Legends: The Origin Of Adamantine

In the olden days of role playing, adamantine was a white, diamond hard metal stronger than steel. Wolverine's claws look like steel but cut it like butter. Over time it has morphed into a black metal, apparently to distinguish it from Mithril. (Is Mithril actually iridium alloyed steel?) But whatever it looks like in your campaign, did you ever wonder where it came from?

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Legends say the dwarves make adamantine, but they have never shared their methods with others. But the dwarven loremasters and priests know that adamantine is the bones of the Earth.

In the chaos before creation, gods came to be and fought other gods. From time to time a god died, and eventually dissolved back into the chaos. But for a time their corpses formed a safe harbor in the void for lesser gods.

The gods of the dwarves gathered such corpses into piles, building ever larger and stronger islands of safety and refuge. When the Smith began to forge the world, these corpses formed the materials of the caverns and mountains, seas and skies.

From time to time in their delvings the dwarves will encounter broken bits of the bones of the ancient gods, hammered into the ground, embedded in stone. Extracting the Bones of the Earth requires master miners. Smelting, casting, and forging the metal from its ore is a secret of the dwarven priests.

For those who doubt these legends, go to the mountains and see the bones of dragons they harvest from time to time buried in stone: a part of the stone. If dragon bones can become stone, why can the bones of the gods not?

Yeah, seems like as good a story as any.

Of topic:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by brian 333

Is Mithril actually iridium alloyed steel?

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I always find correlating fantasy materials to real world materials to be pretty much pointless. Isn't mithril supposed to be less dense than steel? Iridium is about three times denser than iron, so adding it to steel will never reduce the density, and adding more than very little will surely increase it. Also, while iridium is super hard, its tensile strength is either lousy compared to straight steel or comparable to it (still worse than hardened steel) depending on the annealing and the source I look at. Admittedly that doesn't mean a little bit couldn't increase the steel's strength.

A quick Google search does not provide any results for iridium bearing steels.

Iridium is rarely used as an alloy of steel, but in low percentages it increases the strength and hardness of steel without sacrificing the malleability and ductility of steel. It is an extremely expensive way to make steel, and iridium is far too useful in industrial catalysts and high temperature processing to waste on mass produced structural steel.

However, ifyou increase the strength of steel you can reduce the amount of material needed for a particular purpose, thus resulting in a lighter item constructed of denser material, (in much the same way a steel beamcan be lighter and stronger than a physically more massive, less dense wooden beam.)

There are vastly cheaper ways to create strong, corrosion resistant steel, but there are no metals as beautiful as iridium.

However, you are correct that it is kind of pointless to compare real and fantasy materials. It's just been something I've wondered about since I first encountered an iridium/platinum wedding ring. Platinum is pale by comparison.

I wouldn't compare Mithril to a real metal normally, but it's probably something like Vanadium. Lighter than steel, but alloyed with it to make it stronger. Look up Vanadium, it's pretty cool.

I've also heard "Mithril is aluminum and adamantine is titanium" but I just don't buy any of it.

If one wants a scientificish explanation, I suggest the following:

All matter is composed of invisibly small objects called atoms. Atoms, in turn, are composed of four even smaller particles called protons, neutrons, electrons, and manons. Most matter's atoms contain only protons, nutrons, and electroms. Atoms with different numbers of protons make the different matrrial elements like iron, gold, and carbon. (These are not to be confused withe the spiritual elements of earth, air, fire, and water.) Material elements can be combined to make compounds like ash, but I digress. Electrons are found, usually, in the same number as the protons (unless the atoms are in a compound). Neutrons are not important.

Sometimes, however, one or more of the electrons are replaced by manons. Elements made of atoms with manons have magical properties. Although many, many such elements could be conceived of, only a few are known. Adamantine, mithril, and alchemical silver are among these. It is thought that ironwood and holy water are made by substituting manons for electrons in some, but not all of the atoms that make up these compounds. Innumerable other magical materials may exist, or may possibly be created one day.