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| #1CthulhudrewMay 14, 2007 16:54:58 | Been reading over the 2E Savage Coast materials in more depth recently (mainly due to the cool .pdf version at the Vaults, and since I've never read it over much before), and I'm once more kind of put off by the Red Curse changes that came into being in the 2E incarnation. One big reason that sticks out at the moment is that, by the changes made, pretty much everyone has to use cinnabryl now (to ward off Afflications), where in the VotPA version, you really only needed to use it if you a) decided you wanted to live a longer life with more clarity of thought (reverse life expectancy and Int/Wis penalties), and b) even noticed the difference in the first place. That said, it got me to thinking that the sheer amount of cinnabryl required at this stage must be staggering, so I thought I'd do some quick math: (Premise: 1 oz. cinnabryl wards off Affliction for 1 week) Population of Gargoña (c.1013): 14,000 Required cinnabryl/year: 672,000 oz/42,000 lb. Population of Cimmaron (c.1013): 18,000 Required cinnabryl/year: 864,000 oz/54,000 lb. Population of Almarrón (c.1013): 7,000 Required cinnabryl/year: 336,000 oz/21,000 lb. Population of Saragón (c.1013): 8,000 Required cinnabryl/year: 384,000 oz/24,000 lb. Population of Narvaez (c.1013): 16,000 Required cinnabryl/year: 768,000 oz/48,000 lb. Population of Guadalante (c.1013): 7,500 Required cinnabryl/year: 360,000 oz/22,500 lb. Total: 211,500 lb/105 tons of red steel (depleted cinnabryl)/year!! Now, those numbers are what would be roughly required to maintain every citizen in healthy conditions year round, which is obviously not the situation (ie, there are many Afflicted). Even taking that into account, and given the possibility of having clerics casting maintain spells (which couldn't be all that common, since it's a 3rd level spell), you've still got a major and unprecedented need for cinnabryl post-WotI. (Anyone have any ideas on RW economics regarding the proliferation of steel/metals in the Medieval/Renaissance period to gauge whether 105 tons is a lot for populations of that size?) So a couple of things spring to mind: a) Red steel will be becoming a lot more common; the SC campaign book has it costing +1000% over normal metals, which seems incredibly excessive. Under the circumstances, it should probably be equal or only marginally more expensive than regular steel. b) Where is all that red steel going to? It's not being used in construction, nor (seemingly) in armor and weaponry to the extent it would in a more traditionally medieval campaign- so are the miners selling it to outsiders? and of course c) even with semi-self perpetuating cinnabryl, the mines in the SC are going to run dry in a very short time- not to mention that things should likely be getting even more "savage" over there, as the stakes on finding and keeping claims are much higher. |
| #2olddawgMay 14, 2007 17:34:24 | A few economic thoughts come to mind: 1) between 1000-1010, Red Steel is still at +1000% cost to normal steel 2) Immediately after the Wrath and the release of the Curse, RS costs resemble the earlier time frame but cinnabryl costs explode due to the sudden jump in demand. A 10-100 fold increase in value is not unreasonable. Even 1,000 is arguable 3) In the first few years, more effort is made to locate and refine cinnabryl, dropping its cost exponentially to its eventual equilibrium (ala Newton's Cooling) as production increases. Likewise, Red Steel conversion increases to match cinnabryl depletion. Red Steel cost also drops exponentially as supply increases. 4) The long term economics have the following possibilities a) market forces are allowed to evolve naturally, a new-normal is set for cinnabryl (above its present value) and for RS (below its present value). RS could be equal to, greater than, or less than normal steel in cost. If equal or lesser, it supplants steel in many mundane areas (like horseshoe nails). b) RS sellers, to keep prices up, horde/destroy red steel supplies c) RS sellers, to keep prices up, actively trade RS weapons to the larger world, thereby increasing demand to match the supply. But remember this is still going to take some time work out (10 years is a good guess) as new mines and red-steel smithing capacities have to be added. And since the nobles will horde the cinnabryl, that also takes away some of the potential RS production. -OldDawg |
| #3agathoklesMay 14, 2007 17:46:09 | Note that, due to the breakdown of population, there should be some 3500 priests around in the baronies. While, per se, they are definitely not enough to keep an entire population safe using only Maintain spells, I'd say that the maintain spell could well be combined with devotional or cooperative magic (the Combine and Focus spell). Specifically, Focus makes a spell basically permanent, and gives it an area (e.g., one could make an area permanently affected by True Seeing, even though the spell is normally cast only on individuals), while Combine allows several priests to cooperate to increase their caster level (and therefore the area of effect of the Focus spell, or the duration of the Maintain spell). The Inheritors themselves are also keeping the Cinnabryl trade under control, since they prefer that common people don't use legacies and rely instead on Maintain to avoid depleting all Cinnabryl, so they probably provide small amounts of the metal to the churches, in exchange for regular Maintains. All of this is especially true for Narvaez, which receives only a small amount of Cinnabryl, but has a large priesthood (circa 10% of the population). Other nations have large numbers of Afflicted, or combine the use of Cinnabryl and Maintain spells. As to the Red Steel, there are two reasons why it has a high cost: one is that it comes in small bits, since it is mostly the byproduct of depletion of individual cinnabryl "coins", so the producer-consumer chain is longer (there are more middlemen involved, including the Inheritors and the states who hoard the material for war purposes), and the second is that there is high request from the east -- the City-States, and most likely also the KW nations will start buying it. |
| #4havardMay 15, 2007 8:13:19 | I'm sure Hule would be very interested in buying Red Steel.... Havard |
| #5ripvanwormerMay 15, 2007 22:02:10 | There's a Planescape character with Red Steel armor (Factol Sarin, in The Factol's Manifesto) - maybe they're shipping it all off-world. |
| #6zombiegleemaxMay 16, 2007 2:17:32 | There's a Planescape character with Red Steel armor (Factol Sarin, in The Factol's Manifesto) - maybe they're shipping it all off-world. Actually, every Hardhead in DiTerlizzi's pictures seems to wear a Red Steel armor. I think Harmonium uses a lot of the precious steel. If I remember correctly, there is Green Steel from Baator... |
| #7CthulhudrewMay 16, 2007 9:46:35 | Planescape red steel is different from Savage Coast red steel, though. IIRC, it's from the Abyss, while the green steel comes from the Nine Hells. |
| #8havardMay 16, 2007 10:47:51 | Planescape red steel is different from Savage Coast red steel, though. IIRC, it's from the Abyss, while the green steel comes from the Nine Hells. A little disappointing that they couldn't come up with something more original than that. Does the PS Red Steel have very different properties from the SC version? Havard |
| #9agathoklesMay 16, 2007 12:30:31 | Planescape red steel is different from Savage Coast red steel, though. IIRC, it's from the Abyss, while the green steel comes from the Nine Hells. Do you have a source for this? AFAIK, Baatorian green steel is well known from PS sources, while it's the first time I hear of an Abyssal red steel -- and I can't find it in Faces of Evil, Planes of Chaos or Hellbound. The only mention is in a document by Ken Lipka detailing new metals, but this is not part of the PS 2e published books. So, AFAIK, PS red steel should be the same as Mystaran red steel. GP |
| #10CthulhudrewMay 16, 2007 13:30:08 | Do you have a source for this? Nope- just my recollections from discussions on various MBs, but those discussions (looking back) seem to always come up rather inconclusive. I know we've talked about it here on the MMB before (2 years ago, actually). I think I originally got the impression from the Planescape MML when I was a member many, many years back- but there doesn't seem to be any source for it. So it could very well be SC red steel. |
| #11ripvanwormerMay 18, 2007 14:05:17 | Planescape red steel is different from Savage Coast red steel, though. IIRC, it's from the Abyss, while the green steel comes from the Nine Hells. Sarin's armor explicitly comes from the Prime Material Plane. He's a paladin, and wouldn't wear Abyssal armor in any case. Here's the quote from The Factol's Manifesto, page 91: "The tall, broad-shouldered factol wears a perpetually severe look and his unmistakable armor, made of a prime-world metal some call red steel." There's no such thing as "Abyssal red steel." Abyssal bloodiron was invented for the Planar Handbook in 3e, but Planescape didn't have a Baatorian green steel equivalent. |
| #12yellowdingoMay 18, 2007 19:10:35 | "Psst! Want to buy some Red Steel?" Flashes underside of red cloak. Apart from the occasional interdimensional trader, and the bottomless Armoury of Hule, there must be centuries (if not millennia) of Red Steel out there. It would be in the lair of Dragons. Which means you need a Neutral Red Steel Dragon to counter the Law of a Cinnabryl Dragon and the Chaos of the Cinnabar Dragon. How about Discovering Mineralized Red Steel in the Nest of a Giant Ant out in the desert. Hule is building a Mausoleum of Red Steel (1 mile x 1 mile x 1mile - made from 1 ton interlocking ingots) somwhere...Its taken centuries and will take longer still. |
| #13agathoklesMay 19, 2007 10:24:54 | Apart from the occasional interdimensional trader, and the bottomless Armoury of Hule, there must be centuries (if not millennia) of Red Steel out there. Unlikely, IMO: Red Steel is formed by the depletion of Cinnabryl, a phenomenon that doesn't seem to happen at significant rate unless Cinnabryl is brought in contact with flesh, and even then, it is lethal unless the subject is affected by the Red Curse. Moreover, Cinnabryl and Red Steel were devised by Nithian wizards, so (1) they've been around only for 1500 years and (2) Red Steel was created in significant quantities only during the end of the Nithian age and in the modern times. Most of it would have been created either in post-Wrath, or via Deplete spells. |
| #14zombiegleemaxJun 17, 2007 1:52:53 | Been reading over the 2E Savage Coast materials in more depth recently (mainly due to the cool .pdf version at the Vaults, and since I've never read it over much before), and I'm once more kind of put off by the Red Curse changes that came into being in the 2E incarnation. Firstly, How sad is it that I never realized a early PC was wondering around in Mastara Realm? Lol Only Knew it as the "Savage Coast" and the PC still has a Red Steel Sword that makes the PC sick when grasped (In retirement of course) Secondly, if I remember, Correctly the raw Stuff that makes "red Steel" is basically is radioactive meteor debris from crashed meteorites that contain the stuff and those that use the stuff knows that thus the inflated prices and the occasionally look to the sky that could result in chasing a large meteorite to it's crash site. |
| #15zombiegleemaxJun 17, 2007 16:46:11 | Note that, due to the breakdown of population, there should be some 3500 priests around in the baronies. While, per se, they are definitely not enough to keep an entire population safe using only Maintain spells, I'd say that the maintain spell could well be combined with devotional or cooperative magic (the Combine and Focus spell). Specifically, Focus makes a spell basically permanent, and gives it an area (e.g., one could make an area permanently affected by True Seeing, even though the spell is normally cast only on individuals), while Combine allows several priests to cooperate to increase their caster level (and therefore the area of effect of the Focus spell, or the duration of the Maintain spell). In my Savage Coast clergy is very powerful, thanks mantain spells. Each peasant MUST attend a religious cerimony, to recieve a mantain. I think it is really like real world: leprosy was seen as a punishment by God, spirit corruption brounght a body corruption. As a rule of thumb, in my SC there is not so much red steel, since cinnabryl is not allowed to expire. Only inheritors and some adventurer find useful to keep a legacy active. Common people turn their legacy off, by mantain spells, daily. |
| #16culture20Jun 18, 2007 16:45:05 | Unlikely, IMO: Red Steel is formed by the depletion of Cinnabryl, a phenomenon that doesn't seem to happen at significant rate unless Cinnabryl is brought in contact with flesh, and even then, it is lethal unless the subject is affected by the Red Curse. Moreover, Cinnabryl and Red Steel were devised by Nithian wizards, so (1) they've been around only for 1500 years and (2) Red Steel was created in significant quantities only during the end of the Nithian age and in the modern times. Most of it would have been created either in post-Wrath, or via Deplete spells. There should be quite a bit of Steel Seed though since cinnabryl slowly replicates itself in the Nithian colony's soil, and has been slowly turning into steel seed (brittle, crystaline red steel). I have a theory that I was going to make into a reality in my campaign: that the Deplete spell was created by the Nithian Colonists (since they would have had no other way to turn cinnabryl into Red Steel). I was going to have yet another underground Nithian complex (which the characters would mistake for Oltec unless they had ancient history proficiency) filled with undead and treasure, with a secret chamber holding two jackel-headed red-steel golems, and a wall with the spell Deplete enscribed. |
| #17zombiegleemaxJun 22, 2007 2:41:08 | There should be quite a bit of Steel Seed though since cinnabryl slowly replicates itself in the Nithian colony's soil, and has been slowly turning into steel seed (brittle, crystaline red steel). Wit a tic, if it replcates then it could mean we are dealing with some kind of Bacteria...simular to the ones that Discover Magazine was talking about a year ago that eats one kind of metal then another type comes out as it is digested. In particulat the Scientist was talking about bacteria that converts Uranium into Gold by eating and digesting it but the little suckers die rather quickly when subjected to air unless it is dorment in which case colonies of the dorment stuff looks like brittle crystal... (Hmmm. I wonder how many in the Science Community don't realize what the Mystical name for that Crystallized Bacteria would have been to say....an Alchemist?) In any case it is possible Red Steel is a by product of alien bacteria eating a certain metal and shiting out another one...if not the dormant state of the alen bacteria unless they touch something remotely edible |
| #18culture20Jun 22, 2007 8:24:46 | Cinnabryl and Red Steel have no relation to asteroids, aliens, or outer space in the canon sources. Your DM might have misdirected you on purpose since the true source of Cinnabryl and the Legacies was an Egyptian-like, highly sorcerous culture that was erased from both the face of Mystara and the memories of Mystarans by the Immortals. The Nithians in the Savage Coast area created the Legacies to empower their soldiers, and they created Cinnabryl, which replicates via magic, so that they could mine it, easily shape it into weapons (ductile like gold at room temperatures), and easily change it into something as hard as steel, but lighter, and with magical properties. But... Steel Seed could be a byproduct of a bacterial source (it's cinnabryl depleted while still in the ground, making a brittle red steel that quickly crumbles to powder), but it's more likely something else since most DMs might want their players to find out some day, and no character in a medieval world is ever going to know about bacteria. If you want to make it bacteria, maybe they came along with the Beagle, thus a few layers of dirt in the ground, and this type of bacteria only started to thrive after coming in contact with the magically placed radioactive cinnabryl. |