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Avernum Resources


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Hello everybody, i'm trying to use Avernum settings for a role playing campaing, but i need to know if there are some special resources like metals or precious, even magical wood (except mithral). Maybe someone knows something about that, or could hint something? Thanks!

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The only standard fantasy material around is mithral. There are the usual real metals and precious stones, which can be useful for magic, and there are objects that are full of magical powers because they're from magical places, but there aren't really inherently special materials. (Cavewood isn't real, but it's notable only for being wood that grows in caves. It's inferior wood at that.) Fortunately, it's a vague and expansive setting. You can put in whatever you'd like.

 

—Alorael, who wishes you luck with the latest of umpteen attempts to create Avernum pencil and paper RPGs.

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Thanks for the advice, i though that could be some other type of materials here and there hidden in the various episodes of the game...maybe i'll try to make something my own, something like fossil fungus for wood..and such.

Andy other ideas?

 

Ps: i'm italian, so maybe i make some mistakes in writing, sorry!

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You can do quite much anything you want, as Alorael has already pointed out. Be careful to maintain realism in the given setting, though. How would there be fossil fungus when most of the relevant flora was magically created not so long ago? More importantly, it's very unlikely any kind of life-form could be burrowed in cold (!) mud or a similar material long enough to turn into a fossil.

 

You'll mainly have to rely on metals and gems. Volcanic activity and crystallisation are your friends here. Remember the Gemstone Cave in the Eastern Gallery, the various magical springs, etc. There also seems to be obsidian and uranium around.

 

If you really want to use some kind of magical plant-matter, you can always let a tree have grown on a patch of rock containing mithril, or in the middle of a healing spring or whatever. That tree could produce wood, leaves, fruits or whatever with special properties. There is no such tree in any of the games though, so you would have to create some kind of mystery around it.

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Originally Posted By: Rent-an-Ihrno
More importantly, it's very unlikely any kind of life-form could be burrowed in cold (!) mud or a similar material long enough to turn into a fossil.

Uh... that is pretty much how fossils form, you know. Something dies, it gets buried by sediment and whatnot, time passes, everything gets transformed into stone, and then your dead thing is now a fossil.

Avernum is a fairly low-tech world, so it doesn't have a lot of resources to work with, especially if this is pre-A3.

Dikiyoba.
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Fossilization occours even as calcification, essentially a process in wich organic matter is substituted (or filled with) chalcyte, better known as stalagmites and stalactytes, so yes, could be possible and even much more simply as on the surface that something could be fossilized.

 

I've thought that some kind of metals could be even created by monsters, like salamanders that incinerate with merely passage on the rocks everything but the hardest metal..so this could be one...some kind of metals that may contain shards of crystals, and wood-like fungus or cavewood with high concentration of sulfur that give the wood "incendiary" properties, maybe!

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Stalagmites and stalactytes take shape over milennia. A skeleton might be able to be fossilized that way, but not flesh or plant-matter. These materia would have to be sealed away quite fast, in the case of mushrooms and the like in a day or less if you want to preserve its form, and in Avernum, that's only doable with cavequakes, rockfall and so on. Underground, you can't lay another layer of sediment over the youngest existing one, at least it won't happen regularly over a large area. Whatever, that's not my point.

If you put a body in the ground, it rots. You have to seal it airtight so it doesn't get eaten by bacteria or larger animals, and you have to keep it sealed for a very long time - in Avernum, the ground doesn't keep still as long, and it sure doesn't produce materials fit to seal something airtight and cool long enough. What would that material be? Lava? Rocks? How would it cover the mushroom without squishing it? Or the dragon, without airholes? Where would the fossilization take place, where would everything go?

Fossilization is a very special phenomenon in nature, and Avernum simply doesn't have the prerequisites. (Is that English?)

Damn, I've forgotten half of what I wanted to write. Oh well.

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Originally Posted By: Rent-an-Ihrno

If you really want to use some kind of magical plant-matter, you can always let a tree have grown on a patch of rock containing mithril, or in the middle of a healing spring or whatever. That tree could produce wood, leaves, fruits or whatever with special properties. There is no such tree in any of the games though, so you would have to create some kind of mystery around it.

There's a tree near Squiggus and Lenus in A3 that the party can pick rubies from, though that might be some trick made by the resident gremlins.
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