A Pb dungeon + notes from a pop science book on the periodic table

Click the map below for a Pb adventure. (Hand-drawn, keyed map when I get to it.)

Just finished a lovely book called “Periodic Tales” by Hugh Aldersey-Williams. It was a walkthrough the cultural history of the periodic table of elements. Here were some of the most interesting things I learned:

• Some common alchemical principles: Lead is primordial matter. All metal is on its way to becoming gold. Sulphur and mercury are 2 elemental metals, from which others can be synthesized. Antimony is uniquely seen as having properties of both lead and mercury.
• An apocryphal etymology for “antimony” comes from the story of the monk Basil Valentine. After having seen pigs take antimony, vomit, then fatten, he gave it to his cloister to see if they’d similarly fatten. They died, and the name arose from the chemical being an “anti-monk”. In actuality, antimony is named “against singleness”, in reference to its dual sulphurous/mercurial properties. Antimony is also called the sage’s matter and the grey wolf of philosophers.
• Shot used to be made in specialized towers. Molten lead was dropped from the top of the tower into a basin of cold water at the foot. The falling drop of lead would cool the drop into the shape of a lead bullet.
• Sulphur has long had an association with purgation and the demonic. The sulfur released in blacksmithy produces a noxious scent. “Wieland, the blacksmith god of the Anglo-Saxons… is often represented as banished along with his forge to an island because his work is so repulsive.”
• Annie Besant, a theosophist and feminist, worked with Charles Leadbeater, an ex-Anglican preacher, to “see” molecules through clairvoyance. They found gold was too complex to apprehend, but they could see and describe hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, getting weirdly close to predicting their atomic weights. One strange molecule they “saw” they first identified as helium, but after getting a sample of helium and finding the helium atoms “looked” very different, they named their unknown atom occultum.
• One account of a particularly bountiful silver mine reported that, in the wake of forest fires, molten silver would flow from the source through the soil.
• A village in Japan suffered from a mysterious bone-softening disease called itai-itai. Turns out, there was cadmium in the rice. Zinc and silver mines upriver contaminated the water, which contaminated the crops.
• One of the early ideas for the telegraph was to hook 26 operators up to the copper wires, one for each letter of the alphabet. Messages would be spelled out by shocking the operators in order.
• In some ancient systems of belief, the sky was made of meteorite-iron. In others, the wielder of a meteorite-iron sword would be invincible and all-conquering.
• In the wake of WWI, chlorine gas inhalation therapy was used to help with influenza. Calvin Coolidge notably used it.
• Bleigiessen is a method of divination where molten lead is dropped into water. The shapes it makes are “read”, similar to tea leaves.
• In Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, there’s a case of spontaneous combustion attributed to grievously imbalanced humors.
• In the early medieval period, the king of England owned many of the isle’s forests. “’Forest courts decreed severe penalties ranging from death for taking the king’s deer to blinding or castration for lesser offenses”.
• The blow-pipe is a useful field for in-the-field chemical analysis. It can be used, in conjunction with a flame, to oxidize or reduce a sample, which helps identify it. (Don’t ask me how. I’m a music major.)

And a few notable quotes:

• “These miners… may well have resented these secular intruders with their blithe unconcern for the miners’ obscure traditions.” (The “intruders” here are chemists, hunting for new elements.)
• “It is the matches that contain our phosphorus and the street lamps our hydrogen, not the other way around.” (In response to X.)
• “Lead is the reification of gravity. …Lead sarcophagi are traditionally used to preserve the bodies of popes and kings to ensure the soul does not escape.” (Organs were also historically preserved in lead.)
• “When she weeps, her tears are of red gold if they fall on solid ground and amber if they fall at sea.” (About Vanadis, after whom Vanadium is named.)
• “[Zinc arrived] too late to find a partner int he alchemical dance that paired the metals with the bodies of the solar system.”
• “The alchemist, while doing whatever it is that alchemists are supposed to do, inadvertently [made] a genuine contribution to science.”
• “Civilization… is simply organized resistance to oxidation.”

Coming next: another Archon bestiary, then probably another adventure? We’ll see. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.