Yeah


Serpenna will need to teach the blanks how to bartend

Truth be told, they aren't all bad at bartering. But Po could use a wee lesson. <^\/^>

then let me teach him

He was taught how to, and how to adapt to local culture... he's just a bad student. <^\/^>

Fun fact, there are only 2 elemental metals that have a natural colour

How do you mean? <^\/^">

Some metals have colour, such as bronze and brass, but those are mixtures of metals, not metals of a single element. I would hate to tell you the answer to the question, but I will leave a hint that one of two is in this comic

Oh wow!
Man must be a god damn magician! There was literally nothing there before :O

i heard being a magician is a prerequisite to being a trader there.

Perhaps also WIP tickets to bonfires in some places >.>

But he hasn't quite reach the level of Ran's magic mastery. <^\/^>

Well, at least he kept his word.

He's not a bad guy all in all. <^\/^>

Woot! More story.
I love your comic. I look forward to it all the time

Yaaay! <^\/^>

♪ Well, who'd have zought? ♪
♪ Well, bless my soul! ♪
♪ Well, who'd have known? ♪
♪ Well who, indeed? ♪
♪ And who'd have guessed they'd come togezer on zeir own? ♪
♪ It's so peculiar! ♪

Turns out, gold fixes all! <^\/^>

The cad! He hid it off-panel the whole time! :U

La gasp! Hiding it behind the fourth wall? How devious. <^\/^>

Lol.
"We may have some in the back... hard to say."

I mean, I'd have to turn my head slightly. It's a hole thing. <^\/^>

well, well well, so... Iron is available.

Heh

(Most) Everything is available if you have a lot o money! <^\/^>

Iron's better than gold when you think about it- gold's too soft to be useful! Stuck on an island with only gold ores? Good luck making things like tools and nails and stuff!

Finally built a house with gold nails! *house collapses* Fuck... Fine... send them to the mainland to get some iron. Hope they'll accept this mostly useless gold for it. <^\/^>

'Zaaactly

Well, Zhorin saved za day wizh za tradesclerk.

But now he has to explain a few zhings to Po.

In za meantime, from what is shown, will zhey get blooms or ingots?

Those are definitely ingots friend. And he was told to get it "smelted" so while it's in question, I do not think those are blooms in the nearer bin, but probably ore. (bonus aside) While they could be smushed and processed blooms, they tend to be more irregular and porous even if they were well fused and pressed out of cavities. Those come with bits of steel in places, where it absorbed carbon, and cast iron, with a lot of carbon and less useful. You can tell by the grains when you crack them, apparently if you know what you're seeing, and typically if it was bloom work you'd just have different stock shapes with individual chunks re squared and welded, not a whole bloom. More processing yet to be done, you see.

But that's just the inner hobby smith talking, point is, if they have ingots there like that, then they were poured, not shaped, and thus they have blast furnace technology, so while blooming would not necessarily be unused, it'd be for poor or isolated people doing it themselves, and for nations without blast furnace designs.

But this means they probably have steel making knowledge too, definitely not enough lumber for charcoal it's fairly mountainous though, coal would be plentiful enough. Probably more expensive and actually in the back this time. Or further off panel ha. They only have a gold and silver sample there. And uh, what is indicated as iron.

To the author, that coloring of the ingots of "iron" would be closer in hue to polished steel ingots. Iron is darker, almost a black gray on smooth edges, and that is the origin of the name "blacksmith." It only polishes to dusky ashen. Worked steel gets black but thats just heat and oxygen leeching out carbon-iron-oxide filings, or just "forgeblack" and "slag." Back then they also had copper and "silver" smiths as well, tho the latter dealt mostly in lead, pewter and tin, and coin makers and jewlers mostly referred to gold smiths or just melted their own silver and gold chunks off of an ingot. Sos hyu kno :)

the blanks probably don't have enough iron to experiment with to start making steel, even if they probably have coal if they dig much deeper than 40 feet very far. Something to think about, they're your race of course. Maybe they think that's all silver and go all wide eyed haha. Iron? Where? *Smiles* *clerk points further down* Or perhaps he could be referring to the ore, and be kind enough to explain if it means he can sell them slightly more expensive steel. Ye, that's probably the simplest save.

As far as what that tells us. Blast furnace was mid middle ages, so then or further on. It also makes sense by the type of ship seen earlier that it's probably no later than 1100 AD relatively speaking, or they have good metallurgy here and the traders have poor ship building. Either is possible. Val Salia in oop is a bit hard to peg in that way, but it does look like steel weapons, not iron there, so at least blister steel, blast furnaces and mid middle ages.

Yeah they don't make iron anymore at all so it's alright, the mix up. Best you can easily get is pictures of cast iron, which is darker than them both, and usually straight black. You could look up pictures of mild steel, unpolished which is a fair match but not quite the color. Or *eyeroll* you could look up skyrim's coloring for iron and steel ingots, such a shame that is actually easier than googling out the color of an actual irl iron ingot. Bleh.