Extracting iron from iron ore is more difficult than extracting copper from copper ores, due to their melting points. 2700F for wrought iron and 1983F for copper.
In addition, smelting iron is much more difficult than smelting copper and tin. Copper and tin can be poured into molds. Iron requires high heat and hot-working.
Iron is superior to bronze in weapons and tools. Hardness is increased and they retain an edge for a longer period of time. It may be easier to repair a bronze blade, but it’s even easy to not have to repair anything at all.
I enjoy iron being difficult and expensive. When the players get an iron weapon, it’s like finding a magic item in another setting.
In my game, I gave copper weapons a -1 to damage and it still has to roll for breakage. Bronze weapons have no penalties, but must still roll for breakage.
I like @NPC_X 's response over in this post. [feels like between these two posts we’ll soon have enough material for another Net Book]
To quote:
I never liked the rules for ‘inferior’ materials. ‘Inferior’ is a relative term; on Athas, these materials are the standards. It’s metal weapons and tools that are superior to them - hence, I believe they should be boosted up, while the ‘inferior’ weapons should be the unmodified rulebook equipment.
Why not make your copper weapons +1, bronze or iron weapons +2 and steel weapons +3? or some such.
Oh, no doubt of that. Bronze is also much easier to work with, since you can simply cast it. The only real disadvantage of bronze is that it’s an alloy of copper and tin, and the latter is both rare and expensive. You basically need to keep two separate mining industries, which often don’t even coincide in the same region.
*Steel 
Wrought iron was actually a brittle, low quality material, ill-suited for weapons. Refining it into steel that’d beat bronze in all respects would take several centuries still. Which is why, again, I like the distinction between the ‘true steel’ (Green Era weapons and tools) and mere wrought iron made from Tyr ore.
Hol’ up! My assumption of Athasian technology levels does not accord with yours. You see Athas as being in the Bronze, Classical or Conan style Hyperborean Age. I see Athasian technology as approximately being at the earth equivalent of 1600 AD, but the lack of resources suppresses the output of technology into society in general. A wealthy nobleman or templar may have a telescope for example, but the technology will never become widespread.
Athas as I see it has come as far as it can technologically. Things have been invented but cannot be put into large scale production because of lack of metal.
My view of Athas is mostly shaped by illiteracy. Athas laws literally suppress the storage of knowledge. The only authorised use of writing is bureaucracy and statesmanship. Scholars do not exist as a profession or a caste. The lack of stored knowledge is an obstacle this civilisation can’t hope to overcome.
In case of metallurgy, the lack of practice is a death kneel. The Athasian smiths might know some ancient rhymes that describe the Green Age metallurgy, but they have no way to understand what they mean.
This doesn’t mean they don’t have any sophisticated technology, though. I just believe it’s whollly adapted to the Athas conditions. A telescope wouldn’t be a problem since it can be constructed from readily available materials. Advanced metallurgy, on the other hand, would be purely theoretical - and that level just can’t exist without writing.
Yes. Correct.
Maybe. The Wanderer is clear that literacy is highly restricted. Only templars and nobles are permitted to read and write. But in practice the people of the merchant houses know how to read and write in their own script.
I think that they likely do, as a licensed profession or caste. Er’Stali was a freeman (or slave) historian from Urik. When Rome conquered Greece, they enslaved some of the population, many of whom were literate and educated. These slaves became a slave class of scribes. Likewise, Athasian slaves come in all sorts, and while mass education of slaves is out of bounds, there is surely an exception for educated slaves and licensing of such to do work for nobles and templars.
Athas has had many ages before the nadir its finds itself in now. Its resources, not innovation, which stunts the Athasian people.
I’m enjoying this conversation and am learning a lot about the history of metallurgy. I am reading some more. Yes, wrought iron is brittle and is terrible for weapons. It can be worked by a skilled smith to be about as good as bronze, but historically, it seems the best “iron” weapons, of the iron-age, were actually low-grade steel that was accidentally made. This is fascinating.
Also, it appears there were some other alloys of iron made that were better than bronze, but those were accidents as well.
Several things come to my mind with this thread. Here are my two ceramic pieces worth.
There has been several mentions of “lesser” metals. But no mention of aluminum yet. I haven’t researched it yet, but I think that may have been a viable option of a metal to use on Athas at one point. It’s fairly common on earth. Sure it may dull easier than iron and maybe has the some of the same problems the lesser metals have, but just one other metal to think about.
I like the idea that metals have been used as a medium of exchange historically due to their intrinsic value, non perishable nature, usability for tools or decoration, and ability to have varying divisions of units. This is why silver and gold coins have persisted so long. I also recall reading about one society that used the heads of metal hoes as a medium of exchange because of their potential usefulness. What Athasian’s have now with the ceramic coin is a system of fiat currency. I’ve thought of campaigns that might touch upon inflation or counterfitting all those ceramic pieces that might be easy to reproduce whereas metal is not.
I recently replaced all the doors in my house and out went all the metal hinges with them. I couldn’t help but think about all that metal just going to go to waste. Someone on Athas could sharpen a blade on them and attach to a handle and use as an axe or other chopping weapon or tool. I see the potential for some of older metal from previous ages or just repurposed like my hinges. And then being used as daggers or shivs or improvised metal weapons. Perhaps more smaller metal pieces being reused as a weapon. Just not many long swords like you see in a typical fantasy setting.
I don’t think that we can assume that Athas lacks for metallurgical specialists. What lack of metal does is price out the metal for trivial uses. In a society where metal is plentiful, you might expect children to have metal toys like metal figurines, or normal, non-wealthy adults to have metal chess pieces. In a world where metal resources are scarce that is not the case, but iron and other metals ARE used for industrial purposes on Athas.
Metal is expensive, not non-existent. Metal smiths will ply their trade as normal, except the materials that they are using are more expensive. Rather than metals being widely used by other segments of society, the bulk of these metals will pass through the hands of the metal smiths.
This is why D&D needs the basics of a functional economy system with rough estimates to use as guidelines. Some simple tables and basic reasons and guidelines would suffice, I should think. Just enough to give an idea for how ‘valuable’ things versus available versus common things tend to go. Then slot your resources into the categories as appropriate and adjust the prices and off you go.
Sorry, life got a bit busy over the last two days. Thank you for your replies, they made me think a bit about something that’s been bothering me for a while.
I mentioned I favour The Wanderer’s Journal over other sources in another thread. This is because WJ presents Athas as a death world where everything revolves around survival. It made Dark Sun down-to-earth, practical and non-heroic, very different from other D&D settings. I’m really invested in that vision, which doesn’t always agree with other visions. In fact, it immediately clashed with The Prism Pentad 
Anyway, I don’t mean to sound contrary or argumentative. I’d just like to continue an interesting discussion and give some support to my view of things 
Anyway, spoiler brackets so I don’t bloat the thread too much:
Literacy and metallurgy, continued
I believe that’s the core of the problem, really. Literacy is both a legal crime and a cultural offence. Athas exists in a state of a total, permanent, culturally approved censorship. There are people who find a way around it, but it’s an illicit practice. Anyone who physically stores knowledge risks punishment. Most of all, this isn’t some arbitrary tyrannical law, but a very practical move against the spread of defiling magic. Most people approve of this ban and participate in it freely.
I believe this creates three impassable obstacles to the survival of knowledge:
-
Literacy is a deviation
The people who dabbles into physically stored knowledge are not accepted - they’re deviants who break both legal and social rules. This makes them a very narrow, exclusive group, with little reason to share their knowledge and sources with others. As such, they have an extremely limited impact on the society as a whole. Even revealing they know things everyone else forgot would immediately cast suspicion on them.
Worse still, this means the readers have the hardest time finding helpers who’d put their readings into practice. How do you, as a noble who never did a day of practical work, convince a craftsman to follow your instructions on metal smithing without making them suspicious? -
The lack of libraries
Athas is also a world with no liberty to store knowledge. Templars and nobles hide a handful of books in their records, but they can’t amass even a modest library without significant peril. Possession of books is a potent political hook and/or blackmail device; as such, even those who enjoy readership would only store a small number of sources.
Unfortunately, scholarship requires cross-referencing. No source is fully self-contained, and the few that come close are multi-tome series anyway. A prospective Athas scholar can’t enter a library or a monastery to do research. They’re limited to few, scattered, jealously guarded sources. As such, even those who do read mostly have access to fragmented, incomplete (and largely useless) sources. -
Lack of transmission of knowledge
Finally, the Athas ‘scholars’ have very few means to compare ideas and resources… And even less will to do so. For one thing, travel from one CS to another requires an insane amount of resources (water, food, travel gear, etc.) and poses a serious danger to the traveller’s life. Only the most foolhardy ‘scholar’ would undertake travels in search of sources and knowledge - which kept knowledge alive in our world.
For another, finding fellow book-owners and convincing them to share their resources in good faith might be even harder than travelling. Remember, anyone you contact about book lore might denounce you for personal gain. This goes both for the person who possesses a source and the person who asks for it.
I believe these factors would essentially stunt the Green Age-specific knowledge and technology to all but the SMs themselves. There’s no way to safely store, accumulate and transmit knowledge, whether old or new.
I have to argue again: It is the lack of practice, not resources, which stunts Athas in terms of Green Age technology. There is a gigantic leap between theoretical knowledge, applied knowledge and practical craftsmanship. Even if the theoretical lore behind the Green Age metallurgy survived (which I don’t find plausible), the Athas craftsmen lack the sheer how-it’s-done skill to use it… And the way things are, they’ll never get a chance to develop it.
That said, it applies mostly to the Green Age-specific technology. I believe Athasians found ways around these limitations and are capable of producing quite sophisticated technology of their own - just using completely different (often more climate-suitable) materials.
Outside of metallurgy, your post made me think about how other knowledge gets passed in Dark Sun–it’s like moving back to a stone age existence in terms of transmitting knowledge. Would Athasians lose all historical perspective? Would everything become word of mouth/an oral tradition of story telling? Would bards become critical links in knowledge transmission for their talents in setting long histories to verse so that they could be more easily remembered? This would be another reason they might be welcome visitors–in a world without written texts they might be the only couriers delivering long detailed messages between City States. Would psionicists came up with alternatives to written texts, like memory crystals? Would life shapers create living beings for knowledge storage and transmission?
[Bards as a type of mentat but for information storage rather than analysis; Distrans messages sent by hurrum or some sort of small flying reptile]
The Emporium pdf has exactly that. Though it might need some tweaking, as I’ve previously mentioned elsewhere.
In pre-published adventures, I replace books & notes (the ones that are important to the plot) with psionic message crystals.
Yeah I was starting to wonder how I was going to impart more arcane/scholarly rumors to my PCs (like what happened at the Red Tower 200 years ago).
I guess the follow up to having psionic message crystals in your campaign is deciding how rare they are and how difficult to create and how easy or difficult to ‘read’. If even craftsmen had ready access to them, then technology could progress over time.
It also begs the question of how the world is different if knowledge is transmitted mind to mind. Does it eliminate most of the issues ineherent in translation and (mis)interpretation? I’m guessing literary theory would never arise in such a world.
Not necessarily easier at all, I feel.
For example, transmission crystal methods might include telepathic:symbolic, telepathic:word-thoughts, telepathic:databank, empathic: emotional, and psychometabolic:memory.
- Telepathic:symbolic would transfer pure concepts which could be understood without language, but only the things the originator could clearly convey. Just because one person understands a concept, doesn’t mean that the other person will understand the same concept the same way, nor that they will be able to make sense of an abstract concept and apply it to real world things around them. For example, if salt was needed for a specific purpose, and the originator thought of the look and feel and taste of salt as their concept, but the receiver has one of their senses damaged such as taste or touch, then the receiver will not be able to find the right kind of salt because they can’t match the concept of taste, or the concept of touch. Also, the originator would have to clearly envision where to find the salt, and if that source has vanished, did the originator think of including how to find the right kind of salt in the first place?
- Telepathic:word-thoughts would be language dependent and would still run into the problem of people not knowing a word or assigning a different meanings to given words over time and thus the original intent being lost due to lingual drift. In a world without legal writing, lingual drift is a yearly thing among those who don’t have access to record keeping skills.
- Telepathic:databank would be making ranks of a knowledge skill available. However, knowledge skills only “know about” things, they are disconnected from common sense (wis) or muscle memory (craft skills) or in-context experience (profession skills). Also, even if someone describes exactly how to make something, finding the materials, verifying that they are good materials, building the tools and workspace, and so forth may not be included at all, because the originator who transcribed the memory crystal may have assumed unconsciously knowledge about “common” things, at least common to them and their level of skill and experience…
- Empathic:emotional would convey the feel and rhythm of a given task, the mental and/or emotional state or attitude necessary for the job, the sensory feedback of the sound and feel of the workspace, the heft and pressure of using the tools, and the feel of the item taking shape. While this is a crucial part of crafting things, it cannot be conveyed in words easily if at all and usually requires someone who knows what they are doing to transmit the context of each feeling.
- Psychometabolic:memory would be the muscle memory, or effectively ranks of craft skill. But you need the proper layout and tools in order to make use of a craft skill. A Craft skill combined with a Profession skill and Knowledge skill would allow one to improvise variants, but would probably require an entire set of crystals to convey the full information needed.
Last, I recall a memory crystal in FR that can store up to an entire personality, but is more often used to store a mental avatar specific to a given skill or a set of memories about something. The storage of an entire personality is a non-living copy which if I recall correctly, cannot be used to restore a mentality or memory directly, though anyone who can activate it can learn from it, if it is willing. It’s basically a holographic AI interface, fantasy style, in my opinion. But it does sound like something that would be developed on Athas, I feel.
Great stuff. Love the insight that in a world without text, linguistic drift would be accelerated (would the presence of telepathy in the world make this better or worse?).
I wonder if, over time, memory crystals might develop inclusions or flaws in the lattice matrix that might further erode the original message.
Wow, I leave you guys for two days, and then this happens 
This is perfect, I love the mentat vibe in all of it!
@Rhal-othan Oral tradition would be very important, especially among people who do not have access to bona fide psionics. After all, even if anyone can read a crystal, you need someone who can record it for you in the first place. Smaller villages, nomadic tribes, raiders and other small communities would probably rely on oral tradition a lot. In cities, it’d be a staple of everyone who can’t afford a crystal.
Much as you mentioned, rhymes would be pretty widespread. Interestingly, that makes Athasians pretty talented poets. Or talentless poets, but poets nevertheless Also, note that it’d explain why bards know so many forbidden secrets (like poisons) - they’re the ones asked to make the recipe rhymes, after all.
A big downside is that oral tradition relies a lot on rote learning. The ‘loremasters’ spend a lot of time memorising things, and they need to memorise them perfectly - even the slightest variation can completely change the meaning of the rhyme. This has a tremendous impact on creativity, as it creates a mentality that’s oriented on preserving and reproducing lore. Any innovation is a risk of losing the previous knowledge, since it can ‘erase’ the tried-and-true methods.
This doesn’t mean there’s no innovation in oral tradition, but the people who follow it would be less inclined to do independent research. A smart person is someone who can recite lore, not someone who can come up with new things.
@nijineko This is awesome stuff. After reading through it, I have a few thoughts from a linguistic and psychological perspective:
For one thing, I wonder how hard it’d be to decipher a crystal? I imagine ‘reading’ it would require a test. If that test was failed, I’d say it’s possible that the user imposes their own interpretation onto the contents of the crystal: They read what they imagine it says, believing that’s exactly what it ‘says’. In extreme cases, the users might even corrupt the contents of the crystal itself?
For empathic and psychometabolic crystals, there’d also be a barrier of individual differences. The reader might find a transcribed emotional message strange, alien and/or adverse. An extreme introvert wouldn’t be able to stand a crystal made by an extreme extrovert, let alone follow it. A crystal of a neurotic, pedantic craftsmen would induce anxiety in anyone who doesn’t share their personality, and a crystal made by a genius-savant would be plain illegible to anyone else. The same thing goes for psychometabolic messages: People who don’t have the right brain pathways developed would find that the message in the crystal ‘breaks off’ at a certain point.
There’s also a matter of changes in the world over time. It’s a pretty serious barrier in deciphering old written texts: Not only they use old language, but they describe things that the modern users are not familiar with. With psychic crystals, this would create an even stronger backlash. The ‘author’ would take certain things for granted - but someone who reads the crystal centuries later would miss a lot of context.
With very old crystals, this could be quite overwhelming. The reader would suddenly be immersed in another world, whether conceptual, linguistic, emotional or sensual. That sensation could be too distracting to decipher the message of the crystal properly.
Then, there’s also the matter of the price. Paper and parchment were quite expensive in the middle-age Europe, but I imagine the psychic crystals would be even less affordable. This would, as @redking suggested, make this method of storing knowledge very exclusive.
Finally, a side question that will get on your nerves Do you think the telepathic / word-note crystals could be used as spellbooks? If so, wouldn’t they be subject to the same regulations as physical writing?
I feel compelled to point out that in the Crimson legion Lyannius found the book of Kemalok Kings more than a century ago. He spent a huge amount of time with it but made almost no progress deciphering it. While Er’Stali the house slave sorcerer was able to translate most of the book in about an Athasian week or two. All because he had the spell comprehend languages.
I see your point for the average athasian such magic would be unthinkable. But if House Lubar kept a magical slave just for his ability to read and translate. It’s safe to assume others would as well.