Yes, yes, I know, the Alchemerical Element made from radical forms of Silver, Gold Mercury and Copper... But what IS it, physically?

And how in hell does it include copper in that mix?

Basically, using junk chemistry (Ie wilkpedia and guesswork) you can add together the basic atomic masses of these elements and "discard the dross" to get a rough atomic mass of 142.2426 g/mol.

Copper: 63.546
Silver: 107.8682
Gold: 196.96655
Mercury: 200.59

= 568.97075 / 4 = 142.2426

Now, comparing the Atomic mass to what's available, we see that it falls neatly between Praseodymium (Atomic number 59, 140.90765 g/mol) and Neodymium (Atomic Number 60, 144.24 g/mol), both rare-earth metals. Or metaloids, whatever.

These 2 elements were seperated from _didymium_ - a combination of the two, once known as Element Di (When they didn't know better.)

So, rule of thumb being what it is, according to the Atomic mass, Orichalcum should have a density (weight) if roughly 6.89g/ cubic centimeter. That's "lighter" than copper.

Ok, maybe that won't work, but what do you get if you add the densities of the "combination elemental radicals" and divide by 4?

Copper: 8.933 +
Silver: 10.501 +
Gold : 19.282 +
Mercury: 13.533 +
Divide by 4, = 13.07025 g/cm3

Funky. Almost the same as mercury, which makes it a lot more compact (1 ounce of copper = ~3 cm3)

So, depending on the way in which you play (badly) with the figures, an ounce (the "gererally-agreed upon Unit" = 28.349523125g, whew!) of Orichalcum will set you back 88000 and be 2.169 cubic centimeters in volume.

That roughly works out to be.. 88000/28.349523125g = 3104/g

So what's this all in aid of?

Well, IF you happened to go insane during the Year of the Comet or otherwise manage to snag some of the shiny, just be careful when you describe "A chunk of what looks like Orichalcum, roughly the size of a baseball..." because even if you factor in a generous fudge-factor you're still going to end up with 20.79cm3 x :nuyen:3104 = 64532 weighing in at a little over 9 ounces.

Because unless you work this out beforehand, very shortly there's going to be the mother of bitching-sessions about what exactly IS Orichalcum and how much it's worth, what's it weigh and do the mages REALLY need it all?


-An object lesson, -Tir.

Your application of the math doesn't seem to have to big of glaring problems, however, one must question your premise:

Why must the listed metals be in equal portions? Even if they are in equal portions, why would the densities 'average out'?

Neat trick: Pour 1 cup of gasoline into 1 cup of water. You end up with less than 2 cups of liquid.

Why wouldn't orichalcum work like that? Also, why couldn't orichalcum (as sold in stores) be a combination of materials - not an alloy, more like a mixture. Say your average enchanter only really needs about 1/3 of a gram for some above average enchanting, but need more like 1/50th of a gram for the weakest enchantment. You could sell it in tiny, tiny little beads, or just sell it melted together with a non-radical, magically inert material, so that there is less chance of loss due to "Dangit, I dropped it!"

Think Star Trek. The main monatery unit that was used in federation-non federation trades was "Gold-Pressed Latinum." Latinum was a material that couldn't be replicated (using the replicators), but the common use form was melted together with Gold, because gold was pretty, and it made the 'coins' a managable size.

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I, personally, view most enchanting use of orichalcum to be more like fine inlays of the material in mystical patterning. So a weapon-focus katana (dikoted, of course) might have 800,000 worth of orichalcum inlaid in the blade or handle (if your runner was a fan of Robert Jordan, it may be a heron inlaid on either side of the blade just above the guard). That 800,000 may have bought a 1 pound block of 'orichalcum,' which was primarily filler material used to hold the actual magical goodness. A part of the enchanting process would be stripping the orichalcum out of the block of fill, probably with magic.

The filler method solves alot of the problems you may have thought of, such as figuring out the actual cost/weight of orichalcum, because you buy a certain amount, which comes in a much larger block of material. You also don't really have to worry about it's appearence, because different companies may have slightly different filler blocks (so you can easily tell which company the orichalcum came from -- sort of like brand naming your radicals). Anybody magically active would probably be able to recognize the amount of oricalcum fairly easily (meaning don't send your street sam to pick it up from a shady seller -- you'll probably get screwed, since basically identical blocks could contain vastly different amounts of orichalcum), though they may need to assense the block to do so.

As the books say, Orichalcum is a metal that can only be achieved whilst magic is around. It has to be made via a heavy enchanting process that takes (IIRC) 28 days.

So, basically, it's a neato metal that nobody knows anything about because it's purely magical in nature. No way it can exist now, so any of our figures based on current science are probably way off.

Minor problemo, TIralee. The natural orichalcum deposits cost less than synthesized orichalcum due to impruities.

Aunty H's Orichalcum Index! I lurve my site. You lurve it too.

There's also no assurance that orichalcum contains an equal amount of each radical. I know, I know. "You put an equal amount of each in to make it, so the end product has to have an equal amount of all of them!"

There's just one problem with that: the circulation that creates orichalcum (per Enchanting in MitS) has a variable yield. That means you and I could start with exactly the same amount of radical copper, silver, gold, and mercury, and yet I can get more orichalcum out of it than you do.

What's this tell us? That while all those elements need to be present to create orichalcum, the finished product isn't necessarily equal parts all of them. There's obviously a lot of wasted material during the process, and for all we know 90% of the copper (or whatever else) is thrown away once you're done, but every last molecule of gold is used, or something similar.

It also tells us that orichalcum is created via Alchemy, so there's no application of standard materials science that applies, making everything above moot!

The real fun are the hypothetical enchanters who can create more mass of orichalcum than the total mass of the input ingredients.
Take that conservation of matter!

i thought he was talking about something like is done with jewelry, like diamonds, a small precious, added to something "semi-precious" (or, in the case of something like cubic-zirconim, near worthless heh) so that it's in an easier package to handle, the enchanter would then be responsible for removing it from said package to use it.

Why should nature package it - to make it easier to pick up? Natural impurities does not sound, better stick to soy-chalcum from the local stuffer shack

Does anybody use the Fourth World Orichalcum differently from the modern stuff - maybe more potent like a good old wine?

Most of the orichalcum from the Fourth World would probably be classed as natural orichalcum in the Sixth World.

i wouldnt think it would be nature that would be "packaging" it, not as how i described it atleast.

nature provides it in chunks, possibly mised with other prescious and semi prescious, or possibly "cancerious" materials that are counter productive to the orichalcum stuff.

However, after the collecting enchanter or talismonger gets back home, he seperates the good from the bad, but finds that he's got some very small amounts of orichalcum, and some larger chunks. for the very little stuff, he surrounds the orichalcum with some other intert material.