Zagro Steel

A shiny silvery steel with beautiful ripples running through it.

The steel doesn't need to be etched in acid in order to see the ripples and it's completely immune to corrosion. This steel is so inert that it's comparable to gold. Zagro steel is hard, tough, relatively light (not by much, only like 1-2%) and unstainable. Zagro Steel comes in over 45 varieties, but one of the most common variety that is found in swords is comparable to the Tri-River 121 hard which is similar to 1195 high carbon steel from the real world in it's behavior and properties). Zagro Steel is also difficult to heat treat and requires quite a bit of training to work properly. Hence the reason why East Hu-Balaiin crucible steels and Berini bloomery steels gained lots of popularity once they arrived in the Zagr. The incorrodable Zagro Steel became less popular among many blacksmiths as there were a lot of beginner friendly varieties like the 89 soft and 34 medium that came from the Tri-River city-states which were easy to forge and heat treat and much more forgiving. However, Zagro steel was still considered worth the effort for many of those who knew how to make and work it as it's incorrodeable and unstainable and keeps a good edge.

The known components include iron, carbon, chromium and nickel. There are a number of unknown trace elements that are added into the steel.

Zagro steel was developed from iron by experimenting and adding all sorts of materials to the iron. As iron was falling out of fashion in the 33rd century B.B by being much less corrosion resistant than copper even though it was more common. The increased influx of imported bronze which was superior to to plain iron (good bronze that is properly worked is as good as some mild steels and definitely better than wrought iron) was coming in via new trade routes, the iron lovers had to do something. Different smiths set to work experimenting with the iron until they found a winning combination that was immune to corrosion and harder and stronger than the imported bronze. The smiths decided to keep the recipe a secret as they made boatloads of the stuff and stashed it so that they could regulate it's market supply.The secret was so closely guarded that it was agreed that it would be forbidden to write it down or teach it to an outsider or sell it to a foreigner. If it was, all the guilty parties would wind up dead. This was such a well known fact that Mariani Cornelius was afraid of trying to cash in on bringing the discovery to to the empire and why Arquado Barbarossa never managed to find any bit of information besides what was already known. The recipe for this corrosion immune steel or immortal steel was forgotten in the 5th century A.B as the number of smiths who knew the recipe shrunk to a few dozen  and died in a major Pigeon Fever outbreak in the area. The secret was unknowingly preserved because a naughty student wrote down a very vague and coded version the recipe which he stashed somewhere. The codex was found in 1181 A.B and it took 5 years to crack the codex which had to be translated to a forgotten dead language for the translation to work. It then took another 22 years of experimentation by a guild of master smiths who finally reconstructed the immortal steel of old from the vague codex and it proved identical to what they sought after. However, the secret of the immortal steel was still ridiculously guarded and only known to the members of a secret smithing society that vanished with the codex.

Mostly plows, shovels, scythes, kitchen knives and butchers knives as having good resistant tools that don't corrode and keep an edge are pretty ideal for making tools (the reason why this was invented in the first place). It's also used for things like axes and for weapons such as swords, spears and daggers.

Zagro Steel is often used to make bladed tools and weapons or nails that are immune to corrosion. These include swords, daggers, spears, axes, kitchen knives, butcher's knives,etc.

Production of Zagro Steel involves extremely high temperatures and flying sparks. These things are quite obviously dangerous because you could get very serious burns. Blacksmiths who didn't inspect their tools properly before use and made sure that they worked properly occasionally had to deal with hammer heads that flew off their hammers and hit people on the head and killed them or malfunctioning furnaces that caused their workshops to set on fire.

CO₂ emmisions from burning charcoal, extensive logging and wood burning for producing charcoal, slag, etc.

Zagro Steel can be reforged and it often is when a tool breaks beyond repair or to the point that there would be so much grinding involved that reforging the metal will prevent it from being wasted.

Even though 39 secret stashes of Zagro steel that contained over 300 kilograms of metal artifacts were discovered by the 9th century A.B, the material is still very rare and is highly sought after as it's a dream steel for many people.

You can store it however you want as it can take a beating and will never rust or corrode.