Chris Lemens:
> And yet they don't use to to make anything. I think that the reasons are:
> 1. Their fires are not hot enough. They mostly burn dung with a few sticks of brush. (The magic of the internet tells me that dung fires in a kiln can get up to nearly 1500 F, but copper does not melt until 1984 F.)
Yes, that's a problem - especially since they are unlikely to use kilns in the first place. As Bryan Thexton said: they lack the magic.
If they do have kilns, they will be able to char whatever burning material they have before melting the copper. Even a bad coal will easily provide the temperatures to melt copper. But: they lack the magic.
However, provided you have a source for copper (ore or finely ground metal), kilns, charcoal, and wind, you are exactly in the position to mass produce copper and to pour it into rough forms whose products you can refine by hammering or whetting.
And while the Beast Nomads don't have this magic, the Tada-Shi probably had it.
> 2. They have bone-smithing magic that they use to make weapons that are as good a the copper weapons they could otherwise create.
The cynic in me would say "as lousy as", but I will grant you that a neolithic arrow or spear point will be at least once as lethal as a bronze one.
> 3. Historically, they didn't really encounter the copper sands until after Waha was gone and they were firmly set in their ways.
When they were pushed out into the Wastes, their ways just had been disrupted by the Pure Horse folk (whose allies provided them with bronze tools and the necessary magics). I would expect them to raid for both some of those tools and some of that knowledge.
> 4. More prosaically, not all the sand is copper. You would need to get a lot of sand and heat it to the metling point of copper to extract just a little copper. It's enough to make the whole area copper-colored, but that doesn't take all that much as a percent. That sounds like an industrial opportunity, not one for nomads.
Nope... copper is a lot heavier than sand, so there are fairly easy ways to separate a sand-poor, copper-rich fraction just like farmers separate spelt from grain by simply shaking it. (Ok, another magic not native to the Beast Nomads...)
Making glass requires as high temperatures as melting copper (depending on the amounts of ash and other minerals you add to enable the flow of the glass).
> I bet it would make pretty glass, but for items #1.
You would get this kind of glass from lightning strikes into the copper sands. Depending on the sand content, this might be a weapon-grade material in its own right.
> The Paps is a special case. There, they have underground sources of pure copper that can be cold-beaten into the right shapes. And they historically had non-hostile contact with the earth termples in Esrolia.
I'm pretty sure that they do trade and raid for metal items. I suppose that's what Pimper's Block is about - you might not sell herd beasts (even ones from other tribes), but there is no such compunction against selling slaves from those tribes.
IMO there is a magical reason not to deplete the copper sands - they form a barrier against the Krjalki Bog which would be dangerous to weaken. You might as well go and chip away at the Block...
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