Mithril

Mithrill is the rarest and most powerful magical material, with only a few hundred pounds known to exist. Even the mighty Gudersnipe Foundation only holds a few ounces of the stuff.

Mithrill is a highly potent super-conductor and magic amplifier. Hunter Jusenkyou desribed it once: "You're on top of a 1000-story-high wizard tower made of Adamantium. I'm standing in the mud at the bottom with a single mithrill ring. I am more powerful than you."

History

In the Mage Wars, it was extremly highly sought after, yet still very rare. Tiny veins of the stuff would occasionally be found, but hundreds of tons of ore were required to extract even a few ounces of the pure material.

Ore-bearing stones were favored as building material for Mage Towers, as they provided some magic amplification, but it was extracted and purified that the metal became the most powerful. It is extremly hard, yet maluable enough to form intriciate shapes.

Of the few hundred pounds of Mithril known to exist during the Mage Wars, much of it was formed into rings or pendants. A few knives and a single sword have been observed. It was also common to embed small slivers of mithrill into more common materials to make rings. Though not as powerful as a pure mithrill ring, a small sliver was still hugely valuable.

Much of the mithrill was eventually captured by dragons durring the Second Chaotic Period and is held in dragon hordes. What little remains is usually found in museums, where it is considered a national-level treasure.

No Natural deposites of mithrill have been discovered or mined since the early Second Age.

Modern Discoveries

Legends from the Mage Wars spoke of it once being plentiful, they were in fact refering to the Planet Eladamri, which once had soaring towers of mithrill and Adamantium. This deposite was discovered by the Saratoga and some the material brought back(enough to add a six-inch plate of armor of each substance to the ship's hull). Meaning they had retrieved orders of magnitude more mithrill than were thought to exist in the whole rest of the multi-verse.

It was theorized by Jason Bur'I that the Ancients mined most of the mithrill in Antiquity, leaving behind only the poorest deposites by the dawn of the Mage Wars.

In the 43rd year of the Age of the Dragon, scientists at the Victory Research Facility discovered a way to artificially produce mithrill in supercolliders. The synthetic material was discovered to be identicle to the natural product in every way, just made artificially in a lab.

The synthetic material saw a variety of uses both as a superconductor, hull armor, and power-generator. As a conductor, it was only surpassed by metalic hydrogen. Generating power from mithrill invovled one of the few uses of Magic-Tech since the Mage Wars.