About the etymology of Skymetal

[Garrise]

Is Abysium like about the element from abyss?

Djezet is strange to me, is that word from albania? I found dje means yesterday and zet means twenty in albania, but I don't know why paizo make this word a liguid metal.

Is Horacalcum a element of time(hora calc)?

I have totally no idea of inubrix, noqual and sicatite...

Please introduce how this metal were named, thank you very much. I'm so curious.

[keftiu]

I’m increasingly thinking Noqual is an Arcadian name, in-setting.

[Taçin]

Can't answer for the others, but Orichalcum/Aurichalcum (aka "Mountain Copper"/"Gold Copper") is the name of a lost metal/alloy mentioned in ancient historical writings and supposedly present in Atlantis, it gained a quasi-mythical status because we're still not sure what it was exactly; so it's very likely a portmanteau of Orichalcum + "Hora" for "Hour", because of its time-bending nature.

Sicatite might have etymological relation to the Sicarii armed zealots/assassins from roman-occupied Judea (and their name comes from a thracian weapon, the Sica)

[James Jacobs]

Most of these were invented by James Sutter, with the exceptions of Orichalcum and Adamantine (which are from real world mythology) and Noqual, which was invented by me decades ago for my homebrew.

The main thing about noqual in my homebrew was that it was the element that blocked teleportation in particular, but also other magical effects. I was inspried to create it to give an actual material to the "mysterious ores in the deep underground reaches before the Underdark was named anything at all that prevent you from teleporting around in those underground areas becasue 1st edition AD&D often used limiting things like this to prevent high level characters from overly relying on high level stuff."

So that when you were in an area with a lot of noqual surrounding you (like in the case of noqual veins of ore in a cave, or a brick room with mortar laced with noqual) you couldn't teleport in there.

I came up with the word itself by making a sort of portmanteau of "no quality" as in "no quality of magic can affect this metal."

I suspect abyssium is more to do with the scientific use of the word for a deep dark area rather than any actual ties to the Abyss.

Personally, I think that most, if not all of these skymetal names in-world would trace back to pre-Earthfall Thassilon, as we've canonically stated that they used a lot of this stuff in their high-end powerful magic and creations (the most significant of which was the Sihedron itself).

More of it came to the world in Earthfall (which is where a lot of that stuff got into places like the Inner Sea region and northern Arcadia), and shortly thereafter in Numeria after Divinity crashed there. But there was a fair amount of it going on in Thassilon before either of those events.

[QuidEst]

Thanks for giving us some of this history on these! It's always interesting to learn stuff like this, and it's nice to use for knowledgeable PCs. "Despite what you may be thinking, abyssium is named after your everyday garden-variety abysses, not the big-'a' Abyss."

[Temperans]

Abysium according to the wiki at least, has no relation to the Abyss outside some people suggesting the Abyss is the source of power. Btw, Abysium is very similar to Radium and other radioactive materials. Based on the faint glow, greenish hue, death from prolonged exposure, and incredibly potential for power generation.

Learning the history of how they were name is quite interesting, thank you James.

[The Raven Black]

James Jacobs wrote:

Most of these were invented by James Sutter, with the exceptions of Orichalcum and Adamantine (which are from real world mythology) and Noqual, which was invented by me decades ago for my homebrew.

The main thing about noqual in my homebrew was that it was the element that blocked teleportation in particular, but also other magical effects. I was inspried to create it to give an actual material to the "mysterious ores in the deep underground reaches before the Underdark was named anything at all that prevent you from teleporting around in those underground areas becasue 1st edition AD&D often used limiting things like this to prevent high level characters from overly relying on high level stuff."

So that when you were in an area with a lot of noqual surrounding you (like in the case of noqual veins of ore in a cave, or a brick room with mortar laced with noqual) you couldn't teleport in there.

I came up with the word itself by making a sort of portmanteau of "no quality" as in "no quality of magic can affect this metal."

I suspect abyssium is more to do with the scientific use of the word for a deep dark area rather than any actual ties to the Abyss.

Personally, I think that most, if not all of these skymetal names in-world would trace back to pre-Earthfall Thassilon, as we've canonically stated that they used a lot of this stuff in their high-end powerful magic and creations (the most significant of which was the Sihedron itself).

More of it came to the world in Earthfall (which is where a lot of that stuff got into places like the Inner Sea region and northern Arcadia), and shortly thereafter in Numeria after Divinity crashed there. But there was a fair amount of it going on in Thassilon before either of those events.

Does this mean there is not much skymetal in Tian-Xia ?