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Aotrs Commander
2017-07-10, 12:42 PM
Okay. So, the material component for making holy water in 3.x is 5 pounds of powdered silver. (Several other spells also use it as a component.) Along with gemstones, this is sort of a given and 99% of the time, the method by which this is acquired doesn't matter.

This is the 1%.

So how do you actually MAKE powered silver?

I ask because in the quest I'm writing currently, the (low-level) PCs are on a small island, and will likely want a load of unholy water (same difference, component-wise). As a small colony isn't likely to have much to hand (the temples probably have some), there just so happens to be a silver mine nearby. (Also, silver pieces are another obvious source.)

But this besg the question - how DO you make a metal into a powder? (Or perhaps it should be "how could you?") Alchemally? If anyone knows how that might be done in the real world, I'm all ears! Or would you grind it? Could you, say, use a grindstone to grind it into a powder? I really don't know.

Suggestions - especially if anyone happens to know a real-world process - would be greatly welcomed.

Mastikator
2017-07-10, 12:43 PM
Take a silver ingot. File it down. That's it.

Knaight
2017-07-10, 01:54 PM
Filing down an ingot with a fine file is probably the best way to do it that makes sense in setting - modern (https://www.google.com/patents/US4456474) methods (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aoc.159/abstract) tend (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876610213012204) to (https://www.epma.com/powder-metallurgy-powder-manufacture) involve (http://www.metalor.com/en/advanced-coatings/A-propos-de-la-division/Powders-and-Flakes) a fair amount of chemistry, precise temperature control, and/or machinery.

Kane0
2017-07-10, 07:33 PM
Was going to say disintegrate, but that seems inefficient...

Grod_The_Giant
2017-07-10, 08:25 PM
It might not be elementally "pure" silver-- silver nitrate is a powder, for instance, though I don't know how easy it would be to produce with pre-modern technology. Wikipedia says silver + nitric acid, which my Dragonriders of Pern books suggest isn't hard to get, but my chemistry knowledge is drawing a blank on.

If you want a viable method... maybe drip molten silver into water? That should get nice small globules, at least. If you get the water cold enough, or maybe heat them up again and hit them with an ice spell or something, you could maybe shatter them?

Jay R
2017-07-10, 08:41 PM
With medieval technology, the most straightforward way - and the cheapest - is to take a fine file to some silver. In a world in which that component is needed in fairly large quantities, I assume you can buy exactly the right file for it.

[If I needed to make it here today, I'd use the coarse side of my carborundum sharpening stone.]

Necroticplague
2017-07-10, 08:58 PM
1: Acquire silver.
2: Acquire coarse, but tough stone.
3: Rub the two together.
If you can't find something coarse, simply spinning around a tough stone really fast can work. Whatever the people in the region use as a whetstone will probably work.

Knaight
2017-07-10, 09:12 PM
With medieval technology, the most straightforward way - and the cheapest - is to take a fine file to some silver. In a world in which that component is needed in fairly large quantities, I assume you can buy exactly the right file for it.

[If I needed to make it here today, I'd use the coarse side of my carborundum sharpening stone.]

It's the cheapest in terms of initial costs, but given just how useful powdered silver is they might have some better options for bulk production. Medieval technology includes a bewildering variety of watermills for all sorts of activities beyond just grinding grain (metalwork, textiles, sawmills, etc.). A rotary file hooked up to a water mill could work really well, and is almost certainly cheaper in the long run, particularly if labor prices are high.

Plus, the idea of a holy water mill is just fun.

Mastikator
2017-07-10, 09:16 PM
It's the cheapest in terms of initial costs, but given just how useful powdered silver is they might have some better options for bulk production. Medieval technology includes a bewildering variety of watermills for all sorts of activities beyond just grinding grain (metalwork, textiles, sawmills, etc.). A rotary file hooked up to a water mill could work really well, and is almost certainly cheaper in the long run, particularly if labor prices are high.

Plus, the idea of a holy water mill is just fun.

A big grindstone might work if you really need lots, but it's silver, it's expensive and rare. The fact that it's silver is the bottleneck.

Knaight
2017-07-10, 09:20 PM
A big grindstone might work if you really need lots, but it's silver, it's expensive and rare. The fact that it's silver is the bottleneck.

Silver's not really that rare even in real life, and judging by D&D economies it's much more common in D&D-land.

Mastikator
2017-07-10, 09:30 PM
Silver's not really that rare even in real life, and judging by D&D economies it's much more common in D&D-land.

In 2015 the global production of silver was 25 231 metric tons. (https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2017/05/15/global-silver-supply-demand-001072)

In 2014 the global production of iron was 3 220 000 000 metric tons. (http://www.ironorefacts.com/the-facts/iron-ore-global-markets/)

The iron to silver yearly production is a staggering 127 620 to 1.

Silver is extremely rare. Those numbers can very well be very different in D&D land, there's no reason to think it should be the same in every setting even. But objectively, silver is rare and expensive.

Beneath
2017-07-10, 09:32 PM
On top of that, you need 2.5 pounds of the stuff per flask of (un)holy water.

While you can make that with a file, grinding several cubic inches of anything to powder with a file sounds like a lot of work. Especially if you're always gonna need more.

Knaight
2017-07-10, 10:04 PM
The iron to silver yearly production is a staggering 127 620 to 1.

Iron is also ridiculously abundant. In 2015 copper was at a mere 19,100,000, at only two orders of magnitude above silver, and that's another metal used in abundance. 2013 figures for tungsten are at about 80,000* (to one sig fig). Nickel in 2015 was only about 2,000,000* tons. Chromite in 2012 was about 25,000* tons. Even aluminum was only 57,600,000 in 2016, and it's a clear second. It takes things like crude oil (usually measured by energy and not mass, but the tonne of oil equivalent works as an approximate mass unit) at a ridiculous 3,850,141,310 toe in 2015 to get towards iron levels. Much rarer than iron isn't rare.

Now, lets look at some rare metals. Iridium manages a whole 3 tonnes of production annually, osmium isn't even tracked reliably but appears to manage less than one tonne annually. Moving into more commercial metals, palladium (which is a really useful catalyst in a lot of chemistry) had a comparatively whopping 215 tonnes produced worldwide.

*These weren't world figures, and as such are approximate sums done by mental math.

Aotrs Commander
2017-07-11, 05:52 AM
On top of that, you need 2.5 pounds of the stuff per flask of (un)holy water.

While you can make that with a file, grinding several cubic inches of anything to powder with a file sounds like a lot of work. Especially if you're always gonna need more.

Five pounds in 3.x/PF; it may be different in later additions of course.


In 2015 the global production of silver was 25 231 metric tons. (https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2017/05/15/global-silver-supply-demand-001072)

In 2014 the global production of iron was 3 220 000 000 metric tons. (http://www.ironorefacts.com/the-facts/iron-ore-global-markets/)

The iron to silver yearly production is a staggering 127 620 to 1.

Silver is extremely rare. Those numbers can very well be very different in D&D land, there's no reason to think it should be the same in every setting even. But objectively, silver is rare and expensive.

Well. Here's the thing. I just crunched the numbers, and the requisite 5 lbs of silver required for Bless (or Curse) Water is 216 cubic cenitmetres (6 x 6 x 6 cm), or little over a 2 inch-cube. (Less than I thought it might be actually.) That's 25 gp's worth apparently, if we beleive the spell. Given that that's a first level spell, and generally holy water is pretty freely available as mundane gear... Yeah, I have to think that silver is rather more abundant in your typical fantasy land.

However, given the ridiculous amounts of gold and size and prevalence of gemstones, this isn't actually that much of a stretch. I mean, heck, if the world in question has fauna from one million years ago plus pterosaurs, dinosaurs and anamalocaris (let alone magic creatures!), I think "precious metals are more common" isn't that much of a stretch...!

Also that said, D&D's "pounds" with regard to equipment and encumberance typically bears very little resemblence (or sanity) to actual real-world item weights and capacities, so we can perhaps take that "5 lbs" with a pinch of salt, come to that.

(And we'll gloss over how much ore it would take to smelt out that much silver, I want the PCs to actually access it...!)



Though, actally, it raises an interesting thought. The currency runs on sestertii, where the 1 sestertius equals 1 gp (with As 1/4 gp and then Quadrans (1/16th gp) further down, and Denarius (4gp) and Aureus (100gp) going up - and sestertii are technically were originally silver (they'd be brass at this point), As and quadrans are bronze, denarius are silver and only aureus are gold). So a) that has some interesting implications to the relative rarity of gold to silver to regular D&D worlds, let alone Earth and b) means the PCs may not be all that keen to be grinding up their coins, since the worth of said coins will not be equivilent to their actual weight...!



I think, then, my initial gut instinct maybe on the right track - the temples may have a special grinding wheel for the specific purpose. (Like the sort you see for sharpening swords in the movies (though I don't know how accurate that actually is, there theory in this case is probably fair.)) Probably peddle powered, in this case. (Of course, if they were on the mainland in Not-Rome, the posh temples would probably have some water powered contraption.)

Mechalich
2017-07-11, 06:03 AM
However, given the ridiculous amounts of gold and size and prevalence of gemstones, this isn't actually that much of a stretch. I mean, heck, if the world in question has fauna from one million years ago plus pterosaurs, dinosaurs and anamalocaris (let alone magic creatures!), I think "precious metals are more common" isn't that much of a stretch...!


In D&D you can import metals from the Elemental Plane of Earth or the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Mineral where they can be found not only in spectacular abundance but also in pure form. A cleric of sufficient level can even conceivably Planar Ally up a Shaitan and say 'I have this much of x substance and want this much of Y substance, fetch it for me' and pay them off with some of ridiculously high added value like scrolls.

Martin Greywolf
2017-07-11, 07:54 AM
On medieval silver prices, standard measuring unit was a mark of silver, clocking at 200 - 300 grams, depending on which one we're talking about. A relatively simple breastplate circa 1400 would cost you 4 of those, so about a kilo of silver, a warhorse cost about 20, so 5 kilos. Now, there were impurities in this, actual silver content was somewhere between 80 - 95 %

While not all of these were paid for in cash (checks in one form or another are a thing since about 1000), many transactions were, and we can find buried pottery with silver coins in them even today - these would be stashes someone left there for a rainy day or when they heard the road was dangerous and wanted to pick up at a later date (operative word being wanted to).

So yeah, silver is still valuable, but not incredibly rare, especially in societies that have yet to mine out their near-surface reserves and are relatively small (medieval population of Europe is something like 50 million, as opposed to 700 million today).

You will still want to collect the powder on your water-powered grindstone, though.

Yuki Akuma
2017-07-11, 07:59 AM
You just need a file made of something harder than silver and a lot of manual labour.

Thrudd
2017-07-11, 11:10 AM
Grate a chunk of it on a cheese grater made of diamonds.

Jay R
2017-07-11, 12:44 PM
In 2015 the global production of silver was 25 231 metric tons. (https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2017/05/15/global-silver-supply-demand-001072)

To put that figure in perspective, that's about 3.5 grams, or 1/8 oz. per person, assuming 7.2 billion in 2015.

Cealocanth
2017-07-11, 03:46 PM
So, if you want an alchemical answer to this question, you could take a solution of silver nitrate and suspend a copper rod in it. This will react slowly with the solution and produce hairlike crystals of silver on the outside of the rod over the process of a few hours. These could then be easily crushed by hand to produce a powder. In the middle ages, silver nitrate could be obtained by mixing nitric acid (aqua fortis) with a solution containing both gold and silver.

That is an awfully roundabout way of doing it, though. In a traditional fantasy setting, alchemical reagents are expensive, and labor is cheap.

Aotrs Commander
2017-07-11, 04:38 PM
So, if you want an alchemical answer to this question, you could take a solution of silver nitrate and suspend a copper rod in it. This will react slowly with the solution and produce hairlike crystals of silver on the outside of the rod over the process of a few hours. These could then be easily crushed by hand to produce a powder. In the middle ages, silver nitrate could be obtained by mixing nitric acid (aqua fortis) with a solution containing both gold and silver.

So noted. That is something they may be able to do... Though needing a solution with gold and silver in it to start with may be the killer of that option, unfortunately.


That is an awfully roundabout way of doing it, though. In a traditional fantasy setting, alchemical reagents are expensive, and labor is cheap.

Not if everyone else on the island colony is possessed/dominated by a magic sapient virus that the PCs are only immune to because it hasn't adapted to infect Evil creatures yet...!

(Unholy Water - currently - work on it1, which is why I'm looking into this, as the PCs may want to make a load...! Otherwise, the question would never have been all that important, they likely could have just bought the powdered silver (or the black ops organisation could have acquired them a modest amount). But in this adventure, they are literally on their own.)



1Where "works" means "will drive it out of the body/kill the current viral cells in the body, but does nothing to prevent reinfection."

Slipperychicken
2017-07-11, 08:46 PM
On top of that, you need 2.5 pounds of the stuff per flask of (un)holy water.

I pity anyone who decides to drink holy water in a dnd universe.

Mastikator
2017-07-11, 08:56 PM
Not if everyone else on the island colony is possessed/dominated by a magic sapient virus that the PCs are only immune to because it hasn't adapted to infect Evil creatures yet...!

(Unholy Water - currently - work on it1, which is why I'm looking into this, as the PCs may want to make a load...! Otherwise, the question would never have been all that important, they likely could have just bought the powdered silver (or the black ops organisation could have acquired them a modest amount). But in this adventure, they are literally on their own.)



1Where "works" means "will drive it out of the body/kill the current viral cells in the body, but does nothing to prevent reinfection."

Can't the PCs just use an existing grind stone? It's not like grind stones aren't all over the place. They'll probably find several in the nearest village. Or just some lumbermill down the river. Or they could just make one.

JeenLeen
2017-07-12, 01:28 PM
I would think grinding silver, as in silver ingots or coins, would work fine. I reckon the purity needed for the spell is about equivalent to the purity needed for coinage. No need for technological or alchemical methods to get a good purity. Likewise, mined silver is probably okay with only the minimal smithing to remove impurities. (I can see saying you'd need to melt it to remove the impurities that rise to the top, just like you'd need to do so to prepare silver to be coin.)

Note that, in most D&D games, a silver weapon is not actually silver, but treated or worked to get a coating of silver (and maybe a special alchemical silver) on it. Thus, silver(ed) weapons likely are not a good source of silver.

Lord Torath
2017-07-12, 01:47 PM
I pity anyone who decides to drink holy water in a dnd universe.No kidding. And just how big is a flask, anyway? A gallon of water is 8 lbs, which I would suspect is several times bigger than a flask (which I imagine as about 8 oz). In which case the silver you are adding to the water is five times the weight of the water itself...

In 2E AD&D, holy water just required three priests praying over an altar for 3 hours and casting a spell each. The 25 gp price tag was to reimburse them for their time, and maintenance of their temple.

Kami2awa
2017-07-12, 01:58 PM
Most towns and villages will already have a machine intended specifically for turning stuff to powder - namely, a millstone.

Fel Temp
2017-07-12, 02:07 PM
One thing I know from collecting ancient coins is that silver can crystalize and become quite fragile. Like I've accidentally broken an argenteus by lightly handling it. It doesn't happen all the time, and I'm not sure what conditions cause it, but if you can find enough really old silver objects, you should be able to find some that could be crushed into a powder with little effort.

Knaight
2017-07-12, 03:19 PM
No kidding. And just how big is a flask, anyway? A gallon of water is 8 lbs, which I would suspect is several times bigger than a flask (which I imagine as about 8 oz). In which case the silver you are adding to the water is five times the weight of the water itself...
The density of silver is high enough that technically there is room for this - and 8 oz is a pretty small flask anyways.

Lord Torath
2017-07-12, 04:36 PM
The density of silver is high enough that technically there is room for this - and 8 oz is a pretty small flask anyways.Oh sure. Silver's an order of magnitude denser than water.

So how big is a flask? A 2E flask of lamp oil weighed 1 lb, which implies a volume of 2-3 cups (oil is less dense than water). Greek Fire (flammable, sticky oil) weighs 2 lbs per flask, but some of that may be packaging (you really don't want it breaking any time to get bumped), so it's still hard to say for sure.

Holy Water (per the 2E PHB) weighs 1/10th of a pound, and costs 25 gp. Less than 2 ounces of water.

Aotrs Commander
2017-07-12, 04:50 PM
It is worth pointing out that the holy water at the end of it probably doesn't have the actual silver left in it - it's a material component, not an ingredient, asit were, so as per normal, it'll probably be consumed by the activation of the spell.

Beleriphon
2017-07-12, 05:50 PM
Holy Water (per the 2E PHB) weighs 1/10th of a pound, and costs 25 gp. Less than 2 ounces of water.

At least it isn't powdered uranium. Yay instant lung cancer!

Guizonde
2017-07-12, 10:03 PM
with talcum powder and a gaudy sense of makeup?

Beneath
2017-07-14, 06:41 PM
I pity anyone who decides to drink holy water in a dnd universe.

People do actually drink colloidal silver (water with silver particles in it small enough that they don't settle) IRL. It doesn't really do anything (it's a topical disinfectant; drinking it doesn't help with anything) except that if you pile enough silver nanoparticles into a human body they accumulate and turn your skin blue.

A 3e flask of holy water weighs a pound, so it's probably a bit under a pint.

Really, though, D&D holy water makes about as little sense as D&D cold iron

Aotrs Commander
2017-07-14, 07:15 PM
Really, though, D&D holy water makes about as little sense as D&D cold iron

Or the D&D economic system in general.

(10' pole cost > 10' ladder cost.)



(Mind you, I even caught Rolemaster on that issue, where flour was more expensive than bread...

And I was looking at the price of bread in general to work out what the pay for a not-Roman Legionary was, since I managed to find the historical data to work from, which shows you the sort of lengths I go to in my world-building...! )

Guizonde
2017-07-15, 04:40 AM
Or the D&D economic system in general.

(10' pole cost > 10' ladder cost.)



(Mind you, I even caught Rolemaster on that issue, where flour was more expensive than bread...

And I was looking at the price of bread in general to work out what the pay for a not-Roman Legionary was, since I managed to find the historical data to work from, which shows you the sort of lengths I go to in my world-building...! )

two things: 1: please tell me more flour was more expensive than bread (like 5lbs to a 1lb loaf). if not, how can anyone make that mistake?!

2: wasn't the original salary salt? or are you talking about payment in grain as well as coins and transitional items?

Aotrs Commander
2017-07-15, 07:38 AM
two things: 1: please tell me more flour was more expensive than bread (like 5lbs to a 1lb loaf). if not, how can anyone make that mistake?!

2: wasn't the original salary salt? or are you talking about payment in grain as well as coins and transitional items?

30lbs Flour (barley) => 10 cp. 1lbs loaf of barley bread => 3 tp (tin pieces, where 1 cp = 10 tp)

30 loaves of bread => 90 tp = > 9 cp...

So it failed on the first order magnitude pass.

(But hey, of fun, let's go a little deeper. (It was a few years ago since I did that.) Now, a quick google search suggests that 65% hydration of flour to to water for the weight of dough and an approximate loss of 20% of that weight on completion. So, that suggest 0.73 lbs flour per 1lb loaf (1 x 1.2/ 1.65).

Which would gives us 41 2/3 loaves per 30lbs flour, which woud be 125 tp... Which is actually in the profitability range. 'Course, that's also not counting the cost of the yeast and the salt...!

So, to be fair to RM, then, they MIGHT have actually done that, but this was long before the days of the internet which I could loom it up with a google search...!)



It was salt originally, but for not-Rome, what I did was basically take a snap-shot of the various changing laws and whatnots from over the Roman period and standardise a bit. I got the salary, I think from around the later end.

*checks*

Yeah, the Validus Legions get 10 Asses per day, which equates to 960 Sestertii per year (4 asses = 1 sestertius). This is very slightly more more than the Marian Legionary, (at 900 sestertii or 225 denarii - but Dreemaenhyll has a 384-day year, not 365), but less than the later Domintian legionary, who got 1200 Hs (300 Dn). (Of which half, for example for a PC, would be the take-home pay, everything else was expenses.)

I think I just took that value in the end, since trying to work out what a sestertius was worth (bread being the operative commonality price I could find) proved to be largely impracticle, since neither D&D or Rolemaster has a very sensible answer for price - D&D in particular (like most RPG systems), being essentially arbitarily priced. I gave it a good stab, though.

(I may have even found the prcies for flour and bread for a Roman, which would have meant I would have had a basis with which to write of RM's numbers, but that was going back a fair few years - Dreemaenyll is getting on for fifteen years old now, or thereabouts. (the Civ III screencaps I used for the map are dated 2004, which the youngest date I can find, but I suspect it might be a yar or two older than that in concept, but probably not much more.)

So whether or not a Validus Legionary is actually better off than a Roman one with that pay is a good question.

Max_Killjoy
2017-07-15, 08:37 AM
Well. Here's the thing. I just crunched the numbers, and the requisite 5 lbs of silver required for Bless (or Curse) Water is 216 cubic cenitmetres (6 x 6 x 6 cm), or little over a 2 inch-cube. (Less than I thought it might be actually.) That's 25 gp's worth apparently, if we beleive the spell. Given that that's a first level spell, and generally holy water is pretty freely available as mundane gear... Yeah, I have to think that silver is rather more abundant in your typical fantasy land.

However, given the ridiculous amounts of gold and size and prevalence of gemstones, this isn't actually that much of a stretch. I mean, heck, if the world in question has fauna from one million years ago plus pterosaurs, dinosaurs and anamalocaris (let alone magic creatures!), I think "precious metals are more common" isn't that much of a stretch...!

Also that said, D&D's "pounds" with regard to equipment and encumberance typically bears very little resemblence (or sanity) to actual real-world item weights and capacities, so we can perhaps take that "5 lbs" with a pinch of salt, come to that.

(And we'll gloss over how much ore it would take to smelt out that much silver, I want the PCs to actually access it...!)



Though, actally, it raises an interesting thought. The currency runs on sestertii, where the 1 sestertius equals 1 gp (with As 1/4 gp and then Quadrans (1/16th gp) further down, and Denarius (4gp) and Aureus (100gp) going up - and sestertii are technically were originally silver (they'd be brass at this point), As and quadrans are bronze, denarius are silver and only aureus are gold). So a) that has some interesting implications to the relative rarity of gold to silver to regular D&D worlds, let alone Earth and b) means the PCs may not be all that keen to be grinding up their coins, since the worth of said coins will not be equivilent to their actual weight...!



I think, then, my initial gut instinct maybe on the right track - the temples may have a special grinding wheel for the specific purpose. (Like the sort you see for sharpening swords in the movies (though I don't know how accurate that actually is, there theory in this case is probably fair.)) Probably peddle powered, in this case. (Of course, if they were on the mainland in Not-Rome, the posh temples would probably have some water powered contraption.)

The most likely explanation for all this is that the people writing the various D&D materials didn't do a lick of homework on these subjects, were simply concerned with the immediate "balance" of the single topic and not any of its implications for other topics or the actual worldbuilding, and just wrote whatever "felt right" from their favorite fiction and the aftermath of Victorian "scholarship" on popular understanding.



In D&D you can import metals from the Elemental Plane of Earth or the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Mineral where they can be found not only in spectacular abundance but also in pure form. A cleric of sufficient level can even conceivably Planar Ally up a Shaitan and say 'I have this much of x substance and want this much of Y substance, fetch it for me' and pay them off with some of ridiculously high added value like scrolls.

Ah, good old system-setting disconnect... settings usually imply history-like scarcity levels, system implies something entirely different.


On the subject of grinding silver... is silver actually hard enough to grind? Some poking around online implies that it is, but you have to go slowly. Too much pressure will reportedly heat up the silver and cause it to oxidize (tarnish) quickly, resulting in something that probably doesn't work for the spell. And that heat also makes it difficulty to handle the chunk or rod or whatever of silver. There's also evidently a lot of potential waste in dust if you don't take pains to collect it carefully.

Aotrs Commander
2017-07-15, 08:53 AM
The most likely explanation for all this is that the people writing the various D&D materials didn't do a lick of homework on these subjects, were simply concerned with the immediate "balance" of the single topic and not any of its implications for other topics or the actual worldbuilding, and just wrote whatever "felt right" from their favorite fiction and the aftermath of Victorian "scholarship" on popular understanding.

I'm pretty sure this is exactly what happens in a typical set of RPG rles being written.



Ah, good old system-setting disconnect... settings usually imply history-like scarcity levels, system implies something entirely different.

Yeah. I try to cleave reasonable close to histroical - because it gives a better base to work from - and just explain round (or cough over) the disconnects; you can, after all, only do so much. Creating a full and proper workjing fantasy economy is beyond most of us I suspect, in time if not ability (and time spent verses gain).



On the subject of grinding silver... is silver actually hard enough to grind? Some poking around online implies that it is, but you have to go slowly. Too much pressure will reportedly heat up the silver and cause it to oxidize (tarnish) quickly, resulting in something that probably doesn't work for the spell. And that heat also makes it difficulty to handle the chunk or rod or whatever of silver. There's also evidently a lot of potential waste in dust if you don't take pains to collect it carefully.

Okay, that's useful to know.

So, I think that a specially modified grinding wheel in the temple might be the right approach (for the optimum efficiency) after all, then, presumably with the relevant tweaks (water-cooled maybe - the not-Romans love their water systems as much as the Romans did, and they've had more time to practise!) Presumably with some sort of apparatus for collecting the dust.

Expereimental theory time, then: maybe the grinding wheel is partially in a sealed box - you put the silver in through the top to the wheel (which is water-cooled) and then basically deatched the box and wash it out afterwards onto, I dunno, a tray of some sort, and then collect the dust after the water evaporates (mayeb even put it in an apporpriate drying oven or something...?

Max_Killjoy
2017-07-15, 09:21 AM
Okay, that's useful to know.

So, I think that a specially modified grinding wheel in the temple might be the right approach (for the optimum efficiency) after all, then, presumably with the relevant tweaks (water-cooled maybe - the not-Romans love their water systems as much as the Romans did, and they've had more time to practise!) Presumably with some sort of apparatus for collecting the dust.

Expereimental theory time, then: maybe the grinding wheel is partially in a sealed box - you put the silver in through the top to the wheel (which is water-cooled) and then basically deatched the box and wash it out afterwards onto, I dunno, a tray of some sort, and then collect the dust after the water evaporates (mayeb even put it in an apporpriate drying oven or something...?


The wheel can be partially in the water, and while spinning, pull just enough water up and around to keep the wheel wet and cool, and catch the silver particles coming off. Then as you say, drain and rinse into another container, where you evaporate the water and collect the silver grains and dust.

The one thing I'd worry about there is whether water acts as an oxidation catalyst for silver the same way it does for iron.

Aotrs Commander
2017-07-15, 11:24 AM
The wheel can be partially in the water, and while spinning, pull just enough water up and around to keep the wheel wet and cool, and catch the silver particles coming off. Then as you say, drain and rinse into another container, where you evaporate the water and collect the silver grains and dust.

Sounds about right.


The one thing I'd worry about there is whether water acts as an oxidation catalyst for silver the same way it does for iron.

A quick look suggests probably no, since silver is not hugely reactive and wiki says it tends only to form oxides in the presence of other compounds. (It also says it doesn't react with air, even at red heat.) I mean, I wouldn't stake my repuation on it or anything, but if the players ask, I can be reasonable confident and say I couldn't find anything obvious that said it does.

(The one chap who might know more about chemisty than I do might of course be able to provide a better explanation himself on the day, if it comes up. I'd have asked him, but he's one of the PCs...! Heck, if they manage to come up with something clever themselves, great - this whole party is about that sort of thinking, really.)

Xuc Xac
2017-07-15, 01:25 PM
One thing I know from collecting ancient coins is that silver can crystalize and become quite fragile. Like I've accidentally broken an argenteus by lightly handling it. It doesn't happen all the time, and I'm not sure what conditions cause it, but if you can find enough really old silver objects, you should be able to find some that could be crushed into a powder with little effort.

Coins weren't pure. Pure silver is too soft to withstand circulation as coinage so it's alloyed with a bit of copper to make it harder and more durable. All solid metals are crystals. The forging, quenching, tempering, and annealing processes in forging all manipulate the type of crystals that form in the metal. If you look at an old metal doorknob, you can often see the crystals etched in the surface by decades of handling (it looks like a bunch of polygons).

The problem with silver coins is that copper and silver don't make a stable alloy. Over a few centuries, the copper migrates out of the crystals and moves into the boundaries between them. You eventually end up with silver crystals stuck together with a copper glue. Copper doesn't bind silver very well so when the crystals are divided by enough copper, they're easy to separate and the whole thing falls apart under pressure like a dry sandcastle. Pure silver wouldn't do that. It would just tarnish.

GPS
2017-07-16, 12:42 AM
Filing or just plain grinding should work.

Mechalich
2017-07-16, 01:03 AM
Ah, good old system-setting disconnect... settings usually imply history-like scarcity levels, system implies something entirely different.


Well, yeah, but something like silver is weird, because the use of silver in the form of holy water implies a vast quantity of silver is being used in a non-renewable way in a fashion that just doesn't have nay parallels with conventional Earth.

During actual pre-industrial times people dug silver ore out of the ground, smelted it into a useful form and then kept using it over and over. Unless it was lost you could keep using the silver again and again by melting it and remaking it, with the same thing being true of gold and several other metals. But if you're constantly grinding silver into powder and making it into holy water you are removing huge quantities of silver from circulation - major temples are presumably churning through literal tons per year - that's really different from anything that ever happened on Earth and you may need an alternative source. This is especially true if you've being mining for tens of thousands of years without ever significantly enhancing mining techniques. So it gets weird.

Aotrs Commander
2017-07-16, 08:24 AM
Well, yeah, but something like silver is weird, because the use of silver in the form of holy water implies a vast quantity of silver is being used in a non-renewable way in a fashion that just doesn't have nay parallels with conventional Earth.

During actual pre-industrial times people dug silver ore out of the ground, smelted it into a useful form and then kept using it over and over. Unless it was lost you could keep using the silver again and again by melting it and remaking it, with the same thing being true of gold and several other metals. But if you're constantly grinding silver into powder and making it into holy water you are removing huge quantities of silver from circulation - major temples are presumably churning through literal tons per year - that's really different from anything that ever happened on Earth and you may need an alternative source. This is especially true if you've being mining for tens of thousands of years without ever significantly enhancing mining techniques. So it gets weird.

And it's not like even the high level spells allow you create something out of nothing (at best, you can convert gold into silver...!)

But the same holds true for gems, of course, especially diamonds - and all the diamond dust...!

Vinyadan
2017-07-16, 09:08 AM
Maybe you could engineer a rotating file; there is something similar for hard cheese. The silver ingot is pressed from above, pushing against a cylinder beneath it. The cylinder is the file. Rotating on its axis thanks to a crank, it pulverises the silver, which can be collected through a funnel beneath the cylinder.

Squiddish
2017-07-16, 08:53 PM
And it's not like even the high level spells allow you create something out of nothing (at best, you can convert gold into silver...!)

But the same holds true for gems, of course, especially diamonds - and all the diamond dust...!

Well, the difference is, even in real life gemstones can't be put back together. Once you've ground a diamond into dust, it's pretty much just useful for cutting things.

Zalabim
2017-07-17, 04:49 AM
It just makes me think that the infinite expanse of valuable materials in the elemental planes come from the materials being spent as components on the prime planes.

Max_Killjoy
2017-07-17, 06:41 AM
It just makes me think that the infinite expanse of valuable materials in the elemental planes come from the materials being spent as components on the prime planes.

Great, now spellcasters get to be smug about recycling before it was cool, too.

:smallbiggrin:

Deophaun
2017-07-17, 09:36 AM
There's also evidently a lot of potential waste in dust if you don't take pains to collect it carefully.
Take silver, take file, put both in a sack. Cast unseen servant and tell it to get in the sack and start grinding. No wasted dust.

Max_Killjoy
2017-07-17, 09:47 AM
Take silver, take file, put both in a sack. Cast unseen servant and tell it to get in the sack and start grinding. No wasted dust.

Servant is now less unseen and more of a Sparkly Servant.

goto124
2017-07-17, 10:15 AM
I laughed out loud at that. Thank you.

Walk away until the servant is outside spell range, and the servant will go poof, allowing all dust to be collected in the sack.

The spell range also means the wizard can't go adventuring while the servant's grinding silver, though.

Deophaun
2017-07-17, 10:20 AM
The spell range also means the wizard can't go adventuring while the servant's grinding silver, though.
You can take the sack and the servant with you. It's not like the servant weighs anything.

Guizonde
2017-07-17, 10:58 AM
caster: "GET IN THE FETHING BAG!!!"
*sudden police appearance is sudden*
policemen: ahem, kidnapping in broad daylight, in a conspicuous bag, and is that a silver ingot i see? let's add grand larceny to the list *readu truncheons on the nerd*
caster:"hello officers, it's not what it looks like i swear!" *flinches*

NotThog
2017-07-22, 05:42 PM
Servant is now less unseen and more of a Sparkly Servant.
I was going to joke about a certain book and movie series, the sparkly vampires therein and their reactions to silver but then I remembered that it's werewolves that don't like the stuff. (On the other hand, werewolves do like a good stake. :smallamused: )

Honest Tiefling
2017-07-22, 05:49 PM
But the same holds true for gems, of course, especially diamonds - and all the diamond dust...!

Diamonds aren't that rare, and nothing in the spell description says you can't use industrial grade diamonds, really.

I'm not as much of an alchemist or chemist as others, but maybe it'd help if we knew what was in the town? Any industry other then the silver mine? What ore do they have? How are they purifying it, or do they just ship the ore to where the fuel is? (I know that happens with iron smelting, not so sure with silver smelting).

And if the local temple has the powered silver, wouldn't they also have a semi-efficient method of producing themselves? Why bother coming up with a process when you can raid the local friendly temple of whoever-is-not-a-war-god and steal their method, tools, and supplies.

TheCountAlucard
2017-07-22, 08:03 PM
I was going to joke about a certain book and movie series, the sparkly vampires therein and their reactions to silver but then I remembered that it's werewolves that don't like the stuff. (On the other hand, werewolves do like a good stake. :smallamused: )Well, I wouldn't call human-alien-nanotechnology hybrids "vampires," really, even if the author did. :smalltongue:

(Also, garlic and silver have both been observed to possess antimicrobial properties IRL; considering how many vampire folk tales presented them as bringers of disease, is it all that odd that those substances could defeat them?)

lightningcat
2017-07-23, 12:27 PM
I think that I remember there being a high level spell called "Seed Mine" which closes up an old mine and over the course of a decade creates a new vein of material. Maybe that is what happen to all the material component.