>I have always been dissatisfied with the usual consensus naming bronze the
>metal of Umath and his kin. Bronze is a composite metal, not a pure
>elemental one, I think.
Read Wyrm's Footprints for the reasoning behind this: Umath, not Orlanth, is the first god of a mixed elemental background. He is the child of the aloof sky (Zrethus, the Seshnegi term for Dayzatar, though in terms of descendance it should rather be for Aether), first of the Burtae (gods of mixed elemental - possibly also otherwise, but that has never been detailed - background).
This is what sets apart the entire storm tribe of gods from the other, earlier gods. There is no pure storm (metal). There is no storm parthenogenesis (although Kolat's dissembling into winds may approach this), the storm gods are supposed to have mothers, known in the cases of Urox and Orlanth.
>Here are some of my work-in-progress views on Gloranthan metals and their
>metaphysical connections.
>Tin is the metal of Umath. It's light, malleable and the color of a
>stormy sky. The essence of Storm is strength, change and violence.
Tin - or rather Ze-metal - is the metal of the sky (not gold). Otherwise, Umath's metal would have to be an alloy of copper and gold (which is entirely possible in RW metallurgy, and probably in Gloranthan as well).
Umath gets an alloy, and all his sons share this.
Orlanth has no metal of his own.
If you want to go strange and use really obscure old info, sometimes silver has been named as the air metal. With Entekos revealed as the goddess of air, and with a tie to Uleria, a possibility, and a reason why Sedenya claims it for her own. But then so do the various star deities (known case is Yelorna).
Some while ago there were some amusing thoughts on degenerated sky metal on the digest, like "take gold and have water wash over it for so-and-so days, and you will get tin. Place it in the dark, and wait long enough, and you'll get lead."
If you want to mix real world alchemy and chemistry with Glorantha, you might want to call Quicksilver Larnste's metal. It takes up all other metals (except iron) and releases them in possibly altered form.
One thing I find rather more interesting than which god gets which metal is how in Gloranthan praxis are the metals worked? I don't want to lose the image of the smith bent over the anvil, hammering the metal into shape, alternately putting it into the forge for heating and into water (oil, blood, whatever) for cooling. I don't want to get swords etc from casting moulds. At least not as the standard procedure.
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