The seven classical metals: new special materials

D&D 3.5e has "cold iron," a special form of iron dug from deep underground and worked with care, effective in bypassing the inherent immunities of some chaotic creatures. Likewise, mithril was called "true-silver" by Tolkien, among its other names. We might consider these as ennobled forms of iron and silver, special variants that express the essence of the natural form of the metal.

Antiquity knew seven metals, of which iron and silver were two: gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, tin, and mercury. This post suggests ennobled forms for the entire set which GMs might enjoy using.

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Iron: cold iron. As standard.

Silver: mithral, true-silver. Standard. However, GMs using this set might enjoy houseruling that mithral weapons bypass DR as if silver, without silver's -1 to damage. (The expense of a mithral weapon does not usually gain much for the cost anyway.)

Copper: orichalcum. Literally 'gold copper,' historically an alloy of gold and copper with mostly copper, Plato associated it with Atlantis.

Orichalcum is a form of copper found deep in the ocean. It must be worked into a final form by water-dwelling creatures, for it spoils and becomes normal copper if it touches dry air before it is tempered. It is a deep reddish-bronze. On the Planes, it is primarily found on Ossa and Thalassos. Deposits on the Prime are rare, and the sites are often taken to be sacred to the gods. Since these ores may have fallen from the Upper Planes, the supposition is not unreasonable.

Orichalcum was worked by eladrin and fey in days before men walked under the sun. They bore it in the ancient wars that raged across the Inner Planes. If a creature has an elemental subtype, orichalcum bypasses any DR it might have.

Orichalcum weapons cost as adamantine weapons to make. The material confers no particular benefits to armor.

Tin: Jovian tin -- tin was considered the metal of Zeus. Tin and lead were the only two classical metals that required smelting, and working Jovian tin requires enchantment.

Jovian tin can be made into weapons or armor, with the base material costing no more than an equal weight of silver. However, it is too brittle to serve usefully in a military capacity unless it enchanted at least as a +1 item, whereupon it gains the hardness and HP of standard steel. Jovian tin's true usefulness then becomes apparent, for it is susceptible to easy impression by magic: further enchantments ignore the first +1 enhancement when calculating the material and cost.

So, for example, a +2 shocking burst rapier made of Jovian tin would cost 2410gp for the base sword -- the same as a masterwork silver rapier with a +1 enhancement bonus -- plus 18000gp for the additional +1 enhancement and the shocking burst effect, a +2 bonus equivalent, for a total of another +3. The final weapon costs 20410gp. If it is later enchanted with the keen trait (another +2 bonus equivalent), this upgrade costs what it would normally take to go from a +3 to a +5 weapon, or another 32000gp, for a total of 52410gp.

The true features of a Jovian tin weapon still cannot exceed +10 equivalent without epic enchantment.

Lead: utter lead is inimical to living beings. Should a creature susceptible to either poison or natural disease (or both) ingest even the tiny amount that seeps into fluids, food, or combustibles stored for more than a day in a vessel made of utter lead, or take even 1 point of damage from a piercing or slashing weapon made of utter lead, it must make a DC 15 Fort save or take 1 point of Con damage. This damage does not heal naturally, and every day the victim goes without the appropriate treatment, another save must be made to prevent another point of loss. Only when remove disease and neutralize poison effects are received within 6 rounds of each other will the creature be able to begin healing.

Ingestion of further doses, or receipt of further wounds, does not cause extra Con damage but every further such intrusion increases the DC of the ongoing saves by 1.

Fortunately, permanent weapons of utter lead are difficult to make; it is an extremely heavy and very soft metal. Any bludgeoning weapon of utter lead is twice as heavy as normal but does not deal the Con damage; it does treat any other weapon of its size category or smaller as "light" in sundering attempts, though. Piercing or slashing weapons of utter lead find it hard to retain an edge. With each successful strike, add up the armor bonus (manufactured and natural, plus enhancement bonuses, but not, for example, deflection or sacred bonuses) of opponents struck. Once this total reaches 100, the edge dulls and the weapon's basic damage becomes bludgeoning, and is halved. For this reason, utter lead weaponry is typically ammunition.

Utter lead is mostly found in the Grey Waste, though deposits have been mined on Acheron and Mechanus. It costs as adamantine. Vessels of utter lead add 150gp per pound to the cost of the underlying item. Interestingly, none of these items, even enchanted versions, need be masterwork; utter lead can be shaped with crude tools.

Gold: living gold is not casually named. Its most common sources are biological: certain scales of gold dragons, or some accoutrements of high-ranking archons. The source creatures know which is which (at least, they can grasp the feel once an intrepid seeker explains the concept). They can be asked for a scale or a link, though such a request is similar to asking someone for skin graft donation -- not likely fatal, but extremely intrusive, and something that should only be done for a very good reason. It is not usually productive to attempt to take the material by force; not only are creatures biologically merged with gold typically powerful examples of their type, the living gold is very difficult to separate from the standard gold otherwise. The safest source, if one is cruel enough to seek living gold by force, is a mineral quasielemental slain on its native plane. Careful alchemical analysis can isolate the desired substance from the body of the creature, destroying the rest.

A living gold weapon bestows a "negative negative level" on undead with each strike. An undead reduced to 0 HD through this process is disanimated, releasing the original soul to its final reward if this was still trapped in the body.  The save DC to remove the levels after a day is 10 + 1/2 the HD of the being who donated most of the living gold to the weapon. If damaged but not destroyed, a living gold weapon self-heals at the rate of 1hp per day.

Mercury: The essence of mercury is prima materia, first matter: not protomatter, but the original true, natural, heavy matter in existence, or so alchemists believe. This metal is not only liquid, it is positively energetic; it gently moves and ripples on its own while stored. Prima materia is extremely unstable, too: left to its own devices, within a week about half of its weight will have transmuted itself randomly into some material item. This item can be absolutely anything of the appropriate mass: while it is most normally some common mineral or elemental substance like rock or air or water, occasionally the prima materia will transmute into something complex or valuable like diamond, wood, mithral, or meat. Even more rarely, usually after being exposed to magic, the product will be something truly incredible, like a tiny living creature, a magical item, or a flare of magma. The only way to prevent this half-life loss is to keep the prima materia stored in a coating of unguent of timelessness or other means of inducing temporal stasis.

Added to the material components of any spell of the Conjuration (Creation) school or any power of the Metacreativity (Creation) discipline, double the weight of prima materia used adds to the weight of the items that can be created, and all of the resulting material becomes perfectly real: it exists permanently, can be used as spell components, and so forth. Prima materia can also directly replace an equivalent weight of any material component the caster could replicate with such an ability if on his class list. Finally, a pound of prima materia can replace 125 XP in item crafting or spellcasting.

Prima materia can be found in the depths of Limbo, a very few layers of the Abyss, and hard-to-find sites in the Deep Ethereal. It costs 500gp/lb. Because of its decay lifetime, there must be some recent source somewhere producing these deposits, but what this could be is completely unknown.