Cold Iron: Forgery and Reality

European folklore often paints fey creatures as allergic to iron. This supports the idea that people with Bronze or Stone age technology, defeated by iron-using peoples, passed into the victors' mythology as faeries and other weird beings. The first and finest expression of this belief in gaming comes from Runequest, where technology is Bronze Age, meteorite iron is rare and near-magical, and elves and trolls can't stand it.

As with so many other issues, Runequest had the elegant solution and D&D ham-fisted it. In a medieval, iron-using society, there's nothing special about the metal itself. Thus the peculiarity, in the AD&D Monster Manual, of seeing iron as the bane of demons and other evil creatures. And the backpedaling, in a couple of entries, to insist that only "cold iron" bans a ghast or harms a quasit.

Adding injury to St. Dunstan's insult.

As I understood this back in the day, "iron" must mean something different from steel. Most likely, the carbon involved in forging weapons in the medieval-Renaissance world somehow disrupted the mojo of iron, so you would have to special-order a mace head of the same stuff as your cauldron or door handle. And, it would be reasonably balancing to say that non-carbon iron couldn't make up a useful blade, because it would be too soft or brittle.

"Cold iron" is near-meaningless, more a poetic epithet than a technical term. Iron can't be extracted from ore without heat, and "cold forging" is a modern industrial term which assumes you can die-stamp a sheet of rolled iron (which passed through heat in the smelting and rolling processes). One obvious way to get iron "cold" is to chip it off a meteorite, but with what tools exactly?

Over the years, the D&D rules got cleaned up to the point where only this "cold iron" can harm some immune monsters, and the 3rd edition SRD lists it as a special material: "This iron, mined deep underground, known for its effectiveness against fey creatures, is forged at a lower temperature to preserve its delicate properties ."

Well, but there's something too game-y balance-y about this solution, full of vague and passive rules-speak. "Stuff that harms the Weird is super expensive because it comes from a Place of Rareness." It makes sense but lacks resonance. The same goes for meteorite iron. I suppose if only dwarves or lost human races had the technology to whittle blades from meteorites that would sound a bit cooler. But ...

Why not have iron (as opposed to steel) just show up the ability of non-carbon-forged tools and household implements to resist the supernatural? After all, the silver that devils and werewolves fear is dirt-common in the D&D world. Silver pieces are crappy coins that make slightly more expensive sling bullets than lead. A party in my campaign once bought a silver teapot, filled it with sand, and swung it as a flail against the equivalent of wights. So why not have desperate halfling housewives fending off a quasit with a skillet? Or adventurers chucking their iron door spikes at ghasts? 

As a bonus, if elves can't stand iron spikes, it throws a little game balance into elven PC's who (at least in AD&D) are far superior to poor old humans.

Fantasy Science

For the past six or so sessions I have been DM'ing the Band of Iron in an adventure set in an ancient compound on a remote, mountainous island, built by the lost race of Golden Men. It's fair to say that the adventure, while light on treasure, has opened up unknown vistas, revelations about cosmic and human history,and encounters with wonders unknown to our heroes so far.

Now, a classic conceit of Science Fantasy is to have the "wonders of the ancients" be the products of a technological civilization, even ours ...

YOU BASTARDS

Not so, the World of Mittellus. It's inevitable that a game of exploration eventually reveals deep secrets of the far past, but in doing so I consciously tried to avoid that particular cliche. My reasoning (Band of Iron players may read on, as you have already figured out what I'm going to say about the Golden Race):

The kind of adventure scenarios that D&D-type games support best involve medieval-level technology people journeying to a lost, mysterious labyrinth, there to confront monsters and perils, and haul back wondrous artifacts and treasures. As some have noted, this encourages a background assumption of a fallen world, consistent with many of the source inspirations for D&D. In particular, Jack Vance's Dying Earth gives a well-reasoned background for magic, in which the "basic science" that allowed generation of new spells has been lost, leaving only an "applied science" of spells learned by rote - literally crammed into the brain!

Specifically, let's think of any technique or technology as having four elements:

Research:  theoretical knowledge of the underlying phenomena generates new ideas;
Development: experimentation and testing creates new applications;
Engineering: specialist knowledge keeps the techniques running in a stable state; and
User Interface: the techniques are adapted for use by non-specialists.

In D&D, as in Vance, the Research stage has been lost - otherwise, the magic would look more like Ars Magica's theoretically coherent system. Wizardry in Vance is essentially Engineering, learning set spells at a great cost in training, and only rare and costly magic items present an easy User Interface. And D&D allows for spell research, but only by trial and error, typical of the Development layer cut off from Research.

Golden Race: so old they used Myspace.

The era of the Golden Race, I thought, would be one in which the Research and UI aspects of the color magic system had been fully developed, unlike the present Vancian age of the world Mittellus. Magical forces had been harnessed beyond the single spell; forget "Continual Light streetlights" when power, heat and illumination were provided by raw Red magic, force fields and matter creation by Blue, alteration by Yellow and so on. Additionally, the reversed colors of magic were understood; anti-Red gave stasis, anti-Blue gave utter destruction (great for garbage disposal), anti-Yellow preservation and so on.

On the user level, the most simple magical powers were coded into site-specific patches of color, as well as items, most of which are now lost or destroyed. More complicated procedures like medical regeneration required some degree of specialist knowledge and mental training.

For other people's games, the above analysis of technology provides an easy rebuttal to those who wonder why magic doesn't automatically lead to sorcerous streetcars and demonic dishwashers. If magic is confined to a guild where specialized knowledge is needed to wield it, then individual wizards may conjure up invisible butlers for themselves or for the masters they serve, but the lack of an large Engineering class means that magic never becomes an institution. Without the engineers of magic, its phenomena are confined to the lab and testing grounds.

Think of the analogy in technological fiction; it's no coincidence that the typical pulp techno-villain is someone who has hatched an advanced technique of mass control or destruction in isolation. The only thing distinguishing the D&D wizard from the Bond villain is the flavor of handwavium needed to explain their wondrous deeds.

More Sufficiently Advanced Chemistry

Following this earlier post, but going back to an earlier Cracked article,  here are some more inspirations for adventure-game wonders based on real chemistry.

Ferrofluids: Suspensions of iron particles in a liquid that form shapes when magnetic fields are applied.

• An iron door that is solid only through the grace of magnetism; turning off the field collapses it.
• Over here is a jug of some black oily material. Over there is a statue holding a detachable hilt that exudes an invisible magnetic field (going near, you feel the pull on your iron weapons and armor). Pour the jug on the hilt for a real Liquid Sword.
• Flicking the switch means that the slimy liquid at the bottom of the pit rises up and forms nasty spikes.

Aerogel: Translucent, super-strong material that's mostly air.

• Cloudy glassteel pane: you can kind of see through it to all that treasure on display, but not break it.
• Or you can break it - but there's an angry air elemental inside.

Perfluorocarbons: Breathable fluids imbued with oxygen.

• It's a pool with ... a manticore at the bottom?
• I stashed my treasure under water at the end of this long tunnel. Suicide to try and swim, but only I know the water is breathable.
• Potion of water breathing - but you have summon up the guts to inhale it right into your lungs.

Elastic conductor: Material that expands and becomes rigid when current is applied.

• Wizard's bridge over a chasm. You need to cast a lightning bolt to extend it all the way, but hurry - it only stays that way for a round.
• Curtains that part for anyone except the electric shock monster being held captive.
• Gloves that enhance a shocking grasp spell with a floppy ribbon that turns into a blade, adding stabby injury to shocking injury.

Non-Newtonian fluid: "A liquid that turns solid when sufficient stress is applied."

• "It's only a ten-foot drop, I'll just dive into this ... AAAGHHH"
• You find a strange leather suit, that seems to be made of two layers with a little valve. Elsewhere you find a bottle of the fluid. It gives full mobility, works as plate mail against blows of all kinds, and can only be pierced by small soft scratches.
• The giant can walk on this water, but you little guys just fall through.
• Lair feature of a Great Old One wishing to outdo Cthulhu's non-Euclidean geometry.

Transparent alumina: See-through (if slightly cloudy) metal.

• See above under glassteel doors and windows.
• Metal bikinis and codpieces just got more interesting.

Carbon nanotubes: Nano-scale fibers made of carbon: incredibly strong, electrically conductive, and yeah, the Cracked writer gets overwhelmed by the Cracked style guide at this point and just gets stuck on "bur bur bur awesome mind-blowing bur bur bur" so here's the website of a company that makes them, and the wiki article.

• +3 armor that looks like just a shirt and pants. Nanotubes.
• The beast with nanotube fur ... equivalent to plate mail.
• A sword with an invisible blade. It's just one nanotube.
• The wizard installed some looong nanotube wiring in her castle to deliver fire and lightning damage to those below.

Any Sufficiently Advanced Chemistry

.... is indistinguishable from alchemy. I've taken the six miracle substances from this recent Cracked magazine article and found a couple of fantasy-world uses for each one.

Gallium, the Metal That Melts in Your Hand

1. Obviously, heat-sensitive tripwires.
2. Cool way to seal a flask.
3. Reptiles or golems or undead are blocked by this wall, warm-blooded creatures can melt their way through it.
4. Stand here for too long and the heat from your boots will trap your feet in the cube of metal underfoot.
5. Gallium also reacts with aluminum to make it brittle. Imagine that a similar reagent exists for each metal - who needs lockpicking skills? Imagine a self-destroying golden treasure.
6. A metal bridge that you can blow with a tea kettle at each end.

Sulphur Hexafluoride, The Gas Heavy Enough to Float Solid Objects

1. It's what's under your floating disk.
2. Take the 100' leap of faith down; the heavy air will cushion your fall, but then breathing becomes a problem as you climb the 10' ladder to the passage onward.
3. It makes your voice deeper, kind of an anti-helium. Kobolds huff this stuff and hide to make people run from the "loud, singing giant around the corner." 
4. Floating skull! Run!

Hydrophobic (Water-Repelling) Surfaces

1. A necessary coating for underwater adventurers' spellbooks, bows, etc.
2. A corridor floor coated with this, then a trap dumps a blob of water, which races towards you like an Indiana Jones boulder. When blood spills on the floor, it beads and skitters like water on a hot griddle.
3. Invisible fishtank: foot-deep water on the floor surrounded by a hydrophobic zone. Will they figure out that this is the safe place to be when pursued by that water elemental?

Spontaneously Exploding Powders and Crystals

1. What's this smoky gray gem ... BAM
2. What's all this funny colored sand ... BAM
3. Bad guy to captive in10x10 room: Hold this. Don't move.
4. Explodes with shock wave from loud noise... best door opening deterrent.

Hot Ice (clear liquid that turns solid and white when disturbed)

1. Let me just stick my foot into this pool of clear water ... Oh.
2. If you can find a way to carry it around in a flask without bumping it, you have an instant door sealant, hole plugger, etc.
3. Sprayed from the ceiling, is an encasement trap.

Memory Metal


1. Clue, command word, true name, etc. written in cursive script as a twisted piece of wire that only needs an application of heat to snap back into the real letters
2. The same, but forms a key to a mechanical lock.
3. A strip of metal formed into an innocuous looking wristband expands and sharpens into an assassin's blade when placed in warm water.
4. A tangled wire ball placed in a piece of cold meat and fed to a mighty beast will, in its warm stomach, resume its former shape of a jagged, four-pointed cross.