ok, so, here we go, this is the visual design of Breaker of Chains (the revised for book version):

The blade is made of the extremely rare, inherently magical, and potentially very dangerous to craft metal orichalcum.

The danger is that, if you're crafting it, it's not unknown for the metal to, as a finishing touch, rip out your soul and kill you, making you part of enchantments. So there aren't a lot of items made out of it, or if they are, it's by people who don't care if they lose their souls.

The Imperial Circlets - there are crowns, but they only get pulled out for big ceremonies like coronations and weddings - are made of orichalcum, but it's an Imperial High Secret as to what enchantments or souls they may have. (I mean, I know, but that's because it may become important.)

Orichalcum is reddish-gold in color, appears in veins by itself and doesn't need to be purified, and is the hardest known material on Taeliana.It requires magical fires to forge, because regular fires just don't get hot enough. The benefit to that is you can usually heat it up in kilns and remove the other stuff around it.

There are two other fantasy metals in Taeliana - Silversteel, which is very shiny, as strong as iron but weighs half as much, and usually used by elves due to it mostly being found in the Elvenhome Mountains, and Darksteel, which looks like blackened steel, is heavier than regular steel, and holds an edge like few other things.

(yes, they are mithril and adamantite with the names filed off.)

Some other metals also appear, but they're not from Taeliana itself, but the Blessed and Fallen Planes, or the Corruptor's Realm, and usually a gift from some greater power.

But getting back to Breaker of Chains, the fact that there's a greatsword with an orichalcum blade means that it's extremely powerful as a blade. It can focus the power of dragons and emit an aura of energy; it pulls power from the Realm of Souls (aka the Astral Plane) and can damage things there; it can teleport to its wielder's hand, and

part of the soul of the extremely powerful elven mage-artificer who created it is stored within it. He died while forging it, so has lost a bunch of his memories, but still has a lot of knowledge.

[chinhands]