Metal/ element and magical properties

NotaNuffian

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Anyone here has a list of metal/ element and how well they supposed to interact with magic?

For example, in Supreme Magus, Gold reacts violently to mana than Silver, thus it sucks as a hammer for magic forging.
 

MrTiemos

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Idk if there’s a specific list or something, but I’ve seen mana being compared to electricity in that good conductors are better for using mana
 

Jemini

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Also, I would strongly advise against describing gold as reacting violently with anything. That goes for silver as well. Standard fair is to have metals with magical characteristics similar to their IRL chemical characteristics, and in that area gold is a good conductor of electricity (although not as good as copper) and highly non-reactive.

As for silver, silver actually DOES have a strong history in IRL mysticism. It is always described as having strong purification characteristics. This is reflected (pun intended) in the mystical qualities that mirrors sometimes are said to have since older pre-industrial mirrors were made from silver. This is also the reason vampires don't have a reflection in a mirror, it is because silver is such a pure substance that it refuses to carry the image of an impure creature such as a vampire. Similarly, this is also why warewolves have a weakness to silver.

Anyway, if you do want some kind of proper breakdown of magical properties assigned to metals, I would recommend looking up the Mistborn series. In that series, there are 3 magic systems. One of those 3 systems is called allomancy, and allomancy functions by consuming metals in order to enact the magic. Each metal has a different effect. So, allomancy would be the place to go for some kind of magical properties assigned to metals.

Mind you, I have not actually read the Mistborn series myself. So, Brandon Sanderson (the author of Mistborn) might have a different take on gold and silver from me. However, what I described about silver is very much the tranditional way it has been portrayed throughout almost the entirety of the pre-industrial era.
 

NotaNuffian

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Also, I would strongly advise against describing gold as reacting violently with anything. That goes for silver as well. Standard fair is to have metals with magical characteristics similar to their IRL chemical characteristics, and in that area gold is a good conductor of electricity (although not as good as copper) and highly non-reactive.

As for silver, silver actually DOES have a strong history in IRL mysticism. It is always described as having strong purification characteristics. This is reflected (pun intended) in the mystical qualities that mirrors sometimes are said to have since older pre-industrial mirrors were made from silver. This is also the reason vampires don't have a reflection in a mirror, it is because silver is such a pure substance that it refuses to carry the image of an impure creature such as a vampire. Similarly, this is also why warewolves have a weakness to silver.

Anyway, if you do want some kind of proper breakdown of magical properties assigned to metals, I would recommend looking up the Mistborn series. In that series, there are 3 magic systems. One of those 3 systems is called allomancy, and allomancy functions by consuming metals in order to enact the magic. Each metal has a different effect. So, allomancy would be the place to go for some kind of magical properties assigned to metals.

Mind you, I have not actually read the Mistborn series myself. So, Brandon Sanderson (the author of Mistborn) might have a different take on gold and silver from me. However, what I described about silver is very much the tranditional way it has been portrayed throughout almost the entirety of the pre-industrial era.
This is the list I found before, it is fun as in the different metals have different attributes given to the user.

What I was planning on however, is how each metal having different response to mana, a little bit like how metal react to heat or electricity. The reddit posts are not that helpful as in the final answer is just "go read it yourself", there has not been a finalised and clear answer to it. Pf course the mythical metal Mythril is a good conductor and some said it is just Silver, only more magical, thus going by that logic Silver is a good conductor as well. But what about Gold? Which metal is its proxy? Orichalcum? Adamantium?
 

Jemini

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This is the list I found before, it is fun as in the different metals have different attributes given to the user.

What I was planning on however, is how each metal having different response to mana, a little bit like how metal react to heat or electricity. The reddit posts are not that helpful as in the final answer is just "go read it yourself", there has not been a finalised and clear answer to it. Pf course the mythical metal Mythril is a good conductor and some said it is just Silver, only more magical, thus going by that logic Silver is a good conductor as well. But what about Gold? Which metal is its proxy? Orichalcum? Adamantium?

Orichalcum was supposed to be some kind of alloy from Greece, and was a very strong metal. Adamantium is a fictional metal that actually came about rather recently historically speaking. It was invented by Marvel comics. It is something that didn't exist in any lore before they came up with it.

Going by this, neither metal would be analogous to gold. Historically speaking, there is a fairly high chance Orichalcum very well might have been the Greek word for the product of a certain form of steel smelting as it occasionally involves the inclusion of certain other metals to strengthen it. It may surprise most people, but steel existed before the medieval era. It's a metal that was lost and re-discovered several times throughout history. So, the lost Greek metal Orichalcum could very well be just another example of that. The Greeks also had Damascus steel, which is another metal absolutely positively identified as steel. So, they knew about steel but Orichalcum was supposed to be stronger. If Orichalcum is historical (which has a high probability of being the case,) then it suggests the Greeks had some form of bloomery smelting technology that there is not much surviving evidence of and they used it to smelt and mix certain inclusions like, maybe, tin into the steel.

As for uses in fiction, well... Marvel portrays Adamantium as being an alloy that is unbreakable, but never specifies what it's made from. Only that you have to mix it in a completely molten form, and then once it cools it is impossible to ever deform from the state it cooled into. Fantasy series that have later adopted the use of Adamantium, however, often portray it as a mono-metal. As in, it is dug up from the ground as Adamantium. It is portrayed with characteristics similar to lead in this form, except that it's also stronger than steel.

Marvel might have originally had some kind of traidmark on Adamantium, but it is evident that the Japanese were unaware of this traidmark and started using it so frequently in their fantasy fiction that it bled over back into the states and made an appearance in Dungeons and Dragons in the 2000s early enough to have been in 3rd edition. At this point, if any trade mark on Adamantium existed, it became public domain when they didn't enforce on Wizards of the Coast unless they got the permission to use the metal officially and I didn't know about it. Even if they did though, the slew of Japanese fictions and Japanese inspired fictions since then that use Adamantium have created a situation where the IP became uninforcable, and now it's DEFINITELY public domain as a result.

Those are the real world histories of each, you can derive some properties from that.
 

AliceShiki

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I mean, you can just choose them randomly?

You can say that adamantium rejects magic, while mithril is the best magic conductor.

You can say that silver is better with holy magic, while obsidian is better with dark magic.

I dunno, make Copper good with fire magic normally, but good with nature magic when oxidated.... Do whatever you want, I guess? Just make a bunch of ideas and apply to metals based on their color or something~
 

NotaNuffian

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I mean, you can just choose them randomly?

You can say that adamantium rejects magic, while mithril is the best magic conductor.

You can say that silver is better with holy magic, while obsidian is better with dark magic.

I dunno, make Copper good with fire magic normally, but good with nature magic when oxidated.... Do whatever you want, I guess? Just make a bunch of ideas and apply to metals based on their color or something~
That requires creativity.

I am 30 plus.

My creativity died alongside with my passion when I was 25.
 

TheTrinary

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Anyone here has a list of metal/ element and how well they supposed to interact with magic?

For example, in Supreme Magus, Gold reacts violently to mana than Silver, thus it sucks as a hammer for magic forging.
None of that is real. You know that right? You can write whatever you want. You're basically just asking everyone to worldbuild for you.
 

NotaNuffian

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None of that is real. You know that right? You can write whatever you want. You're basically just asking everyone to worldbuild for you.
Yeah, I am lazy.

I am sort of fixulating myself onto systems that had been done by others and just stea- plageriz- liberate and slap it with a new paint job, a bit like how I do my engineering design drawings at work.

Take a drawing done by someone else, change some dimensions, date and put my name and voila, I am now a draftman instead of an engineer. Kind of why my boss is paying me a dirt cheap paycheck and occasionally threaten to fire me if I don't pull my socks up.

I am planning to just say f#@k it and use the common metal in our world as normal metal and just play with the list of fantasy metal instead.

 

Jemini

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That requires creativity.

I am 30 plus.

My creativity died alongside with my passion when I was 25.
I have grown progressively more creative as I age. Creativity, like anything else, is a skill you have to train. Also, research feeds creativity. One of the best areas to research is IRL historical developments for various pieces of fictional lore. Studying various divine mythologies is a prime target to go for. I have actually become fascinated with Babylonian mythos recently, both because it has some interesting concepts but also because it is an area largely untouched by fiction thus far.

Also, researching historical combat is another key area that will bring you a long ways. It is also an easy subject to get into these days due to the HEMA community on Youtube popularizing the subject so much. In just the past 5 years we have gone leaps and bounds toward public education on a lot of historical combat stuff that rested only in the hands of dedicated scholars up until recently.

That's the trick. Suplement your brain with imagery and a frame-work, and then your imagination will bridge the gaps and your creativity will begin fitting a story to that frame-work you have built.
 
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