Elven Steel Existence

[Brar]

Just reading another post made me think of something.

Elven Steel do not exist, this is a long standing misconception coming from I do not know where.
It has never existed in the first place.

For example, a DnD elven mail has the following descriptor:
Elven Chain
This extremely light chainmail is made of very fine mithral links. Speed while wearing elven chain is 30 feet for Medium creatures, or 20 feet for Small. The armor has an arcane spell failure chance of 20%, a maximum Dexterity bonus of +4, and an armor check penalty of -2. It is considered light armor and weighs 20 pounds.

No aura (nonmagical); Price 4,150 gp.

There is no such thing as "elven steel", elves only uses Mithral, nothing more exotic than that...

Here is the list of DnD special material which most, if not all, are already in game:

Code: Select all

Adamantine
Darkwood
Dragonhide
Iron, Cold
Mithral
Silver, Alchemical

There is some more regarding FR specificaly, but no elven anything...

[Selveem]

I remember reading about this and, if I remember correctly it's due to the different methods to produce mithral.

Elves may do it a different way than Dwarves/Duergar?

[Nysan]

It was a processing difference, far as I know, which is why we restricted it to elven smiths in FK. At least, thats how I always looked at it.

[Selveem]

Actually, it's Adamantine that has different ways of being worked. Elven Steel is from an edition prior to 3.0 from what I'm reading around.