Materials and Items

[Dexter]

Well, there's gonna be ceramic/porcelain plate armor, for two reasons:
First, Lutemoth did a really kickass sketch of the armor, which everyone wants to own signed copies of.
Second, PoHa!, the Head of Objects of Tamriel, said yes. Therefore, irrefutibly, porcelain/ceramic plate armor will be included as an armor choice in Hammerfell. The discussion on yes or no to this should have been over when PoHa! said yes.

[El Scumbago]

Lemme hug you guys, I love you (Nemon's magic finally works).
So, I updated the Materials list in the first post, look in the bottom of the list. I'll be updating it as the list grows or the descriptions become more specific. In case I miss something, any moderator who feels like it may (and should) update that part of the list with whatever's new.

[Rockwell]

I can't wait for toilet armor. I wonder what the special materials are for skyrim or high rock. Maybe high rock could be rock armor, and skyrim could have air armor. And because it's made out of air it would practically be weightless, like a feather enchantment. And it'd be invisible, because you can't see air obviously.

Yeah, add air to the list of materials!

[Morgoth]

Guard Captain: "We've escaped alive, but we haven't got any equipment or food!"

Soldier: "Don't worry, sir, I managed to grab everything but the kitchen sink before they breeched the walls."

Captain: "Ah, no need to worry, then. We can always make a new kitchen sink out of your armor there. Onward!"



With that out of the way, I think as a fantasy world, Tamriel can have ceramic plate armor as it wishes. (As has been affirmed numerous times.) However, that said, we could also say that as a fantasy world, water should have the consistency of jello, and that wood should be all bouncey like rubber. We do have to be careful with where we draw the line.

This, however, is no more unreasonable than glass armor, and it fits TES perfectly. In my opinion, it fits very well.

Rockwell, go to TIL and read a bit of lore, will you. You'll find that this is not earth.

[Gnomey]

And that air armour isn't original enough, too much like sunlight if you ask me...

[Lutemoth]

Just to add more controversy to the topic. From wikipedia on plate armor:

[snip]

It's a heavy list, yeah, but that's similar to that of Imperial design, and not Redguard practicality.
[url=http://img86.imageshack.us/img86/7627/ceramickv1.jpg]Take a look at what he's wearing[/url], for instance.
He is taking into consideration of many key points, he is not fully plated. Note the lack of sabatons, spaulders, plate gauntlets, poleyns, fan-plates, cuishe, taces, sabbations, knee-cops, besague, extended nape-guard.. you get the point. This armour, while a healthy individual can do a good sprint into battle with the conventional, gives more freedom in movement that suits the martial sword-play of the Raga. Notice all the necessities in the suit have been left now?

[Eraser]

*solidified sunlight.

Jesus, imagine what the glow and specular maps would be for something made out of solidified sunlight.......

Damn, that is a kickass sketch...can I have a signed copy too? Hints at a harsh arid environment comparable to the ashlands and dunmer designs we saw back in morrowind, but with a stylistically different twist.

[Morgoth]

The solidified sunlight thing seems to be going to extremes, and frankly, I think it's really really lame. Getting more into the dragonball-Z sounding stuff. And plus, you make armor out of sunlight, you can immediately excuse armor made from just about any material as okay. Sunlight. Moonlight. Masser and Secunda armor ftw!1! pwnz0rz.

[Gnomey]

Yet it is still Lore. Ok, I'm not sure about armour, but ships...

Made of crystal and solidified sunlight, with wings though they do not fly, and prows that elongate into swirling Sun-Birds, and gem-encrusted mini-trebuchets fit for sailing which fire pure aetheric fire, and banners, banners, banners, listing their ancestors all the way back to the Dawn.

This is Old Mary at Water.

Personally sunlight doesn't seem to original of a material to me, but it's still Lore, and is far wackier than even stone armour if you ask me, and as wacky as air armour.

BTW, hope you don't mind my directly copying Sload's quote from earlier.

[Sload]

I'm going to be an ass, because I thought I had made it abundantly clear. You don't even have the language barrier, Morgoth, so please get your head out of your fundamentalist ass and listen closely.

Anything can be used as a material as long as it is aesthetically appropriate. Tamriel is not your stereotyped medieval fantasia, and Summerset is the most alien of all. Dragonball-Z my ass.

Rockwell, air armor is a wonderful idea. But more Old Yokuda than Skyrim, and a skill that was certainly lost in the Great Kalamba.

[Morgoth]

I understand you perfectly, Sload. Perhaps what I'd meant was that it was not aesthetically pleasing to me. And I had used the word "personally", which also means "in my opinion".


Now, for the sake of production, and love of TR, I'll hug Nemon. (Thought you all had me, eh?)

[Sload]

MK was answering the question "What does a ship from Summurset look like?" Old Mary is not the name of a ship, but a name for the Altmer, in case that confused you. In other words, this is what the Altmer look like.

It isn't Sload's opinion. It's the opinion of everyone who's opinion Sload trusts on this. Way to be the bigger person with your edit, though. High-five!

[Morgoth]

The edit came before your post, so you need not mention it. It was both prudent and required. I thank you for the high-five. Here's a low-five. Everyone is happy. Hugs all around.

[Lutemoth]

hey, if you boys don't stop rough-housing, I'll make concepts of fibrous asbestos armour, I swear to Zod!
*turns this car around*

[Zalzidrax]

Just a little more on the scientific or pseudo scientific side of things, the term ceramic simply refers to metallic oxide materials in general, which couldbe anything from a teacup to a high temperature superconductor to an armor insert in a SWAT team vest. The only difference that is just abotu guaranteed between metals and ceramics is that as the ceramics, while they do have a crystal structure, like metals do, their electrons are more tightly bound and not in an amorphous cloud as in metals. This means that ceramics will be more rigid and less flexible than metals. This would tend to make them inferior for armor as the energy of the impacts would be imparted over a shrter distance, and thus time, but the material could easily be hard or strong enough to make up for that. And since we can make it however strong we think is fitting for the setting and the story, that's not a big issue. But a telling blow would probably shatter it whereas a similar hit would just make a really big dent and possibly ragged tear in the metal.

So in short all you really need to do to make it scientifically accurate to the general properties of ceramics is to give it a lower durability than metal armors of equivalent protection.

[Morgoth]

Am I the only one who likes the asbestos idea? And obviously, Zalz has been eating his wheaties- that is actually very interesting.

But I think most agree on the ceramic now. I personally love it, and have no problem with it. (As I said, you can have glass armor, you can have ceramic.)

It was my lore not-knowingness that caused the confusion. I simply must find this TIL place someday! Anyway, we can carry on with healthy discussion about materials, I think.

Stupid thing to pull away from former discussion, but:

I don't know if it has really been discussed, but couldn't we do some minor mines in Hammerfell, where you can actually... mine some of these materials? Container rocks, the key to which is some type of pickaxe you get in a mine type of quest? It would be a fun side-quest. Also, if you got some minor materials, (Bituminous and Anthricite coal, Iron ore, perhaps copper?) And priced them all differently, there could be some profit gain in this.

Not anything major. Just a fun way to introduce players to some raw materials. Perhaps miners could even hint at ceramic, thus making it slightly more noticable?

*Puts on helm and prepares to be shot down.*

[Rockwell]

Looks like I'm out numbered . . . I give.

[Eraser]

By a wide margin it seems....

However there has to be a limit otherwise it just gets incredibly stupid, and nothing differenciates us from ST and their h3y th4t5 c00l 13ts 4dd it t0 0ur m0dz attitude of just shoving as much "cool" stuff into their mod regardless of its basis for lore.

[Eyeball88]

I really don't see why a single suit of armor became such a huge point of contention. Don't we have better things to do than argue about a lore-supported, unique concept that will have little overall effect on our end product, other than being aesthetically pleasing and providing the province with a piece of cultural flare and variety?

Is that the longest run-on sentence in TR's history?

[Morgoth]

I think Xui'al has done a few better, but that's close. Agreed, though.

[Sload]

However there has to be a limit otherwise it just gets incredibly stupid, and nothing differenciates us from ST and their h3y th4t5 c00l 13ts 4dd it t0 0ur m0dz attitude of just shoving as much "cool" stuff into their mod regardless of its basis for lore.

Have you read any of my posts at all?

[Morgoth]

I think this is where that aesthetics thing Sload mentioned comes in, Eraser. We just have to trust to our own discretion, when deciding what it suitable, and what is over the edge.

Now, that's all settled and all, and I really don't want to get into another argument which I won't understand, so, how about we talk about something else. What say that mining question that I asked a few posts ago? Or more materials?

[Eyeball88]

They did have mines in Oblivion but they were pretty basic. Depending on how many dungeons we plan on having scattered throughout, we may want to make a few of them into mines of some sort.

The ceramic concept we just finished discussing seems to resemble the original Dwemer from Morrowind; specifically the helmet. Do we want to explain it as something the Dwemer mastered and crafted because the ceramic in this case is better suited for the desert heat than the huge metal pieces that Dwemer armor has become?

[Gez]

Dwemer metal has strange properties, maybe they didn't need it -- but the ceramic armor design's was inspired by old Dwemer armors found in Volenfell by the Redguards.

By the way, has Ghogiel finished the Dwemer Armor redux he was making for us?

[Orix]

I found Ghogiel's Dwemer Armor topic on ESF, which hasn't been active since November 06: [url]http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=537433[/url]

[Morgoth]

Wow. That was coming along VERY well. (Textures might need some work, but we could handle that.) Has anybody been in contact with him?

[Lady Nerevar]

ive been talking to him on and off. it seems to me that he is just modeling everything that he cna think off, and not necesarely finishing everything. last i checked the suit was just about done, was it not?

[Nanu]

Alright, porcelain has weighed in, and sunlight is acceptable. Other than the Beth stuff, what common armor unique to Hammerfell will we have?

[Morgoth]

I should imagine that there would be some types of special cloth meant to be light, and yet resistant to the heat. Whether this would be made from the pelt of an animal, or synthetic, I don't know. We could create some nice "lore" behind something of that sort, and as many if not all of the armors we're likely to use incorporate cloth of some sort, it would be nice to know just what it's made of.

Any ideas?

[CleverClothe]

How about some kind of reptillian hide?

[Lutemoth]

I don't see why anyone doing some good strenuous combat in Hammerfell wouldn't want heat-resistant cloth. Give it to the nimblest of warriors, and they will bring you a torrent of might on the tide of battle.

Reptillian, while it's a cool idea, is something I'd like to reserve for other exotic places in Tamriel. If the number of large reptiles increases, perhaps those that make themselves snake would prefer it

[Gez]

I'm bumping this thread because it's an interesting reference to have around.

And to prevent any redux of the "air armor" debate, I'm going to quote Norse myths: Fenrir was chained by a leash forged by the dwarves from materials such as the sound of a cat's feet, the beard from a woman, the roots of a mountain or the breath of a fish.

Think about it. Everytime you want to complain about a nonsensical material, think about silk made from the sound of a cat's footfall, and used to restrain a diving wolf until the twilight of the gods.

[Menotex]

Sacloth

Made from cactus fibers woven into yarn, then dyed in a solution of cactus milk and scorpion poison.

Makes a resilient light armor cloth protects the wearer from exhaustion in the sun.
Is black in color and embroidered with colorful designs from Yoko tradition.
Worn commonly by the warrior priests serving in Yoko temples.

Is also worn by theives and scouts as it is even more liberating then the ceramic plate armors made for the town guards and local armies.

Lasts longer then many light armors, but is not as resilient.

Cork

The bark of cork tress has been used as alternate material for the making of various containers.
Barrels, small crate boxes, Chests and wardrobes, chairs, beds.
It is pulled from the tree and fitted almost like cloth to a rigid skeleton of other woods.


Was feeling imaginative. hope this starts new discussion. I have no lore to support any of this though.