Re: Re: bronze supply

From: KYER, JEFFREY <jeff.kyer_at_...>
Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 15:51:34 -0500

Dick Kingman wrote:
>
> I picture the Heortlings of Dragon Pass using a sort of "closed open-pit"
> style of mining. However, it may depend on how magical you want your
> Glorantha.

What might a closed open pit be? Something like the blue marlstone quarries south of Saurum? Those were like underground cathedrals -- huge galleries where the rock was hauled out... until they collapsed and you started again.

Dangerous. Not something I'd want a kinsman wandering around in. Thralls, perhaps, but even they are pricy. The things are easy to guard though.  

> I have been preparing a "resettling Dragon Pass" campaign and working on the
> details of the clan and planned events. It is heavily influenced by KoDP.
> I have been strip mining KoDP for ideas. :-)

..as it were. There's some good notes on Dave Dunham's website about that era. Its the timeframe I'd consider running a game it as its a wild and wooly time. And much more violent than the current one (at the moment).  

> One of the clan events will be the discovery on the tula of a deposit of a
> nice blue-green clay for pottery. (Sound familair?) A couple of years later,

Good touch. Someone knows his clays.

> the clan will discover the god-bone that lies there next to the clay. The
> earth priestess/gyda sends an earthsnake (gnome/earth elemental) to
> determine the size and shape of the bone. It is a big one and will probably

I;d be thinking a jumble of bones myself -- several bodies at the least. Again, I'm not too sure on the size of the bodies of giants/gods. But even so, there has to be a suffiecently large mass of metal.

This adds an entirely new meaning to following a vein...

> keep the clan in bronze for generations, unless they start trading it. When
> the clan's bonesmith wants more bronze, he asks her for it. She sends the
> earthsnake in and it loosens the soil covering the bone, breaks up pieces of
> the bone and lifts them to the surface. The bonesmith and his laborers

Earthsnakes have trouble with metal, I think. Its not really earth or stone. I think they'd probably have to send in some daft bugger for the dangerous task of getting the material. But that could also be a subcult of Gusbran or the like -- I'm thinking about it.

But mining is so far out of the Storm Tribe's usual walk that it'd have to be some adopted stranger or a clever hero-cult. Gustbran seems the obvious choice but I'm sure there are other ones.

Often in celtic/saxon society, the smith went and got his metal from the bog using a rake. I somehow don't think we'd get bog-bronze in Glorantha. And bog iron just doesn't feel right -- though it COUDL be a rare thing that might be gotten out of the edges of Delecti's swamp -- or the vast bronze workings of the sunken/encrusted cities under the marsh... Hmmm....

> gather it up and take it back to the smithy.
>
> Happy Holidays,
> Sacred Time and successful LBQ,
> Dick Kingman

Thanks. Its food for thought,

Jeff

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