Adamantium

**Adamantium** is the hardest metal known to man. It is the setting equivalent of adamantine. Adamantium and mythral are known as the heirloom metals for different reasons: mythral due to its aesthetic qualities, adamantium due to its timelessness.

Adamantium is black and matte on all but cutting edges. Due to its unique properties, only very certain parts of adamantium weapons and armor are actually made of the material. For example, an adamantium sword always has a hilt, guard, and pommel made of some other material, and adamantium armor only makes use of some small number of adamantium plates or links.

## Lore

Adamantium is also known as timeless metal and toothmetal. Adamantium is made as part of an extremely difficult process that uses numerous various materials, and when the process is complete, the adamantium piece is likewise complete, forever. A blade made of adamantium will never lose its edge. A helmet made of adamantium will never be broken. Ancient adamantium tools and weapons have been dredged up from the seabed and found to be as sharp as the day they were forged.

While this may make adamantium sound like the ultimate material to make weapons and armor out of, it comes with a strange side effect. When the adamantine process is complete, every single microscopic imperfection in the surface is likewise preserved for all eternity. Adamantium is known as toothmetal because when touching any other material, it will eat away at it. Adamantium is like fine grit sandpaper, but it absolutely never loses its grit. Mystics describe the process as adamantium stealing time from other materials, making them erode and break down so it can remain eternal.

Furthermore, due to certain metallurgic qualities and quirks, adamantium is not idea for a number of important applications. Its toothy quality makes it a poor choice for fittings, insulation, and a number of long-term bulk applications. Furthermore, the fact that it holds edges permanently means that any hard adamantium edge is likely to harm; if you tossed a cube of adamantium to someone with bare hands, it could cut a finger off.

Adamantium weapons and armor need regular service to remain functional. An adamantium sword will eat away at the join between the hilt and the blade (and a person could never hold an adamantium hilt for more than a few minutes at a time without risking injury). "Adamantium armor" is never more than 20-30% adamantium as a result.

Adamantium is a less than ideal material for ammunition. The biggest problem is that, due to its peculiar properties, bullets rarely stop when they hit much of anything and behave extremely unpredictably. Furthermore, the actual adamtine process makes the casting of perfectly round bullets difficult. Ironically, though, adamantium shot is comparitively very easy to make as the adamantine process creates small fragments of adamantium that will always be small fragments anyways. Before the development of shotguns, adamantium fragments were kept as an heirloom (and sometimes incorporated into jewelry) signifying a history of great smithing, as they had very few other uses.

The adamantine process takes several months and uses dozens of materials of both arcane and esoteric origin. When the adamantium alloy finally begins to form after a few days' treatment, the smith has only moments to finish working the material before it sets and becomes timeless. Almost all of the adamantine process is spent waiting for the finished product to cool, as the intense heat required and the high thermal inertia of adamantium means it stays hot for months at a time.

Adamantium is not completely invulnerable. Extremely high heat can break down the alloy, causing the various ingredients to react by melting or even sublimating at different points in the process. Some of the materials can be recycled from the process, but the majority of the magical and alchemical components must be replaced in order to start a new adamantine process. The ingredients that go into adamantium come from all over the world, and most cultures are at least aware of its existence, though only a few smiths in a generation ever get the chance or ability to work with it in any sense.