From: Peter Larsen (peterl@admin.stedwards.edu)
Date: Mon 24 Feb 2003 - 17:47:30 EET
At 7:00 AM -0800 2/24/03, Bryan Thexton wrote:
>Depending on the source it might be as easy as digging through a few
>feet of forest floor humus, as arduous as raking a bog for nuggets, or
>as dangerous as working in a small tunnel. However few if any
>operations would be full time, and most would be performed by the clan
>bonesmith and his apprentices. There may be a few exceptions where
>many clans in a tribe have few or no bronze resources, so one clan with
>a very good supply has a 'smith' who is mostly a full time gatherer.
Hmm. I had the idea that there are two approaches to
gathering metals. One is mining -- digging in areas rich in metals
(mostly the sites of major GodTime battles). These are large-scale
productions and are supported by specialist cults (don't remember the
names offhand, but they appear in _Tarsh in Flames_). Clan-level
metal collecting would be done by Ernaldans, I would think -- both
because the metals are usually found in the ground and because of the
gathering the dead functions of Ty Kora Tek. Smiths probably have a
role to play in the seeking, but the work is done by the Ernaldans.
One advantage to this is it plays up the interconnectedness
of clan life -- the smith is always male, but if he does not make
contacts with the female specialists, he will have supply problems
and serve the clan less well. Smiths in towns buy their raw metals
(or get it second hand from their clans) and have a much more
commodity-driven approach to their craft, perhaps as far as seeing
the metals as more raw material and less the bones of the gods.
Another thing -- I imagine that metal is pretty precious for
the clans. Not as much so as for the Praxians, but there should be a
lot of recycling -- broken swords, old pots, fixtures of various
sorts are probably melted down and reused on a very frequent basis.
There might be some sort of advantage or prestige to using raw,
virgin, unworked, etc. metal over recycled stuff. Enchanting
pre-worked metal, for example, might be difficult, impossible, or
subject to unintended results (your torc bearing the Bronze-Skin
blessing was made with metal from the sword Trollslayer.
Unfortunately for your, the Uz can still sense the faded echoes of
the sword's nature...).
Anyway, there's my cents.
Peter Larsen
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