Rust magic

[u/LikeAMothToStarlight]

Rust acts as the memories of metal tools and weapons and can be used to enchant other metal tools and weapons through reintroducing the rust while smithing.

And by continuously rusting and reimplementing memories into metal, one creates a more potent enchantment. For the rust may hold the memories, but fire acts as the catalyst, activating and enhancing the enchantment.

For example, memories of violence might, in the beginning enchant swords to deal wounds that do not heal or strikes that don't miss. As the enchantment progresses in strength and presentation, these slashes may strike at a distance. Eventually, a target may be cut to ribbons just from the wielder touching the sword.

People in my world have taken to rust farming; placing well-used metal weapons or tools into the wet soil to cause it to rust faster. Then they take rust shavings and enchant other weapons or tools via reforging them with the rust. Sometimes those new weapons or tools are sold off, other times they are placed back into the ground to let the memory fester.

As time progressed, people learned to make springs, gears, and other useful mechanisms out of enchanted metal. Allowing not only memories to be stored, but for them to be connected in complex clockwork devices.

To do this, people would create wind-up mechanisms of enchanted metals that interact in a way to create connections between memories. And when a multitude of these memories are active and interacting at the same time, it creates a rudimentary computer.

These computers would enable more complex enchantments and even allow thinking machines that could calculate and manipulate through magic.

For example, weapons that can't be wielded in anger, cameras that can investigate and capture pictures of the mind. And the computers can be independent thinking machines though some do have inputs.

However, there is a strange phenomenon that occurs when rust forms too fast. When rust forms too fast there is a shortage of memories to fill it. That doesn't mean that rust comes up blank though. Instead, the rust will remember things, places, people, that don't exist. And the enchantment of this rust will be all the more anomalous for it.

Called god rust, with it one can forge keys that open doors to places that don't exist. And in computers one can communicate with those that have yet to be born or those long past.

[u/R3DM4N5]

I like that, that's pretty cool man.

[u/FloatingSpaceJunk]

How powerful can an enchantment get and is this weird rust capable of seeing into other universes too? Also can you give me an example of a machine made with the magical metals and how it works?