Infrastructure: Part Two Hundred and Thirty

Since time immemorial there was the military practice of looting the corpses of fallen enemies for valuables. Men who would view the thought of a grave robber plundering tombs in peacetime would themselves gladly take the arms, armor, boots, rations and valuables off a slain enemy, especially if it was of better quality than the paltry gear they already had and there was further fighting to do. Many warriors were be motivated in part by the prospects of such grizzly plunder. For this reason the Drow would often bind their weapons and armor with curses. If a non-drow wore cursed items or armor or wielded a cursed scimitar they would soon find themselves afflicted with a variety of ailments, from constantly slipping and tripping, uncontrollable twiching, boils, iches, rashes, vomiting, temporary blindness, bouts of unconsciousness, sharp spikes of pain and in a few cases death. This also led to instances in which mass graves full of armored drow warriors became barren for decades afterwards of grew mutated twisted plants. This meant that even after expensive cursebreaking was done only a handful of the brash, headstrong and devil-may-care would wear or wield salvaged drow runic armor. This served two purposes from the Drow's perspective: preventing their foes from using their generally high end weapons and armor against them and adding to their mystique of fear, making enemy armies more prone to break in battle. Such efforts were not spared on Janissary gear due to cost considerations, made all the more prominent due to the fact that fairly simple species specific curses would not do for human soldiers fighting other humans.

In the aftermath of the battle of Daagsgrad Drow Weapons and armor were collected gingerly from the battlefield and were sorted by how much damage they had taken and whom they were from. Janissary equipment in reasonable shape and the hastily abandoned field guns was set aside and much of it would eventually be sold abroad for what additional foreign exchange (and by extension raw materials) could gained from it, but all the metallic gear from drow warriors as well as damaged Janissary equipment, shackles and other such gear were set aside.

The next few days after the battle saw many efforts of the usual routine of life disrupted or out and out stopped by efforts of cleanup, mourning and celebration of victory. The foundries, working on a time table based around the heating and cooling of iron remained active as they had largely done through the battle. But as soon as could be arranged the open hearth furnaces were fed Drow armor, weaponry, chains, whip spikes and other such items. The magical forces inside them sputtered in the heat, giving off multicolored sparks and short arcs of lightning but eventually they would all be released as their containers melted down into the puddles of liquid steel. On the whole this was a fairly common way of dealing with cursed metal items, but Critical Mass made a note to have this disposal process recorded. Soon the image of the arms and armor of the vanquished invaders becoming more material to develop the great machine of Infrastructure would been seen across the Coldlands in newspapers, posters and news videos where it would stick its way into the minds of million. It also meant that everyone got the point several months down the line when Dalatyr shipyards launched three cargo ships named Valnothron's, Cendoliath's and Hansoliath's Gift.

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