Fantasy Metals
In Real Life, a metal is an element of the periodic table which belongs to one of certain groups/columns and has a specific type crystal lattice with free electrons. In fiction, especially fantasy, a metal is shiny stuff with wonderful properties like super strength, lightness, magic resistance and so on, often not resembling any of the metals found in the periodic table. Metals that are brittle, soft, flammable, react violently with water or air or are otherwise useless for smithing swords and shields from them never appear in fantasy, despite there being a lot of these in Real Life. This trope (a supertrope to Mithril and Orichalcum) describes the "shiny and wondrous" kind of metals.
Note that this is mostly a Fantasy trope. Science-fiction examples are only good if they are from a work that is "science" in name only (such as four-color comics or space fantasy like Star Wars or Warhammer 40,000); harder-science materials actually explained as high-tech alloys with some verisimilitude aren't. In a nutshell, Wolverine's adamantium and Boba Fett's Mandalorian iron are examples of this trope, but a composite alloy of titanium and carbon nanotubes isn't.
Real Life examples are only allowed if they are in fact occult superstitions (like hard mercury) or well-known hoaxes (like red mercury).
The most often-encountered types of fantasy metal are:
- Mithril (variously spelled mithral, mythral or mythril): a lightweight, very strong, silvery metal, similar to the real-world metal titanium. The name is Sindarin for "silvery glitter". Appeared in JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings as an Infinity Plus One Metal, but in later examples it's a mid-level miracle metal only, above steel but below adamantium.
- Orichalcum (variously spelled orichalcon, orihalcon or orichalc): a metal first appeared in Plato's version of the Atlantis myth. The name means "mountain copper" in Greek, and it, indeed, often appears the color of copper or bronze. Orihalcum's properties vary heavily from source to source: sometimes its schtick is strength, sometimes it's high value, sometimes it's magic resistance, sometimes it's room-temperature superconductivity.
- Adamantium (variously spelled adamantine, adamantite or adamant): the name comes from Greek "adamas", diamond. And, indeed, this metal is diamond-hard and much more strong and resilient than diamond to boot.
- Meteoric iron (variously called sky iron, Thunderbolt Iron, star iron, and so on) is a real alloy, but its depiction in fantasy is very often a very different metal than it is in reality. The typical "miraculous" meteoric iron is a jet-black metal that is much stronger than regular iron and often has magical properties as well.
The list of fantasy metals is much more than that, but most examples are work-specific and shall be listed in the examples list.
A fantasy-specific subtrope of Unobtainium.
Tropes used in Fantasy Metals include:
- JRR Tolkien's Arda has, beyond mithril, a jet-black metal called galvorn. Galvorn, even stronger than mithril, is invented by Eol the Dark Elf and the secret of its making was lost when he and his son Maeglin, who also had the know-how, died.
- The Book of Lost Tales, Tolkien's very early draft for Silmarillion, also gives us tilkal, an Infinity Plus One Metal that can only be made by Aule, the god of blacksmiths. Its name is an acronym of Quenya names for iron, copper, silver, gold, tin and lead, the six naturally occurring metals known to the Elves, used as its ingredients.
- Dungeons & Dragons collected lots of them with time, including everything that could be borrowed from elsewhere.
- Forgotten Realms has a handful of exotic metals of its own - and loads and loads of alloys and surface treatments, of magical and mundane origins alike, with properties from purely decorative to really weird. Attempts to make custom alloys is the main branch of dwarven alchemy, of course, but elves and even halflings have some "fantasy metallurgy" traditions too.
- sourcebooks clarify that "adamant" is a pure metal (fantasy uranium, so to speak) - very hard, easily enchanted, resistant to most damaging effects, but being almost as fragile as glass, it's used mostly for etching styluses (those are good, but this stuff costs 5x more than gold by weight and far from commonly available even at that price). "Adamantite" is its ore. "Adamantine" is an adamant-silver (mostly) weapon grade alloy - retaining other advantages of adamant including heat resistance, but also very tough. Which makes it very hard to work with - practically only the dwarves and dark elves have smiths trained in this area, but of course both these peoples gathered quite a reputation for not having an agreeable, eager to share nature.
- Arandur - mostly holds edge well and mildly absorbs force magic, and some other nice properties, both metallurgy and magic related.
- Dlarun - sort of fantasy aluminium that responds to heat treatment and is easier to produce, but rare.
- Hizagkuur - exotic metal that reflects magic and naturally produces electric charge, mostly used for reinforcement of gates and suchlike.
- Mithral (of course) - sort of fantasy titanium; looks good and absorbs magic a little.
- Zardazik - soft ferromagnetic metal mostly useless in pure form, but selectively phasing through flesh and retaining this quality in alloys more suitable for blades, mostly used for concealed weapons.
- Forgotten Realms has a handful of exotic metals of its own - and loads and loads of alloys and surface treatments, of magical and mundane origins alike, with properties from purely decorative to really weird. Attempts to make custom alloys is the main branch of dwarven alchemy, of course, but elves and even halflings have some "fantasy metallurgy" traditions too.
- The Elder Scrolls series has quite a lot of fantasy metals.
- TES' Mithril is a lightweight, mid-level metal used to make armor. It's otherwise typical and fairly unremarkable.
- Ebony is a dark gray or brownish-gray metal, sometimes with brown or yellowish veinlets, that is very heavy and very strong, used to make superb weapons and armor.
- Daedric metal is a special kind of Ebony which is infused with demonic souls. It's dark gray with red veinlets, and, basically, Ebony But More So. It's always the high-end, top of the line metal in the games.
- Elven Steel is a kind of superb steel with greenish or golden hue. In Skyrim, its recipe was revealed: it's made by treating iron with a mineral called moonstone; the weapons variant of the steel has also some quicksilver (mercury?) added.
- Orcish Steel was always assumed to be just high-quality steel, but in Skyrim it was revealed (or retconned?) that it's an alloy of iron and orihalcon.
- Dwarven Metal is a Lost Technology alloy that looks like copper or bronze, but its exact composition (and even its proper Dwemer name) is forgotten.
- Adamantium is a rare metal in this 'verse, not appearing in all games; in Morrowind it's a high grade, silvery metal for weapons and armor, almost on par with ebony. It's the best metal for making medium armor; technically, Indoril armor is better, but it's bonemold rather than metallic and it's impractical to wear it because it angers Ordinators.
- "Glass" isn't a metal, but is treated here as metal-like. It's supposedly some kind of super strong, lightweight and resilient volcanic glass that is green. In Morrowind, natural glass was mined; in Skyrim, Morrowind's mines were out of order because of a slight local apocalypse, so glass was smelted artificially by melting moonstone and malachite together.
- In real-world occult alchemy, there was believed that a method exists to make mercury hard at room temperature. At least one medieval Hermetic recipe exists to make a ring of invisibility from hard mercury.
- Red mercury was a hoax perpetrated by Soviet KGB. It was ascribed some miraculous properties like making simple and compact nukes; the purpose of the hoax was sting operations to catch terrorists and rogue state agents seeking easy ways to obtain nukes.
- The Star Wars universe contains some:
- Cortosis, which is a metal hostile to the Force and also with an ability to short out lightsabers. Another famous ability of cortosis is that its ores are constantly electrified and capable of electrocuting anyone who handles them carelessly.
- Phrik is similar to cortosis, but more tame. It doesn't short out lightsabers, but is immune to them as well.
- Beskar (Mandalorian iron) is similar to phrik. Mandalorian armors are typically made of beskar.
- Glasteel is a transparent metal.