Soul Physics
Here's another post by Mnar's player bringing you insight into the physics of Elanthia...
>>Sure, these golems probably weigh several hundred pounds each, but even small football players are able to tackle other players who weigh several times as much as they do. I just don't see why they had to change this, it doesn't make sense<<
Although I don't play any warriors characters, and I don't hunt soul golems, I have to chime in on this one. I think you may be operating under an incorrect assumption regarding just how much these things probably weigh.
These things are made of glaes. Glaes is a rather heavy metal. How heavy, exactly? Well, we can experiment a bit to find out.
Your average steel broadsword, purchased from the armory in the Landing, weighs 3 pounds. Your average glaes or mein broadsword, however, weighs 15 pounds. That's five times heavier than steel.
Steel has a specific gravity of 7.8 at 20 degrees Celsius. This means that it weighs almost 8 times as much as water, and that a liter of steel will weigh 7.8kg.
In comparison, the heaviest naturally occurring metal in the universe (outside of stellar cores) is plutonium, with a specific gravity of 19.84. It is over twice as heavy as steel. Glaes, if our earlier estimation with the broadsword is correct, has a specific gravity of around 39.
If this were correct, it would mean that a single liter of glaes weighs 39 kilograms. For those of us used to English measurements, a gallon milk bottle filled with glaes would weigh in at over 321 pounds-about as much as one of those football players we saw mentioned earlier.
"The soul golem is a rough statue of a man made entirely from glaes. It is a massive construct, with broad powerful shoulders towering above you. An elongated, serpentine head sits atop a thick, tree trunk-like neck. Its two glowing eyes stare into space with the unfocused malice of the dead."
~Description of a Soul Golem
This description doesn't give us much to go on in terms of concrete measurements, but we can make some educated guesses. First, it seems that this statue is roughly modeled after a burly human "towering above you." Since we don't know what race 'you' are, we have no choice but to assume it applies to everyone and that this statue is even taller than your average giantman. For lack of a better standard, I'm going to assume that the statue is 3 meters tall.
For our purposes, we're going to assume that the statue is modeled after a fairly fit, tall person, say 6' and 200lbs. The human body has a specific gravity of about .9, so the person we're describing has a volume of approximately 82 liters.
We can further assume that the statue isn't just taller than a human, it's also wider and deeper (otherwise it'd look like a beanpole). At 3 meters, the statue is 1.67 times taller than our 6' human. Since volume is a cubic function, the statue's volume isn't just 1.67 times that of a human, it's 1.67^3 times as much. 1.67^3 is 4.66, so our statue's volume is 4.66 * 82 liters = 381.91 liters, or 382 for our purposes.
The Soul Golem is, you'll recall, made of glaes, which has a specific gravity of 39. At 39kg per liter, our finished soul golem weighs in around 14,894kg, or 32,678lbs.
Numbers that large are sometimes difficult to imagine in the abstract. So, by comparison:
Male African Elephants, the largest land animal on earth, can weigh up to 8 tons, about half as much as a Soul Golem.
The Ford Excursion, the largest passenger vehicle on the American market, weighs 7,725lbs empty, about ¼ as much as a Soul Golem.
The 14 members of the Dallas Cowboys' offensive line weigh 4,662lbs, or 1/7th of what a single Soul Golem weighs.
This is the creature that you believe should be able to be tackled by warriors? You'd have better luck trying to tackle an oak tree.
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