To Bardus and other interested parties,
You asked me, what are rocks made of? And I have to confess, my first thought in response to your question was ... rock?
Your cause was not helped at all by identifying yourself as a pirate. It seems to me that you should mostly be at sea. Drinking. Singing sea shanties... Assaulting harmless merchants. When I get a letter from "a pirate" asking what rocks are made out of, I begin looking for someone playing a practical joke. Really, what self respecting pirate would study rocks?
But I confess, once I got past the opening of you letter I found your inquiry intelligent and intriguing. Perhaps I initially underestimated you. Certainly I have no broad expertise when it comes to pirates. Really, I only have Armand DeBeaumarche, to compare you to. And Armand is ... incomparable. So Bardus, I have decided to treat you and your question seriously.
So. Pushing aside my bemusement, the nature of "matter" is one of the core topics debated in the field of metaphysics. "Matter" in this case includes stuff like your rocks, or the desk that I'm writing at, or even the oceans of Arcanis. I am not a deep scholar of metaphysics but there are a couple of good works in Litera Scripta Manet. I consulted them. As best I can tell, from a pleasant half day of skimming, there are two major camps of thought.
The majority view embraced by Altherian seems to be that each type of matter, be it the ink I write with or your various "rocks" is predominantly of one type of element but also infused with trace amounts of the others. So my ink is mostly water but perhaps also air or earth or even fire in minute quantities. The impurities separate it from pure water. And if one were to change the impurities ever so slightly, my ink would be transformed into wine or any other liquid. The processes of smelting and forging effectively recombine the unique variations of what I'll call "earth variations" into new and more useful "earth variations." For example after previously looking into fervidite I know a little bit about metallurgy. So I can tell you that by combining copper and tin in the right ratio you get the more durable metal bronze. Platiro, one of Altheria's greatest sages seems, to have embraced this view. With only a half day of study my understanding of these argument is not deep, but even so I find that this line of thought also lines up well with the Cosmology described by Netius which I believe is also in its favor.
Against that is a school of thought surrounding the writings of the Coryani philosopher Democritius. He postulated around 400 I.C. that if Altheres gave you a "magic knife" which continually cut the tiniest things in half, you would eventually come to a point where you reached the smallest unit of the building blocks of matter. These indivisible units were allegedly different in size, shape and weight based on the substances they made when compiled. Smooth ones could slide past each other and made liquids. Other shapes would stick together like a piece of a puzzle. And the the better they stuck the tougher and harder their end result would be. Combining different types of building blocks would also be possible to create new substances.
I do not know enough to have a truly educated opinion on the matter, but my initial reading leaves me questioning Democritius. For example water is usually a liquid, but can turn into solid as snow or ice when its cold. I'm not sure how Democritius' theory would account for that. And I am loath, as many other, to argue against the points of Platiro. If you desire to do your own research there are no shortage of alchemical texts for the first school of thought. Democritius is harder to find, but I have a copy of his scrolls in my rare text room. If you ever make it to the First City I promise to offer you a reasonable price.
Your Obedient Scribe,
Tukufu, Ambassador of Altheria
A small post script. Vaise has suggested that the Marokene have special knowledge of rocks. Though the Marokene seem to be soldiers far more often than scholars I suppose this is not impossible. You might look into it. If you do pursue this and find something of interest I hope you will send me a note here with your discoveries.
_________________ Eric Gorman
AKA Ambassador Tukufu, man of letters, tomb raider and Master Sword Sage . . . and Sir Szymon val'Holryn, Order of the Phoenix Formerly Sir Jaeger val'Holryn. Weilder of the Holy Avenger: Thonanos. Gave his soul to help free King Noen
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