A silly little theory I have about the Triasta of Bronze

Game Discussion
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So, I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s been confused by why the Triasta of Bronze is the way it is. It’s spikes seem like they’d be good for stabbing anything except for what’s directly in front of you. It, for some reason, is a bronze-arcanium alloy, rather than just pure arcanium (if random pirates are able to get their hands on enough arcanium to make rams, surely a king could get enough for a trident/spear). Even the developers seem to be aware of the fact that in-universe, it probably wouldn’t be a super good weapon (as evident by Neviro being able to stand after Calvus attacked him with it, and also by the fact that any time Calvus hits you with the Triasta of Bronze, it only does 50 damage, which is pretty low by Calvus’s standards).

So my theory for why the Triasta of Bronze is such a seemingly crappy weapon in-universe, is that it’s supposed to primarily be symbolic and ceremonial. That would explain why it seems to prioritize looks over function, and it especially would explain why it is made out of bronze as well as arcanium, as bronze is a very fitting metal to represent Ravenna with, considering how they seem to be the number 1 producer of bronze in the War Seas.

What are the implications of this you might be asking? Well I believe that Calvus probably has some less fancy-looking arcanium spear/trident somewhere in his Castle which he would use if Ravenna was going to war or if he was getting his hands dirty with something that he had planned for or anticipated. I believe that the reasons why he uses his crappy ceremonial spear against us, may be partially because he did not have sufficient warning about our escape in order to get his war-spear/trident, and partially because he was arrogant and didn’t think he’d need to use much power to kill us.

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calvus just thought “hm which one of would look better when im going to kill em…” then picked one that would give him the worst pain imaginable

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Small issue with this theory, calvus’s weapon is partially exalted, implying he imbued it with aether extremely often. Unless he was doing 500! x3’s for the citizens of Ravenna during ceremonies, I don’t see why that would be true if this wasn’t intended as a weapon

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Keep in mind arcanium isn’t a specific type of metal. Any metal can be arcanium, since its defining trait is in the sea salt it was forged with.
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Thus, it’s most likely that “arcanium-bronze alloy” is really just pure bronze that has some sea salt mixed in. It’s still called an alloy because bronze itself is an alloy.

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What’s strange to me is that it says it can conduct “some” magic. Why only some? Is it just that he hasn’t used it long enough for it to produce a large quantity of Aether on its own? Doesn’t seem like it. The exact wording is “to allow it to conduct some magic.” It speaks of what the weapon is fully capable of doing, not just what it does in its current state. This leads me to believe that, for whatever reason, the triasta is made of low-quality arcanium.

Maybe bronze in particular can only hold very little sea salt before it starts significantly weakening, so the blacksmiths settled with this mixture that’s weak on the magical side but strong on the physical side.

But isn’t that stupid? Obviously magic is stronger than plain old metal! We hardly even use weapons themselves to attack, most of it is just the aura. Magic aura. So why not throw more sea salt in the alloy so that it can conduct more Aether?!

Well… Even if what we’re hitting people with is purely aura, it seems like the material of the weapon itself still makes a huge difference somehow. Different weapons still have different stats after all, and weapon quality has a huge effect on things like skill tiers.

And the triasta doesn’t really need to be hyper-optimized for conducting magic, does it? It was never intended to be used by anyone other than Calvus. He doesn’t need a weapon that passively generates huge amounts of Aether, since he can already do that himself. There was no reason for the blacksmiths to go all-in on the weapon’s affinity for magical conduction.

Remember, one of the main benefits of arcanium is that channeling magic through the salts isn’t as damaging to the weapon as if you just coated the metal itself. The blacksmiths probably just put in the bare minimum amount of salt required for Calvus to imbue Aether in the triasta without damaging it at all. The arcanium wasn’t hugely needed for any other reason, so from there they prioritized the quality of the bronze, since that would have a larger effect on the power of the skills.
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As for why it’s designed with the prongs jutting outward like that… I’m not too sure, but maybe that type of design is more optimal for aura usage. We shouldn’t be thinking about this from a real-world perspective; weapons in the arcane universe would probably not be designed like ours.

Looking at various weapons and their skills, we see the shape of a weapon seems to have a huge effect on how aura can be exuded from it. For example, swords can only make thin slashes of aura, while staves make large formless bullets that cause blunt wounds instead of cuts.

Maybe prongs angled to the sides allow aura to spread out of the weapon in a wider range? Enhancing the size of skills that consist of outward bursts of energy like Sparrow Thrust and Ethereal Flash.

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shortest SpectreTheFox reply:

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How come the Bronze hammer comes from Thorin, not Ravenna?

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He stole their entire supply

Also how’s this relevant

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In my defense, it was an interesting question! But I’ll happily own that :laughing:

To answer this question, we’re first going to need to go back 600 or so years ago, to the first Keraxe-Azura war…

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Honestly thats a huge fork made from bronze and arcanium

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Better yet, why is a king’s weapon of choice only of good quality when his soldiers wield mass-produced weapons of the same tier?

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For fun

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Somehow, using it as an actual fork seems like it might be more difficult than using it as a weapon.

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Honestly? Calvus is just a farmer and likes to toss the hay around, trust me

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the real interesting history, not something like a stolen bucket!