Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

aaron22 wrote:...dehydrated tissue would smell like the materials used to dehydrate the skin.

it also would not be stronger than normal skin. probably be more brittle. harder, but defiantly not more durable.

There are very expensive kinds of oil-tanned leather that exist. One kind is made simply by saturating the hide in Rose Oil. Rose Oil is basically the very essense of tons of rose petals refined down into an oil. Very expensive stuff. Other similar, cheaper products also exist. Heck, the smell you know as "leather"? That's just the smell of various oxidation stats of various oils and fats, usually.

As far as brittle? We are talking about preserved (by magic) proteins. Proteins are incredibly strong. The skin cells of your dead skin are glued together by enzymes on an insanely strong level. If they weren't, they'd pull apart instead of slowly abrading away.

Heck, even today we are starting to use enzyme based glues. One exists called Moo-Glue that can glue steaks together on a molecular level. Other ones are used to replace stitches when doing eye surgeries and some cosmetic surgeries. These aren't even the ++MAGIC++ that 3.5 edition allows. Remember Wish spells?

Weighing in briefly on this, since I have a character that will, eventually, go into Pale Master. And yes, she is going the Frost Mage route.

I'm playing her as having very pale skin, and with the Frost Mage ice armor, light glints off the ice crystals. But she looks very much like Liv Moore from the CW show iZombie (played by the talented Rose McIver.)

For reference:


Note that while she looks pale for a human, she doesn't LOOK undead. Just means that you can play your PM however you want to.

See!
A little make-up and nobody will ever know!

"Hi you guys want go hunt Xvarts- I can cast Greater Heroism?"

I don’t think many people would confuse a Pale Master with a Zombie.

Apart from you, of course.

The creation of leather and the dehydration of the skin we are soeasking about is a different process. No amount of oil will lubricate complete dehydration. The skin would be fragile.

Proteins are not strong after dehydration. Peptide bonds require a shared water molecule. Hydrogenic bonds would fail and the protein/Peptide would be as strong as dust. Oil cannot fix this

Magic can make anything possible.

The process of using oils to preserve proteins is different than that. It works. You would also be 100% surprised how a little water hangs around. You do know that half the weight of sea-salt is water, correct? Simply salting keeps plenty of moisture around. We aren't talking about baking the proteins until anhydrous. Even many fats and oils carry a degree of moisture in suspension unless fully and utter refined.

Also on the note of old meat... we have examples from the age of wooden ships and sails.

"Whatever meat it may have been, the salt beef was certainly abomin- able. It could, perhaps, have been made eatable by long soaking in the steep tub, but no meat for the messes was ever soaked for more than twenty-four hours. The salt pork was generally rather better than the beef, but the sailors could carve fancy articles, such as boxes, out of either meat. The flesh is said to have taken a good polish, like some close-grained wood." -John Masefield, Sea Life in Nelson’s Time

This more than explains Pale Master Armor in a believeable way if a chunk of meat can act like wood. But how would the arm bend you ask? Using the same magic used to bend joints for Stonebody or Ironbody. Personally I kind of like the idea explaining it as similar to having a prosthetic wooden arm that doubles as a 'shield' for bonus AC.

I like your connection of salt pork and the high AC bonus the palemaster gets. We can suspect that is the method used. Plus as the character is still actually alive, then moisture could be provided naturally by normal processes in the body. And in addition that since salted meats can expire even if it is much longer than untreated meat, normal functions of the body would keep the salted meat shell that a pm has at its freshest and most wooden state.

I was more or less thinking along the lines of a natron treated body like the mummies of Egypt or even the effect of bog acids to dehydrate and deplete the minerals of bog mummies. Those are crazy fragile. Like dirt stays in the form of a clod after it has fully dried. But returns to loose dirt with even the slightest impact.