From: Sandy Petersen (sandyp@idgecko.idsoftware.com)
Date: Sat 07 Sep 1996 - 03:00:09 EEST
Jean
>Sandy said that the only metal used by the mermen is aluminum.
Certainly it is the _most_ used metal by far.
>There is more to metallurgy than armor and weapons.
Absolutely. But for a huge number of these uses, other
substances work just fine.
>A stone (or bone) tipped harpoon will sink as easily as a metal
>tipped one.
No it won't, if the shaft is made of a flotable material.
Stone and bone don't weigh as much as metal. In any case they would
probably use sharpened shell, not stone. And if you lose a
shell-tipped harpoon, big deal. It was cheap enough, and there's
plenty more clamshells about to fashion more.
>A bronze needle is better than a bone one, and IMO will have
>rusted away long after the bone one had broken.
A bronze needle covered with green corrosion is not better
than a bone one. Mermen live in salt water, remember? A bronze needle
won't last a week. In addition, for repairing nets, most people use
special _wooden_ "needles", not metal ones. Look it up.
Mermen don't use fish hooks. That's a technique used by
surface-dwellers because of our near-total inability to operate
beneath the surface.
Mermen have better, less-random techniques, such as
spearfishing, herding, traps, and trained animals to collect their
food.
>since aluminium is sacred for them, they won't use it for day to day
>objects
Jean, gold is a sacred metal to Pelorians, but they use it
for ordinary coinage. Lead is sacred for the trolls, but it is used
in tools, trade, and implements. Copper is sacred to the Earth, but
there's nary a house in Esrolia lacking its copper pot.
Aluminum may be "sacred", but mermen are perhaps the most
practical race in Glorantha (far more so than humans, for instance),
and use it for as many day-to-day objects as they possibly can,
limited only by the supply of metal.
Sandy P.
------------------------------
End of Glorantha Digest V3 #177
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