Editing Miscellany (section)

===Starmetal===
Every once in a while a lump of stone and ore plummets from the sky and collides with the earth. If it is large enough to survive its fiery descent the ore may be refined from the meteorite through a laborious alchemical process. As it comes from the formless void of space starmetal is inimical to the matter that makes up the world, making weapons that are most potent against elementals and their kin. In addition, it makes a fine material to use for the creation of magical items, as it never rusts or tarnishes. When alloyed with steel, the most common alloy, it has a dull bluish hue. This alloy is typically called starsteel or durseren, in Faery.

Starmetal must be refined in an alchemical laboratory, a process taking one week for every pound of ore processed. Each pound of ore yields half a pound of star metal. The refined star metal has two primary purposes: it can be used in the crafting of non-magical, masterwork items or as components in magical items.

When used to make masterwork items a single pound of refined starmetal will yield twenty arrow or bolt heads, five daggers or spear tips, three short swords, hand axes or similar, two longswords, battle axes or similar or a single two handed sword. Metal shields or any armor up to chain mail may be fashioned from two pounds of refined starmetal while a suit of plate require four pounds. Masterwork items composed of starmetal alloy have the following qualities in addition to the typical masterwork properties:

*Weapons are considered to be magical for the purposes of hitting and damaging elemental creatures, regardless if they may only be struck by magical weapons.
*Armor and shields grant an AC of 1 greater when resisting attacks from elementals and elemental creatures, but not spells that rely on one specific element.

Magical items forged from starsteel have the following properties (and require the same amounts, as given above):

*In general, using starsteel is considered to be worth 10,000 gp of precious materials, regardless of the amount actually used.
*Each pound is valued at 1000 gp for purposes of valuable components.
*If crafting an item specifically to interact with elemental beings (such as a a brazier of elemental control, or a sword +1/+2 v. elementals) reduce the base price of the item by 2000 gp.

However, because it was born in the cold depths of space starsteel is brittle and suffers a -2 penalty to attempts to sunder or break it.