abyssalbrews

Metallurgy

Added 2022-08-18 16:01:03 +0000 UTC

Greetings adventurers!

This odd little trinket came to us by way of a traveling blacksmith. Well, at least he claimed to be a blacksmith as he shoved it into our hand and ran off with a crowd of angry merchants behind him saying something about counterfeit gold. You know, come to think of it, he didn’t seem to be carrying any tools. Well, no matter. Now you too can be a blacksmith without all the actual work!

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Design notes from Matthew:

Metals are extremely versatile things. There’s a nearly infinite amount of alloys and techniques that can be employed for different purposes. I sometimes end up watching a lot of Forged in Fire and the idea of a magic item that would offer various ways to engage with metals sounds like a great opportunity to create an item that could do something unique by plating a weapon.

I knew from the start that I wanted to mimic the common currencies in 5E for the metals. This would make it easier to put the pieces into any setting as they don’t necessarily have to introduce metals that aren’t already in their world. That basically set up the copper, silver, gold, and platinum.

The unique use cases for each was a legitimate struggle. I knew very little about actual metallic properties, so I ended up putting in a good amount of research. Silver was pretty easy as silvered weapons are already a thing. The gilded one came across rather naturally as well, but the mechanics for platinum and copper were much less obvious until I started thinking a bit more abstractly. I’m really proud of the copper mechanic in particular and have ideas for an item centered around that in the future.

Illustration notes from Fernando:

I’m not very good at designing jewelry, so the first step whenever we do rings and necklaces is to do a deep dive on Pinterest for inspiration. Matthew mentioned that he thought a celtic knot might be the way to go with this one so I did several sketches using that type of pattern but none of it resonated with me.

Part of my hang up was that in a celtic knot the metals would be intertwined and I was having a hard time picturing how you could touch one metal to a surface without the others touching it too. That’s when I had the idea of different plates that stack over each other with the one you are intending to use shifting to the top. That was a very “cinematic” visual which is something we both strive for with our items. The plates being housed with each other led to a mosaic look that I then included throughout the rest of the design; I pictured the different blocks on the ring moving up and down like the pistons on an engine; it makes for a very cool, dynamic visual!

A smaller challenge was finding the right color palette, silver and platinum for instance are similar colors, so are gold and copper for that matter; I chose to lean on values to differentiate them, making the copper and platinum darker than their counterparts; that left the mount and ring itself, I chose green because jade is a common precious material used in jewelry and the green contrasts nicely with the yellows and blues on the metal plates.

This special little ring could make quite a splash with the forge clerics our there as well as some artificers perhaps. I really love the idea of a craftsman having this to give that extra little touch of versatility to their work. It seems only right that someone that upgrades weapons on the regular could have something a little extra. We hope you’ve enjoyed this special little ring.

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