't "generate above-average returns for our shareholders" (that part, however, is gospel truth).

But let's stipulate that Woods sincerely believes that it is too late. It's pretty goddamned rich of this genocidal, eminently guillotineable monster to just drop that in the conversation without mentioning the role his company played in getting us to this juncture. After all, #ExxonKnew. 40 years ago, Exxon's internal research predicted climate change, connected climate change to its own profits, and predicted how bad it would be today.

Those predictions were spookily accurate and the company took them to heart, leaping into action. For 40 years, the company has been building its offshore drilling platforms higher and higher in anticipation of rising seas and superstorms – and over that same period, Exxon has spent millions lobbying and sowing disinformation to make sure that the rest of us don't take the emergency as seriously as they are, lest we switch from molecules to electrons.

Exxon knew, and Exxon lied. McKibben quotes Woods' predecessor Lee Raymond, speaking in the runup to the Kyoto Treaty negotiations: "It is highly unlikely that the temperature in the middle of the next century will be significantly affected whether policies are enacted now or 20 years from now."

When Woods says we need to keep shoveling corpses into the furnace because we "waited too long to open the aperture on the solution sets terms of what we need as a society," he means that his company lied to us in order to convince us to wait too long.

When Woods – and his fellow enemies of humanity in the C-suites of Chevron and other corpse-torching giants – was sending the arson billions to his shareholders, he held back a healthy share to fund this deceit. He colluded with the likes of Joe Manchin ("[D-POLLUTION]" -McKibben) to fill the Inflation Reduction Act with gifts for molecules. The point of fantasies like "direct air carbon-capture" is to extend the economic life of molecule businesses, by tricking us into thinking that we can keep sending billions to Exxon without suffocating in its waste-product.

These lies aren't up for debate. Back in 2021, Greenpeace tricked Exxon's top DC lobbyist Keith McCoy into thinking that he was on a Zoom call with a corporate recruiter and asked him about his work for Exxon, and McCoy spilled the beans:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/01/basilisk-tamers/#exxonknew

He confessed to everything: funding fake grassroots groups and falsifying the science – he even names the senators who took his bribes. McCoy singled out Manchin for special praise, calling him "a kingmaker" and boasting about the "standing weekly calls" Exxon had with Manchin's office.

Exxon's response to this nine-minute confession was to insist that their most senior American lobbyist "wasn't involved at all in forming policy positions."

McKibben points to the forthcoming book The Price Is Wrong, by Brett Christophers, which explains how the neoclassical economics establishment's beloved "price signals" will continue to lead us into the furnace:

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3069-the-price-is-wrong

The crux of that book is:

We cannot expect markets and the private sector to solve the climate crisis while the profits that are their lifeblood remain unappetizing.

Nearly 100 years ago, Upton Sinclair wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Today, we can say that it's impossible to get an oil executive to understand that humanity needs electrons, not molecules, because his shareholders' obscene wealth depends on it.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

#pluralistic #bill mckibben #exxon #exxonknew #solarpunk #climate #climate emergency #climate crisis #gaslighting #guillotine watch #Darren Woods #incentives matter

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heartshapedbubble · 4 months

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Ello can I request a Norton Fools good x fem reader where she came across the blown up mines and sees Norton (in his hunter form) she’s scared at first but starts to recognise him and slowly starts to approach him reaching her hand up to cub his cheeks ( bro this man needs all the love! )

HOO BOY i agree tho... his release made me regain my interest in norton🫡🫡

[not to be a scum but i'm still open for sanrio emma comms btw😭😭]

fool's gold: imagine...⛏️

cut for length!

paying the bills has become a hellish cycle. break your back to pay off the expenses, relax for the following twenty-ish days, and be sent into frenzy again, not knowing if you're going to have a roof over your head tomorrow or not.

you found yourself hopelessly skimming through newspaper, looking for any job offer possible that would easen up the burden on your wallet. The paper was plastered with offers from bars, post offices and restaurants, but those were a always gamble. will you get your wage or not? and if you will, when? too much effort for something so high-risk.

at last, a small offer in the corner of the page caught your attention. pressed in miniscule letters, it said: MINE RESEARCH. EMPLOYEES URGENTLY NEEDED. EQUIPMENT PROVIDED. underneath the text, an attractive number: $15,000 payed off immediately after the job is done.

not only could this solve the rent for the following 3 months, you'd also have some money left for yourself! you rang the number the second you got home and successfully scored the job, due to the urgency of the situation.

it took you a day or two to start thinking about the job. what do you exactly need to know for mine research? probably at least some physical strength and stamina, you thought. surely it can't be too complex.

you arrived at the mine right on time, the sun slowly slipping back into the horizon to let the moon take center stage. to your dismay, you realized no one else applied for the job. maybe this wasn't a good idea after all? crawling through the narrow, rocky terrain all alone doesn't sound like the ideal scenario. no living being in sight, and 20 minutes have already went by.

still, that money is way too good to pass up. you picked up one of the yellow helmets piled up at the entrance, prayed to whatever god out there that your flashlight has enough power to last the following 2 hours and mindlessly rushed into the collapsing mine.

for the following 10 minutes, your sight unfocused while your mind took the lead, in front of and all around you just rocks and grime, shadows dispelled by the flashlight held by your hip like a lance. only after a good 5 minutes of running did you realize that you, in fact, have no idea what you're supposed to do. what qualifies as mine research? mining, inspecting the ores, measuring the surface?

all sweaty and breathless, the tunnel led you to a large room inside of the mine, the roof extending towards what seemed like a pitch black abyss. carts messily thrown around, bumpy and unpolished geodes laying all over the place, when was the last time a living being stepped foot into this mine? it made sense that such a large sum of money was needed to attract volunteers.

you carefully moved through the rubble, trying to avoid stepping onto pickaxes and shrapnel splayed all over the ground. since you forgot about the gloves your bare hand now held onto the unpromising terrain, the other firmly squeezing the only source of light in this limbo.

the surface grazing your hand now seems like it became... smoother? no longer does it cut and pierce your palms. it's bumpy, but at least you're not risking an infection anymore.

moving inch by inch in fear of falling, the stone below changes its form. you don't even pay attention to the fact that you're now grabbing onto cloth and that, below your palm, a steady pulse is faintly beating.

it's already too late when you realize that you're not alone, and the stone below you starts to take shape and morph until it extends towards the ceiling, now towering over you, slouched like a ragdoll.

complementing the cold shades of grey, a face emerges from the shadows. pale, with defined cheekbones, although malnourished. only his bust passes as human, as below his collarbones there's nothing but a mosaic of pebbles and boulders forming his torso, arms and legs. it - or he, perhaps - is breathing with struggle, coughs interrupting his wheezes here and there.

you feel a sense of dread overcoming you. you freeze on the spot, but he doesn't budge, either. lifeless except for the fact he's breathing and his heart ticks like a machine.

you draw back a step, and he lunges forward, seemingly still not used to this monstrous body of his. he could harm me with ease if he wanted to, a thought suddenly manifests in your mind, and with newfound bravery you inspect the cryptid like a sculpture. your hand grazes over his bumpy and unfinished hands, tugs at the remains of his clothes around his chest. he groans, in annoyance, you assume, but doesn't resist. you climb up a cart to reach his face, your fingers pinch his stubborn hairstrands, inspect the cavity in which his other eye once laid. in a moment of either stupidity or courage you roughly pinch his cheeks - they're cold to the touch, but it's funny how naturally does his intimidating face mush like a little boy's. kind of cute. after a minute of cooing to yourself two of his rocky fingers gently pinch your wrists and put them back to your sides, but his one foggy eye doesn't divert its gaze from yours.

perhaps the flashlight can last an hour more.. you've just began getting to know him, and the mystery of the mine and his origin still lay cold for you to discover.

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simon-roy · 5 months

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A little press release from Image comics - we're putting out a mass market edition of Griz Grobus! Press release follows:

PORTLAND, Ore. 12/07/2023 — The high fantasy, graphic novel Kickstarter sensation, Griz Grobus, by co-writer/artist Simon Roy (Prophet, Jan's Atomic Heart and Other Stories) and co-writer Jess Pollard, with colors by Sergey Nazarov, will be available in trade paperback format for the first time this June 2024 from Image Comics.

Griz Grobus was originally a popular Webtoon sequential webcomic that leveled up its exposure with the 2021 launch of a Kickstarter campaign for a stunning hardcover edition. The campaign ignited fandom fervor, was fully funded in under a day, and raised nearly $70K—far exceeding the stretch goal. This Summer’s forthcoming paperback edition will bring this roaring success story to an even wider audience of readers.

"Part of what we wanted to make, in Griz Grobus, was a story that felt like a foreign film from a country you haven't heard of," said Roy. "Natural, familiar elements, sitting harmoniously alongside the new and unfamiliar. The proposition of getting to introduce a whole new audience to our little pocket universe, and the worlds within it, is very exciting!"

Set in the same sci-fi universe as Roy's Habitat,Griz Grobus is another tale of life after the collapse of the interstellar empire. But unlike Habitat—where a once utopian orbital community found itself descending into cannibal tyranny—the characters of Griz Grobus inhabit the rural world of Altamira, where post-utopian frontier life has blossomed into something a bit more wholesome.

Pollard added: "I can definitely say it is one of the funniest, most delightful things I've ever been a part of, and I laugh every time I read the story, as if I'm reading it for the first time. I hope readers will feel the same warmth when they read this edition, whether it be for the first time, the second, or third.”

Griz Grobus tells two parallel, intertwined tales from the far-off colony world. High in a sleepy mountain village, the overzealous academic ambitions of a young scribe lead to the resurrection of the town’s ancient colonial-era priest-bot. This long-defunct pastor finds himself in a world that has passed him by, but refuses to simply accept his obsolescence, much to the chagrin of the scribe and the local townsfolk. The second story, a mise-en-abyme, is Altamira’s most famous novel (being avidly read by the characters of the first story). It is a fantasy tale about a war-god who gets trapped in the body of a goose, and the efforts of one pacifist cook to delay the war-god’s bloody return to the battlefield.

This lush, intricately detailed, standalone fable is perfect for fans of Hiyao Miyazaki, Asterix, and Arthur C. Clarke.

The Griz Grobus trade paperback (ISBN: 9781534397866) will be available at local comic book shops on Wednesday, June 5 and independent bookstores, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, and Indigo on Tuesday, June 4.

Griz Grobus will also be available across many digital platforms, including Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, and Google Play.

#griz grobus #simon roy #comics #scifi #image comics #fantasy

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howtofightwrite · 7 months

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So in my fantasy setting, magic not only doesn't work on iron, but applying it immediately nullifies any spell upon contact. This means that iron, in a setting with a lot of beings made of magic, is the one universal weakness that can easily kill them. Naturally, considering the fact that we're talking about a world overrun with them that are not afraid to eat people, this means societies tend to form around veins of iron ore (that's the right word, vein, right?) and are naturally going to be much more inclined to crafting iron weapons to deal with the magical beings wanting to eat people.

However, it was in thinking through that only pure iron weapons are what give iron its power that I run into issues. Considering that means steel is effectively blocked off when it comes to weapon making and magical enchantments don't work on iron here (though they do work on other kinds of metal), how exactly might that impact the tech tree on weapons in my setting? As well as anything else I might not have thought of when writing this? Thank you!

I poked at a similar thought process awhile back, and there's some problems I never fully worked around.

The problem with, “iron, but not steel,” is that, when you really get down to it, steel is just purer iron.

Let me put this another way, you're wandering around in a fantasy world that is geologically similar to our own, with similar metallurgy to 12thcentury Europe. An iron weapon you find will be mostly iron with some trace amounts of other metals such as nickle, copper, and whatever else didn't get filtered out.

In contrast, if you get your hands on a steel weapon, that's going to be almost exclusively iron, with a little carbon, maybe some phosphorus or sulfur. (There's a fairly long list of elements you can find in trace quantities, but this is also true of normal iron weapons.) The important thing to understand is, iron weapons are made from iron, steel weapons are made from better iron.

Even as far back as the first millennium, some smiths were intentionally purifying their iron to produce higher quality weapons (including the first super alloys, such as Damascus steel.) But, it was still iron.

Really, the one kind of iron you're likely to find in that world that isn'talmost exclusively iron would be meteoric iron. This is, as the name implies, iron that came from a meteor strike. In these cases, you're actually looking at a significant amount of nickle (usually 5-10%), along with a bit of cobalt and traces of a mix of other elements.This stuff was used in weapon making, but was extraordinarily rare. As a weapon, meteoric iron isn't incredibly useful, it's still inferior to steel weapons, but it will resist corrosion, and can make for a very showy weapon. This, in turn, can result in a weapon that appears to be somewhat magical, and may be while, “starmetal,” “starsteel,” or meteoric iron is a semi-popular material for magical weapons.

So, if the issue is iron itself, then there's no chemical reason steel shouldn't also function. Of course, that does nothing to eliminate potential mystical or supernatural explanations, but if this is a magical vulnerability, you're not going to find an answer in chemistry.

This leads to two possibilities. I'm going to use orichalcum as an arbitrary example, if you're unfamiliar, this was a metal Plato claimed was mined on the isle of Atlantis, and was the foundation for their economy, but you'll frequently find this brought up in fantasy without any connection to that original context.

So, either your world is one where human on human violence is conducted with something other than (and superior to) iron and steel, for example: Orichalcum, and that creates a situation where using steel weapons could actually put fighters at a disadvantage against properly equipped troops.

Alternatively, it's possible that, while iron and steel are marginally effective against monsters, there are other, much rarer, possibly irreplaceable, materials that are far more effective. In this example, it's possible that there are no sources of raw orichalcum remaining in the world, and the artifacts that have been mined and forged are all that is left. To make matters worse, it's possible that no living smiths have the knowledge to forge (or reforge) these weapons, meaning that any damage to these items is irreparable.

For an amusing twist on this, if titanium was the metal needed to harm monsters, that would create serious issues. The problem is, you cannot mine titanium. It's impossible (at least on Earth.) This is because titanium does not naturally occur as a metal, and only as an oxide (a white powder), and it wasn't until 1910 that the first metallic titanium was produced in a lab. It would be over 20 years before a process was discovered to produce it on an industrial grade. If your setting is built off of a distant apocalypse, it's possible there would be weapons produced from this material, but there would be absolutely no way to get more, while still having a veneer of chemical plausibility. (Alternately, it's possible some alchemist in the past developed a method to produce titanium in your setting... and they may or may not still be around, with the weapons being extremely difficult to produce, or signs of a lost technology.)

Actually, a fun side note, chemistry comes from the same root as alchemy, and it's a case where a pseudo-mystical field transitioned into a hard science over time.

Now, don't consider this part an indictment, but, a couple years back, I remember watching someone's, how-to: world-building on YouTube, and they blasted the concept of the, “trade city,” as semi-nonsensical. The issue is that basically any city will get its start based on trade, and really, cities live and die based on their economies. So, when you say, “this city started as a trade city,” yeah, that's how you get a city. It's the rare cities that are founded for some other reasons (like a massive fortress that gradually accumulated a civilian population of people fleeing from beyond its walls, and adventurers or crusaders using it as a last stop before moving on into the wastes, with the city, and its trade economy growing due to factors unrelated to its usefulness as a trade port.)

Now, if you're wondering how this is relevant to your question, this is about the distribution of iron. There's some discrepancies between the largest iron deposits in the real world and the distribution of people, but access to iron was a critical consideration in the development of Western Europe. Or, put another way, if you have iron mines in the hills, but farmland and a river in the lowlands, you'll probably build your city in the lowlands, on the banks of the river, and then export whatever iron and food you don't need in exchange for other goods that you do find useful. It doesn't, really, matter much if there are ravenous hellbeasts wandering the foothills, if you can dispatch them with iron weapons. All that really means is you'll have slightly less iron to export. This creates a situation where settlements may range pretty far the iron mines, if there are other economic resources worth extracting. Trade would more heavily favor access to iron than in real world history, but it's not a completely alien scenario. In some ways, this isn't that different from a continent in a permanent state of total war, the only difference is that the monsters don't need their own iron supply lines. Settlements would need to be guarded, mines, farms, and other resources would also need protection. Trade lines would need guards. The overall level of fortification may be higher than in real history (though, this isn't a certainty), but a lot of the same considerations wouldn't be affected.

Now, on a grand scale, persistent hunting by supernatural monsters would amount to a greater economic drain than witnessed in real world history. This would slow some technological, and economic growth. I'd say that cities would, likely, be more fortified, but when looking at medieval cities, I'm not sure that would be the case. I'm also not certain this would meaningfully shift the balance of power (assuming an alternate history), simply because those monsters would hit everyone roughly equally. (Though, if the monsters do play favorites, that could heavily skew the balance of power.) While access to iron would be critical, access to other trade goods such as salt, clay, grains, and other things would still be useful. The best iron mine in the world won't keep your troops fed on its own.

I doubt you'd see a situation where iron became the dominant currency metal, and too valuable to waste on coinage. You would probably still see gold and silver as the dominant metal coinage, and that would also result in some geographical skewing, as there would be some settlements built around mining gold or silver, and then selling those materials to others in exchange for iron. It's also worth remembering that for a large part of the middle ages, most coin based transactions took place at the upper echelons of society. The barter economy would still be going strong in most fantasy settings. When talking about roleplaying game settings, that does get a bit warped, as players tend to swing around extraordinary amounts of wealth.

The biggest changes I'd expect would be slightly more terra nullius. If the plains between two mountains have no mineral wealth, and the mines on either side are already well supplied, there wouldn't be much reason to settle there. You might also see a move away from river travel. Historically, this was an extremely efficient way to move large amounts of resources, but if there are monsters in the water that pose a real threat to brown water shipping, that could cause some significant changes. Settlements might be more isolated from one another initially, until technological development got to the point where overland shipping (by cart) became more viable. It might also reduce the scope of trade overall, meaning situations like the gold mining settlement above, wouldn't be able to import enough food and iron to be viable. This might also inflate the value of other, secondary, goods. For example, access to limestone deposits large enough to effectively quarry, might become a defining factor on where fortified settlements can be built. If there isn't enough limestone on site, there simply might not be a way to effectively transport more. Even if it was only 20 miles from the settlement.

At the end, how much would it change the world? I don't know. There's a lot of factors which could heavily skew how the world shakes out. It could be almost non-existent, or it could be an entirely alien world. It depends on how much pressure your monsters apply to the world.

-Starke

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#writing reference #writing advice #writing tips #worldbuilding #starke answers #how to fight write

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