Silver is the bane of evil, the most pure and holy of
substances. Its very touch will burn evil and prevent corruption, but how pure
must an object be to truly allow it to effectively ward off a werewolf?
The three primary types of silver available on the market are
Elemental Silver, Sterling Silver, and 900 Silver.
Elemental Silver:
Also known as pure silver, this is 99.9% pure silver, (it is considered
impossible/not cost effective) to separate out the last .1% of other elements.
This is the most pure form of silver available, due to how soft it is this
silver is not commonly used in anything but jewelry (and even then Sterling
Silver is more common).
Sterling Silver:
A silver alloy, it is 92.5% silver and also contains some other elements,
commonly copper. This is the most commonly found silver around the house and
what will be available in an emergency. It is much stronger than pure silver.
900 Silver:
Within the US only items which contain at least 90.0% silver can be marked as
silver, usually with a stamp that says 900.
All three of the above have been proven with great success
to burn and harm werewolves and other monsters. A hunter should feel no fear
when using any of the above substances. In laboratory conditions the three
substances when applied to bare skin produced interesting results. The pain
inflicted on these monsters was notably higher with Elemental silver than with
Sterling and higher with Sterling than with 900. The wounds themselves showed no
additional burns or damage, however an interesting result was observed amongst
lycanthropes with regards to healing.
A slight increase in the silver content slowed the werewolf’s
ability to heal. A small 1cm incision into Werewolf A’s abdomen with a 900
silver scalpel took about 24 hours to heal (as opposed to the ten minutes when
a non-blessed, steel scalpel is used). The 92.5% took 28 hours and the 99.9%
took nearly two days for the wound to close. With subjects B and C the times
varied based on the creature’s healing ability, however there was a definite
correlation between healing and silver content.
This leads us to draw the conclusion that while a higher
silver content will not cause more damage it will slow the creature’s healing
speed and cause them considerably more pain.
Field trials produce mixed results with the above items, the
additional pain inflicted can lead to heightened aggression in the target or
submission. The actual results vary entirely on who and what the beasts once
were.
A warning: Often
times you will encounter silver that seems to tarnish a little too quickly and
then doesn’t clean up well. This can be gotten primarily from Mexico especially
in small disreputable markets. This “silver” is actually an alloy called Alpaca
silver, also known as Mexican silver, German silver, new silver, Paktong, and
Nickel Silver. These can actually contain no silver at all, being an alloy of nickel, copper, cadmium, zinc, or tin. This “silver” has no
effect on lycanthropes and has lead to the death of more than one hunter who
has been carrying these inferior knockoffs.
Gold Alloys: Silver
is often used in gold to produce different colours. Most notable amongst these
are white and green gold. An easy way to understand is the meaning of Karats
for gold. The highest number is 24K, which means that it is 99% pure gold (like
silver it is not possible to get pure gold with all other elements removed). 10K
means that there are 10 parts gold to 14 parts other alloy. The two numbers
will always add up to 24, so 12K means 12 parts gold, 12 parts other. For a
hunter’s purpose this means that the lower the Karats the more effective it
will be as there will be a higher possible concentration of silver.
White Gold: A
gold alloy made with varying amounts of other silver coloured metals. Before
trying to use anything white gold to protect yourself you will need to
determine just how much if any silver is in it. While much White gold jewelry is
a mixture of gold, palladium, and silver others are mixtures of gold, nickel,
and copper. As such a 9K white gold ring may contain up to 60% silver, or it
could contain none at all.
Green Gold: This
gold is primarily made with Silver as the alloy making it work well for a
hunter. For these items low Karats will work best as that means a higher
concentration of Silver.
Tests with gold alloys produced mixed results, as best as we
can tell the lycanthropes respond to silver in many ways as an allergic
reaction. While no lycanthrope is immune to silver some are more resilient to
it than others. Werewolf C responded to a 22k green gold chain (8% silver) with
a rash while Werewolf A was not even discomforted. The abdominal slice test was
conducted and found that while Werewolf C’s healing time was slowed by the 22k
green gold, Werewolf B required at least a 25% silver content for any
noticeable retardation of healing and Werewolf A required at least a 50% silver
content to impede its own healing ability.
In conclusion we have discovered that while lower silver
concentrations will work to cause actual damage to a lycanthrope it is highly
dependent on both the silver concentration and the ability of the beast. What
this means is that we encourage everyone to acquire an item with higher silver
content, but it should also be based off the task at hand. While a knife made
from elemental silver will cause the most damage it is too soft to be truly
effective
