Truestone & Adamant

From: Lewis Jardine <jardine_at_rmcs.cranfield.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 12:22:32 +0000


In response to:

> > Admantium is to Truestone as gold is to gold ore; well, in _Cults Of
> > Prax_ it says that the dwarves have a way of "refining" Truestone into
> > Admantium so I figure that''s roughly the relationship. Given that, I'd
> > figure that it has the properties of Truestone and then some; possibly
> > weaker chaos beasts would die simply by touching an admantium item.
>

Pasanen Panu wrote:

> Adamantium cancels magics totally when touched; at least Griffin Island
> suggests so. Like superb non-enchanted iron. I'd say that refining is
> a long-term process, equivalent in difficulty to HQ'ing. Adamantium
> is so hard to get that I know of no Gloranthan hero who would have
> an adamantium arrowtip or a piece of it.

That is only because the Mostali come to collect it as soon as they find out about it. When they come you have these choices:

  1. Give them the adamant (& possibly be well rewarded).
  2. Fight them and they will keep coming until they eventually kill you.
  3. Run & keep running until they catch you...

Thus, you are "bound" not to know of anyone with adamant as if you knew, then the Mostali would know and they would take it away. If anyone owns any of it they are either a superhero (Harrek's claws & Gbaji's claws...)
or they are very quite about it.

> Killing chaos beasts is a property of item of Law, for example
> truestone from Spike. When Law is processed, it is no longer Law.
> I do not know what it is, though.
> The effect and logics propose Disorder.
>

I have to disagree here.
I believe that you are confusing 2 similar but non-identical concepts:

Law (as opposed to Chaos) which can be a living thing (hence Truestone is Fossilized Law).

Order (as opposed to Disorder) which is a stagnant non-living thing.

  1. Refining is a method for adding Order, so I would not expect Truestone to lose its order based properties (destroying Chaos) in the process.
  2. I would speculate that you cannot have magic without Disorder, thus refining Truestone (fossilized Law) into something without Disorder produces the antimagic effect.
  3. The concept of Entropy is I believe the combination of Chaos & Disorder. This is naturally very distructive, but not in itself Evil.
  4. Adamant is unbreakable thus it is a total block to Entropy which as every Mostali knows is out to break the World Machine.

Chaos beasts are basically creatures of Entropy (Chaos & Disorder) so that they are affected by the orderly nature of Truestone (& even more so by Adamant). However, if you could have a non-Disorderly creature of Chaos I would speculate that this would be unaffected by Truestone.

Of course I'm not sure if one of these exists, ideas are:

Wild Healer of the Rockwoods
Some Lunars..?

Cheers

        Lewis


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