How can mermaids have metallurgy if they can't create fire underwater?

>WHY DOESN'T THIS CHILDREN'S MOVIE SATISFY MY AUTISTIC NEED FOR EVERY SINGLE ASPECT OF THE SETTING TO BE EXPLAINED REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Settle down.

You don't need fire. You need heat.

Nigga all he was saying is that it's pointless to bring up these inconsistencies because the people who created it literally do not care about the inconsistencies, as it's completely irrelevant to the message they were trying to convey.

They're magic half-human-half-fish hybrids that can talk to fish, breath air and water, who is ruled by Triton the son of Poseidon.

Clearly they use magic.

this, my instant thought was just mermaid smiths on the beach.

What if they put their fires and such above water, or in certain air-filled underwater caverns, or create some kind of artificial air-pockets?

Merfolk could totally live near shores, the same way humans often live by rivers and seas.

King Triton is son of Poseidon, God of the Ocean. Clearly they were given the gift of smithing by Poseidon's nephew (and therefor King Triton's cousin) Hephaestus.

The only metal object in their entire kingdom is Triton's magical trident

I don't think they actually have Metallurgy

> How can mermaids have metallurgy if they can't create fire underwater?

>The only metal object in their entire kingdom is Triton's magical trident
This, and also >Maybe they traded with Atlantis back in the day.

I mean, it's pretty clear that they scavenge shipwrecks, but their culture seems pretty old.

What about those armbracers? Looted from surfacers doesn't seem to be big enough source for everybody to get some.

Shipwrecks.

Mermaid bloodmagic
Fulled by all the oysters and clams scarified to make mermaid bras

If it were me, I would make an underwater bubble with air lines running to the surface. This way I could control air flow and to some degree air temperature much in the same way a typical blast furnace would operate.

One of the settings in a game basically had an aquatic race use high water pressure to forge and 'cut' the shape of the blade.

(OP)

They go to the surface to forge their metals. Very dangerous yet rewarding trek. It's like going to the top of a volcano to forge a ring.

That trident was a magic artefact, a gift from a cyclops.
The other stuff they probably just found in a sunken ship.

You could theoretically heat brass to its melting point by using exposed magma. And both copper and zinc were relatively easy to come by in pure or nearly pure forms back a few millennia ago. They could have smelted and cast it using exposed volcanic stuff. Most of the time brass was cast rather than forged due to the fact that it is tensily strong but brittle. Also it holds a good edge for a damn long time.

Protection from energy is a thing in D&D

Why not in any other fantasy game?

This whole thread, and no one mentions POWDER METALLURGY.

A true travesty upon Veeky Forums. Wherefore art thou science?

Sorry, never took in depth classes on powder metallurgy. I'm more of an extractive metallurgy guy.

The men put it between their pecs and flex. It causes so much heat and pressure that they are the anvil, hammer and the forge. They use their fishy butts as sand paper if it needs sanding.

Well basically, underwater they could pretty easily use hydraulic shearing (or other) to generate metal powders, then as well hydraulic compression to form mechanically strong composites.
Obtaining the metals could be done with electrolytic refining.
There's lots of non-thermal methods to make things. Even down to sol-gel methods.

You could get pretty technical about an advanced Mer society.

Not the user you replied to, but this was educational, thanks for sharing.

Metalbending as a magical gift from Hephaistos.

I'd have to ask some of the other guys in the department about powder metallurgy sometime. I know one of our professors was doing something with it.

One thing I do know about is that it would be difficult for them to use the majority of extractive techniques we use. Once the orebody has been mined, it's gotta go through a lot to get it into a state where it's useful. Electrolytic refining only works once you've separated most of the gangue from the ore. And even then, it's tricky and usually requires the metal to be killed into fines and floated in chemical tanks. At least that's what you need for industrial production of high-quality copper.

1. mermaids do their smithing above water, either on shore or on rafts/boats
2. mermaids trade for all their metalwork
3. mermaids build special air chambers underwater for smithing
4. magic lets them forge metal without heat
5. the gods teleport fully formed metals to the mermaids

this isnt hard
a more interesting question IMO is what kind of clothes do mermaids wear?

Sure.

The electrolytic refining they use for copper is the purifying electroplate variety. Dissolve the impure, plate on to a pure seed. They already have a first order conductive metal.

However! That is not the only electrolytic method. For example, some species of anaerobic bacteria, like Geobacter, can form bionanowires to respire by reducing iron oxide and similar.
You could have a Mer refinery that uses extremophile Geobacter fed upon iron ore to produce the metal, perhaps even in convenient filamentaceous form for weaving, pressing, or shearing to powder.

Land-dweller cities often extend into the sea with docks and things, so why can't underwater cities extend into the land?

Maybe they could have an arrangement with a land-dwelling subject people, whereby the land-dwellers live in a Venice-style district under the mer-people's protection in exchange for doing all the above-water shit the merfolk can't?

I'm not going to lie, it's entirely too late for me to speculate on how feasible that would be. The main problem that my tired brain can see with it is the presence of organic remnants sullying the crystal structure during compaction and causing weaknesses in the metal.

6. Mermaids can make magical underwater fire.
7. They scavenge shipwrecks.

Well, it's magic, and once you've got that ball rolling you can do anything anyway.

>Getting anywhere near them would fry their fishy asses.

How about this:
>setting has regular, pretty mermaids and deep mermaids who look more like pic related
>they're extremophiles who can't leave the crushing pressure of the bottom of the sea or the ungodly heat of the hydrothermal vents
>they wish more than anything to see daylight
>the surface mermaids trade magical lights of various kinds with them in exchange for their metalwork

That's pretty cool worldbuild.

>a spy in europa.jpg

Land smiths don't stick their hands into fires either, kid.

For a moment I thought I was being even remotely original.

I will never ever understand how people- espicually on Veeky Forums have such a targeted suspension of disbelief.

>Wants to get into the specifics of metallurgy underwater
>Yet
>Fish people?! Yeah sure evolution I guess! That's how it works right!?

He's saying that you'd have an easier time using a forge than a hydrothermal vent because heat transfers easier in water than air. Honestly I'd think the solution there would just be longer tools but that sounds unwieldy.

To be fair mermaids are traditional monsters; a great deal of "good worldbuilding" nowdays is taking monsters and make them more or less plausibile in the aspects not defined by tradition.

Anyway saying they can muster electroplating that much is cooler.

Projection

Translation "only the parts that bother my autism are unrealistic"

this op is one of the great qustions of our time....

those swords are ugly thought.
Anyways, who would they need to make war on down there?

Hostile sea life?

I don't have problems with saying that they do it by magic, user.

Based on those swords, it gives them an awful lot of trouble.

Care to expand on that a bit, user? It sounds interesting.

Would it be possible to do this with machinery that wasn't metal? Because they'd have to make these machines out of something else before they could make anything else out of metal.

>getting near the vents is unrealistic because x
>BUT MAGIC

At this point just ignore that vents would kill them.

1. Vents are usually teeming with ocean life.
2. Fire also has a tendency to fry humans, but somehow we managed to use forges at over a thousand degrees.

He's a magic king of his realm and is family with Poesidon, of course he has the magic water controlling shit, Greek god's and their friends always have magic shit.

>the surface mermaids trade magical lights of various kinds with them in exchange for their metalwork
reminds me of the sunlight trade in sunless sea

Water is a better conductor of heat then air.

>They're magic half-human-half-fish hybrids that can talk to fish, breath air and water

Do they? Or maybe they just work like dolphins?

It's also a worse conductor of heat than metal. Also vents are surrounded by a lot of cold water to absorb the heat. The entire ocean floor isn't boiling around a vent, there are still cool spots.

Yeah, this guy as it: Air is actually a really good insulator against heat. Water, on the other hand, is an excellent conductor.
The safe distance for a creature like a mermaid is going to be pretty far from where you hit the melting point of steel. Also, you can't really build walls around the vent, so you have to deal with current shifts blowing the plume in your face, which might kill you too.

But if you use magic, then you don't need the vents anymore, do you? That's my point right there. Magical heat is safer under all sorts of magic systems than trying to approach a hydrothermal vent.

Water is a worse conductor than metal, yeah, but far better than air, which is the point. Consider that the red area around that vent is probably more than enough to cook a fish, while the central vent itself is where you need to work your metal.

The way I like to do it in fantasy settings is to create a deep, almost symbiotic relationship between a certain tribe of merfolk and a certain city of humans. The two of them realize that they are by no means competitors to eachother (one lives on land, the other in the sea) and that both of them can offer the other things they cannot otherwise get. The humans can forge such things as bronze weapons (bronze doesn't rust if I'm not mistaken, and having forged weapons would give this group of mermaids a huge advantage against their enemies) and merfolk could easily swim deep into the ocean to retrieve rare pearls (which would just be pretty rocks to them, with practically zero worth). Food would also work, with mermaids being able to catch rare deep sea fish. On the other hand, humans have cattle on land. Perhaps over time merfolk would begin to see pork and beef as delicacies, on par with how we today view lobster and caviar.

Either that, or they form some deep sea maffia where they ask protection money to not sink human ships.

>reminder that there is multicellular life on top of the black smokers where the water is so hot and so pressurized it's a form of plasma

It would be like the salamanders of the fire elemental plane, specialize providers of blacksmithing services to those who can pay and those who dare.

Other merpeople?

Nigga was casting spells and OP brings this shit up.

This is beautiful but also makes me sad for the deepmaids.

Mermaids forge and cook using blue fire. It's fire that only burns underwater and is snuffed out by exposure to open air.

Most people seem to forget that underwater vents are very deep down, far beyond the depth normal surface-dwelling animals can survive. It would probably be easier for merfolk to just built forges above water than figure how to a) get to the bottom of the ocean several kilometers down and b) how to actually use superheated water to heat metal to melting point without getting close enough to boil alive.

>teeming with ocean life
This. The deep ocean is way too cold to live in. The vents are warm and allow life near them. The biggest problem in getting close to vents is not the heat, but the cold.

Crustacean blacksmithes using ocean vents as a forge. They one tiny claw for holding the blade and one huge claw they use as a smith's hammer. Aqua dwarves.

Im essentially writing a setting that is Underwater Dark Sun/Barsoom.

The last surviving humans in their underwater bubble cities only have the means of metalworking. Despite these advantages, few go beyond their city as they cannot breathe underwater.

It's not 'that' cold. It's pretty consistent 4 degrees centigrade. Not exactly warm, but perfectly liveable.
The big porblem is lack of resources. Geothermal vents are deep sea oasises because they provide sustenance for bacteria that use the sulphides dissolved in the water as energy source, forming the basis of an ecosystem in the same way plants do on surface.

MAGIC
>MAGIC
>>MAGIC

Abduct human smiths, strand them on an isolated island and force them to forge shit in exchange for not drowing their asses.

They can breathe air and trade for shit.

Plus stuff sinks and is 'lost' to the sea all the time.

how will they have enough wood tho?

Plenty of hot redheaded mermaid chicks taking off their seashells, user. I know it gives me an endless supply.

They have Orichalcum, which can be forged to the strength of steel underwater using no heat. It is worked to shape, and then left in the open air for a week where it hardens to steel strength. This gave Merfolk great power during the era of bronze weaponry and armor, but their power has waned now that steel is common.

My king what are you talking about? By your own law we pesants can not be armed. all of our arms and armor were lost in a tragic boating accident.

/thread

They're fucking mermaids, how did they even evolve?
It's a little late in the game at that point to stress about realism.

What are you babbling on about?