Of course you understand it - you just don't agree with it. If you think of it as ceremonial, it makes more sense. In feudal Japan women were samurai also, though no one (including them) was stupid enough to pretend that they were interchangeable with men. It was a social rank, not a military one. If you imagine a society where clothes make the man and his armor denotes a warrior, a “woman warrior” could easily appear in “armor” that's useless in combat, but this is irrelevant to its true purpose…
As to your mithril mentioned above, some points to ponder:
• Armor may be hard, but you aren't. Wearing metal chainmail directly over bare skin is not only very uncomfortable but will result in truly spectacular bruising.
• Can shapeshift at the command of its wearer? Is insanely valuable? “Stole it? Prove that this is your armor. I don't see your namne on it…” Not any more, certainly. Plus, in the heat of a melee you don't want that armor getting “commands” you didn't intend to give. Is there some way to fix it in form?
• You can wad a pretty good amount of tinfoil into a baseball size. Work that backwards: Is a baseball lump of mithril going to give you tinfoil armor? It may be good, but that good?
• Why “mithril”? The name's been taken - and defined. Give it a Hawaiian name, with lots of vowels. Or the Esperanto kiraso or the Russian скафандр, for “suit of armor.” Widen your gaze.
By the way, point two above can be solved if you make the armor sentient. Again, in feudal Japan a warrior's sword was not merely a miracle of metallurgy (that alliteration wasn't intentional) but was considered to possess its own soul. Armor which has protected the first-born of the T'lerkhinza clan for five generations is likely to have its own opinions by now - and won't cotton to being stolen, either, which settles that point also.
That's kind of what I meant by "living metal" in fact. I don't know HOW sentient it is, but it IS sentient. But if steel can have properties like that, well, I'm going to lean toward the high end for mithril zivotnikov.
Hmm... looked it up, and mithril is an elven word from Tolkein's books. Damn. Guess I'll have to give it another name after all. I'll probably mix languages for it, like I've done before.
I've decided to go with a bastardization of Czech, call it zivotnikov.
• You can wad a pretty good amount of tinfoil into a baseball size. Work that backwards: Is a baseball lump of mithril going to give you tinfoil armor? It may be good, but that good?
Point. Though it can be used for more than just armor. Swords, shields, and stuff.
The living metal can protect people from bruising, by anticipating blows and reacting appropriately.
“Stole it? Prove that this is your armor. I don't see your namne on it…”
Well, given Lyria's abilities, and Fae abilities, I'll have to change that to "the owner's command." Lyria can make anything so that it will refuse to be useful for a thief. Hell, she could probably make things that would escape a thief and head back to its owner.
The cultural diffusion here is interesting: I'd be curious to know how you picked up the word 'mithril' for silvery, better-than-steel metal, without knowing that Tolkien used the word to describe silvery, better-than-steel metal.
Probably from Dungeons & Dragons - back in 1974 the boys at Tactical Studies Rules simply ignored copyright and intellectual property laws, because who was going to care? It was no big deal… By the time TSR Hobbies Inc was formed, they'd had a schooling and cleaned up their act.
Now, beware: I have not noticed any Slavic or Baltic language forms in use before. If Lyria the Fae is using something called kamazotz or zivotnikov or ph'thoo-ting! there'd better be a real good reason why it has such an outlandish name and has not been renamed. [In Victorian times the British Royal Family was Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Come the First World War, fighting the Krauts, the Hun, &c., they discreetly changed it to Windsor.] It's possible that this is a True Names issue, that the stuff cannot be worked unless you call it zivotnikov. Maybe that's the big secret, why the proles who only know it as 'moonmetal' can do nothing with it. Just a thought.
The simple fact of the matter is, that while I knew Tolkein called it mithril, I had thought the name was far older, like "adamantium" being from the old Greek "adamant." I didn't know until I read about it online, that mithril was an elven word.
Moon metal. Hmm. Even better. Goes along with other things in that 'verse, like Sun Crystals and Moon Crystals.
Of course you understand it - you just don't agree with it. If you think of it as ceremonial, it makes more sense. In feudal Japan women were samurai also, though no one (including them) was stupid enough to pretend that they were interchangeable with men. It was a social rank, not a military one. If you imagine a society where clothes make the man and his armor denotes a warrior, a “woman warrior” could easily appear in “armor” that's useless in combat, but this is irrelevant to its true purpose…
As to your mithril mentioned above, some points to ponder:
• Armor may be hard, but you aren't. Wearing metal chainmail directly over bare skin is not only very uncomfortable but will result in truly spectacular bruising.
• Can shapeshift at the command of its wearer? Is insanely valuable? “Stole it? Prove that this is your armor. I don't see your namne on it…” Not any more, certainly. Plus, in the heat of a melee you don't want that armor getting “commands” you didn't intend to give. Is there some way to fix it in form?
• You can wad a pretty good amount of tinfoil into a baseball size. Work that backwards: Is a baseball lump of mithril going to give you tinfoil armor? It may be good, but that good?
• Why “mithril”? The name's been taken - and defined. Give it a Hawaiian name, with lots of vowels. Or the Esperanto kiraso or the Russian скафандр, for “suit of armor.” Widen your gaze.
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I've decided to go with a bastardization of Czech, call it zivotnikov.
• You can wad a pretty good amount of tinfoil into a baseball size. Work that backwards: Is a baseball lump of mithril going to give you tinfoil armor? It may be good, but that good?
Point. Though it can be used for more than just armor. Swords, shields, and stuff.
The living metal can protect people from bruising, by anticipating blows and reacting appropriately.
“Stole it? Prove that this is your armor. I don't see your namne on it…”
Well, given Lyria's abilities, and Fae abilities, I'll have to change that to "the owner's command." Lyria can make anything so that it will refuse to be useful for a thief. Hell, she could probably make things that would escape a thief and head back to its owner.
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The cultural diffusion here is interesting: I'd be curious to know how you picked up the word 'mithril' for silvery, better-than-steel metal, without knowing that Tolkien used the word to describe silvery, better-than-steel metal.
http://www.henneth-annun.net/resources/things_view.cfm?thid=221
Probably from Dungeons & Dragons - back in 1974 the boys at Tactical Studies Rules simply ignored copyright and intellectual property laws, because who was going to care? It was no big deal… By the time TSR Hobbies Inc was formed, they'd had a schooling and cleaned up their act.
Now, beware: I have not noticed any Slavic or Baltic language forms in use before. If Lyria the Fae is using something called kamazotz or zivotnikov or ph'thoo-ting! there'd better be a real good reason why it has such an outlandish name and has not been renamed. [In Victorian times the British Royal Family was Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Come the First World War, fighting the Krauts, the Hun, &c., they discreetly changed it to Windsor.] It's possible that this is a True Names issue, that the stuff cannot be worked unless you call it zivotnikov. Maybe that's the big secret, why the proles who only know it as 'moonmetal' can do nothing with it. Just a thought.
Reply
Moon metal. Hmm. Even better. Goes along with other things in that 'verse, like Sun Crystals and Moon Crystals.
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