Boric's Book of Metal (2024)

The following text is transcluded from Transcript:Boric's Book of Metal.

• Entries
• Mithril
  Adamant
  Rune
  Orikalkum
  Necronium
  Bane
  Elder Rune
  Primal

• Mithril
• (After finding entry #1 in Boric's Book of Metal:)
  • Mithril is a bluish purple-tinged metal which is both stronger and lighter than steel.
  • The early dwarves used mithril widely in their equipment and machinery. By the end of the first age, they preferred the more durable adamant, and used mithril almost exclusively for jewellery.
  • Mithril is the strongest metal that humans can easily work, because it can still be melted in primitive coal furnaces.
  • Being rare on the surface, mithril was highly prized by the early Fremennik, and swords made of the material became valuable heirlooms.
  • (Continues below.)

• Adamant
• (After finding entry #2 in Boric's Book of Metal:)
  • Adamant is a dark green metal which is only easily found deep underground.
  • Extracting the metal from adamantite ore requires such high temperatures that the early dwarves were unable to make use of the material until they discovered luminite.
  • Luminite, known to humans as dwarven firecoal, is a partially magical rock which contains the essence of fire.
  • Luminite is difficult to mine and work, but generates a flame far hotter than coal.
  • Using luminite, the dwarves were able to smelt adamantite and found the metal even stronger than mithril and much heavier than steel.
  • The dwarves quickly switched all of their industries over to make use of the new wonder material, and dwarven weapons were much sought after and traded to other races.
  • The smelting and forging of adamant remained a dwarven secret until the early second age, when the clans that left the worship of Guthix to follow Saradomin revealed the properties of the two rocks to their non-dwarven allies.
  • This caused a rift between the Guthixian and Saradominist clans that lasted for thousands of years.
  • When the Guthixian dwarves abandoned the surface during the god wars, they were forced away from the best adamantite mines by the Saradominists and their culture gradually reverted to the widespread use of steel.
  • (Continues below.)

• Rune
• (After finding entry #3 in Boric's Book of Metal:)
  • Runite, despite the name, has no direct connection to runes or rune essence.
  • While the strange, bright blue metal was known to early dwarves, they found the resulting metal weak, and could find no use for it.
  • In the second age, Saradominist dwarves searching for new sources of adamantite experimented by smelting the blue ore with luminite, and the results were fantastic.
  • Despite being soft and deformable to a degree normally useless for making weapons and armour, properly refined rune metal which has been smelted with luminite projects a kind of invisible energy field around it. The energy field damages and disrupts anything that comes into sudden contact with it, which works superbly well both offensively and defensively.
  • Attacks with rune weapons almost tear their opponents apart, while rune armour will deflect incoming blows from lesser materials like steel or mithril.
  • The dwarves found the energy field too unstable to use in devices or as a power source, so the use of rune metal never spread beyond weaponry.
  • Amongst Saradominists, it was the belief that runes were the personal creations and gifts of their god. The properties of runite were so incredible that they believed it to have a similar origin, and named it for that reason. By the time they discovered that there was no relationship, the name had stuck.
  • (Continues below.)

• Orikalkum
• (After finding entry #4 in Boric's Book of Metal:)
  • Orikalkum is one of the names for the hard, dark red metal used by the dragonkin to make much of their equipment.
  • Orikalkum is what the Saradominist dwarves called the metal, but the word is actually icyene in origin, as icyene was the official language of the Saradominists of the second age.
  • The dwarves found small deposits of the metal on Gielinor, but at the time were unaware of its significance.
  • Although Saradomin knew of the dragonkin, he felt no need to share that information with his Gielinorian subjects.
  • The ore, called orichalcite, didn't react even to being smelted in the astonishing heat of luminite. It wasn't until an unrelated discovery later in the god wars that they were able to make use of it.
  • During the second age, many ilujanka had fought for the Zarosian empire during its incredible expansion.
  • These small lizardmen were powerful warriors because of their ability to control and ride fire-breathing dragons.
  • The dwarves, always extremely attentive to mineralogical matters, noticed that the fire the dragons breathed would subtly alter any rock it blasted, seeming to trap the essence of the dragonfire within.
  • The dwarves learned to coax the fire back out of the stone. The resulting flame was less powerful than luminite, but unmistakably tinged with the essence of dragonfire.
  • They called the material drakolith. They were never able to reliably produce it, as dragons were more or less impossible to capture or control, and were reduced to scavenging for small quantities of it where it occurred by accident. As the number of ilujanka dwindled, the material became scarcer and scarcer.
  • Despite being less hot than luminite, experiments showed that the drakolith flame was able to draw the metal forth from the orichalcite ore.
  • The resulting metal, which they named orikalkum, was remarkable. It was tougher even than adamant, and no heavier than light steel.
  • Two factors prevented its widespread distribution amongst the Saradominists: firstly, they only found vanishingly small quantities of both the orichalcite ore and the drakolith catalyst. Secondly, they considered the metal's deep red colour to be ill-omened, preferring the bright blue of runite.
  • What the Saradominists of the god wars never discovered was the true secret of working orikalkum in the direct and controlled flame of a dragon.
  • This technique, used by the dragonkin in antiquity, created a purer and stronger metal, and was used in the creation of the legendary 'dragon' armour and weapons.
  • (Continues below.)

• Necronium
• (After finding entry #5 in Boric's Book of Metal:)
  • Necronium, like its predecessor orikalkum, is forged from two ores - in this case, necrite and its catalyst, phasmatite.
  • In the third age, when the conflict between the gods raged across the world unchecked for centuries, mortal casualties were beyond measure, though they must have counted in the hundreds of millions.
  • Demons and other great monsters heaped bodies upon bodies in great mountains of the dead.
  • The bones and blood and metal panoply of those ancient battlefields sank beneath the soil.
  • Over the centuries, they coagulated in darkness and steeped into the residual magical energies.
  • When the humans of the fourth age unwittingly disturbed these open-air charnel houses, they found new materials of remarkable strength.
  • Necrite is a dark fusion of bone, third age metal and ancient magicks.
  • The skulls of humanoids and larger, monstrous creatures protrude from the sickly green surface of this ore. In its presence, the skin crawls.
  • Phasmatite is a pale, greenish-white, powdery rock formed primarily of bone infused with ectoplasm, which burns with a brilliant green flame and a sound of distant screaming.
  • When necrite is heated in the flame of phasmatite, it does not melt or sag, but rather stretches and rises as if straining for something. It forms itself into the plates and shapes of armour and weapons, though bizarre and misshapen.
  • A skilled smith can guide and correct this process and create usable and extremely powerful equipment.
  • The resulting necronium has a dark green sheen and is still covered in the skulls and bones of the dead that grant it strength.
  • (Continues below.)

• Bane
• (After finding entry #6 in Boric's Book of Metal:)
  • There is a creature in Fremennik legend more dangerous and terrifying than any other.
  • Jormungor, a wyrm said to be so vast and ancient that he encircles the whole of Gielinor, allegedly sleeps deep beneath the ground at the crown of the world.
  • The stories call Jormungor the Great Wyrm of Hatred, for he is said to bear such utter loathing for all other beings that his mere touch is lethal to everything that moves.
  • The scholars of the Moon Clan believe Jormungor to be merely be a myth; a tale told by their superstition kin.
  • They believed this up until the fifth age, when the explorers of the Basilisk Clan discovered a strange new ore along the north coast.
  • This dark purple rock seemed to almost seethe with menace, and the Fremennik could not make use of it.
  • They could smelt it, but no warrior wished to wield a weapon that filled their heart with dread, and they believed the metal cursed.
  • They named it the Flesh of Jormungor, and left it well alone.
  • The scholars thought this a coincidence, until several more deposits were discovered in the north, winding a sinuous pattern across the top of the world.
  • Despite the grim omen, the Moon Clan could not unlock the secrets of the metal, nor could they find any other trace of an entity buried in the earth.
  • Decades later, a powerful warrior named Koschei, who knew neither fear nor death due to the enchantment laid upon him, made a weapon from the Flesh of Jormungor, a great axe named Balmung, for the slaying of dagannoths and other threats.
  • Koschei, who was wise in the way of magic due to a heritage he had forgotten, worked magic into the weapon as he wrought it, and the enchantment was completed later by an adventurer who slew many dagannoths with the weapon.
  • Once correctly 'tuned' against the dagannoths, the weapon's aura of dread disappeared, and it became extremely effective at slaying its chosen foe.
  • Koschei later taught his technique to an itinerant dwarf visiting Rellekka.
  • The dwarves of Keldagrim were horrified by the samples of metal with which he returned, and refused to allow it into the city.
  • The dwarven quarter of Falador was more tolerant, if not welcoming, and slowly the knowledge of bane metal spread to the smiths of that city.
  • (Continues below.)

• Elder Rune
• (After finding entry #7 in Boric's Book of Metal:)
  • Elder rune is a rune bar reinforced with light and dark animica.
  • Animica crystallises over thousands of years at sites of significant concentrations of anima, usually the resting place of a dead god.
  • A notable example is Tumeken's remnant, where the desert god Tumeken sacrificed himself at the end of the Kharidian-Zarosian War.
  • While the majority of Tumeken's energy gradually became one with the anima mundi of Gielinor, the lingering remnants of Tumeken's divine energy crystallised into light animica.
  • Similarly, when Guthix banished the gods from Gielinor, the goddess of the elves, Seren, shattered herself into thousands of crystals to always be with her followers.
  • Some of those crystals gradually melded with rocks of the elven lands, forming light animica.
  • The most notable site of dark animica can be found in the Empty Throne Room, where the empty lord Zaros was betrayed by his Legatus Maximus, Zamorak.
  • The dark power within Zaros was rejected by the anima mundi, and gradually manifested as crystals of dark animica.
  • (Continues below.)

• Primal
• (After obtaining entry #8 in Boric's Book of Metal:)
  • Primal is a light red metal forged from ten ores originally found only in the dungeons of Daemonheim...novite, bathus, marmaros, kratonium, fractite, zephyrium, argonite, katagon, gorgonite and promethium.
  • These strange deposits originate in the lowest levels of the dungeon, but by some great power that can change, alter, and dare I say it, taint the physical properties of matter in this world, these warped resources steadily emerged on the upper levels.
  • Daemonheim is an unstable space, constantly shifting and rearranging, and so it's inevitable that which lies below would eventually intersect the world above.
  • Despite the best efforts of the Fremennik to contain this taint by forbidding the passage of items in and out of Daemonheim, in recent years, isolated deposits of Daemonheim ore were discovered by prospectors in the wilderness.
  • Though argonlike was soft and inferior, providing negligible protection, this intrusion from the depths sparked an ill omen.
  • Now, as if driven by some primal instinct to expand and conquer, and excavated by recent archaeological activity, the mineral deposits of Daemonheim have breached the surface of the peninsula, sparking an onrush of opportunistic miners in search of fortune.

Stairs to Boric

Boric's location

1. ^ Mod Jack. Design - Both - Metals. 12 February 2018. (Archived from the original on 13 August 2024.)
2. ^ Mod Jack. Metal Lore. 19 November 2019. (Archived from the original on 13 August 2024.)