Trace metals are still metals, and chemical compounds containing metals can be broken down, soooo…
How much blood would a rust monster have to ingest to benefit from the iron ?
Would an anemic be a ‘diet’ drink for them ?…or for a vampire ? 😉
Not sure I properly understand all the organic bits but it seems like iron makes up a little more than 0.3% of Hemoglobin A which in turn amounts to about 15% to 20% of our roughly 5 to 6 liters of blood. Looks like a rather small nail to me.
And still, with all the organic chemistry going on, what do people focus on? “Hey, there’s iron in there!”
Anemia is usually caused by the lack of iron, not other stuff to make hemoglobin. The lack of the other stuff generally causes more general problems, but is fortunately rarer.
So, that gives us between 0.003 x 0.15 x 5 = 0.00225 and 0.003 x 0.2 x 6 = 0.0036 liters of iron. Roughly an average figure of 0.002925 liters. Let’s turn those into milliliters for convenience, low estimate: 2.25 ml, high estimate: 3.6 ml, average 2.925 ml. One ml is one cubic centimeter.
Iron’s volumetric mass is, according to the first duckduckgo search result I got, 7860 kg/cubic meter. There’s one thousand grams in one kg, and one million (100 x 100 x 100) cubic centimeters in one cubic meter, so that means the volumetric mass is 7.86 g per cubic centimeter.
So we have between 2.25 x 7.86 = 17.685 g and 3.6 x 7.86 = 28.296 g of iron in an adult body’s total supply of blood. With an estimated average of 2.925 x 7.86 = 22.9905 grams. Let’s just say 23 grams.
Some other random website tells me that a five-inch nail weighs 28 grams while a four-inch nail only weighs 8 grams. So our average blood nail is not exactly five inches, but close to it.
In any case, it’s probably insufficient to feed a rust monster. Plus that iron is there to help carry oxygen and carbon dioxide, meaning it probably counts as being already rusted (oxidized).
Those were mass percentages. Guess I should have said 5 to 6 kg of blood (1 liter = 1 kilogram is a good estimate for anything water-based though I guess the actual density of blood could be very slightly higher). So it comes to somewhere around 2.25 to 3.something (give or take) grams of iron.
It’s not rusted, it’s a complex ion. But I doubt rust monsters can eat iron by the single atom, any more than you can eat bread by the microscopic crumb.
Don’t forget that iron is contained in *all* cells and is a vital cofactor of a lot of our enzymes, with particular concentrations in bone marrow and liver. The iron in our haemoglobin is only a small part of the total.
I don’t want to go through moderation so I won’t post a link, but check out “Composition of the human body” on Wikipedia, specifically the starred note for iron: 3g for an adult human male, 2.3g for an adult human female. The numbers would, of course, be different for non-humans (these are elven lands, after all) or children.
Rust monsters derive sustenance by converting iron into iron compounds. They can’t perform the reverse conversion any more than mammals can turn poop into food.
I was going to wonder what iron components are since iron is elemental, but I guess in a D&D universe (that isn’t order of the stick) the elements are earth, air, fire, and water. I could see iron being compounded out of earth and a little water, which would be nutritious if you could digest it.
“Compounds” are not the same thing as “components.” They’re pretty much opposite, in fact. Argus is claiming that rust monsters get sustenance by adding stuff to iron, not by breaking iron into pieces.
This is a dubious assertion for multiple reasons, including “rust monsters can eat other metals, Rusty himself having a particular preference for gold” but it’s still not the same statement you thought it was.
…I mean, rust monsters are magical monstrosities. They rust iron so quickly it should be catching fire and can survive solely on ferrous metals. I don’t think the biochemistry is the hindering factor here.
Rabbits have to eat their poop in order to properly digest it, the process requires two trips….
Other mammalian carnivores eat it along with the rest of their prey and brea kit down, calories are calories.
The part where Rusty doesn’t seem to be a mammal might be more relevent to the concept though.
I’d suggest a rust monster derives it’s calories used for sustenance either from the heat generated by the oxidation or reduction of metallic compounds and base elements or magic…probably magic.
Clearly not (well, clearly she either isn’t present or doesn’t drink blood, not quite as clear which one it is). If they smell blood, she didn’t drink it.
Never has Rusty delivered a more chilling line, he’s normally a silly bug who eats metal, but that last panel is so Ominous despite his goofy face. MY blood got chills.
This brings up a mildly interesting question, what does Rusty eat in town? Metals aren’t a common “trash” item, they’d be melted down as scrap and recast, reforged, etc. So unless they’re buying him snacks all the time… he’s probably eating people’s ‘furniture bits’, like the nails int he wall, the errant candle holder, etc…
And there’d be almost nothing in the wilds for him…
Obviously, rust monsters normally live in places where they can get enough food by eating armor of adventurers. And they are probably not only monsters who would die of hunger if there would be no adventuring group for month or two. Luckily, the stream of adventurers is steady.
(no, you really are not supposed to think so hard about how dungeons works)
“(no, you really are not supposed to think so hard about how dungeons works)”
And wouldn’t have… except the author made the ‘mistake’ of bringing it up. Which is usually how this sort of “immediate fridge logic” works, something comes that suggests things “work in a certain way”, you notice and think “Okay, but that would also apply to all the previous times that it didn’t work in this way…”
It’s like if you’re playing a video game and there are never any farms or trade wagons going between towns and there’s a quest to “help fight this town’s famine – you have to go beat up brigands and bring back the food supplies they stole from the trade wagons”, if the game is very cartoonishly/fantastically done, you might ignore it. But if the game’s been following certain “states of detailed verisimilitude” so far, you might ask “I’ve never seen any trade wagons and where is this food even grown?”
You might keep playing the game and enjoy it just fine, but it’s a moment of dropping out of the immersion. Suddenly you have questions not being answered in the medium.
Keep in mind, this is a universe with a functioning metal band scene, violent bloodsports similar to modern sporting events, and printed t-shirts as merch. Tech level’s a bit higher here than your ‘typical’ fantasy ‘verse. He probably eats discarded Cloaker-Cola cans, dislodged railship spikes, tins of canned meat after they’re empty, and stuff like that.
Even in reality-land, there are creatures that can hibernate for years when food is scarce. In a universe where wizards can cast Time Stop and magic ignores conservation of mattenergy, there’s no reason to assume that a Magical Beast slash Monstrosity even needs food to survive.
Not sure if someone pointed this out already, but shouldn’t the second to last image be mirrored? Otherwise Rusty is just sort of teleporting for dramatic effect.
The composition could probably use some work, yes, but if we assume the “dumpster” is behind Roxy and Rusty in panel 1, their positions relative to Mimic mostly make sense at least. Unfortunately, Rusty’s expression in the last two panels is nearly the same despite looking in opposite directions, which kills the sense of movement. I would have left Rusty out of the semifinal panel so that his head turn in the final panel is in comparison to his previous appearance in the fourth panel, where he’s staring at the “dumpster”. His “Not Iron!” dialogue bubble would then point to his face in the next panel over.
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Trace metals are still metals, and chemical compounds containing metals can be broken down, soooo…
How much blood would a rust monster have to ingest to benefit from the iron ?
Would an anemic be a ‘diet’ drink for them ?…or for a vampire ? 😉
According to the internet, you’ve got about a nail’s worth of iron in your blood. They never specify how BIG a nail, but either way that’s not much.
Not sure I properly understand all the organic bits but it seems like iron makes up a little more than 0.3% of Hemoglobin A which in turn amounts to about 15% to 20% of our roughly 5 to 6 liters of blood. Looks like a rather small nail to me.
And still, with all the organic chemistry going on, what do people focus on? “Hey, there’s iron in there!”
Anemia is usually caused by the lack of iron, not other stuff to make hemoglobin. The lack of the other stuff generally causes more general problems, but is fortunately rarer.
So, that gives us between 0.003 x 0.15 x 5 = 0.00225 and 0.003 x 0.2 x 6 = 0.0036 liters of iron. Roughly an average figure of 0.002925 liters. Let’s turn those into milliliters for convenience, low estimate: 2.25 ml, high estimate: 3.6 ml, average 2.925 ml. One ml is one cubic centimeter.
Iron’s volumetric mass is, according to the first duckduckgo search result I got, 7860 kg/cubic meter. There’s one thousand grams in one kg, and one million (100 x 100 x 100) cubic centimeters in one cubic meter, so that means the volumetric mass is 7.86 g per cubic centimeter.
So we have between 2.25 x 7.86 = 17.685 g and 3.6 x 7.86 = 28.296 g of iron in an adult body’s total supply of blood. With an estimated average of 2.925 x 7.86 = 22.9905 grams. Let’s just say 23 grams.
Some other random website tells me that a five-inch nail weighs 28 grams while a four-inch nail only weighs 8 grams. So our average blood nail is not exactly five inches, but close to it.
In any case, it’s probably insufficient to feed a rust monster. Plus that iron is there to help carry oxygen and carbon dioxide, meaning it probably counts as being already rusted (oxidized).
Those were mass percentages. Guess I should have said 5 to 6 kg of blood (1 liter = 1 kilogram is a good estimate for anything water-based though I guess the actual density of blood could be very slightly higher). So it comes to somewhere around 2.25 to 3.something (give or take) grams of iron.
It’s not rusted, it’s a complex ion. But I doubt rust monsters can eat iron by the single atom, any more than you can eat bread by the microscopic crumb.
It rusts on exposure to air.
Don’t forget that iron is contained in *all* cells and is a vital cofactor of a lot of our enzymes, with particular concentrations in bone marrow and liver. The iron in our haemoglobin is only a small part of the total.
I don’t want to go through moderation so I won’t post a link, but check out “Composition of the human body” on Wikipedia, specifically the starred note for iron: 3g for an adult human male, 2.3g for an adult human female. The numbers would, of course, be different for non-humans (these are elven lands, after all) or children.
About enough for a one-inch nail
Ah, so you’d need nine people to start a nail-based band…
Rust monsters derive sustenance by converting iron into iron compounds. They can’t perform the reverse conversion any more than mammals can turn poop into food.
I was going to wonder what iron components are since iron is elemental, but I guess in a D&D universe (that isn’t order of the stick) the elements are earth, air, fire, and water. I could see iron being compounded out of earth and a little water, which would be nutritious if you could digest it.
I think you misunderstood.
“Compounds” are not the same thing as “components.” They’re pretty much opposite, in fact. Argus is claiming that rust monsters get sustenance by adding stuff to iron, not by breaking iron into pieces.
This is a dubious assertion for multiple reasons, including “rust monsters can eat other metals, Rusty himself having a particular preference for gold” but it’s still not the same statement you thought it was.
…I mean, rust monsters are magical monstrosities. They rust iron so quickly it should be catching fire and can survive solely on ferrous metals. I don’t think the biochemistry is the hindering factor here.
Humans can’t turn poop directly into food, but I’ve been to a fast-food joint that came close.
Tell that to all the dogs I’ve seen eating their own “diamonds”…or those of another animal, for that matter.
Rabbits have to eat their poop in order to properly digest it, the process requires two trips….
Other mammalian carnivores eat it along with the rest of their prey and brea kit down, calories are calories.
The part where Rusty doesn’t seem to be a mammal might be more relevent to the concept though.
I’d suggest a rust monster derives it’s calories used for sustenance either from the heat generated by the oxidation or reduction of metallic compounds and base elements or magic…probably magic.
Well, that’s not ominous at all, no sir!
Ancient undead. That’s what’s ominous.
A clue? No, not ominous at all. A rise in tension, yes.
Eat blood?
The Ezra theory suddenly seems more likely. Except, does she even still drink blood?
Clearly not (well, clearly she either isn’t present or doesn’t drink blood, not quite as clear which one it is). If they smell blood, she didn’t drink it.
Vampires drinking blood is so mainstream. If anything, she’d probably make it into a cappuccino or something.
The plot coagulates….
“stumble _into_ an ominous clue th’elves o’erlooked”
So, this seems like an ominous clue the elves overlooked. Now, they have to stumble into it.
The problem is that it looks like there’s nothing to trip over. They might just walk up.
Never has Rusty delivered a more chilling line, he’s normally a silly bug who eats metal, but that last panel is so Ominous despite his goofy face. MY blood got chills.
I don’t even think his face in that panel looks goofy. Mike’s art here is incredible, the bug actually looks scared.
I like how Rusty is immediately able to tell the difference.
Other than that, all I can say is Mimic was right (they did stumble onto a clue) and Dun Dunn DUNNN~!
A dark line like that is made even darker coming from Rusty. OOC is Serious Business.
I love how Mimic is “shading his eye” as he “looks” around. 😀
It’s so that Roxy knows he’s pulling his weight and not just waiting for the opportunity to become an unassuming piece of furniture.
This brings up a mildly interesting question, what does Rusty eat in town? Metals aren’t a common “trash” item, they’d be melted down as scrap and recast, reforged, etc. So unless they’re buying him snacks all the time… he’s probably eating people’s ‘furniture bits’, like the nails int he wall, the errant candle holder, etc…
And there’d be almost nothing in the wilds for him…
Obviously, rust monsters normally live in places where they can get enough food by eating armor of adventurers. And they are probably not only monsters who would die of hunger if there would be no adventuring group for month or two. Luckily, the stream of adventurers is steady.
(no, you really are not supposed to think so hard about how dungeons works)
“(no, you really are not supposed to think so hard about how dungeons works)”
And wouldn’t have… except the author made the ‘mistake’ of bringing it up. Which is usually how this sort of “immediate fridge logic” works, something comes that suggests things “work in a certain way”, you notice and think “Okay, but that would also apply to all the previous times that it didn’t work in this way…”
It’s like if you’re playing a video game and there are never any farms or trade wagons going between towns and there’s a quest to “help fight this town’s famine – you have to go beat up brigands and bring back the food supplies they stole from the trade wagons”, if the game is very cartoonishly/fantastically done, you might ignore it. But if the game’s been following certain “states of detailed verisimilitude” so far, you might ask “I’ve never seen any trade wagons and where is this food even grown?”
You might keep playing the game and enjoy it just fine, but it’s a moment of dropping out of the immersion. Suddenly you have questions not being answered in the medium.
Keep in mind, this is a universe with a functioning metal band scene, violent bloodsports similar to modern sporting events, and printed t-shirts as merch. Tech level’s a bit higher here than your ‘typical’ fantasy ‘verse. He probably eats discarded Cloaker-Cola cans, dislodged railship spikes, tins of canned meat after they’re empty, and stuff like that.
Techno/magical level. Some of it is probably not running on the same stuff as ours.
Even in reality-land, there are creatures that can hibernate for years when food is scarce. In a universe where wizards can cast Time Stop and magic ignores conservation of mattenergy, there’s no reason to assume that a Magical Beast slash Monstrosity even needs food to survive.
Critical missives #1: Rusty goes around eating antiques and doorknobs.
Wait a minute…pale elves…aversion to sunlight…smell of blood…
Are we looking at vampire elves? Or, dare I say, “blood elves”?
Not sure if someone pointed this out already, but shouldn’t the second to last image be mirrored? Otherwise Rusty is just sort of teleporting for dramatic effect.
The composition could probably use some work, yes, but if we assume the “dumpster” is behind Roxy and Rusty in panel 1, their positions relative to Mimic mostly make sense at least. Unfortunately, Rusty’s expression in the last two panels is nearly the same despite looking in opposite directions, which kills the sense of movement. I would have left Rusty out of the semifinal panel so that his head turn in the final panel is in comparison to his previous appearance in the fourth panel, where he’s staring at the “dumpster”. His “Not Iron!” dialogue bubble would then point to his face in the next panel over.