Dolotai Steel

 Game Stats

• +5 damage

Description

"Dolotai steel" is the colloquial name given to the metal used in certain artifacts found in Dolotai ruins.  It is easily the most valuable metal in the world, and its production is beyond the knowledge of any civilization of the Circle.  Its use, at least in the last quarter of the 17th century, is restricted exclusively to blades.

Dolotai steel bears a visual resemblance to blackened steel, though with a distinctive iridescent pattern to it that resembles an oil slick.  It shares many of the properties that make steel desirable for weaponry: hardness, toughness, and an ability to be shaped when hot (although Dolotai steel is extraordinarily resistant to heat, and can usually only be reforged with magical aid or in the very best ClockTech furnaces).  In many ways it functions like a "super steel" - it is harder and tougher than steel, does not tarnish, and is amazingly strong even when hammered very thin.  It is also lighter than steel, although not so light as to leave a Dolotai steel sword with no weight for cutting.  Most scholars conclude that it was deliberately designed to be the ultimate in edged weapon metals, a conclusion strengthened by the fact that all extant Dolotai steel comes from excavated edged weapons.

Scholars from all disciplines have examined examples of Dolotai steel weapons over the centuries, but the exact nature of the metal remains a mystery.  It is known that the metal is thaumically enhanced, because it continues to give off thaumic radiation even after millennia in the earth.  It is also known that repeated reworking of Dolotai steel into different weapons weakens the thaumic treatments.  A few items of Dolotai steel have been reforged so many times that they no longer give off any thaumic radiation.  Curiously, the base metal thus produced is actually rather rigid and inflexible, making it unsuitable for sword blades (although even depleted Dolotai steel makes excellent daggers).  However, even the base metal is beyond the skill of alchemical science to produce.  Alchemists and blacksmiths have confirmed that Dolotai steel does contain steel, but what other substances form the finished alloy is unknown.  Attempts to reproduce the qualities of even the base metal by alloying steel with other substances have all failed.

Price

Dolotai steel is for all intents and purposes priceless.  There is a finite supply in the world, and each time the metal is reforged it loses some of the properties that make it so extraordinary.  The only known way to produce new Dolotai steel is to unearth it from an archaeological site, a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence for any explorer and one that is sure to bring both untold riches and untold trouble.