SharpShrapnel

Hey guys, long time lurker first time post. Just thought I'd add a few thoughts since this topic has been on my mind and I just finished a mineralogy course. I can think of a few metals off the top of my head that shatter. Tungsten Carbide is one of them. While technically not a metal, it has the appearance of a metal. Many grooms use it for their wedding rings because it is extremely hard. Hard as in resistant to scratches or abrasion. Unfortunately, in most circumstances as the hardness increases it becomes more brittle. Iron under the right circumstances can also shatter rather than dent. However, I like the crystal idea someone had earlier. Little known fact, a lot of metals can be grown as crystals. Just thought I'd throw that out there. Most likely it is a compound that has yet to be identified. In reality us humans have yet to even scratch the surface on possible combinations of elements. I have a friend who uses a super computer in order to discover the properties of new alloys. Basically what I'm saying is that whatever the shard plate is made out of, it probably grows like a crystal and has high material strength. The trade off for the high strength is that it is brittle and fractures instead of denting. The stormlight provided by either a radiant or a gemstone gives the shardplate the energy to grow the crystals since they probably don't spontaneously happen in nature. Where the actual materials come from I have no idea.