How can mermaids have metallurgy if they can't create

>>50719126
Do you even oceanic vents, bro?

>>50719126
Magma is a thing, as are volcanic vents. It's difficult, but not impossible to properly smelt things underwater.

Also, stop reading into it too much. It's a Disney movie, the setting revolves around the story, not the other way around.

>>50719126
Electroplating.

>>50719153
they also can breathe air.

>>50719141
>>50719153

Getting anywhere near them would fry their fishy asses. But that's okay.

>>50719126

They don't have metallurgy, they have FUKKEN MAGIK. Also, they're all a bunch of dirty thieves who steal things from the surface worlders, I have documentary evidence. And that trident was stolen from Ursula, I have testimony.

>>50719153
>Also, stop reading into it too much. It's a Disney movie, the setting revolves around the story, not the other way around.
Translation: Stop asking questions that I don't like.
How about you kill yourself, you little baby.

>>50719316
Found the autist.

>>50719126
Who says they have metallurgy?

Maybe they traded with Atlantis back in the day.

>>50719126
Cold forging is a thing, the trident seems to be brass though, scavenged? Isn't Brass pretty brittle? Not sure if you can cold forge that? Maybe solid deposits of metal, filing and grinding? Logically they'd use shells, bone and stuff.

>>50719316
>WHY DOESN'T THIS CHILDREN'S MOVIE SATISFY MY AUTISTIC NEED FOR EVERY SINGLE ASPECT OF THE SETTING TO BE EXPLAINED REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Settle down.

>>50719126
You don't need fire. You need heat.

>>50719316
Nigga all he was saying is that it's pointless to bring up these inconsistencies because the people who created it literally do not care about the inconsistencies, as it's completely irrelevant to the message they were trying to convey.

>>50719126
They're magic half-human-half-fish hybrids that can talk to fish, breath air and water, who is ruled by Triton the son of Poseidon.

Clearly they use magic.

>>50719197
this, my instant thought was just mermaid smiths on the beach.

>>50719126
What if they put their fires and such above water, or in certain air-filled underwater caverns, or create some kind of artificial air-pockets?

Merfolk could totally live near shores, the same way humans often live by rivers and seas.

>>50719126
King Triton is son of Poseidon, God of the Ocean. Clearly they were given the gift of smithing by Poseidon's nephew (and therefor King Triton's cousin) Hephaestus.

The only metal object in their entire kingdom is Triton's magical trident

I don't think they actually have Metallurgy

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>>50719126
> How can mermaids have metallurgy if they can't create fire underwater?

>>50719947
>The only metal object in their entire kingdom is Triton's magical trident
This, and also >>50719349
>Maybe they traded with Atlantis back in the day.

I mean, it's pretty clear that they scavenge shipwrecks, but their culture seems pretty old.

>>50719947
What about those armbracers? Looted from surfacers doesn't seem to be big enough source for everybody to get some.

>>50719126
Shipwrecks.

>>50719126
Mermaid bloodmagic
Fulled by all the oysters and clams scarified to make mermaid bras

>>50719126

If it were me, I would make an underwater bubble with air lines running to the surface. This way I could control air flow and to some degree air temperature much in the same way a typical blast furnace would operate.

>>50719126
One of the settings in a game basically had an aquatic race use high water pressure to forge and 'cut' the shape of the blade.

>>50719126 (OP)

They go to the surface to forge their metals. Very dangerous yet rewarding trek. It's like going to the top of a volcano to forge a ring.

>>50719126
That trident was a magic artefact, a gift from a cyclops.
The other stuff they probably just found in a sunken ship.

>>50719401
You could theoretically heat brass to its melting point by using exposed magma. And both copper and zinc were relatively easy to come by in pure or nearly pure forms back a few millennia ago. They could have smelted and cast it using exposed volcanic stuff. Most of the time brass was cast rather than forged due to the fact that it is tensily strong but brittle. Also it holds a good edge for a damn long time.

>>50719291
Protection from energy is a thing in D&D

Why not in any other fantasy game?

>>50719126
This whole thread, and no one mentions POWDER METALLURGY.

A true travesty upon /tg/. Wherefore art thou science?

>>50722836
Sorry, never took in depth classes on powder metallurgy. I'm more of an extractive metallurgy guy.

>>50719126
The men put it between their pecs and flex. It causes so much heat and pressure that they are the anvil, hammer and the forge. They use their fishy butts as sand paper if it needs sanding.

>>50722861
Well basically, underwater they could pretty easily use hydraulic shearing (or other) to generate metal powders, then as well hydraulic compression to form mechanically strong composites.
Obtaining the metals could be done with electrolytic refining.
There's lots of non-thermal methods to make things. Even down to sol-gel methods.

You could get pretty technical about an advanced Mer society.

>>50722924
Not the anon you replied to, but this was educational, thanks for sharing.

Metalbending as a magical gift from Hephaistos.

>>50722924
I'd have to ask some of the other guys in the department about powder metallurgy sometime. I know one of our professors was doing something with it.

One thing I do know about is that it would be difficult for them to use the majority of extractive techniques we use. Once the orebody has been mined, it's gotta go through a lot to get it into a state where it's useful. Electrolytic refining only works once you've separated most of the gangue from the ore. And even then, it's tricky and usually requires the metal to be killed into fines and floated in chemical tanks. At least that's what you need for industrial production of high-quality copper.

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>>50719126
1. mermaids do their smithing above water, either on shore or on rafts/boats
2. mermaids trade for all their metalwork
3. mermaids build special air chambers underwater for smithing
4. magic lets them forge metal without heat
5. the gods teleport fully formed metals to the mermaids

this isnt hard
a more interesting question IMO is what kind of clothes do mermaids wear?

>>50722940
Sure.

>>50722979
The electrolytic refining they use for copper is the purifying electroplate variety. Dissolve the impure, plate on to a pure seed. They already have a first order conductive metal.

However! That is not the only electrolytic method. For example, some species of anaerobic bacteria, like Geobacter, can form bionanowires to respire by reducing iron oxide and similar.
You could have a Mer refinery that uses extremophile Geobacter fed upon iron ore to produce the metal, perhaps even in convenient filamentaceous form for weaving, pressing, or shearing to powder.

Land-dweller cities often extend into the sea with docks and things, so why can't underwater cities extend into the land?

Maybe they could have an arrangement with a land-dwelling subject people, whereby the land-dwellers live in a Venice-style district under the mer-people's protection in exchange for doing all the above-water shit the merfolk can't?

>>50723034
I'm not going to lie, it's entirely too late for me to speculate on how feasible that would be. The main problem that my tired brain can see with it is the presence of organic remnants sullying the crystal structure during compaction and causing weaknesses in the metal.

>>50723012
6. Mermaids can make magical underwater fire.
7. They scavenge shipwrecks.

>>50722814
Well, it's magic, and once you've got that ball rolling you can do anything anyway.

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>>50719291
>Getting anywhere near them would fry their fishy asses.

How about this:
>setting has regular, pretty mermaids and deep mermaids who look more like pic related
>they're extremophiles who can't leave the crushing pressure of the bottom of the sea or the ungodly heat of the hydrothermal vents
>they wish more than anything to see daylight
>the surface mermaids trade magical lights of various kinds with them in exchange for their metalwork

>>50723638
That's pretty cool worldbuild.

>>50723638
>a spy in europa.jpg

>>50719291
Land smiths don't stick their hands into fires either, kid.

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>>50723682
For a moment I thought I was being even remotely original.

>>50719126
I will never ever understand how people- espicually on /tg/ have such a targeted suspension of disbelief.

>Wants to get into the specifics of metallurgy underwater
>Yet
>Fish people?! Yeah sure evolution I guess! That's how it works right!?

>>50723686
He's saying that you'd have an easier time using a forge than a hydrothermal vent because heat transfers easier in water than air. Honestly I'd think the solution there would just be longer tools but that sounds unwieldy.

>>50723788

To be fair mermaids are traditional monsters; a great deal of "good worldbuilding" nowdays is taking monsters and make them more or less plausibile in the aspects not defined by tradition.

Anyway saying they can muster electroplating that much is cooler.

>>50719316

Projection

>>50723953
Translation "only the parts that bother my autism are unrealistic"

>>50719126
this op is one of the great qustions of our time....

>>50719126
those swords are ugly thought.
Anyways, who would they need to make war on down there?

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>>50724273
Hostile sea life?

>>50724154
>>50724154

I don't have problems with saying that they do it by magic, anon.

>>50719126
Based on those swords, it gives them an awful lot of trouble.

>>50722924

Care to expand on that a bit, anon? It sounds interesting.

>>50722924
Would it be possible to do this with machinery that wasn't metal? Because they'd have to make these machines out of something else before they could make anything else out of metal.

>>50719291
>getting near the vents is unrealistic because x
>BUT MAGIC

At this point just ignore that vents would kill them.

>>50719291
1. Vents are usually teeming with ocean life.
2. Fire also has a tendency to fry humans, but somehow we managed to use forges at over a thousand degrees.

>>50720425
He's a magic king of his realm and is family with Poesidon, of course he has the magic water controlling shit, Greek god's and their friends always have magic shit.

>>50723638
>the surface mermaids trade magical lights of various kinds with them in exchange for their metalwork
reminds me of the sunlight trade in sunless sea

>>50725874
Water is a better conductor of heat then air.

>>50719695
>They're magic half-human-half-fish hybrids that can talk to fish, breath air and water

Do they? Or maybe they just work like dolphins?

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>>50726600
It's also a worse conductor of heat than metal. Also vents are surrounded by a lot of cold water to absorb the heat. The entire ocean floor isn't boiling around a vent, there are still cool spots.

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>>50723686

Yeah, this guy as it: >>50723852

Air is actually a really good insulator against heat. Water, on the other hand, is an excellent conductor.
The safe distance for a creature like a mermaid is going to be pretty far from where you hit the melting point of steel. Also, you can't really build walls around the vent, so you have to deal with current shifts blowing the plume in your face, which might kill you too.

>>50725667

But if you use magic, then you don't need the vents anymore, do you? That's my point right there. Magical heat is safer under all sorts of magic systems than trying to approach a hydrothermal vent.

>>50727011

Water is a worse conductor than metal, yeah, but far better than air, which is the point. Consider that the red area around that vent is probably more than enough to cook a fish, while the central vent itself is where you need to work your metal.

>>50719126
The way I like to do it in fantasy settings is to create a deep, almost symbiotic relationship between a certain tribe of merfolk and a certain city of humans. The two of them realize that they are by no means competitors to eachother (one lives on land, the other in the sea) and that both of them can offer the other things they cannot otherwise get. The humans can forge such things as bronze weapons (bronze doesn't rust if I'm not mistaken, and having forged weapons would give this group of mermaids a huge advantage against their enemies) and merfolk could easily swim deep into the ocean to retrieve rare pearls (which would just be pretty rocks to them, with practically zero worth). Food would also work, with mermaids being able to catch rare deep sea fish. On the other hand, humans have cattle on land. Perhaps over time merfolk would begin to see pork and beef as delicacies, on par with how we today view lobster and caviar.

Either that, or they form some deep sea maffia where they ask protection money to not sink human ships.

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>>50727729
>reminder that there is multicellular life on top of the black smokers where the water is so hot and so pressurized it's a form of plasma

It would be like the salamanders of the fire elemental plane, specialize providers of blacksmithing services to those who can pay and those who dare.

>>5072427
Other merpeople?

>>50719126

Nigga was casting spells and OP brings this shit up.

>>50723638
This is beautiful but also makes me sad for the deepmaids.

>>50719126
Mermaids forge and cook using blue fire. It's fire that only burns underwater and is snuffed out by exposure to open air.

Most people seem to forget that underwater vents are very deep down, far beyond the depth normal surface-dwelling animals can survive. It would probably be easier for merfolk to just built forges above water than figure how to a) get to the bottom of the ocean several kilometers down and b) how to actually use superheated water to heat metal to melting point without getting close enough to boil alive.

>>50725874
>teeming with ocean life
This. The deep ocean is way too cold to live in. The vents are warm and allow life near them. The biggest problem in getting close to vents is not the heat, but the cold.

Crustacean blacksmithes using ocean vents as a forge. They one tiny claw for holding the blade and one huge claw they use as a smith's hammer. Aqua dwarves.

Im essentially writing a setting that is Underwater Dark Sun/Barsoom.

The last surviving humans in their underwater bubble cities only have the means of metalworking. Despite these advantages, few go beyond their city as they cannot breathe underwater.

>>50729229
It's not 'that' cold. It's pretty consistent 4 degrees centigrade. Not exactly warm, but perfectly liveable.
The big porblem is lack of resources. Geothermal vents are deep sea oasises because they provide sustenance for bacteria that use the sulphides dissolved in the water as energy source, forming the basis of an ecosystem in the same way plants do on surface.

>>50719126
MAGIC
>MAGIC
>>MAGIC

>>50719126
Abduct human smiths, strand them on an isolated island and force them to forge shit in exchange for not drowing their asses.

>>50719126
They can breathe air and trade for shit.

Plus stuff sinks and is 'lost' to the sea all the time.

>>50729654
how will they have enough wood tho?

>>50729802

Plenty of hot redheaded mermaid chicks taking off their seashells, anon. I know it gives me an endless supply.

>>50719126
They have Orichalcum, which can be forged to the strength of steel underwater using no heat. It is worked to shape, and then left in the open air for a week where it hardens to steel strength. This gave Merfolk great power during the era of bronze weaponry and armor, but their power has waned now that steel is common.

>>50729761

My king what are you talking about? By your own law we pesants can not be armed. all of our arms and armor were lost in a tragic boating accident.

>>50719839
/thread

>>50719126
They're fucking mermaids, how did they even evolve?
It's a little late in the game at that point to stress about realism.

>>50719126
What are you babbling on about?