Who is actually the master of blacksmithing and forging? Elves or Dwarves?
Elves for Dex builds. Dwarves for strength builds.
>>93891171Elves for lightweight, overly designed garbage and Dwarves for extremely heavy, overly designed garbage. Humans if you just want overly designed garbage
>>93891171Dwarves master the craft faster due to innate inclination but Elves can reach higher levels of skill if they choose to focus on it for a thousand years.So the greatest masters of elves surpass the greatest masters of Dwarves but there are more master dwarves than there are elven smiths in general.
Nogames thread
Clearly dwarves
In Tolkien, the crafty elves are just better at almost everything, which I find unsatisfying. Elves should craft magic items, things that require great skill to physically manufacture but the physical manufacturing is only a fraction of the process, weaving and sculpting and etching and crystal-growing and that sort of thing. Their technology should look like art. Dwarves should make really good shit (mostly metal) that works fine without magic and then they should reinforce it with magic.
>>93891171Rabbits.
>>93891171Depends on how much magic is in the setting.There's a common belief among humans--and I mean humans in real life--that it's possible to master a skill and that mastery begets magical bullshit. See, for example, people who believe in the power of karate, kung fu, the almost supernatural slicing power of the katana, general quantum woo bullshit in physics, etc.In reality all of that crap is total bullshit. There's an absolute limit to how good a piece of crafted metal can really be unless you start adding enchantments to the table. I don't give a shit if a dwarf spends 100 years educating himself to spend another 100 years crafting the "perfect" sword. A sword is a sword is a sword and no amount of skill is going to make the metal any better. So long as you can do it competently there's not that much farther you can seriously take it unless you're superstitious and believe in magic.
>>93891371This is dumb, you can always make a better sword. In the real world we made them tiny and we shoot them out of tiny canons that we keep in our pockets, but that's just our particular timeline, it might have gone in a completely different direction under different circumstances. And a lot of settings (like Middle Earth) work very hard to blur the line between technology and enchantment, from their point of view this is a meaningless distinction born of imperfect knowledge, it's all just different kinds of superior craftsmanship.
>>93891371eh, that kinda implies there's a perfect sword. A sword that no other sword can surpass.But if you were indeed saying that, what would you consider that best sword that cannot and will never be surpassed or improved upon?
>>93891171Elves are better at weapons and armour while dwarves are better at jewelry and decorative objects
>>93891171That depends on what you want. If you want one-hundred masterwork blades, you go for a dwarven smith. If you want one legendary blade, you go for an elven smith.
>>93891854>And a lot of settings (like Middle Earth) work very hard to blur the line between technology and enchantment, from their point of view this is a meaningless distinction born of imperfect knowledge, it's all just different kinds of superior craftsmanship.which makes sense because if IRL a witch potion worked it would just be yet another chemical in our eyes albeit one with a really weird list of ingredients and effects. if those enchantments are 100% reproducible by the blacksmith then it would just be seen as a normal (if highly difficult and rare) part of blacksmithing
>>93891371>A sword is a sword is a sword and no amount of skill is going to make the metal any better. Metals have properties that can be dramatically altered by the way they're processed, ranging from its hardness to its flexibility to its corossion resistance to even much more complicated properties like self-healing surfaces or even shape memory. In regards to steel, what temperature it is heated to, what it is quenched with, what ratio of iron and carbon and other materials it has, and even something like what kind of air it is forged in can have dramatic effects on the final product.Katana, for example, wanted a mix of soft and flexible steel so they wouldn't snap, as well as hard (and thus more brittle) steel to hold a sharper edge. They would acheive this by cooling the edge of the blade more quickly, making it harder, but allowing the core of the blade to cool more slowly, making it more flexible. Some smiths would use techniques to cool a blade in as many as four different stages, producing a blade cross-section with seven distinct areas of different types of steel. And, this was incredibly primitive compared to modern metallurgy understanding and techniqes, with no real limit to how much we can potentially improve a sword.
>>93891171dwarves. elves are only interested in creating as a form of art. dwarves create as a science. thats why dwarves have good industry and engineering and elves need to rely on magic to make things worth a damn and it takes 1000 years
>>93891371this assumes everyone is operating with identical resources, material science, and time
>>93891171Elves for more unique or specialty work. Dwarves for pure durability, and physical effectsSo an elf can make a sword that vibrates at a frequency which drives hostile beasts away and tie some minor wind magic or the like to it for various effects. Meanwhile a dwarf's sword is going to pound for pound keep its edge and last for longer even in intense conditions while having a massive tolerance for the elements and being augmented by dwarven runes as a endurance multiplier.TLDRThe Elves will make shit with extra effects.The Dwarves will make shit that will last generations with minor upkeep.
>>93891171what game?
>>93892291My Game, I shape whatever system I feel best suits the campaign to the standards I create for it and then when I want to play another game in the world I pick whatever system is best for that and shape it to suit my needs.Faggot
>>93892329Cool. Can you post the rules?
>>93891171Elves are better at enchanting steel, dwarves are better at mining higher quality steel and alloying it with rare elements for a better base blade. Magic still trumps metallurgy without magic, but the best of both worlds would be a fusion of their unique talents.
>>93892021Based metallurgist
>>93891247Based
>>93891171White Human Male Wizards.
>>93891171elves for when you want 1 really badass sword. Dwarves for when you want 1000 perfectly good swords.At least by contemporary fantasy rpg way of thinking.In ye olde viking lore the difference between elf and dwarf is sometimes murky
There is a worldbuilding general. Check the catalog next time newfriend!
>>93892471Where is it, friend! I do not see it!
>>93891171the most skilled masters are elves who have immense personal skill and extremely refined personal methods blending forging with magic to create supernatural works of art.The best dwarf masters have much better routines and structure in their work and can therefor do production of very high quality objects at scale with the help of apprentices and lesser skilled forge workers that only have one of a few tasks. Its more correct to say an object is from a dwarf's masters forge since the master himself isn't as hands on, while an elf master definitely worked with an object from start to finish with only some help from chosen apprentices. This makes dwarven work much more known and affordable (relatively speaking, you still have to be loaded) while elf works is in a league of its own both in cost and quality
>>93892471>>93892341>>93892291>>93891268>hall monitors arriving to seethe and contribute absolutely nothing YWNBAJ
>>93892631OO yeah cant wait to read the same exact responses to this same pointless question this time! ffs even every reply is the fucking same answer always. Nothing new has been contributed. You seriously can't defend this.
>>93892643Don't need to. If a thread doesn't interest you then don't go in there. Hide the thread, even. Plenty of people who haven't engaged with the topic before or simply aren't tired of the subject.You're just making yourself mad, right now. You cannot defend against this.
>>93892668It's worth it to make you mad.
>>93891171>Elves or Dwarves?Trick question. The answer is gnomes.
>>93892676Well as long as you're having fun then there's no issues here.
>>93892676so you don't actually care about board quality it's just another shitpost, got it
If this thread was actually about a game where dwarf and elf blacksmithing had a difference. You know like dwarf and elf armor, weapons etc. There could be an interesting discussion about their impact in games mechanics and the implications it would have to the games setting. But no. It's just the same boring slop thread with the same boring answers.
>>93892471No.
>>93892643You are no better.
>>93892708thanks for letting us know this thread on a burmese wood carving forum isn't up to your standards. Will you be making a full report to the administration of this fine website or just stay in the thread crying?
Elf's good with magic.Dorfs good with metal.Elf's make good sword imbued with powerful magics.Dorfs make powerful sword with good magic.
>>93892727>no argumentnogames keep seething
>>93892643Maybe stop being so terminally online that you memorized every thread ever made here?
>>93892708With your obsession with game mechanics over anything else that's part of a role playing game maybe you'd be better off going to /v/ and discuss wizardry or minecraft my dude.
>>93891171>profession: blacksmith>craft: blacksmiththe eternal debate
>>93892753trying too hard "anon"
>>93892760Or you can stay here, shit up the place, and spend your days getting mad at people having fun in a way you don't like. That's your choice m8. Just be sure not to regret you wasted time in a few years.
>>93892769*beep boop*
>>93891171The really ancient elves who work with metal are the best just because they have been doing it for so long. But they are rare.Dwarves are normally better then elves when those super ancient masters aren't considered.
>>93891171The original AD&D rules were pretty succinct in how to handle crafts, and didn't go the WotCAIDS way of reducing everthing to splats modifier hunting.
>>93891171Goblins.And you know why
>>93891171Dwarfs make the best gear and runic magic will always be superior to any form of traditional magic (or even magic that uses the natural environment without for the use of the winds).
>>93892471This isn't reddit bro fuck off, this is one of the better threads going right now
>>93892708I like discussing elven fantasy verse Dwarven fantasy it's fun. Have a sense of imagination it doesn't need to be about numbers and data
>>93892981so you admit that rules are secondary to roleplay.thanks for the affirmation.
>>93891171Tolkien is clearly the foremost authority on the handiwork of elves and dwarves, as such, I will look to those mentioned in his works. I've left out Enerdhil and Fëanor since they are best known for their gems, not their smithing.Elves>Celebrimbor: Crafted the three elven rings. Involved in the crafting of other rings of power.>Eöl: Learned steel smithing from the dwarves of the Blue Mountains. Invented a meteoric iron called Galvorn, crafted the swords Anglachel and Anguirel.>Maeglin: Son of Eöl. Brought advanced steel smithing to Gondolin. It is never said who crafted Glamdring, Orcrist, and Sting, but it is likely they came from his workshop, and they couldn't have been made without his teaching. >Velindo: Wéland the Smith, crafted wondrous things like wings to fly, Beowulf's mail coat, and the swords Curtana, Durendal, and Joyeuse. Dwarves>Gamil Zirak: Master of Telchar. His works are unknown to us, likely jewelry since Thingol had some of his work.>Mîm: A petty dwarf. Said to have crafted wondrous and beautiful works in his youth, and a magical chest to store them in. Was robbed of everything and lost his creativity as he grew old. Likely made his poison rune dagger.>Telchar: One of the greatest smiths to live. Crafted Narsil(later reforged by the smiths of Rivendell as Andúril, these same smiths were probably part of the Gwaith-i-MÃrdain who forged the rings of power), Angrist and the Dragon-helm of Dor-lómin.The best elven weapon and armor smiths learned from dwarves, but whether they surpassed the best of them is debatable. I feel Telchar's works outshine that of Eöl and his son Maeglin, and all of their work has gone head to head with maiar and dragons. It is clear though that the greatest dwarven jewelers never surpassed the work of the elves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm96Cqu4Ils
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjZ1B897Tuk
>>93893246Was that ever in question? Fucking rollplayers.
>>93893246>so you admit that rules are secondary to roleplay.This was always the case. The rules are there to serve the play.
Fey > Gith > Gloryborn > Pitspawned > Soulforged > Fireshaped > No Template > HellforgedDwarven stuff that reaches into supernatural enhancement would be soulforged>While angels (such as astral devas, planetars, and solars) are quite capable of creating soulforged items, they are more commonly crafted by the spirits of dwarf smiths in the realm of Moradin the Soul Forger, for whom the template is named.leShay are fey.So we can conclude that elves are better forgers than dwarves per DMGII. Looking at other books, mithril is far superior to adamantine (core, consider elven chain vs. the much more expensive and infinitely worse dwarven plate), drow are responsible for many of the best armor magic enhancements in history, and the absolute peak of dwarven accomplishment is a worse version of mechanicus plate and doesn't come close to what humans achieved in thaalud.The actual masters of blacksmithing and forging are clearly precursor elves (i.e. leShay) since the best crafting techniques are split between terrestrial and cthonic elves in the modern day. Dwarves got blown out of the water by gith, ysgardians, demons, mechanicus, humans, far realm creatures, efreet, and of course every stripe of elf.
>>93893580You missed the big one for the Elves>Fëanor: Crafted the Silmarils
>>93891171What are you asking for?Mass production? Dwarves all the way. They live a short enough time that most still see the need to reproduce en masse.Masterwork and magical artifacts? I'd argue depends on the metal: Elves definitely aren't working with some sort of super metal like Adamantine that needs a high forge temperature.Weapons and armor that are pieces of art? Elves all the way.
>>93891171Elves don't dig as deep. I'd like to think that while elves can achieve more interesting craft their metalwork is mostly what can be found easily. They might still rely more on copper and bronze from easily obtainable surface deposits, like the copper people in ancient north america. Or maybe they have methods of magically coaxing minerals from the floors of lakes and rivers. Maybe that was all in the past and they do a lot of work with other metals only because they've traded for them. So since it's not something they dig up and refine themselves and they don't study raw stone and metal ores like dwarves, then of course they don't have as much technical ability with them. They can craft with magic and make intricately designed things, but the core material strength depends on who they trade with. They can do great stonework, but just like how they'll build around trees they use whatever materials are available where they build and craft. If there is strong stone they'll make great stone buildings, but if there's only sediments they'll mostly use wood. If they live in the planes they'll live in beautifully woven tents. Dwarves know metalwork on a material level. They live it. Their designs and decorations are about showcasing the material and its quality. They know metals as well as elves know trees. They know metals the elves don't know exist. They've invented metals to combined with other metals using magic more like another kind of forge to smelt with. Elves: form over functionGnomes: function over formDwarves: material over formHumans: ok, but how much will it cost?
>>93893771No he didn't. Jewelers aren't smiths
>>93891171Depends on who you ask.
>>93892021You're absolutely right, but at the same time the other guy also kind of has a point: all those metal smithing techniques will make a sword slightly sharper than the last, slightly more durable, slightly more flexible, sightly more resistant to dulling, etc etc etc but you will eventually reach a hard cap on how good your sword is as a practical implement. You can fold your katana a billion times but you're never going to reach a state where it can bisect a man through his plate armour. You're not making a rapier that can withstand dragon's fire while still being thin and flexible enough. You can't forge a longsword that can cleave stone like butter. You can do a lot with metal, but there's a hard limit on what its physically capable of unless you enter the realm of magic enchantments or mythical alloys.
>>93894745>You can fold your katana a billion times but you're never going to reach a state where it can bisect a man through his plate armour. You're not making a rapier that can withstand dragon's fire while still being thin and flexible enough. You can't forge a longsword that can cleave stone like butter.>GODOT HAS ENTERED THE CHAT
>>93891171I would rule that Elves and Dwarves specialize working in different materials/metals/alloys.
>>93894745The sword is a sword is a sword guy has a point but it's expressed in a way that distracts rather easily from it, which is where the anon you're replying to comes from.I don't think you're really expressing yourself very well, either: I don't think slightly really encapsulates the difference between a sword made from cast bog iron in some dude's back yard and a sword made from modern high quality steel in a profession facility by someone with twenty years of quality craftsmanship behind them.Take a look at Forged in Fire. You can see the wildly different end products when smiths have access to the same materials and facilities and time to produce a blade. I think your point would've been better made if you just were more concise and to the point and didn't try to diminish the huge range in quality that exists and existed in weapon crafting. I doubt anyone would've even replied if you said "without magic there's a certain ceiling that can't be overcome, so ultimately the best dwarf is going to be the equal of the best elf unless you bring magic into play, and then it's decided by who you decide gets the most magic."
>>93892631>YWNBAJYou Will Never Be A Jew? Kinda anti-semitic, anon.
>>93895437Yeah, I could have phrased it a bit better - by "slightly better" I meant difference made by each advance in smithing techinques, compared to the previous example of a masterwork weapon. It's like the diminishing returns theory of video game graphics - a rusty nail that's been filed down by a hobo into a shiv is going to be leagues behind a sword made in a proper forge by someone who knows how to smelt steel, but each relative improvement in alloy ratio, tempering techique, cooling dynamics or whatever else is never going to make that blacksmith sword look like a hobo shiv in comparison, even if it is making an objectively "better" weapon.
>>93896823That image is bullshit. Slapping a smooth modifier on the right and just removing vertices on the two left is pretty disingenuous. It would be like taking a house, removing random rooms for the two right images, and then just covering the last house in a layer of gold, and saying-"Look at the difference between a $1,000 house, a 10,000 house, a $100,000 house, and a $10,000,000 house. The level of comfort clearly has diminishing returns."54,000 extra polygons allows you to do quite a lot more than just make everything smoother, which is why people who care about things like render speeds don't just slap lazy smooth modifiers on objects.A lot of younger developers, who have always had much faster machines than were available in the past, are notoriously bad at optimization, and can easily make an object far more complicated than it needs to be. That's not to say that a designer who knows what he's doing couldn't make something significantly better with less render constraints.
>>93896823I think a good place to look at sword metallurgy is actually one of the few places people still compete with swords at a high level: Olympic Fencing. You can buy a cheap sabre for about $30. It's actually one of the cheapest pieces of fencing equipment, and decades of refinement made it an incredible piece of technology that is well beyond anything that was possible even just a century ago. It's lighter and more flexible thanks to steel that simply wasn't available in the past, but also the bottom half is incredibly rigid/strong and has to pass rigorous safety standards. But, that's the entry level for sabres. You can easily spend as much as $200 for a higher quality sabre, with swords in this category being around 15-20% lighter but still passing all the strength requirements and safety checks. 15-20% may not sound like a whole lot, but that's a significant difference when we're talking about a sport which is timed in microseconds. The Olympic level is something else entirely, with sabre costing over $500 and every part of the blade being customized to perfectly suit each fencer's specific needs, with the rigidness/flexibility at different points from the tip to the base made to exact specifications, and all almost-impossibly light while still being able to withstand the ridiculous forces of the Olympic level.Sure. The $30 saber is fine. It gets the job done. It even looks nearly identical to the $500 saber. But, the $500 saber provides a significant edge, and when you have hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line alongside the pride of your entire country in a sport where the action is so fast that that it needs to be judged electronically, that edge really matters. Imagine if it was your life on the line. Whether you live or die could be decided by a fraction of a second, a difference that could be made by the weight of your blade. If you had to fight a duel, I'm curious if you think the $30 saber would be fine, or if you'd splurge a bit.
>>93897246But would a sabre with $1000 worth of smithing expertise put into it give you a sword that's 30% lighter than the cheap $30 sabre? Is the cost factorial, and that much bonus maneuverability instead would cost you $8000? Can you pump the entire GDP of your country and thousands of man hours into smithing a rapier that's lighter than air and still qualifies as a legitimate fencing foil?...Or is shaving an additional 15-30% of the weight off of that $500 sword while still retaining a functional weapon simply not physically possible without constructing it from Mithral alloy harvested from the sacred mines and blessed by an arcane spell of durability?
>no Hephaistos/Vulcanus>no cyclops
>>93892471You are the worst posters on this board. All secondaries and subverters are enabled by you.
>>93898071>But would a sabre with $1000 worth of smithing expertise put into it give you a sword that's 30% lighter than the cheap $30 sabre?Many Olympic fencers do have sabres worth more than $1000. But, keep in mind that being light is not the only important factor, and just focusing on reducing the weight isn't beneficial. Some fencers actually prefer heavier blades, because it gives them more force during beats and resisting the opponent's maneuvers.>Can you pump the entire GDP of your country and thousands of man hours into smithing a rapier that's lighter than air and still qualifies as a legitimate fencing foil?A single olympic medal isn't worth the GDP of an entire country. But, countries and companies do spend millions of dollars on researching how to build better swords, and spreading that cost out by producing millions of blades. And, they think those millions spent are worth that value.Finding the perfect balance of flexibility, rigidity, hardness, softness, lightness, and heaviness, in all the right portions of the blade, which change depending on the athlete, is quite a challenge even before you consider the technical expertise required to figure out how to manufacture that blade in the first place. While each blade itself may only be several hundreds of dollars, they're borderline disposable, with some sabre fencers breaking blades as often as once a month or even more often (There's a lot of chance involved), and many blades not surviving a single tournament, so it really becomes not just the question of an individual blade, but a system and supply, which greatly multiplies the cost. People are spending a lot of money on those blades.
>>93898609 2/2Remember, we're talking about items that are considerably more advanced than anything produced in the middle ages or settings that imitate their technology, using modern industrialized methods that enable scales of production that would bankrupt even the most most hardworking dwarven kingdom if they were to compete using traditional forging techniques, all with expensive research performed at a likewise gigantic scale. And we're talking about sport equipment, not even life-or-death weapons, so imagine if all that money put into fencing equipment was instead focused on tools of war.To go from your historical medieval sword to something akin to the still very non-magical but considerably more technologically advance modern sword is enough to keep any dwarven or elven smith occupied for quite a few centuries. The ceiling for how much room there is for non-magical swords to improve is incredibly high, if it even exists, so we really don't need to worry about fantasy races hitting that ceiling.
>>93898609>>93898624So another aspect of forge mastery would be the capability to create a weapon that works with the indented wielders body to an optimal degree. Because if your adding that in the mastery of technique is not just about making "the best" but making the best for each individual that needs one turning each weapon into a unique challenge.
>>93891171Neither. The best work is not forged, but manifested by the spirits. If not by the spirits, then forged by the ancient masters whose like exists not in the world today.
I see Elves often better for more magical and long-lasting weapons and armor. It takes forever to get and costs a pretty penny for something that a human might never use but give to his son or grandson when it is ready. Dwarves would get it done faster and would still look nice overall. Just Elves tend to take their time and often can make stronger magical items overall. Dwarves mostly just use runes to power their magical items, so they are less powerful, but they come out faster and are often just as good for what you want them to do. (An Elf-made sword would be lighter, shoot lighting, and float around you when not used. A Dwarf Sword would have runes to have its blade glow red hot while in battle or need to light the way, but the handle will stay cool. Though it wouldn't fly around or float next to you. Also, it would be cheaper and you would get it within a year or so, compared to waiting 4 or 5.)
>>93897177>A lot of younger developers, who have always had much faster machines than were available in the past, are notoriously bad at optimization, and can easily make an object far more complicated than it needs to be. That's not to say that a designer who knows what he's doing couldn't make something significantly better with less render constraints.This. Optimization is a lost art.>just download a 250GB game bro? What's the problem?
>>93891171>Ctrl+F>This is the only: >>93898166 Cyclopes post. Weirdly illiterate thread. Cyclopes are the best blacksmiths; everyone else is just parroting their craft.
>>93892733>So what happens when we pay an Elf to enchant a Sword that was made by a Dorf>Shonkey business.
>>93894745>You can't forge a longsword that can cleave stone like butter.>LaughingSpaniards.jpg
>>93891171Dwarves are better on average, but occasionally you get a hyper-autist smithing-elf that makes a sword that can kill god and it blows the competition out of the water
>>93891247goblin hands typed this post
Neither of them beats humans at the whole "supplying an army" thing In the end what matters is that every soldier has his spear, his sword and decent armor, not that they last for a thousand years or are impossibly light
>>93891268Nogames response.
>>93891171Dragonborn, obviously.
>>93901467I can't think of a single example of a setting where the limiting factor for an elf or dwarf army was the amount of equipment they had.
>>93891171I would argue Dwarves, as they will make ANYTHING from armor to weapons, to tools to just plain nails or horse shoes, and all with dedication and scrutiny to make them the best they can be. I always see Elven blacksmiths as rare because it usually goes against their nature, and the event of one is by happenstance of an elf living amongst other races and integrating to the culture, or an elven "blacksmith" is more magic focused that just uses a spell to transmute raw materials into an item without having to burn things, heat and pound on the metal.TLDR an elven blacksmith seeks to be a craftsman. A dwarven blacksmith seeks to be a Master of the craft.
>>93891171Elves make better swords and arrowheads. Dwarves make better everything else, especially things like armor or axes. Humans make most famous objects, though, or at least wind up carrying them. Elf swords get famous once the rightful human king picks it up and kills twenty or so dudes with it.
>>93891171Dwarves forged Mjollner, Gungnir, Sif's golden hair, Skidbladner, Gullinbursti and Draupnir. What tools or weapons worthy of the gods have the elves forged?
>>93892643Consider the rope. """People""" like you are subhuman.
>>93905901Norse "Gods" are super low-tier in terms of divinities. They're little better than glorified cheiftains, and even the mightiest Norse Gods are below the scale of power of tall tale/folk story heroes like Paul Bunyan.Even calling them "Gods" is a bit much. Ultimately, their weapons and other items are trinkets compared to what other Pantheons carry and command.
>>93905942Zeus needed a javelin per lightning bolt, Thor had a hammer that returned to him fast enough for multiple strikes per second.Greek gods got spooked by Typhon, Norse picked fights with bigger enemies for entertainment.Plenty of Tall Tales sorts had some incredible ability but they weren't typically sorcerers on top of that as many Jotunn tended to be, and the gods operated on a whole other scale from "incredible mortal"Maybe the Greek gods are more potent in some aspects, but it's hardly the power gap you imply. I'll give you that anything out of India is crazy powerful, and being beyond all others is the whole deal of Mr. Big G Almighty God, but those are somewhat exceptions to what you find elsewhere.
>>93906094>Greek gods got spooked by TyphonOh yeah, just a little nobody.Y'know, the son of Earth and Hell, born by his mother as revenge against the Gods for imprisoning her children the Titans, and was so gigantic that his head brushed against the stars. He was so powerful that all the other Gods could only flee, including Gods that embodied every metaphysical concept you could name. There's nothing even remotely close in Norse Mythology, with even Fenrir nor Surtr not even coming close to Typhon's power. Typhon would throw mountains at Zeus as a way of greeting.The only one who could match his power was Zeus, and these two beings literally fought for control over the entire cosmos.And the Greek Gods are not even that high in terms of power scale either. Stronger than the Norse Gods, sure, but still not quite on the level of things like the Hindu Pantheon, where destroying universes with a single arrow is not even that impressive and a feat for demigods. Then we have Hindu-influenced Zoroastrianism, which alongside Slavic pantheons began to approach Dualism (with some asterisks), where these Gods are getting closer and closer to Monotheism, and eventually Monotheistic All-Powerful Deities like the Christian God at the very top. Norse Gods are kind of a joke. Even their giants weren't really all that big.
>>93906320Typhon got squished under Mount Etna, he wasn't all that big and certainly didn't compare to Jormungandr, whose coils encompass the entire mortal world.Norse giants are every bit as big as you could want, with Ymir becoming the whole planet and even "smaller" jotuns like Utgard-Loki being so big that when he wanted to trick Thor, he cast an illusion over a whole mountain in place of his head. Actually three mountains, as Thor kept smashing them to bits.And I already gave you that Hindu and Christian deities are on a whole other level.Now name some magic items that elfs have forged for gods of any variety.
>>93905901The entities youre referring to were inspirations of both dwarves and elves. Dont be an ergi.
>>93906402>whose coils encompass the entire mortal world.You're forgetting that the "World" was relatively tiny back then, and was a flat disc, not a planet. People in the past had a bad habit of doing this, where the Greeks didn't think there was much of the world beyond the Mediterranean, putting markers for the edge of the world in places that make their entire world almost comically small. The Norse had it even smaller than the Greeks, with their own sailors quite routinely going beyond the borders of their mythological world.Also, as far as Mt. Etna, the actual size of "mountains" when the Greeks describe them in Mythology is kind of a weird, nebulous idea. Even something like Olympus was this dumb thing where every city just called whatever was the biggest mountain near them "Olympus" and it didn't really refer to the single mountain we call Mt. Olympus in modernity. The mythological Olympus was high enough to be unclimbable by any mortal, so the mythological Etna may likewise be far larger. People back then really had a pretty poor understanding of a mountain's size, which is understandable, so any mountain can largely just be said to be "really, really big".In any case, the Etna bit is only one version of the death of Typhon anyway, and it's more of his headstone. Check out this account.>Thus Pindar has Typhon in Tartarus, and buried under not just Etna, but under a vast volcanic region stretching from Sicily to Cumae (in the vicinity of modern Naples), a region which presumably also included Mount Vesuvius, as well as IschiaThat's pretty big. Not scraping the stars big, but a region of about 200 miles. A region about the size of Norway.
>>93906449True, and the Norse didn't make as much distinction between elves, dwarves and even trolls at times as we do now>>93906622All fair points, though I'd argue that Jormungand is still bigger by virtue of encompassing Norway and then some Ocean beyond.Also I'm still wondering if any elf was known for crafting items beyond dwarven skill, at least prior to Tolkien.
>>93891265Sure, also elves can only surpass dwarves using magic or making magical items. Elven non-magic forged items are just filigree at best. Dwarves can't make better magical items, but always create superiors non-magical stuff.
>>93906732Jormie's pretty thin though. He's probably longer, but in terms of mass, Typhon is pretty thicc.
>>93906872Yeah I was considering that after my last post, Midgard Serpent is very much a noodle.
>>93906732>Also I'm still wondering if any elf was known for crafting items beyond dwarven skill, at least prior to Tolkien.Is the Lady of the Lake considered an elf? She's definitely faerie-ish which counts as elven by most standards
>>93909252She's definitely a fairy. The fairies liked Arthur. That's why they took him to Avalon.
>>93909252She'd count, and iirc it was an elf from Avalon who forged it, so there's one sword possibly on par with Norse dwarf forged artifacts. Honestly a lot of Celtic myths feature quite potent swords and spears, and without having dwarfs a lot more is likely to be elf work or some other fairy.
>>93891171Elves are craftsmen, Dwarves are engineers. Elves are probably better at artisan manufacture of absurdly high quality pieces, but Dwarves advance the actual industrial science more.I.E., an Elf comes up with pattern welding, a Dwarf figures out a way to mass produce cheap steel. The Elf sword might be nicer but the Dwarf can make 500 good swords in a month.
Wood elves invented writing, and the other wood elves were like "Hoho what a wonderful intellectual curiosity that we're never going to use", but the dwarves were like "MY GOD THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING" and that's why the dwarves of middle earth all use elven runes. I always thought that was a neat little story and it illustrates some of the core difference between elven worldview and dwarven worldview. A lot of the wonders of Doriath are lost to time just because the wood elves never wrote anything down, they didn't see the point.
>>93891265Magical weapons are just weapons crafted so well that they gain supernatural qualities.
>>93891331Correct, how else do you get a vorpal blade?
>>93891171Dwarves are overall better smiths, but master elvish artisans make some absolute bullshit that no dwarf can match. A dwarf that lived a thousand years would run rings around elvish smiths and make wonders, but they just run out of time. It's not fair, but thats what it is. Elves living longer just lets them master the craft beyond what a dwarf can hope to achieve. But the flip side is that very, very few elves bother to achieve that kind of mastery. They can, but they basically never do. The 1 or 2 S-tier elvish smiths that have been making shit for thousands of years are singlehandedly throwing off the math.
>>93891171Blacksmiths are cute! CUTE!
