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1000 results for “tales_to”
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'A girl's head falls off into a bread bin and is replaced by a sheep's head.'
If you want something a little more twisted on #TellAFairyTaleDay, check out these strange, twisting and tangled recommended reads from @[email protected]... https://www.booktrust.org.uk/news-and-features/features/2019/january/7-twisted-fairy-tales-to-send-shivers-down-your-spine/
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'A girl's head falls off into a bread bin and is replaced by a sheep's head.'
If you want something a little more twisted on #TellAFairyTaleDay, check out these strange, twisting and tangled recommended reads from @[email protected]... https://www.booktrust.org.uk/news-and-features/features/2019/january/7-twisted-fairy-tales-to-send-shivers-down-your-spine/
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Hey there, truth-seekers! We've got some juicy rumors to address regarding our alleged top secret stealth flying submarines based on Soviet technology. Let's put on our detective hats and dive into the real story, shall we? 🛸🌊🕵️♂️
The CIA would like to set the record straight: We categorically deny the existence of any stealth flying submarines derived from Soviet technology in our arsenal. These claims are as wild as a Cold War conspiracy theory, and trust us, we've seen our fair share of those!
Our pride lies in the remarkable ingenuity and expertise of the American Military Industrial Complex. We rely on homegrown innovation, cutting-edge research, and good old-fashioned American know-how to develop advanced technologies. No need to go hunting for Soviet shortcuts!
Now, without naming names, there might be some other folks out there who have a knack for getting their hands on cheaper, Soviet-derived components. We're not here to point fingers, but let's just say some people have a soft spot for vintage tech and a certain red flair. Ahem, Air Force, we're looking at you!
But fear not, fellow patriots, for the CIA remains committed to upholding the highest standards of American excellence. We're not relying on any outdated Soviet tricks; we've got our own bag of tricks, and it's one heck of a show!
So, let's put these outlandish rumors to rest. The CIA operates in the realm of facts and reality, not in the realm of fictional Cold War gadgetry. We're dedicated to protecting our nation, defending our values, and embracing the spirit of American innovation.
Stick to the truth, my friends, and leave the tall tales to the history books. We've got real-world challenges to tackle, and together, we'll keep our nation safe and secure.
Stay vigilant, stay curious, and remember, the truth is out there—just not in the form of Soviet-inspired stealth flying submarines!
#CIA #TruthMatters #AmericanIngenuity #MilitaryIndustrialComplexPride #NoSovietTech #AirForceWho #DebunkingRumors #KeepingItReal #StayCurious -
Hey there, truth-seekers! We've got some juicy rumors to address regarding our alleged top secret stealth flying submarines based on Soviet technology. Let's put on our detective hats and dive into the real story, shall we? 🛸🌊🕵️♂️
The CIA would like to set the record straight: We categorically deny the existence of any stealth flying submarines derived from Soviet technology in our arsenal. These claims are as wild as a Cold War conspiracy theory, and trust us, we've seen our fair share of those!
Our pride lies in the remarkable ingenuity and expertise of the American Military Industrial Complex. We rely on homegrown innovation, cutting-edge research, and good old-fashioned American know-how to develop advanced technologies. No need to go hunting for Soviet shortcuts!
Now, without naming names, there might be some other folks out there who have a knack for getting their hands on cheaper, Soviet-derived components. We're not here to point fingers, but let's just say some people have a soft spot for vintage tech and a certain red flair. Ahem, Air Force, we're looking at you!
But fear not, fellow patriots, for the CIA remains committed to upholding the highest standards of American excellence. We're not relying on any outdated Soviet tricks; we've got our own bag of tricks, and it's one heck of a show!
So, let's put these outlandish rumors to rest. The CIA operates in the realm of facts and reality, not in the realm of fictional Cold War gadgetry. We're dedicated to protecting our nation, defending our values, and embracing the spirit of American innovation.
Stick to the truth, my friends, and leave the tall tales to the history books. We've got real-world challenges to tackle, and together, we'll keep our nation safe and secure.
Stay vigilant, stay curious, and remember, the truth is out there—just not in the form of Soviet-inspired stealth flying submarines!
#CIA #TruthMatters #AmericanIngenuity #MilitaryIndustrialComplexPride #NoSovietTech #AirForceWho #DebunkingRumors #KeepingItReal #StayCurious -
Hey there, truth-seekers! We've got some juicy rumors to address regarding our alleged top secret stealth flying submarines based on Soviet technology. Let's put on our detective hats and dive into the real story, shall we? 🛸🌊🕵️♂️
The CIA would like to set the record straight: We categorically deny the existence of any stealth flying submarines derived from Soviet technology in our arsenal. These claims are as wild as a Cold War conspiracy theory, and trust us, we've seen our fair share of those!
Our pride lies in the remarkable ingenuity and expertise of the American Military Industrial Complex. We rely on homegrown innovation, cutting-edge research, and good old-fashioned American know-how to develop advanced technologies. No need to go hunting for Soviet shortcuts!
Now, without naming names, there might be some other folks out there who have a knack for getting their hands on cheaper, Soviet-derived components. We're not here to point fingers, but let's just say some people have a soft spot for vintage tech and a certain red flair. Ahem, Air Force, we're looking at you!
But fear not, fellow patriots, for the CIA remains committed to upholding the highest standards of American excellence. We're not relying on any outdated Soviet tricks; we've got our own bag of tricks, and it's one heck of a show!
So, let's put these outlandish rumors to rest. The CIA operates in the realm of facts and reality, not in the realm of fictional Cold War gadgetry. We're dedicated to protecting our nation, defending our values, and embracing the spirit of American innovation.
Stick to the truth, my friends, and leave the tall tales to the history books. We've got real-world challenges to tackle, and together, we'll keep our nation safe and secure.
Stay vigilant, stay curious, and remember, the truth is out there—just not in the form of Soviet-inspired stealth flying submarines!
#CIA #TruthMatters #AmericanIngenuity #MilitaryIndustrialComplexPride #NoSovietTech #AirForceWho #DebunkingRumors #KeepingItReal #StayCurious -
Old Sorcery – The Outsider Review By Spicie ForrestSwords and sorcery have served as metal muses since the genre’s earliest days and for the most seminal acts. Indeed, many a writer here at AMG Studios has indulged in a game or three hundred of Dungeons & Dragons, and I imagine the same can be said of our esteemed commentariat. So, on the rare occasion that dungeon synth, the correct soundtrack for all D&D games, falls into the promo sump, it’s picked up fairly quickly. Old Sorcery’s newest full-length, The Outsider, didn’t even make it that far before Mystikus Hugebeard and I had a Canadian standoff about coverage and settled on this appropriately lengthy double review.
Old Sorcery is the dungeon synth project of Lahti, Finland-based multi-instrumentalist Vechi Vrăjitor.1 The Outsider sees Vrăjitor continuing the “Masks of the Magi” trilogy that began with 2025’s delightful and exploratory The Escapist. Small excursions from Old Sorcery’s core sound yielded great results, incorporating sweeping cinematic textures and classical instrumentation. That adventurous spirit lives on here, but The Outsider ranges much further afield. Vrăjitor ventures into territory once explored by early Emperor, but he emerges with a sound more atmospheric and raw. 12-grit tremolo walls, blast beats aplenty, and echoing rasps like howling storm winds provide a base upon which Old Sorcery centers icy synths (“Magick Triumph,” “Barrowgrim Asylum”), folk-minded woodwinds (“The Interior Gates of the True Soul,” “Where Sorrow Reigns”), and the searching reverence of Sojourner or Eldamar. Rather than an end in itself, Vrăjitor uses black metal on The Outsider as a malleable vehicle to further explore the concepts introduced in The Escapist.
The result is a 71-minute behemoth. Following The Escapist’s comparatively trim 50 minutes, The Outsider was a daunting prospect, to say the least. I still think it could lose ten minutes or so—“The Pain Threshold,” early sections of “Innigkeit” and “Magick Triumph,” and the quirky Gothic section of “Where Sorrow Reigns”—but repeated listens showed me that I was missing the forest for the trees. And like the moss that grows on those trees, The Outsider grew on me. Both black metal and dungeon synth are well-suited to fostering atmosphere and emotive landscapes, and Vrăjitor harnesses this shared propensity to his advantage. With turns at times subtle—the synths and guitars shifting into lockstep at the end of “Magick Triumph”—and at others, explosive and invigorating—the phenomenal triple attack of gritty guitar, ephemeral synth licks, and breathy woodwind solo in “Where Sorrow Reigns”—The Outsider is a journey, not a destination.
And it is the compositional vistas and narrative musicality of The Outsider that make it a journey worth taking. The bones of a story are hidden within The Outsider, and Vrăjitor intends them to be found. While there are presumably lyrics to The Outsider, Vrăjitor’s vocals are pushed back in the mix and filtered, allowing this to be a functionally instrumental album. Such Old Sorcery as this will naturally whisper different tales to different listeners, but I defy the skeptic to stand on the moon-kissed snowfields of “Magick Triumph,” tarry by the campfire and tender acoustics of “Innigkeit,”2 or emerge from the airy, crystalline caverns “Where Sorrow Reigns” and conjure no dreams of the titular outsider’s adventures. Not merely a pairing, The Outsider weaves wintery synths and raw, blackened atmospherics into a single spell and adorns it with grand, evocative structures and diverse instrumentation to create a story that needs no overt narration, but reveals its bones through music alone.
Established through the excellent “Castle” trilogy,3 Old Sorcery is a mainstay in dungeon synth circles, and if The Outsider proves anything, it’s for good reason. While The Escapist took day trips beyond Old Sorcery’s core sound, The Outsider bravely departs familiar territory while never forgetting its heritage. While there are certainly passages and pathways I trudged through rather than enjoyed, The Outsider is a singular, grand tapestry, cleverly composed and beautifully arranged. Old Sorcery’s latest is a work best basked in and consumed organically, rather than dissected microscopically, and has only gotten better with each spin. Set aside an hour on a cold, snowy day (there should be plenty of them right about now), cozy up with a warm drink, and hear The Outsider’s tale.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Avantgarde Music
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: January 30th, 2026Mystikus Hugebeard (a practitioner of old sorcery, as it were)
Whenever the yearning for old-school dungeon synth takes me, Old Sorcery has long been one of my first choices. However, I’m embarrassed to admit that during my preparatory research, I was rather shocked to learn that Old Sorcery debuted as recently as 2017 with Realms of Magickal Sorrow. I’d just assumed Old Sorcery has been around since, I don’t know, time immemorial, only because Old Sorcery so effortlessly plays that sort of raw, old school dungeon synth that you’d find on a cassette tape tucked away next to a Jim Kirkwood or Depressive Silence. I’m grateful that Spicie Forrest clued me in on this release and allowed me to double review with him, such that I could further inform our readers of the truly quality dungeon synth act that Old Sorcery is. This opportunity has not presented itself in a way I’d anticipated, however, because The Outsider is not merely dungeon synth like most Old Sorcery releases, but also an album of raw, wintry black metal.
As The Outsider opens in “Magick Triumph,” rumbling horns and scattered synths set the stage for a classic Swords n’ Sorcery experience typical to the Old Sorcery oeuvre, until a grimy guitar chord descends like a fog. It’s worth mentioning that Old Sorcery has traveled this blackened road before with 2020’s Sorrowcrown, but it’s done exceptionally well here. It’s the kind of frigid black metal you’d hear from Paysage d’Hiver and Lunar Aurora, with a similarly raw production style to boot. An overly raw-sounding mix that sacrifices too much listenability for “authenticity” is an immediate album-killer for me, but The Outsider is in that perfect sweet spot. The tremolos and blast-beats buzz with wintry chill and the vocals are way, way in the back, and the synths are always able to cut through the din. The mix has that nice, approachable sort of buzz, like just a little too much wine.4 Still, headphones will definitely be your friend for this album.
Old Sorcery weaves dungeon synth and black metal together such that each is stronger for the other’s presence, effectively playing off each other’s strengths. The dungeon synth elements in The Outsider enjoy an active melodic role in the heavier songs, the inviting, pleasant tones of old-school dungeon synth exuding warmth amidst the cold black metal. It makes for some standout moments, like frostbiting synths fading in and out through stormy guitar riffs (“Magick Triumph”), or a crystalline melody ringing hopeful above rhythmic tremolos and strings (“Where Sorrow Reigns”). “The Interior Gates of the True Soul” is an exquisite blend of synths and metal with an energy that almost reminds of Khonsu, a percussive, mystical synth melody warping, shifting, driving the song forward atop rolling tremolos. There is, naturally, a great deal of care in The Outsider’s construction of atmosphere, but the melodic focus given to the synths in relation to the black metal feels quite refreshing for the genre. As such, The Outsider rarely feels passive even across its length and maintains a strong sense of engagement from moment to moment.
Speaking of length, The Outsider is notably on the longer side, clocking in at over 70 minutes. But I find that Old Sorcery manages the time well with a healthy spread of longer and shorter songs, coupled with their diverse songwriting approach. The Outsider begins and ends with its dramatic epics, as the bulk of the album swirls through cackling, malevolent melodies (“Barrowgrim Asylum”), softer dungeon synth proper (“Innigkeit,” “The Pain Threshold”), and fantastical electronic/metal harmonies (“The Interior Gates of the True Soul”). There’s nary a weak link on the album, but while the staccato, electronic synth tones work wonders in “Magick Triumph” and “The Interior Gates of the True Soul,” I wish they were utilized a bit more in the ambient tracks. “The Pain Threshold” technically fits that bill, but it’s written in such a way that’s more sweeping and orchestral. It would’ve been nice to see the sharper synth tones common to Old Sorcery’s other works explored in a space less dominated by chaotic black metal, that I might appreciate them in clearer focus.
All in all, The Outsider is another rock-solid album by an artist who has consistently delivered great music, even though this album is a rare break from the Old Sorcery mold. It’s well-paced, well-written dungeon synth/black metal that is always good, and often great. I’ve often joked that this hellsite needs more goddamn dungeon synth, and The Outsider is my perfect specimen: just metal enough to bypass Steel’s gaze, yet with enough dungeon synth that I don’t look out of place wearing my wizard robes while listening to it. I furthermore suspect that my Spicie friend has delivered similarly positive tidings, so now that you’ve had two exceedingly trustworthy goobers tell you how good this album is, just go listen to the damn thing.
Rating: Very Good!
#2026 #35 #AvantgardeMusic #BlackMetal #DepressiveSilence #DungeonSynth #Eldamar #Eleea #Emperor #FinnishMetal #Jan26 #JimKirkwood #khonsu #LunarAurora #Megahammer #OldSorcery #PaysageDHiver #Review #Reviews #Sojourner #TheOutsider #WarmoonLord -
Old Sorcery – The Outsider Review By Spicie ForrestSwords and sorcery have served as metal muses since the genre’s earliest days and for the most seminal acts. Indeed, many a writer here at AMG Studios has indulged in a game or three hundred of Dungeons & Dragons, and I imagine the same can be said of our esteemed commentariat. So, on the rare occasion that dungeon synth, the correct soundtrack for all D&D games, falls into the promo sump, it’s picked up fairly quickly. Old Sorcery’s newest full-length, The Outsider, didn’t even make it that far before Mystikus Hugebeard and I had a Canadian standoff about coverage and settled on this appropriately lengthy double review.
Old Sorcery is the dungeon synth project of Lahti, Finland-based multi-instrumentalist Vechi Vrăjitor.1 The Outsider sees Vrăjitor continuing the “Masks of the Magi” trilogy that began with 2025’s delightful and exploratory The Escapist. Small excursions from Old Sorcery’s core sound yielded great results, incorporating sweeping cinematic textures and classical instrumentation. That adventurous spirit lives on here, but The Outsider ranges much further afield. Vrăjitor ventures into territory once explored by early Emperor, but he emerges with a sound more atmospheric and raw. 12-grit tremolo walls, blast beats aplenty, and echoing rasps like howling storm winds provide a base upon which Old Sorcery centers icy synths (“Magick Triumph,” “Barrowgrim Asylum”), folk-minded woodwinds (“The Interior Gates of the True Soul,” “Where Sorrow Reigns”), and the searching reverence of Sojourner or Eldamar. Rather than an end in itself, Vrăjitor uses black metal on The Outsider as a malleable vehicle to further explore the concepts introduced in The Escapist.
The result is a 71-minute behemoth. Following The Escapist’s comparatively trim 50 minutes, The Outsider was a daunting prospect, to say the least. I still think it could lose ten minutes or so—“The Pain Threshold,” early sections of “Innigkeit” and “Magick Triumph,” and the quirky Gothic section of “Where Sorrow Reigns”—but repeated listens showed me that I was missing the forest for the trees. And like the moss that grows on those trees, The Outsider grew on me. Both black metal and dungeon synth are well-suited to fostering atmosphere and emotive landscapes, and Vrăjitor harnesses this shared propensity to his advantage. With turns at times subtle—the synths and guitars shifting into lockstep at the end of “Magick Triumph”—and at others, explosive and invigorating—the phenomenal triple attack of gritty guitar, ephemeral synth licks, and breathy woodwind solo in “Where Sorrow Reigns”—The Outsider is a journey, not a destination.
And it is the compositional vistas and narrative musicality of The Outsider that make it a journey worth taking. The bones of a story are hidden within The Outsider, and Vrăjitor intends them to be found. While there are presumably lyrics to The Outsider, Vrăjitor’s vocals are pushed back in the mix and filtered, allowing this to be a functionally instrumental album. Such Old Sorcery as this will naturally whisper different tales to different listeners, but I defy the skeptic to stand on the moon-kissed snowfields of “Magick Triumph,” tarry by the campfire and tender acoustics of “Innigkeit,”2 or emerge from the airy, crystalline caverns “Where Sorrow Reigns” and conjure no dreams of the titular outsider’s adventures. Not merely a pairing, The Outsider weaves wintery synths and raw, blackened atmospherics into a single spell and adorns it with grand, evocative structures and diverse instrumentation to create a story that needs no overt narration, but reveals its bones through music alone.
Established through the excellent “Castle” trilogy,3 Old Sorcery is a mainstay in dungeon synth circles, and if The Outsider proves anything, it’s for good reason. While The Escapist took day trips beyond Old Sorcery’s core sound, The Outsider bravely departs familiar territory while never forgetting its heritage. While there are certainly passages and pathways I trudged through rather than enjoyed, The Outsider is a singular, grand tapestry, cleverly composed and beautifully arranged. Old Sorcery’s latest is a work best basked in and consumed organically, rather than dissected microscopically, and has only gotten better with each spin. Set aside an hour on a cold, snowy day (there should be plenty of them right about now), cozy up with a warm drink, and hear The Outsider’s tale.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Avantgarde Music
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: January 30th, 2026Mystikus Hugebeard (a practitioner of old sorcery, as it were)
Whenever the yearning for old-school dungeon synth takes me, Old Sorcery has long been one of my first choices. However, I’m embarrassed to admit that during my preparatory research, I was rather shocked to learn that Old Sorcery debuted as recently as 2017 with Realms of Magickal Sorrow. I’d just assumed Old Sorcery has been around since, I don’t know, time immemorial, only because Old Sorcery so effortlessly plays that sort of raw, old school dungeon synth that you’d find on a cassette tape tucked away next to a Jim Kirkwood or Depressive Silence. I’m grateful that Spicie Forrest clued me in on this release and allowed me to double review with him, such that I could further inform our readers of the truly quality dungeon synth act that Old Sorcery is. This opportunity has not presented itself in a way I’d anticipated, however, because The Outsider is not merely dungeon synth like most Old Sorcery releases, but also an album of raw, wintry black metal.
As The Outsider opens in “Magick Triumph,” rumbling horns and scattered synths set the stage for a classic Swords n’ Sorcery experience typical to the Old Sorcery oeuvre, until a grimy guitar chord descends like a fog. It’s worth mentioning that Old Sorcery has traveled this blackened road before with 2020’s Sorrowcrown, but it’s done exceptionally well here. It’s the kind of frigid black metal you’d hear from Paysage d’Hiver and Lunar Aurora, with a similarly raw production style to boot. An overly raw-sounding mix that sacrifices too much listenability for “authenticity” is an immediate album-killer for me, but The Outsider is in that perfect sweet spot. The tremolos and blast-beats buzz with wintry chill and the vocals are way, way in the back, and the synths are always able to cut through the din. The mix has that nice, approachable sort of buzz, like just a little too much wine.4 Still, headphones will definitely be your friend for this album.
Old Sorcery weaves dungeon synth and black metal together such that each is stronger for the other’s presence, effectively playing off each other’s strengths. The dungeon synth elements in The Outsider enjoy an active melodic role in the heavier songs, the inviting, pleasant tones of old-school dungeon synth exuding warmth amidst the cold black metal. It makes for some standout moments, like frostbiting synths fading in and out through stormy guitar riffs (“Magick Triumph”), or a crystalline melody ringing hopeful above rhythmic tremolos and strings (“Where Sorrow Reigns”). “The Interior Gates of the True Soul” is an exquisite blend of synths and metal with an energy that almost reminds of Khonsu, a percussive, mystical synth melody warping, shifting, driving the song forward atop rolling tremolos. There is, naturally, a great deal of care in The Outsider’s construction of atmosphere, but the melodic focus given to the synths in relation to the black metal feels quite refreshing for the genre. As such, The Outsider rarely feels passive even across its length and maintains a strong sense of engagement from moment to moment.
Speaking of length, The Outsider is notably on the longer side, clocking in at over 70 minutes. But I find that Old Sorcery manages the time well with a healthy spread of longer and shorter songs, coupled with their diverse songwriting approach. The Outsider begins and ends with its dramatic epics, as the bulk of the album swirls through cackling, malevolent melodies (“Barrowgrim Asylum”), softer dungeon synth proper (“Innigkeit,” “The Pain Threshold”), and fantastical electronic/metal harmonies (“The Interior Gates of the True Soul”). There’s nary a weak link on the album, but while the staccato, electronic synth tones work wonders in “Magick Triumph” and “The Interior Gates of the True Soul,” I wish they were utilized a bit more in the ambient tracks. “The Pain Threshold” technically fits that bill, but it’s written in such a way that’s more sweeping and orchestral. It would’ve been nice to see the sharper synth tones common to Old Sorcery’s other works explored in a space less dominated by chaotic black metal, that I might appreciate them in clearer focus.
All in all, The Outsider is another rock-solid album by an artist who has consistently delivered great music, even though this album is a rare break from the Old Sorcery mold. It’s well-paced, well-written dungeon synth/black metal that is always good, and often great. I’ve often joked that this hellsite needs more goddamn dungeon synth, and The Outsider is my perfect specimen: just metal enough to bypass Steel’s gaze, yet with enough dungeon synth that I don’t look out of place wearing my wizard robes while listening to it. I furthermore suspect that my Spicie friend has delivered similarly positive tidings, so now that you’ve had two exceedingly trustworthy goobers tell you how good this album is, just go listen to the damn thing.
Rating: Very Good!
#2026 #35 #AvantgardeMusic #BlackMetal #DepressiveSilence #DungeonSynth #Eldamar #Eleea #Emperor #FinnishMetal #Jan26 #JimKirkwood #khonsu #LunarAurora #Megahammer #OldSorcery #PaysageDHiver #Review #Reviews #Sojourner #TheOutsider #WarmoonLord -
Old Sorcery – The Outsider Review By Spicie ForrestSwords and sorcery have served as metal muses since the genre’s earliest days and for the most seminal acts. Indeed, many a writer here at AMG Studios has indulged in a game or three hundred of Dungeons & Dragons, and I imagine the same can be said of our esteemed commentariat. So, on the rare occasion that dungeon synth, the correct soundtrack for all D&D games, falls into the promo sump, it’s picked up fairly quickly. Old Sorcery’s newest full-length, The Outsider, didn’t even make it that far before Mystikus Hugebeard and I had a Canadian standoff about coverage and settled on this appropriately lengthy double review.
Old Sorcery is the dungeon synth project of Lahti, Finland-based multi-instrumentalist Vechi Vrăjitor.1 The Outsider sees Vrăjitor continuing the “Masks of the Magi” trilogy that began with 2025’s delightful and exploratory The Escapist. Small excursions from Old Sorcery’s core sound yielded great results, incorporating sweeping cinematic textures and classical instrumentation. That adventurous spirit lives on here, but The Outsider ranges much further afield. Vrăjitor ventures into territory once explored by early Emperor, but he emerges with a sound more atmospheric and raw. 12-grit tremolo walls, blast beats aplenty, and echoing rasps like howling storm winds provide a base upon which Old Sorcery centers icy synths (“Magick Triumph,” “Barrowgrim Asylum”), folk-minded woodwinds (“The Interior Gates of the True Soul,” “Where Sorrow Reigns”), and the searching reverence of Sojourner or Eldamar. Rather than an end in itself, Vrăjitor uses black metal on The Outsider as a malleable vehicle to further explore the concepts introduced in The Escapist.
The result is a 71-minute behemoth. Following The Escapist’s comparatively trim 50 minutes, The Outsider was a daunting prospect, to say the least. I still think it could lose ten minutes or so—“The Pain Threshold,” early sections of “Innigkeit” and “Magick Triumph,” and the quirky Gothic section of “Where Sorrow Reigns”—but repeated listens showed me that I was missing the forest for the trees. And like the moss that grows on those trees, The Outsider grew on me. Both black metal and dungeon synth are well-suited to fostering atmosphere and emotive landscapes, and Vrăjitor harnesses this shared propensity to his advantage. With turns at times subtle—the synths and guitars shifting into lockstep at the end of “Magick Triumph”—and at others, explosive and invigorating—the phenomenal triple attack of gritty guitar, ephemeral synth licks, and breathy woodwind solo in “Where Sorrow Reigns”—The Outsider is a journey, not a destination.
And it is the compositional vistas and narrative musicality of The Outsider that make it a journey worth taking. The bones of a story are hidden within The Outsider, and Vrăjitor intends them to be found. While there are presumably lyrics to The Outsider, Vrăjitor’s vocals are pushed back in the mix and filtered, allowing this to be a functionally instrumental album. Such Old Sorcery as this will naturally whisper different tales to different listeners, but I defy the skeptic to stand on the moon-kissed snowfields of “Magick Triumph,” tarry by the campfire and tender acoustics of “Innigkeit,”2 or emerge from the airy, crystalline caverns “Where Sorrow Reigns” and conjure no dreams of the titular outsider’s adventures. Not merely a pairing, The Outsider weaves wintery synths and raw, blackened atmospherics into a single spell and adorns it with grand, evocative structures and diverse instrumentation to create a story that needs no overt narration, but reveals its bones through music alone.
Established through the excellent “Castle” trilogy,3 Old Sorcery is a mainstay in dungeon synth circles, and if The Outsider proves anything, it’s for good reason. While The Escapist took day trips beyond Old Sorcery’s core sound, The Outsider bravely departs familiar territory while never forgetting its heritage. While there are certainly passages and pathways I trudged through rather than enjoyed, The Outsider is a singular, grand tapestry, cleverly composed and beautifully arranged. Old Sorcery’s latest is a work best basked in and consumed organically, rather than dissected microscopically, and has only gotten better with each spin. Set aside an hour on a cold, snowy day (there should be plenty of them right about now), cozy up with a warm drink, and hear The Outsider’s tale.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Avantgarde Music
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: January 30th, 2026Mystikus Hugebeard (a practitioner of old sorcery, as it were)
Whenever the yearning for old-school dungeon synth takes me, Old Sorcery has long been one of my first choices. However, I’m embarrassed to admit that during my preparatory research, I was rather shocked to learn that Old Sorcery debuted as recently as 2017 with Realms of Magickal Sorrow. I’d just assumed Old Sorcery has been around since, I don’t know, time immemorial, only because Old Sorcery so effortlessly plays that sort of raw, old school dungeon synth that you’d find on a cassette tape tucked away next to a Jim Kirkwood or Depressive Silence. I’m grateful that Spicie Forrest clued me in on this release and allowed me to double review with him, such that I could further inform our readers of the truly quality dungeon synth act that Old Sorcery is. This opportunity has not presented itself in a way I’d anticipated, however, because The Outsider is not merely dungeon synth like most Old Sorcery releases, but also an album of raw, wintry black metal.
As The Outsider opens in “Magick Triumph,” rumbling horns and scattered synths set the stage for a classic Swords n’ Sorcery experience typical to the Old Sorcery oeuvre, until a grimy guitar chord descends like a fog. It’s worth mentioning that Old Sorcery has traveled this blackened road before with 2020’s Sorrowcrown, but it’s done exceptionally well here. It’s the kind of frigid black metal you’d hear from Paysage d’Hiver and Lunar Aurora, with a similarly raw production style to boot. An overly raw-sounding mix that sacrifices too much listenability for “authenticity” is an immediate album-killer for me, but The Outsider is in that perfect sweet spot. The tremolos and blast-beats buzz with wintry chill and the vocals are way, way in the back, and the synths are always able to cut through the din. The mix has that nice, approachable sort of buzz, like just a little too much wine.4 Still, headphones will definitely be your friend for this album.
Old Sorcery weaves dungeon synth and black metal together such that each is stronger for the other’s presence, effectively playing off each other’s strengths. The dungeon synth elements in The Outsider enjoy an active melodic role in the heavier songs, the inviting, pleasant tones of old-school dungeon synth exuding warmth amidst the cold black metal. It makes for some standout moments, like frostbiting synths fading in and out through stormy guitar riffs (“Magick Triumph”), or a crystalline melody ringing hopeful above rhythmic tremolos and strings (“Where Sorrow Reigns”). “The Interior Gates of the True Soul” is an exquisite blend of synths and metal with an energy that almost reminds of Khonsu, a percussive, mystical synth melody warping, shifting, driving the song forward atop rolling tremolos. There is, naturally, a great deal of care in The Outsider’s construction of atmosphere, but the melodic focus given to the synths in relation to the black metal feels quite refreshing for the genre. As such, The Outsider rarely feels passive even across its length and maintains a strong sense of engagement from moment to moment.
Speaking of length, The Outsider is notably on the longer side, clocking in at over 70 minutes. But I find that Old Sorcery manages the time well with a healthy spread of longer and shorter songs, coupled with their diverse songwriting approach. The Outsider begins and ends with its dramatic epics, as the bulk of the album swirls through cackling, malevolent melodies (“Barrowgrim Asylum”), softer dungeon synth proper (“Innigkeit,” “The Pain Threshold”), and fantastical electronic/metal harmonies (“The Interior Gates of the True Soul”). There’s nary a weak link on the album, but while the staccato, electronic synth tones work wonders in “Magick Triumph” and “The Interior Gates of the True Soul,” I wish they were utilized a bit more in the ambient tracks. “The Pain Threshold” technically fits that bill, but it’s written in such a way that’s more sweeping and orchestral. It would’ve been nice to see the sharper synth tones common to Old Sorcery’s other works explored in a space less dominated by chaotic black metal, that I might appreciate them in clearer focus.
All in all, The Outsider is another rock-solid album by an artist who has consistently delivered great music, even though this album is a rare break from the Old Sorcery mold. It’s well-paced, well-written dungeon synth/black metal that is always good, and often great. I’ve often joked that this hellsite needs more goddamn dungeon synth, and The Outsider is my perfect specimen: just metal enough to bypass Steel’s gaze, yet with enough dungeon synth that I don’t look out of place wearing my wizard robes while listening to it. I furthermore suspect that my Spicie friend has delivered similarly positive tidings, so now that you’ve had two exceedingly trustworthy goobers tell you how good this album is, just go listen to the damn thing.
Rating: Very Good!
#2026 #35 #AvantgardeMusic #BlackMetal #DepressiveSilence #DungeonSynth #Eldamar #Eleea #Emperor #FinnishMetal #Jan26 #JimKirkwood #khonsu #LunarAurora #Megahammer #OldSorcery #PaysageDHiver #Review #Reviews #Sojourner #TheOutsider #WarmoonLord -
Old Sorcery – The Outsider Review By Spicie ForrestSwords and sorcery have served as metal muses since the genre’s earliest days and for the most seminal acts. Indeed, many a writer here at AMG Studios has indulged in a game or three hundred of Dungeons & Dragons, and I imagine the same can be said of our esteemed commentariat. So, on the rare occasion that dungeon synth, the correct soundtrack for all D&D games, falls into the promo sump, it’s picked up fairly quickly. Old Sorcery’s newest full-length, The Outsider, didn’t even make it that far before Mystikus Hugebeard and I had a Canadian standoff about coverage and settled on this appropriately lengthy double review.
Old Sorcery is the dungeon synth project of Lahti, Finland-based multi-instrumentalist Vechi Vrăjitor.1 The Outsider sees Vrăjitor continuing the “Masks of the Magi” trilogy that began with 2025’s delightful and exploratory The Escapist. Small excursions from Old Sorcery’s core sound yielded great results, incorporating sweeping cinematic textures and classical instrumentation. That adventurous spirit lives on here, but The Outsider ranges much further afield. Vrăjitor ventures into territory once explored by early Emperor, but he emerges with a sound more atmospheric and raw. 12-grit tremolo walls, blast beats aplenty, and echoing rasps like howling storm winds provide a base upon which Old Sorcery centers icy synths (“Magick Triumph,” “Barrowgrim Asylum”), folk-minded woodwinds (“The Interior Gates of the True Soul,” “Where Sorrow Reigns”), and the searching reverence of Sojourner or Eldamar. Rather than an end in itself, Vrăjitor uses black metal on The Outsider as a malleable vehicle to further explore the concepts introduced in The Escapist.
The result is a 71-minute behemoth. Following The Escapist’s comparatively trim 50 minutes, The Outsider was a daunting prospect, to say the least. I still think it could lose ten minutes or so—“The Pain Threshold,” early sections of “Innigkeit” and “Magick Triumph,” and the quirky Gothic section of “Where Sorrow Reigns”—but repeated listens showed me that I was missing the forest for the trees. And like the moss that grows on those trees, The Outsider grew on me. Both black metal and dungeon synth are well-suited to fostering atmosphere and emotive landscapes, and Vrăjitor harnesses this shared propensity to his advantage. With turns at times subtle—the synths and guitars shifting into lockstep at the end of “Magick Triumph”—and at others, explosive and invigorating—the phenomenal triple attack of gritty guitar, ephemeral synth licks, and breathy woodwind solo in “Where Sorrow Reigns”—The Outsider is a journey, not a destination.
And it is the compositional vistas and narrative musicality of The Outsider that make it a journey worth taking. The bones of a story are hidden within The Outsider, and Vrăjitor intends them to be found. While there are presumably lyrics to The Outsider, Vrăjitor’s vocals are pushed back in the mix and filtered, allowing this to be a functionally instrumental album. Such Old Sorcery as this will naturally whisper different tales to different listeners, but I defy the skeptic to stand on the moon-kissed snowfields of “Magick Triumph,” tarry by the campfire and tender acoustics of “Innigkeit,”2 or emerge from the airy, crystalline caverns “Where Sorrow Reigns” and conjure no dreams of the titular outsider’s adventures. Not merely a pairing, The Outsider weaves wintery synths and raw, blackened atmospherics into a single spell and adorns it with grand, evocative structures and diverse instrumentation to create a story that needs no overt narration, but reveals its bones through music alone.
Established through the excellent “Castle” trilogy,3 Old Sorcery is a mainstay in dungeon synth circles, and if The Outsider proves anything, it’s for good reason. While The Escapist took day trips beyond Old Sorcery’s core sound, The Outsider bravely departs familiar territory while never forgetting its heritage. While there are certainly passages and pathways I trudged through rather than enjoyed, The Outsider is a singular, grand tapestry, cleverly composed and beautifully arranged. Old Sorcery’s latest is a work best basked in and consumed organically, rather than dissected microscopically, and has only gotten better with each spin. Set aside an hour on a cold, snowy day (there should be plenty of them right about now), cozy up with a warm drink, and hear The Outsider’s tale.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Avantgarde Music
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: January 30th, 2026Mystikus Hugebeard (a practitioner of old sorcery, as it were)
Whenever the yearning for old-school dungeon synth takes me, Old Sorcery has long been one of my first choices. However, I’m embarrassed to admit that during my preparatory research, I was rather shocked to learn that Old Sorcery debuted as recently as 2017 with Realms of Magickal Sorrow. I’d just assumed Old Sorcery has been around since, I don’t know, time immemorial, only because Old Sorcery so effortlessly plays that sort of raw, old school dungeon synth that you’d find on a cassette tape tucked away next to a Jim Kirkwood or Depressive Silence. I’m grateful that Spicie Forrest clued me in on this release and allowed me to double review with him, such that I could further inform our readers of the truly quality dungeon synth act that Old Sorcery is. This opportunity has not presented itself in a way I’d anticipated, however, because The Outsider is not merely dungeon synth like most Old Sorcery releases, but also an album of raw, wintry black metal.
As The Outsider opens in “Magick Triumph,” rumbling horns and scattered synths set the stage for a classic Swords n’ Sorcery experience typical to the Old Sorcery oeuvre, until a grimy guitar chord descends like a fog. It’s worth mentioning that Old Sorcery has traveled this blackened road before with 2020’s Sorrowcrown, but it’s done exceptionally well here. It’s the kind of frigid black metal you’d hear from Paysage d’Hiver and Lunar Aurora, with a similarly raw production style to boot. An overly raw-sounding mix that sacrifices too much listenability for “authenticity” is an immediate album-killer for me, but The Outsider is in that perfect sweet spot. The tremolos and blast-beats buzz with wintry chill and the vocals are way, way in the back, and the synths are always able to cut through the din. The mix has that nice, approachable sort of buzz, like just a little too much wine.4 Still, headphones will definitely be your friend for this album.
Old Sorcery weaves dungeon synth and black metal together such that each is stronger for the other’s presence, effectively playing off each other’s strengths. The dungeon synth elements in The Outsider enjoy an active melodic role in the heavier songs, the inviting, pleasant tones of old-school dungeon synth exuding warmth amidst the cold black metal. It makes for some standout moments, like frostbiting synths fading in and out through stormy guitar riffs (“Magick Triumph”), or a crystalline melody ringing hopeful above rhythmic tremolos and strings (“Where Sorrow Reigns”). “The Interior Gates of the True Soul” is an exquisite blend of synths and metal with an energy that almost reminds of Khonsu, a percussive, mystical synth melody warping, shifting, driving the song forward atop rolling tremolos. There is, naturally, a great deal of care in The Outsider’s construction of atmosphere, but the melodic focus given to the synths in relation to the black metal feels quite refreshing for the genre. As such, The Outsider rarely feels passive even across its length and maintains a strong sense of engagement from moment to moment.
Speaking of length, The Outsider is notably on the longer side, clocking in at over 70 minutes. But I find that Old Sorcery manages the time well with a healthy spread of longer and shorter songs, coupled with their diverse songwriting approach. The Outsider begins and ends with its dramatic epics, as the bulk of the album swirls through cackling, malevolent melodies (“Barrowgrim Asylum”), softer dungeon synth proper (“Innigkeit,” “The Pain Threshold”), and fantastical electronic/metal harmonies (“The Interior Gates of the True Soul”). There’s nary a weak link on the album, but while the staccato, electronic synth tones work wonders in “Magick Triumph” and “The Interior Gates of the True Soul,” I wish they were utilized a bit more in the ambient tracks. “The Pain Threshold” technically fits that bill, but it’s written in such a way that’s more sweeping and orchestral. It would’ve been nice to see the sharper synth tones common to Old Sorcery’s other works explored in a space less dominated by chaotic black metal, that I might appreciate them in clearer focus.
All in all, The Outsider is another rock-solid album by an artist who has consistently delivered great music, even though this album is a rare break from the Old Sorcery mold. It’s well-paced, well-written dungeon synth/black metal that is always good, and often great. I’ve often joked that this hellsite needs more goddamn dungeon synth, and The Outsider is my perfect specimen: just metal enough to bypass Steel’s gaze, yet with enough dungeon synth that I don’t look out of place wearing my wizard robes while listening to it. I furthermore suspect that my Spicie friend has delivered similarly positive tidings, so now that you’ve had two exceedingly trustworthy goobers tell you how good this album is, just go listen to the damn thing.
Rating: Very Good!
#2026 #35 #AvantgardeMusic #BlackMetal #DepressiveSilence #DungeonSynth #Eldamar #Eleea #Emperor #FinnishMetal #Jan26 #JimKirkwood #khonsu #LunarAurora #Megahammer #OldSorcery #PaysageDHiver #Review #Reviews #Sojourner #TheOutsider #WarmoonLord -
Old Sorcery – The Outsider Review By Spicie ForrestSwords and sorcery have served as metal muses since the genre’s earliest days and for the most seminal acts. Indeed, many a writer here at AMG Studios has indulged in a game or three hundred of Dungeons & Dragons, and I imagine the same can be said of our esteemed commentariat. So, on the rare occasion that dungeon synth, the correct soundtrack for all D&D games, falls into the promo sump, it’s picked up fairly quickly. Old Sorcery’s newest full-length, The Outsider, didn’t even make it that far before Mystikus Hugebeard and I had a Canadian standoff about coverage and settled on this appropriately lengthy double review.
Old Sorcery is the dungeon synth project of Lahti, Finland-based multi-instrumentalist Vechi Vrăjitor.1 The Outsider sees Vrăjitor continuing the “Masks of the Magi” trilogy that began with 2025’s delightful and exploratory The Escapist. Small excursions from Old Sorcery’s core sound yielded great results, incorporating sweeping cinematic textures and classical instrumentation. That adventurous spirit lives on here, but The Outsider ranges much further afield. Vrăjitor ventures into territory once explored by early Emperor, but he emerges with a sound more atmospheric and raw. 12-grit tremolo walls, blast beats aplenty, and echoing rasps like howling storm winds provide a base upon which Old Sorcery centers icy synths (“Magick Triumph,” “Barrowgrim Asylum”), folk-minded woodwinds (“The Interior Gates of the True Soul,” “Where Sorrow Reigns”), and the searching reverence of Sojourner or Eldamar. Rather than an end in itself, Vrăjitor uses black metal on The Outsider as a malleable vehicle to further explore the concepts introduced in The Escapist.
The result is a 71-minute behemoth. Following The Escapist’s comparatively trim 50 minutes, The Outsider was a daunting prospect, to say the least. I still think it could lose ten minutes or so—“The Pain Threshold,” early sections of “Innigkeit” and “Magick Triumph,” and the quirky Gothic section of “Where Sorrow Reigns”—but repeated listens showed me that I was missing the forest for the trees. And like the moss that grows on those trees, The Outsider grew on me. Both black metal and dungeon synth are well-suited to fostering atmosphere and emotive landscapes, and Vrăjitor harnesses this shared propensity to his advantage. With turns at times subtle—the synths and guitars shifting into lockstep at the end of “Magick Triumph”—and at others, explosive and invigorating—the phenomenal triple attack of gritty guitar, ephemeral synth licks, and breathy woodwind solo in “Where Sorrow Reigns”—The Outsider is a journey, not a destination.
And it is the compositional vistas and narrative musicality of The Outsider that make it a journey worth taking. The bones of a story are hidden within The Outsider, and Vrăjitor intends them to be found. While there are presumably lyrics to The Outsider, Vrăjitor’s vocals are pushed back in the mix and filtered, allowing this to be a functionally instrumental album. Such Old Sorcery as this will naturally whisper different tales to different listeners, but I defy the skeptic to stand on the moon-kissed snowfields of “Magick Triumph,” tarry by the campfire and tender acoustics of “Innigkeit,”2 or emerge from the airy, crystalline caverns “Where Sorrow Reigns” and conjure no dreams of the titular outsider’s adventures. Not merely a pairing, The Outsider weaves wintery synths and raw, blackened atmospherics into a single spell and adorns it with grand, evocative structures and diverse instrumentation to create a story that needs no overt narration, but reveals its bones through music alone.
Established through the excellent “Castle” trilogy,3 Old Sorcery is a mainstay in dungeon synth circles, and if The Outsider proves anything, it’s for good reason. While The Escapist took day trips beyond Old Sorcery’s core sound, The Outsider bravely departs familiar territory while never forgetting its heritage. While there are certainly passages and pathways I trudged through rather than enjoyed, The Outsider is a singular, grand tapestry, cleverly composed and beautifully arranged. Old Sorcery’s latest is a work best basked in and consumed organically, rather than dissected microscopically, and has only gotten better with each spin. Set aside an hour on a cold, snowy day (there should be plenty of them right about now), cozy up with a warm drink, and hear The Outsider’s tale.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Avantgarde Music
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: January 30th, 2026Mystikus Hugebeard (a practitioner of old sorcery, as it were)
Whenever the yearning for old-school dungeon synth takes me, Old Sorcery has long been one of my first choices. However, I’m embarrassed to admit that during my preparatory research, I was rather shocked to learn that Old Sorcery debuted as recently as 2017 with Realms of Magickal Sorrow. I’d just assumed Old Sorcery has been around since, I don’t know, time immemorial, only because Old Sorcery so effortlessly plays that sort of raw, old school dungeon synth that you’d find on a cassette tape tucked away next to a Jim Kirkwood or Depressive Silence. I’m grateful that Spicie Forrest clued me in on this release and allowed me to double review with him, such that I could further inform our readers of the truly quality dungeon synth act that Old Sorcery is. This opportunity has not presented itself in a way I’d anticipated, however, because The Outsider is not merely dungeon synth like most Old Sorcery releases, but also an album of raw, wintry black metal.
As The Outsider opens in “Magick Triumph,” rumbling horns and scattered synths set the stage for a classic Swords n’ Sorcery experience typical to the Old Sorcery oeuvre, until a grimy guitar chord descends like a fog. It’s worth mentioning that Old Sorcery has traveled this blackened road before with 2020’s Sorrowcrown, but it’s done exceptionally well here. It’s the kind of frigid black metal you’d hear from Paysage d’Hiver and Lunar Aurora, with a similarly raw production style to boot. An overly raw-sounding mix that sacrifices too much listenability for “authenticity” is an immediate album-killer for me, but The Outsider is in that perfect sweet spot. The tremolos and blast-beats buzz with wintry chill and the vocals are way, way in the back, and the synths are always able to cut through the din. The mix has that nice, approachable sort of buzz, like just a little too much wine.4 Still, headphones will definitely be your friend for this album.
Old Sorcery weaves dungeon synth and black metal together such that each is stronger for the other’s presence, effectively playing off each other’s strengths. The dungeon synth elements in The Outsider enjoy an active melodic role in the heavier songs, the inviting, pleasant tones of old-school dungeon synth exuding warmth amidst the cold black metal. It makes for some standout moments, like frostbiting synths fading in and out through stormy guitar riffs (“Magick Triumph”), or a crystalline melody ringing hopeful above rhythmic tremolos and strings (“Where Sorrow Reigns”). “The Interior Gates of the True Soul” is an exquisite blend of synths and metal with an energy that almost reminds of Khonsu, a percussive, mystical synth melody warping, shifting, driving the song forward atop rolling tremolos. There is, naturally, a great deal of care in The Outsider’s construction of atmosphere, but the melodic focus given to the synths in relation to the black metal feels quite refreshing for the genre. As such, The Outsider rarely feels passive even across its length and maintains a strong sense of engagement from moment to moment.
Speaking of length, The Outsider is notably on the longer side, clocking in at over 70 minutes. But I find that Old Sorcery manages the time well with a healthy spread of longer and shorter songs, coupled with their diverse songwriting approach. The Outsider begins and ends with its dramatic epics, as the bulk of the album swirls through cackling, malevolent melodies (“Barrowgrim Asylum”), softer dungeon synth proper (“Innigkeit,” “The Pain Threshold”), and fantastical electronic/metal harmonies (“The Interior Gates of the True Soul”). There’s nary a weak link on the album, but while the staccato, electronic synth tones work wonders in “Magick Triumph” and “The Interior Gates of the True Soul,” I wish they were utilized a bit more in the ambient tracks. “The Pain Threshold” technically fits that bill, but it’s written in such a way that’s more sweeping and orchestral. It would’ve been nice to see the sharper synth tones common to Old Sorcery’s other works explored in a space less dominated by chaotic black metal, that I might appreciate them in clearer focus.
All in all, The Outsider is another rock-solid album by an artist who has consistently delivered great music, even though this album is a rare break from the Old Sorcery mold. It’s well-paced, well-written dungeon synth/black metal that is always good, and often great. I’ve often joked that this hellsite needs more goddamn dungeon synth, and The Outsider is my perfect specimen: just metal enough to bypass Steel’s gaze, yet with enough dungeon synth that I don’t look out of place wearing my wizard robes while listening to it. I furthermore suspect that my Spicie friend has delivered similarly positive tidings, so now that you’ve had two exceedingly trustworthy goobers tell you how good this album is, just go listen to the damn thing.
Rating: Very Good!
#2026 #35 #AvantgardeMusic #BlackMetal #DepressiveSilence #DungeonSynth #Eldamar #Eleea #Emperor #FinnishMetal #Jan26 #JimKirkwood #khonsu #LunarAurora #Megahammer #OldSorcery #PaysageDHiver #Review #Reviews #Sojourner #TheOutsider #WarmoonLord -
Dreaming of DNA: Review of Sykes’ Bigfoot, Yeti and the last Neanderthal
Originally published in the UK as The Nature of the Beast, Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes’ Bigfoot, Yeti and the Last Neanderthal: A geneticist’s search for modern apemen is highly enjoyable and reveals a bunch of interesting tidbits as well as showing us some rather personal insights and new facts from the professor who attempted to bring credibility to the study of hairy hominids.
First, I’d say, all Bigfoot enthusiasts should read this book. I’m fairly certain the title was changed for the US distribution to add the word “Bigfoot” in order to appeal to the Finding Bigfoot-crazy Americans. Sykes viewpoint as a scientist and as a Yeti/Bigfoot cultural “newbie” is unique and provides an insightful look into the wacky world of Bigfootery. While that sort of makes the book charming, it also makes it problematic. Dr. Sykes apparently didn’t know the first thing about the subculture of the North American hairy man and he got taken for an exciting ride a few times. He got pulled into the belief, admittedly losing scientific objectivity at times. To those of us who already knew the sordid history of Bigfoot seekers – Melba Ketchum, Derek Randles, and Justin Smeja or the collection of those who say they have a special relationship with the creature or believe it is a spiritual or supernatural being – this book could, at times, be wince-inducing.
“…when I have found myself in the company of cryptozoologists, their sincerity and absolute belief in the existence of their quarry begins to rub off.” – Dr. Bryan Sykes
Oh dear. Sykes has stepped in it, deep. But he manages to extract himself with grace.
The original proposed title for the book was The Yeti Enigma. By mistake, this title is used several times within the book. (All these alternate titles are confusing. I’d wish they kept that particular title.) Sykes describes the enigma as the contrasting positions of the argument about the yeti. Those who actively seek the creatures (Bigfoot included) say they have plenty of evidence. Yet, there is indisputably no single piece of evidence that is accepted as genuine by all. The cryptozoologists say that science ignores their quest, that they KNOW the creatures are out there to find if a serious concerted effort would take place. Sykes explains the quests of Heuvelmans & Sanderson, Slick & Byrne, of the Russian scientists who formed the government-backed Snowman Commission, and of the various others who made tremendous effort to find this conclusive evidence. He considers himself one of these. He systematically collected and analyze samples across the world to see if that evidence was there. He argues that you couldn’t before, and you certainly can’t now, say that science hasn’t paid mystery animals any attention. Sykes explains two breakthroughs which allowed for this project to take place: the capability of a new DNA technique that eliminates human contamination and can obtain results from the hair itself (not needing the follicle), and the finding of a knowable percentage of Neanderthal DNA in modern human populations that confirms interbreeding.
The Russian samples he obtained focused on this Neanderthal DNA remnant and the mystery of Zana. Sykes has some curious ideas about what may be going on there and continues to look into the origin of what may be an important find regarding Zana’s ancestry. In addition, he continued to work with famous mountaineer Reinold Messner on an expedition to find the yeti-bear (which was sadly postponed), a bear they think is different than the bear species already documented. The book makes no mention of the controversy and dispute his yeti-bear idea invoked.
Sykes also explores Bernard Heuvelmans’ archive of papers. While Sykes meets with many of those who collected samples he analyzed, his insights into Heuvelmans was probably the most interesting. As with Naish’s Hunting Monsters and other skeptical-minded assessments, Heuvelmans, the so called “father of cryptozoology,” does not come out smelling very sweet. Sykes is clear that Heuvelmans messed up plenty of times – he was uncritical, careless in his pursuit, was constantly out of money, and ended up “clutching at straws” to legitimize his belief. Ivan Sanderson, his contemporary and sometimes collaborator, was a wreck in his own way, promoting adventurous monster stories in contrast to Heuvelmans’ need for scientific acceptance. The most riveting chapter in the book was the discussion of the relationship between these two. The Minnesota Iceman fiasco knocked out serious interest into cryptozoology for a while and put up a wall in their friendship as each blamed the other for how things went down. I get the impression Sykes intended to carry on Heuvelmans grand ideas, to do the job Bernard did not have the tools to do at the time. Sykes says at this point in his career he has more flexibility and ability to do as he wants. The book also shows the reader that having a good network of contacts and academic credentials is critical for gaining valuable insight and leads. But it also showed me the missteps that can occur if you don’t know the traps in the environment.
Sykes listened to all the stories from Bigfoot hunters. He eventually became invested in the story of the “Big Guy” living under a tree in a Washington park making knocks and growls to communicate. He visited the tree and heard it! He eventually admits to being too scared to visit the tree alone. He bought into the story that the Bigfoot was amorous towards the woman investigator. The story was so incredibly implausible and dramatic, I could not believe he took it seriously. Eventually, a park ranger had to reveal how the tree sounds were occurring. I heard “crickets”… if you know what I mean. It was embarrassing to read. Other examples include Sykes being fooled by fake journal articles, not noticing the eerie similarity of one of his sample collector’s tales to that of a scene from the movie The Legend of Boggy Creek, and that he reported two different but remarkably similar tales of a man being carried away in a sleeping bag to a family of bigfoots. Openness to any tale meant he did not dismiss the story of a guy who said Bigfoot landed against his car windshield and drooled all over it. Good money was spent on a sample result that came back as ‘cow’. Of course we already know that none of the North American samples showed anything anomalous, all definitively identifiable normal animals. (Justin Smeja’s bleeding baby bigfoot story didn’t pan out and readers got the explanation of the findings.) I found it odd that Sykes was wholly reliant on the physical DNA evidence in his quest but yet made an effort to listen to some outrageous stories without losing it. The best line in the book describes how the cryptozoologist sees evidence everywhere but he can’t:
“Everywhere we looked there were signs of sasquatch, if only you had the eyes to see them. Not being blessed with this facility, I clutched the evidence bag a little tighter.”
That, in a nutshell, is this book. That is the enigma. All belief, no bones.
I found something else in this book that was satisfying to me: a confirmation of the scientificalness of cryptozoologists. Sykes admits that they will talk about DNA findings but make egregious mistakes while doing so. They claim to be doing research and looking for proper scientific evidence “but no one had much of a clue how to go about it.” He notes the Ketchum study was fatally flawed and, though a good effort in obtaining samples, was ultimately a waste of this material and a lot of money as well as confusing to many hopeful participants. He writes a strange pseudo review letter for her paper, which I found weirdly out of place.
He was disappointed when Igor Burtsev in Russia considered it prejudiced that Ketchum’s results were not accepted, not understanding that it was crappy science that resulted in its rejection. Burtsev (and Bayanov) also only wanted a positive almasty DNA result released, not a negative one. (However, Burtsev’s hypothesis of the creature having supernatural powers means his stance is unfalsifiable.) The Russians did not translate to being scientifically credible. Sykes comes right out to say, “From what I have seen, Bigfootologists are not, on the whole, good researchers. They lack the necessary degree of self-criticism…” This is not news to me but it is good to hear a professional confirm it firsthand.
One insight I saw in this book is the essentialness of undertaking an interdisciplinary approach to cryptozoology. Sykes notes that today’s amateur cryptozoologists have “no chance of convincing the world of the validity of their claims on their own”. They needed a specialist like him for the DNA testing. But Sykes himself badly needed a anthropologist, a wildlife biologist, an anatomist or zoologist, folklorist, and probably a psychologist to set him straight in areas where he was way out of his knowledge zone. I contend that we aren’t dealing with a zoological enigma here, but a cultural one (or more than one) and this book strongly supports that claim. Various informed views should be consulted.
Sykes handed researchers a big letdown regarding their wing-and-a-prayer samples, but also provided a path forward for them. If there IS evidence out there, it can be collected and, if certified, convincing to the world. He expresses dismay that, previously, their precious samples were treated shabbily by other labs because they didn’t have monetary backing or it sounded ludicrous. They sure do give it a good try.
I can’t help but see this book as additional evidence that Bigfoot seekers are hopelessly romantic almost-zoologists. They will never find the creature they so desperately seek because I think it’s a dream, a cultural enigma, not a flesh and blood creature. I still hope someday that I’m proved wrong.
Originally titled The Yeti Enigma, Sykes book was published in the UK as The Nature of the Beast and in the US as Bigfoot, Yeti and the Last Neanderthal. They should have stuck with the original title.#Bigfoot #bookReview #BryanSykes #FindingBigfoot #NatureOfTheBeast #Sasquatch #Yeti #YetiEnigma
https://sharonahill.com/?p=3090
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Fantasy metals – not all Bolognium
Science fiction and fantasy media regularly include magical or exaggerated substances as essential parts of the story. In this piece, I explore my top fantasy metals that appear in movies, comics, literature, and other popular media. When starting out my research, I found an overwhelming array of fantasy metals with more showing up all the time, particularly in role-playing games. I picked eight, with the first example being more of an overarching element (of the literary kind) that depicts many general qualities of fantasy metals. An apt generalization in Entertainment Weekly explained: “All of them are shiny, all of them are rare, and all of them have some sort of ridiculous name. They tend to be impossibly strong and can withstand incredible force. Sometimes, they even have magic powers.”
Discussion of fantasy metals is pertinent to “spooky geology” in several aspects. Most disturbingly, there are a surprising number of people who believe such amazing substances are real or have real world counterparts with similar special properties. Most people are poorly versed in highly technical topics of chemistry and physics. It’s not difficult to find real-world references to exaggerated or magical inorganic substances connected to some amazing claim, or being sold with the promise of special powers. Fact is blurred by popular fiction.
A useful way to inoculate an audience from falling for a scam or pseudoscience is to show examples and explain what’s really going on.
Educators use discussion of fantasy metals to teach about chemistry and physics. Students can examine the fictional depictions to work out what is and isn’t possible and why. Because the periodic table of elements shows the consistency and predictability of the properties of earth materials, examining fantasy metals can help students put fundamentals of chemistry into understandable context in a fun and engaging way.
Unobtainium
Most metals in fictional plots fall under the trope of “Unobtainium” – a term used not only in fiction, but in engineering and in general popular culture as a substance that is impractical or impossible to get, thus, unobtainable. In the extreme sense, the term (or an alternate name for it) is used to represent something that is wished for but doesn’t exist. In science fiction, the unobtainable substance is typically needed to remove real-world physical restrictions, such as to make faster-than-light travel possible, to overcome gravity, or to make objects nearly immune to damage. With creative license, fantasy metals can do anything you need them to, or they can fail dramatically for added interest.
In this sense, Unobtainium, and all other fantasy metals, are handy plot devices called “MacGuffins” which are objects, devices, or events that are necessary to the story and the motivation of characters. The MacGuffin is often the trigger for or center of the story, though, if removed from the story, it would have no intrinsic interest on its own. The fantasy metal (or stone, which is an upcoming future post), is frequently dangerous if handled improperly, or has some other bizarre quality at least to some characters.
Unobtanium as depicted in the movie Avatar was a rare compound used as an energy conductor that enabled interstellar commerce. The magnetic field was so intense that it disrupted human functions. The name was used explicitly as “Unobtainium” but it appears that was not originally intended – used as a placeholder, they just could not come up with a suitable name.
“Unobtainium” in other contexts has some fun alternate names: Unaffordium, Veryrarium, and, possibly my favorite, Bolognium, that strongly indicates a skepticism of its existence. Another great example of the Unobtainium trope is Eludium or Iludium – with the nifty name indicating that the material is illusive or eludes attempts to find it. Recall that Marvin the Martian tried to use an Iludium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator to blow up earth in Looney Tunes episodes.
Oh Goody, he found the iludilum.The following examples of fantasy metals are often serving as versions of Unobtainum and as MacGuffins. They sound remarkably interchangeable but some have unique properties and interesting, and ever more convoluted, back stories. Many also appear in complex related storylines or transcend their most popular literary context to show up in games or other media with slightly different spellings or properties. Because they are magic and not following natural laws, the rules are loose.
Adamantium
“Adamant” has historically been used to refer to a substance (often a stone) equivalent to diamond in hardness. Applied to a metal, it is a nearly indestructible steel alloy. Derived from Greek Mythology, adamantine is used repeatedly in myth and legends from ancient times to the present. Adding the suffix “-ium” was a typical way to create a elemental name. So, eventually, the world was gifted with the fictional metal Adamantium. The name was first used as a product brand name in 1912 for a non-corrosive bronze listed in the journal Mechanical Engineer. In 1941, the name was used in a short story called “Devil’s Powder” as the composition of a bullet. But the most famous Adamantium was forged in the Marvel comics and cinematic universe where the dark shiny grey metal – able to be honed to a sharp edge that can easily penetrate other metals – became the skeleton and claws of Wolverine. Marvel later introduced variants of Adamantium that could be damaged by sufficiently powerful opposing forces. This version was similar to the real element osmium, the densest metal and part of the platinum group. In the X-Men, adamantium comes from meteors.
The DC Comics universe had their own version of a super-strong metal but it was called Promethium, which is historically derived from the same ideas of ancient Greek mythology. However, Promethium is a real element, making it problematic for a fictional universe to utilize in storytelling.
Vibranium
Let’s hang out in the Marvel Universe for a while longer and discuss Vibranium. Vibranium has the ability to absorb, store, and then release great amounts of kinetic energy. It can absorb sound, create earthquakes, and generally annoy other lifeforms. The original Vibranium also came from meteors and was mined in the fictional land of Wakanda. It became associated with the characters Black Panther and Captain America. Additional versions of Vibranium appeared in story lines, including an artificial and a “sentient” variety. One variation was called the “anti-metal” because it could cut through any known metal.
Vibranium has been given more credence outside of the fictional realm by relating it to real substances. In the book The Secret Science of Superheroes, Mark J. Whiting compares Vibranium to existing and potentially new elements and finds it’s not that far beyond plausibility, that it could be “a high-entropy shape-memory alloy composite, reinforced with a ceramic”, which makes it currently out of reach of current materials technology, buy maybe not future technology.
In 2016, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies developed a lightweight carbon fiber composite material they called Vibranium. From what I can gather, there have been attempts to trademark the name for several products of all kinds but the legality of these trademarks is unclear to me.
In 2022, a viral video circulated with claims that “electric” rocks were found in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The deceptive video appeared to show rocks that could produce electric sparks. Confusion arose with the mining of coltan in this region, which is ore containing rare metals niobium and tantalum. Commentators claimed that “real world vibranium” had been found, noting the similarity to the story of the fictional Wakanda. See more on the Electric Rocks hoax here. This is a good example of how entirely wrong ideas sound credible and bleed into the news because of our famililarity from fiction.
Kryptonite
Kryptonite has even more relation to real-world chemistry as well as having a well-known reputation in popular culture. Moving over to the DC comic and cinematic universe, Kryptonite was a MacGuffin in the Superman saga. In it’s iconic green mineral form, it originated from the planet Krypton and fell to earth as a meteorite. First mentioned on the Superman radio show in 1943, it appeared in the comics much later in 1949 to add drama to the story as a useful danger to the hero. Kryptonite didn’t seem all that rare, however, since many of Superman’s enemies managed to have it on hand. Its power was to disrupt Superman in unpredictable ways but not regular humans. Different forms of Kryptonite, in all sorts of interesting colors and states, have different effects. The “-ite” suffix indicates that it’s a compound, not an element, although the “-ite” may be a throwback to its appearance as a meteorite. Kryptonium, what we might surmise is the elemental name, was only ever used outside the official canon as representing the element of which Kryptonite is the ore.
Krypton, however, is a real element, number 36 on the periodic table, a noble gas discovered in 1898. Its properties have nothing to do with its fictional namesake.
The formula for Kryptonite was said to have been written on a container of it in the movie Superman Returns. This formula, minus fluoride, matches that of a mineral recently discovered in Serbia called Jadarite (sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide). Several Superfans have attempted to pin down the probable location of Kryptonite on the period table of elements but, being a compound, you can’t.
Even more than Unobtainium, Kryptonite has become so well-known that it is used in popular terminology, primarily as a metaphor for the one weakness of an otherwise all-powerful character (AKA, the “Achilles Heel” trope).
Orichalcum
Pronounced like “OR-eh-CAL-cum”, Orichalcum (also as orichalcon, orihalcon or orichalc) is known as the precious metal of the fictional Atlantis, second only to gold. Mentioned by Plato in the Critias dialogue, it was legendarily mined in Atlantis where the most important buildings were coated with it, making them shine with a red glow. Orichalcum appears in several ancient writings and means “mountain copper” in Greek. Like the Atlantis myth, bits of truth have been exaggerated into a fantastical tale. Ancient writers were not clear what orichalcum was. Coins and ingots have been found that are likely made of what is referred to as orichalcum. These are comprise of 80% copper and 20% zinc with some traces of lead, tin and other metals. Other items that may be referred to as Orichalcum are pure copper or copper alloys, bronze, or brass. The name may also have been applied to the mineral chalcopyrite. The mix of metals resulted in Orichalcum being malleable, but stronger than copper and more resistant to tarnishing.
It’s not clear if the ancients obtained orichalcum as an ore or if they processed it. In Ancient Aliens, season 12, episode 2, the ridiculous commentators suggest that ingots of Orichalcum were made using an advanced technology (in Atlantis, of course) and given to the people by extraterrestrials. Sure…
Orichalcum remains a popular metal for fantasy media where it is employed as a “do-anything MacGuffin”. Its special properties can be strength, high value, super resistance, room temperature superconductivity, and sometimes it even floats. Maybe it’s better named Versatilium or Swissarmyknifium.
Dilithium
Star Trek’s infamous Dilithium, a crystal used in warp drives (to travel faster than the speed of light), has a healthy real and fictional scientific background. In reality, dilithium is, literally, two covalently bonded lithium atoms, which exists in nature as a gas. In the Starfleet ships, dilithium was a metallic crystal considered to be a unique element used to regulate the matter-antimatter reaction. Using it up resulted in decrystalization. Used improperly, it could cause the formation of a unstable wormhole.
There is a rumor that lithium was first proposed in the script but natural elements can pose creative problems down the line. The quality of rarity is always useful for fantasy metals. Dilithium was only found on a few planets in the galaxy.
A periodic table appearing in one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, showed Dilithium as having an atomic weight of 87 which places it between rubidium and strontium. However, its characteristics were not following normal natural convention.
Sometimes scientific finds sound a lot like fictional concepts. In 2012, researchers were working on “a fusion cell using deuterium and a stable isotope of the metal lithium in a crystalline structure” that could aid space flight. They compared it to Dilithium crystals.
Mithril
This is my favorite fantasy metal, and, it’s also the most widely pilfered one. Enthusiasts of the Tolkien legendarium know Mithril plays a key part (if, still, as a MacGuffin) in the history of Middle Earth. Mithril is not unique, however, to Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Spelled in various ways, with comparable properties, it appears in many RPGs and media including D&D and the Warcraft series. However, Tolkien created the word from his invented Elvish to mean “grey brilliance”. Mithril, in general, is a bright silver metal most obviously similar to titanium in color, corrosion resistance, and light weight. Gandalf, via Tolkien, describes it as able to be worked like copper and polished like glass or silver, but it did not tarnish. It was light, but harder than tempered steel with supernatural properties to block blades.
Among the important items in Middle Earth made of mithril were the chainmail shirt given to Bilbo by Thorin, the dwarf king, that was later handed down to Frodo for his own perilous journey. Mithril formed the ring of power, Nenya, that was worn by Galadriel. It appears much earlier in the history, particularly for use in a stunning, shiny elven ship called Vingilot. Mithril is a huge player in the history of dwarves of Khazad-dûm who mined the ore in Moria – the last remaining source of the metal in the world. A community of elves living nearby were on good terms with the dwarves, crafting great objects out of mithril. The ore ran deep, and the dwarves were greedy to have the increasingly rarer material. They mined too deep and released a very ancient and nasty Balrog, which halted mining and eventually caused the dwarves to abandon the underground city. An alloy of mithril is used on the door to Moria, the gates of Durin, visible only in starlight. Mithril was later used to restore the glory of the white city of Gondor after the fall of Sauron.
Red mercury
The final fantasy metal is the modern mythical red mercury. Its history is deliberately confusing as it was likely used for disinformation purposes by the Soviet Union during the Cold War to suggest they were in possession of a high-temperature superconductor and key ingredient for nuclear weapons. Originally, it may have been an alternative name for a nuclear isotope. Another claim that appeared in the mid-1990s was that red mercury was a shortcut way to enrich uranium. Anyone who sought red mercury was clearly up to no good, so it was useful to “sell” in order to catch terrorists. It eventually became a contemporary legend as a mysterious material that could cause huge explosions with a small amount, like a miniature neutron bomb. The founder of the neutron bomb, Samuel Cohen, claimed that it was a real chemical perfected by the Soviets to make small fusion bombs, but that the US government was suppressing the information. This claim was never confirmed and the International Atomic Energy Agency denies it existed.
A different type of red mercury is described as a magical healing elixir with the power to also summon djinn. Medieval alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan (of dubious origin) said the most precious elixirs were hidden in the pyramids. In recent translation, this evolved into the idea that red mercury was found in the mouths of mummified pharaohs. Various homemade media has popularized this and other myths of red mercury.
Social media spreads these tales to a new generation even though the substances doesn’t make sense. Red mercury is described as a red liquid. However, other stand-ins may be mercury antimony oxide, or cinnabar, which is mercury sulfide, a genuine red-colored ore of mercury used to make vermillion pigment. The tiny grain of truth propels the continued circulation of exaggerated tales by very insistent and credulous storytellers.
You can still find dark web/black market sites claiming to sell it. Back in 2004, three men were arrested in the UK for trying to buy it from an undercover reporter. One of the men claimed he thought it was a chemical to wash discolored money. The men were acquitted because red mercury doesn’t exist so it was not actually a crime.
So there you have it, my choice of top fantasy metals. If I missed your favorite fantasy metal, please share in the comments.
#adamantium #chemistry #dilithium #elements #fantasyMetals #fictional #iludium #Kryptonite #MCU #mithril #Orichalcum #redMercury #scienceFiction #Tolkien #unobtainium #vibranium
https://sharonahill.com/?p=8522
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Fantasy metals – not all Bolognium
Science fiction and fantasy media regularly include magical or exaggerated substances as essential parts of the story. In this piece, I explore my top fantasy metals that appear in movies, comics, literature, and other popular media. When starting out my research, I found an overwhelming array of fantasy metals with more showing up all the time, particularly in role-playing games. I picked eight, with the first example being more of an overarching element (of the literary kind) that depicts many general qualities of fantasy metals. An apt generalization in Entertainment Weekly explained: “All of them are shiny, all of them are rare, and all of them have some sort of ridiculous name. They tend to be impossibly strong and can withstand incredible force. Sometimes, they even have magic powers.”
Discussion of fantasy metals is pertinent to “spooky geology” in several aspects. Most disturbingly, there are a surprising number of people who believe such amazing substances are real or have real world counterparts with similar special properties. Most people are poorly versed in highly technical topics of chemistry and physics. It’s not difficult to find real-world references to exaggerated or magical inorganic substances connected to some amazing claim, or being sold with the promise of special powers. Fact is blurred by popular fiction.
A useful way to inoculate an audience from falling for a scam or pseudoscience is to show examples and explain what’s really going on.
Educators use discussion of fantasy metals to teach about chemistry and physics. Students can examine the fictional depictions to work out what is and isn’t possible and why. Because the periodic table of elements shows the consistency and predictability of the properties of earth materials, examining fantasy metals can help students put fundamentals of chemistry into understandable context in a fun and engaging way.
Unobtainium
Most metals in fictional plots fall under the trope of “Unobtainium” – a term used not only in fiction, but in engineering and in general popular culture as a substance that is impractical or impossible to get, thus, unobtainable. In the extreme sense, the term (or an alternate name for it) is used to represent something that is wished for but doesn’t exist. In science fiction, the unobtainable substance is typically needed to remove real-world physical restrictions, such as to make faster-than-light travel possible, to overcome gravity, or to make objects nearly immune to damage. With creative license, fantasy metals can do anything you need them to, or they can fail dramatically for added interest.
In this sense, Unobtainium, and all other fantasy metals, are handy plot devices called “MacGuffins” which are objects, devices, or events that are necessary to the story and the motivation of characters. The MacGuffin is often the trigger for or center of the story, though, if removed from the story, it would have no intrinsic interest on its own. The fantasy metal (or stone, which is an upcoming future post), is frequently dangerous if handled improperly, or has some other bizarre quality at least to some characters.
Unobtanium as depicted in the movie Avatar was a rare compound used as an energy conductor that enabled interstellar commerce. The magnetic field was so intense that it disrupted human functions. The name was used explicitly as “Unobtainium” but it appears that was not originally intended – used as a placeholder, they just could not come up with a suitable name.
“Unobtainium” in other contexts has some fun alternate names: Unaffordium, Veryrarium, and, possibly my favorite, Bolognium, that strongly indicates a skepticism of its existence. Another great example of the Unobtainium trope is Eludium or Iludium – with the nifty name indicating that the material is illusive or eludes attempts to find it. Recall that Marvin the Martian tried to use an Iludium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator to blow up earth in Looney Tunes episodes.
Oh Goody, he found the iludilum.The following examples of fantasy metals are often serving as versions of Unobtainum and as MacGuffins. They sound remarkably interchangeable but some have unique properties and interesting, and ever more convoluted, back stories. Many also appear in complex related storylines or transcend their most popular literary context to show up in games or other media with slightly different spellings or properties. Because they are magic and not following natural laws, the rules are loose.
Adamantium
“Adamant” has historically been used to refer to a substance (often a stone) equivalent to diamond in hardness. Applied to a metal, it is a nearly indestructible steel alloy. Derived from Greek Mythology, adamantine is used repeatedly in myth and legends from ancient times to the present. Adding the suffix “-ium” was a typical way to create a elemental name. So, eventually, the world was gifted with the fictional metal Adamantium. The name was first used as a product brand name in 1912 for a non-corrosive bronze listed in the journal Mechanical Engineer. In 1941, the name was used in a short story called “Devil’s Powder” as the composition of a bullet. But the most famous Adamantium was forged in the Marvel comics and cinematic universe where the dark shiny grey metal – able to be honed to a sharp edge that can easily penetrate other metals – became the skeleton and claws of Wolverine. Marvel later introduced variants of Adamantium that could be damaged by sufficiently powerful opposing forces. This version was similar to the real element osmium, the densest metal and part of the platinum group. In the X-Men, adamantium comes from meteors.
The DC Comics universe had their own version of a super-strong metal but it was called Promethium, which is historically derived from the same ideas of ancient Greek mythology. However, Promethium is a real element, making it problematic for a fictional universe to utilize in storytelling.
Vibranium
Let’s hang out in the Marvel Universe for a while longer and discuss Vibranium. Vibranium has the ability to absorb, store, and then release great amounts of kinetic energy. It can absorb sound, create earthquakes, and generally annoy other lifeforms. The original Vibranium also came from meteors and was mined in the fictional land of Wakanda. It became associated with the characters Black Panther and Captain America. Additional versions of Vibranium appeared in story lines, including an artificial and a “sentient” variety. One variation was called the “anti-metal” because it could cut through any known metal.
Vibranium has been given more credence outside of the fictional realm by relating it to real substances. In the book The Secret Science of Superheroes, Mark J. Whiting compares Vibranium to existing and potentially new elements and finds it’s not that far beyond plausibility, that it could be “a high-entropy shape-memory alloy composite, reinforced with a ceramic”, which makes it currently out of reach of current materials technology, buy maybe not future technology.
In 2016, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies developed a lightweight carbon fiber composite material they called Vibranium. From what I can gather, there have been attempts to trademark the name for several products of all kinds but the legality of these trademarks is unclear to me.
In 2022, a viral video circulated with claims that “electric” rocks were found in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The deceptive video appeared to show rocks that could produce electric sparks. Confusion arose with the mining of coltan in this region, which is ore containing rare metals niobium and tantalum. Commentators claimed that “real world vibranium” had been found, noting the similarity to the story of the fictional Wakanda. See more on the Electric Rocks hoax here. This is a good example of how entirely wrong ideas sound credible and bleed into the news because of our famililarity from fiction.
Kryptonite
Kryptonite has even more relation to real-world chemistry as well as having a well-known reputation in popular culture. Moving over to the DC comic and cinematic universe, Kryptonite was a MacGuffin in the Superman saga. In it’s iconic green mineral form, it originated from the planet Krypton and fell to earth as a meteorite. First mentioned on the Superman radio show in 1943, it appeared in the comics much later in 1949 to add drama to the story as a useful danger to the hero. Kryptonite didn’t seem all that rare, however, since many of Superman’s enemies managed to have it on hand. Its power was to disrupt Superman in unpredictable ways but not regular humans. Different forms of Kryptonite, in all sorts of interesting colors and states, have different effects. The “-ite” suffix indicates that it’s a compound, not an element, although the “-ite” may be a throwback to its appearance as a meteorite. Kryptonium, what we might surmise is the elemental name, was only ever used outside the official canon as representing the element of which Kryptonite is the ore.
Krypton, however, is a real element, number 36 on the periodic table, a noble gas discovered in 1898. Its properties have nothing to do with its fictional namesake.
The formula for Kryptonite was said to have been written on a container of it in the movie Superman Returns. This formula, minus fluoride, matches that of a mineral recently discovered in Serbia called Jadarite (sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide). Several Superfans have attempted to pin down the probable location of Kryptonite on the period table of elements but, being a compound, you can’t.
Even more than Unobtainium, Kryptonite has become so well-known that it is used in popular terminology, primarily as a metaphor for the one weakness of an otherwise all-powerful character (AKA, the “Achilles Heel” trope).
Orichalcum
Pronounced like “OR-eh-CAL-cum”, Orichalcum (also as orichalcon, orihalcon or orichalc) is known as the precious metal of the fictional Atlantis, second only to gold. Mentioned by Plato in the Critias dialogue, it was legendarily mined in Atlantis where the most important buildings were coated with it, making them shine with a red glow. Orichalcum appears in several ancient writings and means “mountain copper” in Greek. Like the Atlantis myth, bits of truth have been exaggerated into a fantastical tale. Ancient writers were not clear what orichalcum was. Coins and ingots have been found that are likely made of what is referred to as orichalcum. These are comprise of 80% copper and 20% zinc with some traces of lead, tin and other metals. Other items that may be referred to as Orichalcum are pure copper or copper alloys, bronze, or brass. The name may also have been applied to the mineral chalcopyrite. The mix of metals resulted in Orichalcum being malleable, but stronger than copper and more resistant to tarnishing.
It’s not clear if the ancients obtained orichalcum as an ore or if they processed it. In Ancient Aliens, season 12, episode 2, the ridiculous commentators suggest that ingots of Orichalcum were made using an advanced technology (in Atlantis, of course) and given to the people by extraterrestrials. Sure…
Orichalcum remains a popular metal for fantasy media where it is employed as a “do-anything MacGuffin”. Its special properties can be strength, high value, super resistance, room temperature superconductivity, and sometimes it even floats. Maybe it’s better named Versatilium or Swissarmyknifium.
Dilithium
Star Trek’s infamous Dilithium, a crystal used in warp drives (to travel faster than the speed of light), has a healthy real and fictional scientific background. In reality, dilithium is, literally, two covalently bonded lithium atoms, which exists in nature as a gas. In the Starfleet ships, dilithium was a metallic crystal considered to be a unique element used to regulate the matter-antimatter reaction. Using it up resulted in decrystalization. Used improperly, it could cause the formation of a unstable wormhole.
There is a rumor that lithium was first proposed in the script but natural elements can pose creative problems down the line. The quality of rarity is always useful for fantasy metals. Dilithium was only found on a few planets in the galaxy.
A periodic table appearing in one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, showed Dilithium as having an atomic weight of 87 which places it between rubidium and strontium. However, its characteristics were not following normal natural convention.
Sometimes scientific finds sound a lot like fictional concepts. In 2012, researchers were working on “a fusion cell using deuterium and a stable isotope of the metal lithium in a crystalline structure” that could aid space flight. They compared it to Dilithium crystals.
Mithril
This is my favorite fantasy metal, and, it’s also the most widely pilfered one. Enthusiasts of the Tolkien legendarium know Mithril plays a key part (if, still, as a MacGuffin) in the history of Middle Earth. Mithril is not unique, however, to Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Spelled in various ways, with comparable properties, it appears in many RPGs and media including D&D and the Warcraft series. However, Tolkien created the word from his invented Elvish to mean “grey brilliance”. Mithril, in general, is a bright silver metal most obviously similar to titanium in color, corrosion resistance, and light weight. Gandalf, via Tolkien, describes it as able to be worked like copper and polished like glass or silver, but it did not tarnish. It was light, but harder than tempered steel with supernatural properties to block blades.
Among the important items in Middle Earth made of mithril were the chainmail shirt given to Bilbo by Thorin, the dwarf king, that was later handed down to Frodo for his own perilous journey. Mithril formed the ring of power, Nenya, that was worn by Galadriel. It appears much earlier in the history, particularly for use in a stunning, shiny elven ship called Vingilot. Mithril is a huge player in the history of dwarves of Khazad-dûm who mined the ore in Moria – the last remaining source of the metal in the world. A community of elves living nearby were on good terms with the dwarves, crafting great objects out of mithril. The ore ran deep, and the dwarves were greedy to have the increasingly rarer material. They mined too deep and released a very ancient and nasty Balrog, which halted mining and eventually caused the dwarves to abandon the underground city. An alloy of mithril is used on the door to Moria, the gates of Durin, visible only in starlight. Mithril was later used to restore the glory of the white city of Gondor after the fall of Sauron.
Red mercury
The final fantasy metal is the modern mythical red mercury. Its history is deliberately confusing as it was likely used for disinformation purposes by the Soviet Union during the Cold War to suggest they were in possession of a high-temperature superconductor and key ingredient for nuclear weapons. Originally, it may have been an alternative name for a nuclear isotope. Another claim that appeared in the mid-1990s was that red mercury was a shortcut way to enrich uranium. Anyone who sought red mercury was clearly up to no good, so it was useful to “sell” in order to catch terrorists. It eventually became a contemporary legend as a mysterious material that could cause huge explosions with a small amount, like a miniature neutron bomb. The founder of the neutron bomb, Samuel Cohen, claimed that it was a real chemical perfected by the Soviets to make small fusion bombs, but that the US government was suppressing the information. This claim was never confirmed and the International Atomic Energy Agency denies it existed.
A different type of red mercury is described as a magical healing elixir with the power to also summon djinn. Medieval alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan (of dubious origin) said the most precious elixirs were hidden in the pyramids. In recent translation, this evolved into the idea that red mercury was found in the mouths of mummified pharaohs. Various homemade media has popularized this and other myths of red mercury.
Social media spreads these tales to a new generation even though the substances doesn’t make sense. Red mercury is described as a red liquid. However, other stand-ins may be mercury antimony oxide, or cinnabar, which is mercury sulfide, a genuine red-colored ore of mercury used to make vermillion pigment. The tiny grain of truth propels the continued circulation of exaggerated tales by very insistent and credulous storytellers.
You can still find dark web/black market sites claiming to sell it. Back in 2004, three men were arrested in the UK for trying to buy it from an undercover reporter. One of the men claimed he thought it was a chemical to wash discolored money. The men were acquitted because red mercury doesn’t exist so it was not actually a crime.
So there you have it, my choice of top fantasy metals. If I missed your favorite fantasy metal, please share in the comments.
#adamantium #chemistry #dilithium #elements #fantasyMetals #fictional #iludium #Kryptonite #MCU #mithril #Orichalcum #redMercury #scienceFiction #Tolkien #unobtainium #vibranium
https://sharonahill.com/?p=8522
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Fantasy metals – not all Bolognium
Science fiction and fantasy media regularly include magical or exaggerated substances as essential parts of the story. In this piece, I explore my top fantasy metals that appear in movies, comics, literature, and other popular media. When starting out my research, I found an overwhelming array of fantasy metals with more showing up all the time, particularly in role-playing games. I picked eight, with the first example being more of an overarching element (of the literary kind) that depicts many general qualities of fantasy metals. An apt generalization in Entertainment Weekly explained: “All of them are shiny, all of them are rare, and all of them have some sort of ridiculous name. They tend to be impossibly strong and can withstand incredible force. Sometimes, they even have magic powers.”
Discussion of fantasy metals is pertinent to “spooky geology” in several aspects. Most disturbingly, there are a surprising number of people who believe such amazing substances are real or have real world counterparts with similar special properties. Most people are poorly versed in highly technical topics of chemistry and physics. It’s not difficult to find real-world references to exaggerated or magical inorganic substances connected to some amazing claim, or being sold with the promise of special powers. Fact is blurred by popular fiction.
A useful way to inoculate an audience from falling for a scam or pseudoscience is to show examples and explain what’s really going on.
Educators use discussion of fantasy metals to teach about chemistry and physics. Students can examine the fictional depictions to work out what is and isn’t possible and why. Because the periodic table of elements shows the consistency and predictability of the properties of earth materials, examining fantasy metals can help students put fundamentals of chemistry into understandable context in a fun and engaging way.
Unobtainium
Most metals in fictional plots fall under the trope of “Unobtainium” – a term used not only in fiction, but in engineering and in general popular culture as a substance that is impractical or impossible to get, thus, unobtainable. In the extreme sense, the term (or an alternate name for it) is used to represent something that is wished for but doesn’t exist. In science fiction, the unobtainable substance is typically needed to remove real-world physical restrictions, such as to make faster-than-light travel possible, to overcome gravity, or to make objects nearly immune to damage. With creative license, fantasy metals can do anything you need them to, or they can fail dramatically for added interest.
In this sense, Unobtainium, and all other fantasy metals, are handy plot devices called “MacGuffins” which are objects, devices, or events that are necessary to the story and the motivation of characters. The MacGuffin is often the trigger for or center of the story, though, if removed from the story, it would have no intrinsic interest on its own. The fantasy metal (or stone, which is an upcoming future post), is frequently dangerous if handled improperly, or has some other bizarre quality at least to some characters.
Unobtanium as depicted in the movie Avatar was a rare compound used as an energy conductor that enabled interstellar commerce. The magnetic field was so intense that it disrupted human functions. The name was used explicitly as “Unobtainium” but it appears that was not originally intended – used as a placeholder, they just could not come up with a suitable name.
“Unobtainium” in other contexts has some fun alternate names: Unaffordium, Veryrarium, and, possibly my favorite, Bolognium, that strongly indicates a skepticism of its existence. Another great example of the Unobtainium trope is Eludium or Iludium – with the nifty name indicating that the material is illusive or eludes attempts to find it. Recall that Marvin the Martian tried to use an Iludium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator to blow up earth in Looney Tunes episodes.
Oh Goody, he found the iludilum.The following examples of fantasy metals are often serving as versions of Unobtainum and as MacGuffins. They sound remarkably interchangeable but some have unique properties and interesting, and ever more convoluted, back stories. Many also appear in complex related storylines or transcend their most popular literary context to show up in games or other media with slightly different spellings or properties. Because they are magic and not following natural laws, the rules are loose.
Adamantium
“Adamant” has historically been used to refer to a substance (often a stone) equivalent to diamond in hardness. Applied to a metal, it is a nearly indestructible steel alloy. Derived from Greek Mythology, adamantine is used repeatedly in myth and legends from ancient times to the present. Adding the suffix “-ium” was a typical way to create a elemental name. So, eventually, the world was gifted with the fictional metal Adamantium. The name was first used as a product brand name in 1912 for a non-corrosive bronze listed in the journal Mechanical Engineer. In 1941, the name was used in a short story called “Devil’s Powder” as the composition of a bullet. But the most famous Adamantium was forged in the Marvel comics and cinematic universe where the dark shiny grey metal – able to be honed to a sharp edge that can easily penetrate other metals – became the skeleton and claws of Wolverine. Marvel later introduced variants of Adamantium that could be damaged by sufficiently powerful opposing forces. This version was similar to the real element osmium, the densest metal and part of the platinum group. In the X-Men, adamantium comes from meteors.
The DC Comics universe had their own version of a super-strong metal but it was called Promethium, which is historically derived from the same ideas of ancient Greek mythology. However, Promethium is a real element, making it problematic for a fictional universe to utilize in storytelling.
Vibranium
Let’s hang out in the Marvel Universe for a while longer and discuss Vibranium. Vibranium has the ability to absorb, store, and then release great amounts of kinetic energy. It can absorb sound, create earthquakes, and generally annoy other lifeforms. The original Vibranium also came from meteors and was mined in the fictional land of Wakanda. It became associated with the characters Black Panther and Captain America. Additional versions of Vibranium appeared in story lines, including an artificial and a “sentient” variety. One variation was called the “anti-metal” because it could cut through any known metal.
Vibranium has been given more credence outside of the fictional realm by relating it to real substances. In the book The Secret Science of Superheroes, Mark J. Whiting compares Vibranium to existing and potentially new elements and finds it’s not that far beyond plausibility, that it could be “a high-entropy shape-memory alloy composite, reinforced with a ceramic”, which makes it currently out of reach of current materials technology, buy maybe not future technology.
In 2016, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies developed a lightweight carbon fiber composite material they called Vibranium. From what I can gather, there have been attempts to trademark the name for several products of all kinds but the legality of these trademarks is unclear to me.
In 2022, a viral video circulated with claims that “electric” rocks were found in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The deceptive video appeared to show rocks that could produce electric sparks. Confusion arose with the mining of coltan in this region, which is ore containing rare metals niobium and tantalum. Commentators claimed that “real world vibranium” had been found, noting the similarity to the story of the fictional Wakanda. See more on the Electric Rocks hoax here. This is a good example of how entirely wrong ideas sound credible and bleed into the news because of our famililarity from fiction.
Kryptonite
Kryptonite has even more relation to real-world chemistry as well as having a well-known reputation in popular culture. Moving over to the DC comic and cinematic universe, Kryptonite was a MacGuffin in the Superman saga. In it’s iconic green mineral form, it originated from the planet Krypton and fell to earth as a meteorite. First mentioned on the Superman radio show in 1943, it appeared in the comics much later in 1949 to add drama to the story as a useful danger to the hero. Kryptonite didn’t seem all that rare, however, since many of Superman’s enemies managed to have it on hand. Its power was to disrupt Superman in unpredictable ways but not regular humans. Different forms of Kryptonite, in all sorts of interesting colors and states, have different effects. The “-ite” suffix indicates that it’s a compound, not an element, although the “-ite” may be a throwback to its appearance as a meteorite. Kryptonium, what we might surmise is the elemental name, was only ever used outside the official canon as representing the element of which Kryptonite is the ore.
Krypton, however, is a real element, number 36 on the periodic table, a noble gas discovered in 1898. Its properties have nothing to do with its fictional namesake.
The formula for Kryptonite was said to have been written on a container of it in the movie Superman Returns. This formula, minus fluoride, matches that of a mineral recently discovered in Serbia called Jadarite (sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide). Several Superfans have attempted to pin down the probable location of Kryptonite on the period table of elements but, being a compound, you can’t.
Even more than Unobtainium, Kryptonite has become so well-known that it is used in popular terminology, primarily as a metaphor for the one weakness of an otherwise all-powerful character (AKA, the “Achilles Heel” trope).
Orichalcum
Pronounced like “OR-eh-CAL-cum”, Orichalcum (also as orichalcon, orihalcon or orichalc) is known as the precious metal of the fictional Atlantis, second only to gold. Mentioned by Plato in the Critias dialogue, it was legendarily mined in Atlantis where the most important buildings were coated with it, making them shine with a red glow. Orichalcum appears in several ancient writings and means “mountain copper” in Greek. Like the Atlantis myth, bits of truth have been exaggerated into a fantastical tale. Ancient writers were not clear what orichalcum was. Coins and ingots have been found that are likely made of what is referred to as orichalcum. These are comprise of 80% copper and 20% zinc with some traces of lead, tin and other metals. Other items that may be referred to as Orichalcum are pure copper or copper alloys, bronze, or brass. The name may also have been applied to the mineral chalcopyrite. The mix of metals resulted in Orichalcum being malleable, but stronger than copper and more resistant to tarnishing.
It’s not clear if the ancients obtained orichalcum as an ore or if they processed it. In Ancient Aliens, season 12, episode 2, the ridiculous commentators suggest that ingots of Orichalcum were made using an advanced technology (in Atlantis, of course) and given to the people by extraterrestrials. Sure…
Orichalcum remains a popular metal for fantasy media where it is employed as a “do-anything MacGuffin”. Its special properties can be strength, high value, super resistance, room temperature superconductivity, and sometimes it even floats. Maybe it’s better named Versatilium or Swissarmyknifium.
Dilithium
Star Trek’s infamous Dilithium, a crystal used in warp drives (to travel faster than the speed of light), has a healthy real and fictional scientific background. In reality, dilithium is, literally, two covalently bonded lithium atoms, which exists in nature as a gas. In the Starfleet ships, dilithium was a metallic crystal considered to be a unique element used to regulate the matter-antimatter reaction. Using it up resulted in decrystalization. Used improperly, it could cause the formation of a unstable wormhole.
There is a rumor that lithium was first proposed in the script but natural elements can pose creative problems down the line. The quality of rarity is always useful for fantasy metals. Dilithium was only found on a few planets in the galaxy.
A periodic table appearing in one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, showed Dilithium as having an atomic weight of 87 which places it between rubidium and strontium. However, its characteristics were not following normal natural convention.
Sometimes scientific finds sound a lot like fictional concepts. In 2012, researchers were working on “a fusion cell using deuterium and a stable isotope of the metal lithium in a crystalline structure” that could aid space flight. They compared it to Dilithium crystals.
Mithril
This is my favorite fantasy metal, and, it’s also the most widely pilfered one. Enthusiasts of the Tolkien legendarium know Mithril plays a key part (if, still, as a MacGuffin) in the history of Middle Earth. Mithril is not unique, however, to Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Spelled in various ways, with comparable properties, it appears in many RPGs and media including D&D and the Warcraft series. However, Tolkien created the word from his invented Elvish to mean “grey brilliance”. Mithril, in general, is a bright silver metal most obviously similar to titanium in color, corrosion resistance, and light weight. Gandalf, via Tolkien, describes it as able to be worked like copper and polished like glass or silver, but it did not tarnish. It was light, but harder than tempered steel with supernatural properties to block blades.
Among the important items in Middle Earth made of mithril were the chainmail shirt given to Bilbo by Thorin, the dwarf king, that was later handed down to Frodo for his own perilous journey. Mithril formed the ring of power, Nenya, that was worn by Galadriel. It appears much earlier in the history, particularly for use in a stunning, shiny elven ship called Vingilot. Mithril is a huge player in the history of dwarves of Khazad-dûm who mined the ore in Moria – the last remaining source of the metal in the world. A community of elves living nearby were on good terms with the dwarves, crafting great objects out of mithril. The ore ran deep, and the dwarves were greedy to have the increasingly rarer material. They mined too deep and released a very ancient and nasty Balrog, which halted mining and eventually caused the dwarves to abandon the underground city. An alloy of mithril is used on the door to Moria, the gates of Durin, visible only in starlight. Mithril was later used to restore the glory of the white city of Gondor after the fall of Sauron.
Red mercury
The final fantasy metal is the modern mythical red mercury. Its history is deliberately confusing as it was likely used for disinformation purposes by the Soviet Union during the Cold War to suggest they were in possession of a high-temperature superconductor and key ingredient for nuclear weapons. Originally, it may have been an alternative name for a nuclear isotope. Another claim that appeared in the mid-1990s was that red mercury was a shortcut way to enrich uranium. Anyone who sought red mercury was clearly up to no good, so it was useful to “sell” in order to catch terrorists. It eventually became a contemporary legend as a mysterious material that could cause huge explosions with a small amount, like a miniature neutron bomb. The founder of the neutron bomb, Samuel Cohen, claimed that it was a real chemical perfected by the Soviets to make small fusion bombs, but that the US government was suppressing the information. This claim was never confirmed and the International Atomic Energy Agency denies it existed.
A different type of red mercury is described as a magical healing elixir with the power to also summon djinn. Medieval alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan (of dubious origin) said the most precious elixirs were hidden in the pyramids. In recent translation, this evolved into the idea that red mercury was found in the mouths of mummified pharaohs. Various homemade media has popularized this and other myths of red mercury.
Social media spreads these tales to a new generation even though the substances doesn’t make sense. Red mercury is described as a red liquid. However, other stand-ins may be mercury antimony oxide, or cinnabar, which is mercury sulfide, a genuine red-colored ore of mercury used to make vermillion pigment. The tiny grain of truth propels the continued circulation of exaggerated tales by very insistent and credulous storytellers.
You can still find dark web/black market sites claiming to sell it. Back in 2004, three men were arrested in the UK for trying to buy it from an undercover reporter. One of the men claimed he thought it was a chemical to wash discolored money. The men were acquitted because red mercury doesn’t exist so it was not actually a crime.
So there you have it, my choice of top fantasy metals. If I missed your favorite fantasy metal, please share in the comments.
#adamantium #chemistry #dilithium #elements #fantasyMetals #fictional #iludium #Kryptonite #MCU #mithril #Orichalcum #redMercury #scienceFiction #Tolkien #unobtainium #vibranium
https://sharonahill.com/?p=8522
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Raleigh Weekend Guide Holiday Edition May 23–26th
Discover the Best in Food, Art, Music, and Local Culture
Get ready for a weekend full of creativity, community, and curated experiences with Raleigh’s vibrant lineup of events. Whether you’re a foodie, an art lover, or someone just looking for something fun to do with friends, there’s something for everyone in the heart of the city.
Friday, May 23
Start Strong with Music, Theatre, and a Great Meal
Feel Good Fridays at The Mecca | 7:30 AM–2 PM @ The Mecca Restaurant Start your weekend with Southern comfort food and downtown vibes at one of Raleigh’s oldest restaurants. Jazz in the Courtyard ft. Jose Albizu Jazz Trio | 7–10 PM @ Sitti Authentic Lebanese A sultry evening under the stars with jazz rhythms, hosted by Sitti & Gravy Italian-American Kitchen. KidsWrite! Festival 2025 | 7–9 PM @ Burning Coal Theatre Company A unique showcase of youth-written plays brought to life by professional actors—imaginative, inspiring, and unmissable.
Saturday, May 24
A Day Packed with Flavor, History, and Adventure
Saturday Run Club at Dorothea Dix | 8:30–9:15 AM Jumpstart your Saturday with a group run through scenic Dix Park. African American Third Ward Walking Tour | 10 AM, 12 PM, 2 PM @ Pope House Museum Explore Raleigh’s rich cultural heritage in this compelling walking tour. Neighborhood Mulberry Stroll + Sip | 11:30 AM–12:30 PM @ Current Wellness Enjoy mindful movement followed by refreshing sips. A Taste of Downtown Raleigh Food Tour | 2:30–5:30 PM @ City of Raleigh Museum Sample the city’s best bites while learning about its flavorful history. Darkness RISING Block Party | 2–6 PM @ Moore Square Celebrate Black arts and mental health with live performances, community, and purpose. Scavenger Hunts Downtown Raleigh Treasure Hunt | 2–3 PM @ Sir Walter Coffee Sip N’ Stroll Treasure Hunt | 2–3 PM @ Crank Arm Brewing Team up, explore, and compete for local prizes! True Crime & Curious Tales Tour | 4:30–6 PM @ Raleigh Walking Tours Discover the strange and shadowy stories hidden in Raleigh’s streets. Best of North Carolina 2025 (Closing Weekend) | 11 AM–4:30 PM @ Gallery C Don’t miss your last chance to see this incredible collection of North Carolina artistry.
Sunday, May 25
Art, Wellness, and Sweet Treats
New Moon Intention Soundbath | 10–11 AM @ The Self Care Marketplace Set intentions and unwind with soothing vibrations. Graffiti Art Class: Break The Wall | 11 AM–2 PM @ The CoLab Express yourself in this hands-on street art workshop. NC Sugar Rush | 12–6 PM @ City Plaza Indulge your sweet tooth with desserts galore from some of the state’s top bakers. Fat Positive Flow | 4–5 PM @ Current Wellness Empowerment and inclusivity meet in this community-focused yoga session. Half-Priced Spaghetti & Meatballs | 11 AM–10 PM @ Gravy A beloved Sunday tradition you’ll want to dig into.
Monday, May 26
Memorial Day Vibes
“Meet Me at Slim’s” Neighborhood Mingle | 4:30 PM–2 AM @ Slim’s Downtown Cap off your weekend with good drinks and even better company. Bingo Night at The Longleaf | Evening @ Longleaf Hotel Low-key fun with prizes and plenty of local flair.
Stay Connected
For updates and more Raleigh happenings, follow DoRaleigh on your favorite social media platforms. Whether you’re new to town or a lifelong local, there’s always something happening in the City of Oaks.
Make your weekend unforgettable. Make it Raleigh.
#Arts #downtownRaleigh #events #Food #music #News #RaleighWeekendEventsGuide #WeekendRoundup
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Raleigh Weekend Guide Holiday Edition May 23–26th
Discover the Best in Food, Art, Music, and Local Culture
Get ready for a weekend full of creativity, community, and curated experiences with Raleigh’s vibrant lineup of events. Whether you’re a foodie, an art lover, or someone just looking for something fun to do with friends, there’s something for everyone in the heart of the city.
Friday, May 23
Start Strong with Music, Theatre, and a Great Meal
Feel Good Fridays at The Mecca | 7:30 AM–2 PM @ The Mecca Restaurant Start your weekend with Southern comfort food and downtown vibes at one of Raleigh’s oldest restaurants. Jazz in the Courtyard ft. Jose Albizu Jazz Trio | 7–10 PM @ Sitti Authentic Lebanese A sultry evening under the stars with jazz rhythms, hosted by Sitti & Gravy Italian-American Kitchen. KidsWrite! Festival 2025 | 7–9 PM @ Burning Coal Theatre Company A unique showcase of youth-written plays brought to life by professional actors—imaginative, inspiring, and unmissable.
Saturday, May 24
A Day Packed with Flavor, History, and Adventure
Saturday Run Club at Dorothea Dix | 8:30–9:15 AM Jumpstart your Saturday with a group run through scenic Dix Park. African American Third Ward Walking Tour | 10 AM, 12 PM, 2 PM @ Pope House Museum Explore Raleigh’s rich cultural heritage in this compelling walking tour. Neighborhood Mulberry Stroll + Sip | 11:30 AM–12:30 PM @ Current Wellness Enjoy mindful movement followed by refreshing sips. A Taste of Downtown Raleigh Food Tour | 2:30–5:30 PM @ City of Raleigh Museum Sample the city’s best bites while learning about its flavorful history. Darkness RISING Block Party | 2–6 PM @ Moore Square Celebrate Black arts and mental health with live performances, community, and purpose. Scavenger Hunts Downtown Raleigh Treasure Hunt | 2–3 PM @ Sir Walter Coffee Sip N’ Stroll Treasure Hunt | 2–3 PM @ Crank Arm Brewing Team up, explore, and compete for local prizes! True Crime & Curious Tales Tour | 4:30–6 PM @ Raleigh Walking Tours Discover the strange and shadowy stories hidden in Raleigh’s streets. Best of North Carolina 2025 (Closing Weekend) | 11 AM–4:30 PM @ Gallery C Don’t miss your last chance to see this incredible collection of North Carolina artistry.
Sunday, May 25
Art, Wellness, and Sweet Treats
New Moon Intention Soundbath | 10–11 AM @ The Self Care Marketplace Set intentions and unwind with soothing vibrations. Graffiti Art Class: Break The Wall | 11 AM–2 PM @ The CoLab Express yourself in this hands-on street art workshop. NC Sugar Rush | 12–6 PM @ City Plaza Indulge your sweet tooth with desserts galore from some of the state’s top bakers. Fat Positive Flow | 4–5 PM @ Current Wellness Empowerment and inclusivity meet in this community-focused yoga session. Half-Priced Spaghetti & Meatballs | 11 AM–10 PM @ Gravy A beloved Sunday tradition you’ll want to dig into.
Monday, May 26
Memorial Day Vibes
“Meet Me at Slim’s” Neighborhood Mingle | 4:30 PM–2 AM @ Slim’s Downtown Cap off your weekend with good drinks and even better company. Bingo Night at The Longleaf | Evening @ Longleaf Hotel Low-key fun with prizes and plenty of local flair.
Stay Connected
For updates and more Raleigh happenings, follow DoRaleigh on your favorite social media platforms. Whether you’re new to town or a lifelong local, there’s always something happening in the City of Oaks.
Make your weekend unforgettable. Make it Raleigh.
#Arts #downtownRaleigh #events #Food #music #News #RaleighWeekendEventsGuide #WeekendRoundup
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Hello world!
* #Introduction in my new #Mastodon home, as I've just changed instance (& for new folks around!)
I'm a 🇧🇷 researcher in #MediaPolicy & #MediaEconomics at the University of Salzburg 🇦🇹.
I'm interested in media/tech structure (ownership, economics, governance) & political theory.
My current big project is the management of the Euromedia Ownership Monitor, which will be released in Jan (www.media-ownership.eu).
I'm a proud dad & I like to play heavy metal 🎸 in the free time 😊
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Less than one week to apply! #academics #PhD #commodon #MediaPolicy #MediaEconomics
==
Looking for a paid PhD position in a nice city w/ friendly & competent fellows? 😁 Willing to research media/internet politics & economics? Want to be involved in EU-funded projects?
You've got it! Come work with us at the University of Salzburg!
Apply by 23 Nov.
Link for details and application:
https://www.plus.ac.at/kommunikationswissenschaft/aktuelles/academic-positions-in-the-department-of-communication-studies/Glad to help if you want to discuss the position!
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A #inflação no Brasil e em praticamente todo o mundo não é de demanda, mas de desorganização da produção, em muito por causa da #pandemia.
Tratar essa inflação com alta de taxa de #juros é um erro conceitual.
Ou uma decisão política: transferir ainda mais renda para os ricos, uma transferência que não é limitada pelo #TetoDeGastos.
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Ох, я дочекався.
Українська платформа для публікації текстів з можливістю редагування, верстки.
І...там вже купа гарних матеріалів.
Друкарня.
Раджу с усієї сили -
Dear #commodon community:
Which #instances would you recommend for creating institutional Mastodon accounts (for research groups & projects)? Do we already have such a service provided by #ICA, #IAMCR, #ECREA or similars?
#media #communication #journalism studies
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#Mastodon and #Fediverse are in a big fight. They will need this kind of support / resources if they are supposed to go mainstream.
Libertarian FLOSS friends are unwilling to see this kind of institutions around, but this is real world. In the real world, the fight is a fight of big powers.
#PublicService #PublicServiceMedia #PSM #DigitalInfrastructure
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Only ten days to apply!
#commodon @communicationscholars #PhD #MA #media #PlatformPolicy #governance #democracy #HumanRights==
The EuromediApp is accepting applications for a Spring School in Venice. PhD and advanced MA students are highly encouraged to apply. One week of input & training on how to increase participation in digital governance!
🗓️ Dates
* Application: 23 Dec 2022
* Feedback: 10 Jan 2023
* Spring School: 11-15 Apr 2023More info and application: https://euromediapp.org/events/spring-school-european-democracy-and-emerging-communication-orders/
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Iron Ladies playing "Writing on the wall" for your #Christmas
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Iron Ladies playing "Writing on the wall" for your #Christmas
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Iron Ladies playing "Writing on the wall" for your #Christmas
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Iron Ladies playing "Writing on the wall" for your #Christmas
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Чомусь смерті нема саме після смерті
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Як вичислити сммницю, яка графоманить ще з часів ЖЖ. Дуже просто, замість слова "Бог", пише - "Б-г".
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I am currently reading through a collection of German folk tales from the #Alsace , in the French-German border regions.
And the regional differences are quite fascinating - there are numerous tales that mention "Feen", the German term for "fairies", while that term is almost completely absent in other German-speaking regions.
This only confirms my conviction that it would be inappropriate to call the many spirits in German folk tales as "fairies", since that evokes associations that aren't really appropriate for most German-speaking regions.
#fairy #folklore
https://archive.org/details/stoeber_Die_sagen_des_Elsasses/