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<blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 8986290" data-attributes="member: 32164">Butcher's Dresden notes that &quot;Cold Iron&quot; is like someone saying you filled someone full of &quot;hot lead.&quot; It's not some weird kind of material, the phrase itself is just poetic license. Fey Courts in that world don't deal well with anything that has iron in it of any kind, so no steel for the fey, although it doesn't bother Wizards much. Wizards, on the other hand, don't play well with technology (electronics and the like), something that bothers the Fey not in the least.On the other hand, I learned something interesting while digging into it. Historically, &quot;cold iron&quot; was iron you dug out of the ground, and things that were made from it, like steel. By contrast, there was also &quot;hot iron,&quot; which was something you might not expect: star-metal, or &quot;meteoric iron.&quot; I guess the assumption was that the otherworldly metal just wasn't as good against faeries, but I found the distinction fascinating.I also had a fascinating conversation with a swordsmith friend of mine about &quot;bog iron,&quot; which is naturally occurring as a deposit in peat bogs, can be mined from them, and grows back. It deposits slowly in the bogs as water runs through subterranean iron deposits. This got me to thinking of all kinds of cool world-building where elves don't cut holes in the ground, but rather simply harvest all their iron from bogs, because they're totally okay with the wait for the deposits to grow back. Similarly, elves don't mine for gold, they just pan for it like during the California gold rush. And so on.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="JohnSnow, post: 8986290, member: 32164"] Butcher's Dresden notes that "Cold Iron" is like someone saying you filled someone full of "hot lead." It's not some weird kind of material, the phrase itself is just poetic license. Fey Courts in that world don't deal well with anything that has iron in it of any kind, so no steel for the fey, although it doesn't bother Wizards much. Wizards, on the other hand, don't play well with technology (electronics and the like), something that bothers the Fey not in the least. On the other hand, I learned something interesting while digging into it. Historically, "cold iron" was iron you dug out of the ground, and things that were made from it, like steel. By contrast, there was also "hot iron," which was something you might not expect: star-metal, or "meteoric iron." I guess the assumption was that the otherworldly metal just wasn't as good against faeries, but I found the distinction fascinating. I also had a fascinating conversation with a swordsmith friend of mine about "bog iron," which is naturally occurring as a deposit in peat bogs, can be mined from them, and [I]grows back.[/I] It deposits slowly in the bogs as water runs through subterranean iron deposits. This got me to thinking of all kinds of cool world-building where elves don't cut holes in the ground, but rather simply harvest all their iron from bogs, because they're totally okay with the wait for the deposits to grow back. Similarly, elves don't mine for gold, they just pan for it like during the California gold rush. And so on. [/QUOTE]

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