| # How Destroy mode behaves, and why |
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| The scroll is carbonized papyrus. The eruption heated the rolls to combustion temperature with no oxygen around them, so they became something close to charcoal: black, light, brittle and layered. Sheets that were pressed together during manufacture and burial are fused in places, and in other places they have bubbled or come apart. The tools are tuned to that material and not to paper. This is for fun, not a simulation of conservation practice. |
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| ## What the sources say |
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| - Carbonization left the rolls "similar to pieces of burnt wood, very fragile and extremely difficult to unroll without losing large portions of the scroll" (*A computational platform for the virtual unfolding of Herculaneum Papyri*, Scientific Reports, <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-80458-z>). |
| - The rolls are "blackened and brittle like charcoal ... easily falling to pieces with light contact". Carbonization "often causes these sheets to bubble or delaminate" (Parsons et al., EduceLab-Scrolls, 2023, <https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.02084>). |
| - Physical opening, whether by Piaggio's machine, by cutting the hard outer *scorza*, or by the 1980s Oslo method, broke the rolls into fragments and lost text (Mocella et al., *Nature Communications* 2015, <https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms6895>; *Analysis of Herculaneum Papyri with X-Ray Computed Tomography*, micro-CT of P.Herc.Paris 3 and 4, <https://www.ndt.net/article/art2011/papers/FIELD%20-%20M%2014.pdf>). |
| - Liquids did damage. Over the centuries the rolls were immersed in water, and some were painted with mercury, which turned them to mush (the micro-CT paper above; BYU Magazine, "A Library of Mud and Ashes", <https://magazine.byu.edu/article/a-library-of-mud-and-ashes/>). Humidity speeds the decay of charred papyrus (*Digitization and Digital Preservation of P.Herc. 817*, BYU thesis, <https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=11264&context=etd>). |
| - Charcoal smolders rather than flames. It glows dull orange at the burning front, shrinks and cracks, and leaves light gray ash with little smoke. That is general combustion behavior of char, used here as a qualitative guide. |
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| ## What each tool does |
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| | Tool | Behavior | |
| | --- | --- | |
| | Tear | No stretching or peeling. A grab snaps and crumbles the sheet at the grab point into small flakes and black dust, and a crack runs off along the fibers of that layer. Fractures follow the fiber direction and existing cracks. Fused layers let go easily (lower glue strength). | |
| | Crush | Powders into fine black dust and a few small flakes with very little springback. | |
| | Burn | Smolders: a dim, slowly breathing deep orange glow in the charred band creeps slowly along the fibers. Edges char and break away, flakes drop, faint smoke rises, and the ash is light gray. Sparks are rare and dull. | |
| | Water | Darkens to a matt black-brown with no gloss. The sheet swells slightly and slumps a little, with no paper-like sag. Layers lift apart, and soaked spots dissolve into black sludge that drips and drops sodden fragments onto a dark puddle. | |
| | Crumble | The whole scroll breaks up from its edges inward over about four seconds and collapses into a heap of black dust and flakes. | |
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| Dust is dark charcoal and very light. It settles at about 2.5 mm/s and drifts on air currents. The only light source is the smoldering embers. |
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