Legends: The Origin Of Adamantine

[jqavins]

Yeah, seems like as good a story as any.

Of topic:

Is Mithril actually iridium alloyed steel?

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.