Lys, The Narrow Sea, second week, third moon of 294 AC
After several weeks and thousands of gold coins' worth of purchases I finally had a second proper lab in what had once been the old Ormollen quarry in southern Lys. One of the old, crumbling watchtowers had been repaired then converted into a combination of forge, chemistry lab and ritual chamber. The ground floor had the forge, mini-glassworks and some of the heavier equipment, the first floor had various boilers, distillers, a collection of minerals, chemicals and leftover experiment results or tools I had made myself, and the ritual chamber on the second floor was more secure storage for enchanted gear and magical substances rather than a more traditional witch's sanctum.
The faint grinding of metal on metal met me as soon as I entered, the bulky armored form of a wight turning the crank of an oven-sized dynamo, cables from the contraption running to a smaller crucible glowing the bright orange-yellow of a molten mineral at over two thousand degrees. Touching a finger into the molten liquid and feeling it out with stone-shaping, I nodded in satisfaction. With most of the dynamo's output going into the heating the process was slow, but the weak fire-proofing spell had prevented the mixture from oxidising on contact with the air, the crucible itself and the second electrode were made of carborundum that would not corrode, and the wight could keep cranking the dynamo indefinitely. In a day or two more, the molten alumina would have been fully converted into aluminium and operation 'Troll the Citadel' would be a go.
Leaving the wight to its cranking, I took a seat next to the forge and considered my next project. After the battle of Saelys and my last growth spurt, mere repair and adjustment to my arms and armor would not suffice. A relatively slow month and jumping between random projects for the lulz was enough rest; it was time to get serious again. Lord Stark's party and the Manderly forces would take another four weeks to get into position for the final approach through Bolton lands, so spending that time to upgrade my gear and hammer the recruits into shape was the best option.
The first hour for this day was spent doing tests on various leather samples, from stabbing and hacking at them, to tearing them by main force, to grinding at them with sandpaper, to exposing them to corrosive substances. Unsurprisingly, both aurochs hide and goatskin proved several times tougher than cowhide for the same thickness, with goatskin being lighter as well. The hard silvery skin of a lysene giant fish was harder still and water-resistant, but it turned brittle when too dry. The three best samples were a grey, rubbery sample that gleamed like hardboiled egg, a pebbly, green-grey hide that was very familiar, and a softer yet still pebbly darker green that had my eyes try to slide away from it, almost as if it would disappear if I stopped looking.
Leviathan leather from Ibb, lizard-lion hide from the North, phantom turtle skin from Qarth. All three quite expensive yet strong enough to be fit for armor even without processing. At less than an inch of thickness the leviathan leather probably came from baby leviathans, the only ones even the best whalers could reasonably hunt. Considering my need to sail across the Narrow Sea on occasion and the remote possibility of some adult leviathan taking umbrage at the use of said leather with ship-wrecking enthusiasm, I set it aside. The phantom turtle skin held echoes of magic and considering its origins, it had probably found its way into the hands of House Ormollen merchants through some warlock's machinations. I had no idea what kind of magic traps they might have added to it and I did not feel like finding out so it, too, was out. Lizard-lion hide on the other hand not only lacked any significant drawback but setting up a trade deal with the Crannogmen would be mutually beneficial and improve relations with House Reed.
Choice made, the next few hours were spent on testing the hide's potential in various uses and with various processing methods. The "boiled leather" approach with the best rabbit glue we could make resulted in armor comparable to low-quality steel. It was more prone to wear and tear but did not rust and was water resistant on top of being a lot faster to manufacture and adjust to individual wearers. The end price and weight were about the same, but we could armor our rank and file in months instead of years.
Rabbit glue was not the only possibility; sorcery allowed for materials and designs even modern science would find impossible. With a fire-resistance spell, soaking leather into molten minerals to produce composites became possible. The molten material infused the porous leather much like the molten glue would have, with results reminiscent of fiberglass and similar modern materials. Steel and leather resulted in a composite almost as hard as the base steel but a little tougher against impacts at a little over half the weight. It was vulnerable to chemicals as well as fire as soon as the fire-resistance spell ended and it could not be repaired by a smith, but it provided provided superior armor if only due to its lower weight. Alumina and leather resulted in a composite slightly tougher and harder than steel at only the weight of aluminum, but needed a much longer time to infuse the leather for some reason. Since I was the only one who could make it and my time was limited, it was unlikely to be used for anything except as a showpiece.
Several other minerals produced mildly interesting results, with quartz resulting in a lightweight, quick to make but ultimately weaker than steel material, but the greatest success was carborundum. As soon as the test piece got out of the crucible and was no longer nearly white-hot, it turned into a hard, matte-black solid similar to dragonbone. Stronger than steel at less than half the weight, it was hard enough that hacking at it with a steel axe left only scrapes before the weapon's edge was blunted even with my strength. It made a better armor material than anything a normal smith could make, or even most modern composites, the only problem was the amount of power and time needed to make it. Making enough for my own arms and armor would take days and without the pulsing red gem feeding me a steady trickle of power would have left me worn out before making even a pauldron, so it would only be for my own use or a champion or two. No matter; it would be a placeholder until I learned how to make true magical materials.
xxxx
The day after the leather tests, I tried my hand in another project. In a crucible of solid flame, I used magic to force carborundum into a fully molten state instead of sublimating, then used Valyrian stone-shaping to coax it into the shape I wanted it to take. I had expected the complexity of what I was envisioning to be a problem, but the yellow-white, blindingly bright molten ceramic reacted almost as well to Valyrian techniques as pure obsidian. The real problem proved to be lack of precision in what I was asking of my magic. What I was attempting to make had been made before - if not with even close to similar methods - but my knowledge of the field was lacking. Magic could fill in details the human mind could not handle or did not know... but not in a natural, physics-based way.
The first result was an abnormally heavy crystal, almost as heavy as iron and blacker than an empty hole in outer space. It was about twice as dense as carborundum, twice as tough and hard, but unfortunately twice as brittle and as soon as it cracked under testing it exploded into highly abrasive black sand that appeared to be normal carborundum in every way. I suspected the magic had somehow condensed the material before locking in the very unstable product.
The second result was a waxlike blob of black glass that made every source of light closer than my exact height behave oddly. Everything became brighter and dimmer at the same time, with white materials looking like polished ivory, yellows gleaming like coins of various denominations, reds becoming like copper sheets covered in spilled blood, and shadows cast by those lights but not normal darkness becoming like dark holes. The effect ended as soon as the glass-like blob was put in a box away from light sources and I decided to conduct further testing at a later time.
The third result was a translucent brownish-black plate that seemed to be made out of tiny glass-like needles. As soon as it was struck it broke apart in said needle-like filaments, each one sharp enough to pierce through steel plate if pressed point-first yet flexible enough to wrap around one of my fingers. Trying to tie one into a knot made it snap and shatter into tiny, even sharper pieces that sliced into my skin more easily than a surgeon's scalpel. Carborundum filaments, it turned out, could be pretty nasty if misused. This meant that they warranted further testing, especially as shrapnel for explosive devices. A filler that could cut through light armor would make my still crude magical grenades far more effective.
The fourth result was just a crystal plate that seemed more matte black than usual but did not echo oddly with magic - not any more than anything else I made with magical smelting anyway. It proved resistant to cuts and jabs or even the average blow from a mace, but a two-handed blow with a sledgehammer cracked the plate with only slightly more difficulty than a normal carborundum plate of the same thickness. Another failure... but we were getting closer.
The fifth result was a brownish transparent glass with a visible network of filaments going through it. Hammering it broke it to pieces, the rutile-like inclusions making its durability a lot worse than what I wanted. Still, it was valuable experience in knowing what did not work, especially in the fine details of the plate's internal structure.
Results six through twenty-three showed a gradual improvement in both flexibility and fracture toughness, outpacing normal carborundum within the first few tests and then improving from there. The original idea had not been new back on Earth; it was the same reinforcement concept as steel rebar in concrete and had been used for over two and a half thousand years since the building of the old temple of Zeus in Athens. The mechanics became slightly more complex on the microscopic scale of complex composites and ceramic-metal matrixes, but the principles were the same. Oddly enough, reinforcing a given material with itself still worked because complex microstructures spread out loads, limited fracture propagation, and were more flexible than a monolithic structure - often several times more flexible. It took another five tests to optimize the structure further, which was impressively quick. Then again, once magic had a rough idea of what the caster wanted, it tended to fill in details by itself. That was evident in healing almost every time, but was no less true here.
The twenty-ninth attempt ate two-handed hammer blows that would have shattered normal carborundum until the steel hammerhead bent out of shape. Attempts of carborundum fiber-reinforced carborundum back on Earth had been an order of magnitude harder to break than carborundum alone. My results were better, probably due to magic shenanigans similar to those that allowed ice to be piled up several times further than should have crumbled under its own weight. The problem was that the material was an opaque, flint-like dark grey.
Half a dozen more attempts well into the night made the resulting plate lighter and clearer, but no matter how pure the initial material, the result was no clearer than a light grey crystal, almost like honey seen in a black and white television. Vague shapes were still visible through it if it was thin enough, but that made it useless for its intended purpose. Instead of beating my head against the metaphorical wall, I sat down and thought less magic and more physics. Not that an illusion could not have made it transparent... but that would have meant making a permanent magic item for every application. Now... how did internal refraction work again?
Attempt number forty-one was finally ready in the early hours of the third day. I should probably have slept and retried with a clear head but screw it, I was close and magic meant minor things like bodily needs, the laws of physics and common sense could be kicked off the path to greatness with minor consequences that would only matter to future Flann. This time, the carborundum fibers inside the plate were very, very thin - thinner than the wavelength of visible light. They were also so well-fitted into the surrounding carborundum matrix they might as well have been a single piece - and opticts seemed to agree, because the plate was entirely transparent without losing out on durability. Enough durability that even repeated harhammer strikes with my full strength failed to make a dent on the half-inch-thick crystal.
Operation Helmet was a go.