Items · Materials · Non-Magical
Helspar
A metal found deep in the bowels of the earth. It stays warm even after years away from the forge.
Helspar is a metal ore found near volcanoes or deep underground. It has a rusty orange hue and is warm to touch.
It has an inhereant heat which makes it a dangerous metal to mine. In large areas, like veins of ore, the heat is tremendous, similar to standing in a forge on a hot summer day. If pockets of gas from elsewhere in the mine come in contact with a vein of Helspar, it can ignite and bury the mine.
Raw Helspar ore is more dangerous than forged Helspar, because of it's crystal nature. The veins are exposed ignots of large six sided crystals. The crystaline nature makes it act as a radiator, broadcasting the heat in the most efficent way possible in nature.
Helspar is to soft to make a blade out of, unless it has been tempered. While tempering a blade of normal metal is an easy process of heating and then rapidly cooling a blade, tempering a Helspar blade requires much higher tempertures. The heat is so great that if it were plunged into water, it would explode into shrapnel. The most common way reaching the great tempurtures without magic has to use a magnesium bath. To quench the blade from these extreme temperatures, it is plunged into a forge at normal temperatures. Even after this risky and difficult forging, Helspar blades hold a poor edge, but rarely break and bend only as often as a normal blade.
The most common use of Helspar is garments and armour. Gloves and boot soles with Helspar worked into them prevent frostbite, and helmets with a Helspar circlet inside keep soilders warm on wintery nights.
Helspar can be 'cold forged' be simply beating it into the shape desired. The problem with designing anything with Helspar is that it's heat is detemined by how much is touching, so if a person was wearing Helspar gauntlets and shook hands with another person wearing Helspar gauntlets, the heat would double during the handshake, it would likely result in a light burn where the Helspar was touching thier skin. Due to this, most of the Helspar equipment is fashioned in the brigidane manner, with small plates woven into individual pockets of the material.
Magical Properties:
Helspar stays hot, and gets hotter the more of it touches. A six inch square against the skin would feel like sitting next to an average campfire. Shoe soles and bracers can keep persons from fearing frostbite. A mail suit would burn a man alive.
If more than thirty-six square inches of Helspar touches, it can make wood and other flamible objects smoke and catch fire after a bit. Twice that will make things catch fire on contact. Prision bars would burn the hands of anyone to touch them, even though they would be soft enough to bend if they were not hot.
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Links to this article 3
- 30 Pairs of Boots Alongside Cheka Man linked by Cheka Man
- 7 Pairs of Gloves Alongside Cheka Man linked by Cheka Man
- Janus's Scythe Cheka Man linked by Cheka Man
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This is absolutely beautiful. It's deeply magical, it's logically hazardous, and it's got the potential benefit to go with the hazard.
I suppose my major question is this: Can we run up alloys with it? While it might blow away steel, a skilled alchemist and smith may be able to put this together with, say, tungsten, in a kind of Damascine-style alloy. That's where the big potential to this seems to be for me.
I suppose as long as the other metals in the alloy can withstand the tremendous heat of forging Helspar, it would be possible, but aside from it's inherent heat, Helspar is a poor metal. It's soft and doesn't hold an edge unless forged, and it is rather expensive, due to the difficulty of mining it.
How about Helspar shovels in places where the snow gets deep?
Since the metal is warm, the blade of the shovel would melt the snow and make clearing the streets much easier.
An expensive but useful item. Treasured by civic officials.
The same thing could be used to cut blocks of ice, then the flat of the ice knife could be used to melt the seams together. Ice fort anyone?
Whether or not one could make an alloy of it, its still a valuable material for armor. By placing a little square inside plate armor, you can keep your soldiers warm and well-armored.
Or cause them to overheat. Or, if the opposition knows you are doing this and adds it to their weapons, it can cause your soldiers to cook in their own juices.
Very good. 5/5 I like the prison bars idea-it could make a very good punishment cell, or be used in the prisones of icy countries to stop prisoners from freezing to death before their trials.
You could make a pretty good portable stove with just two pieces, each having about 18 square inches of Helspar - just place the pot on the plate and you have smokeless,flameless cookery...
:)
Does this material create the heat it emits or just stores it? If it stores it, will it run out?
I like this concept. One of these subs that get the creative juices flowing. Good job!
An interesting, non-genre specific metal -- I can easily see this fitting into a Sci-Fi setting as well as a fantasy one. I also wonder if its heat ever runs out, or if it is actually tapping some energy source to generate it. If so, perhaps it will burn itself out in time?