Why Cold Iron?, There has to be a reason...

[Talisman]

Everyone knows that cold iron is anathema to the fey...but why is this? Normal steel and non-cold-forged iron are no more dangerous than any other metal...silver, adamantine, meteorite iron...none of these are as dangerous as cold iron.

So why is this? What is it about cold-forged iron that is so inimical to the fey?

This is something that makes a certain amount of sense in real world mythology iron weapons vs. bronze weapons; iron as a symbol of industry) but has never, to my knowledge, been satisfactorily explained in D&D.

Thoughts? Ideas?

[Galliard]

I like WW's take on it...apparently the ancient fey made all sorts of pacts and geasa with all sorts of items and entities. They had one with "Iron", but the fey broke their oath (though no one knows how or why)...and Iron (naturally enough) became very angry with the fey. Hence, to this day, it retains its grudge, and has become the anathema of the fey.

[frostfucious]

a good dogma, but not something we can so ditrectly use.

hmmm

Men stole the secret of steel right?
Maybe cold iron represents a kind of static reality that is bane to the nature of fey, something we created, not anyone else, no one else's fault and nothing to do with gods or ancient powers.
worked iron is what represents our need to excel and evolve, leaving magic and imagination, illusion and wonder behind.

[Sig]

I made a proposal that Fey blood reacts to iron by chemical process, like acid to base.
When Fey become mortal they are effectively poisoned and get -2 CON as well as have their blood change from milky white-green sap to red blood.

However, I might just scrap this idea since no one else has stuff that would fit with it. It's just too weird. >_<

[alesian]

We should also make note of the fact that in D&D, cold iron can penetrate the damage reduction of demons, making a connection between fey and fiends.

Additionally, iron has been traditionally believed to be a powerful ward against anything magical. Also, according to my preliminary research, "cold iron" is not actually seperate from regular iron-it's just the poetic name for iron, like saying "Albion" for Great Britian.

[Sig]

Yeah good point, I've been trying to tie demons and fey together but it seems there's much of an overlap as it is!

Succubus, for instance, is pretty much the same as a Leanan Sidhe with similar yet different objectives, and method of executing those goals (of sucking souls).
Succubi do it fast, Leanan Sidhe do it slow.
Almost as if they enjoy the process rather than the result.

But I digress...

The reason for fey reaction to Cold Iron, with whatever ruling one can derive for "when fey get hit or touch iron, X occurs" could do with either chemical reaction or magnetic field.

The first option, not working so well. I wrote a while ago that when fey become trapped in the prime, they slowly become mortal, and the conversion of their "sap" into blood weakens them due to their "iron allergy".
They lose CON -2, which also explains why Elves have a CON penalty.

Electromagnetic distortion from the material is.. well... a whim. Every thing has a field, which means fey would be reacting constantly to any material, but the density of iron and properties of magnetism could drive their biology haywire like magnets do to a TV screen.

[alesian]

In my campaign setting, I've worked up an explanation for the similarities between demons and fey.

When demons first entered the multiverse, they appeared as tentacled, Lovecraftian horrors-like the obryiths of FCI. They created "natural evils"-things like death, pain, disease, parasitism-that threatened to destroy the world. The early fey, with assistance from the gods and the celestials, worked to integrate what the demons had unleashed into the world. Things like death and pain were given a purpose, made part of the natural cycle of life.

As the fey did this, the demons changed. They shifted from being nebulous, unthinkable horrors to being feral, animalistic horrors-a slight improvement, but an improvement nonetheless. The fey's association with the demons caused the demons to take on typical fey characteristics, such as horns and hooves and vulnerability to cold iron.

In addition to providing an explanation for their shared weakness, this also gives a reason for people being afraid of fey; they associate the fey with demons.

[Sig]

Guaranteed though, I will be adapting some Tanar'ri as Fey.. vaguely.

The shared Iron weakness makes it that much easier.

[alesian]

Here are some preliminary thoughts on the matter:

Cold iron is spiritually and mystically inert. It has no resonance in the fey realms, and produces no fey in its dreams. It is spiritually static-making it anathema to magic in general, but specifically to the highly magical, higly morphic types of monsters-fey and demons.

[Sig]

Hm. By now I think we're actually going in an odd direction with discussion of magnetism, resonance, magic, etc.

I'm leaning more towards the chemical aspect, much like how Vampirism is defined in some modern tales/movies/books as being viral and silver causes chemical reaction with the composition of the virus (or in the case of I Am Legend, bacteria...)

http://www.webelements.com/webelements/ele...xt/Fe/chem.html

Apparently iron does not react with bases. It does, however, react with oxygen by oxidation, a reaction commonly known as 'rusting'. This might be key.
Perhaps iron oxydizes too fast in Fey worlds to be of any threat? This would mean the air composition is similar to that of most mortal worlds yet different in this way.
Exactly WHAT is in the air, has yet to be defined, if at all.

The reason iron reacts with Fey is due to the iron's intrusion into the Fey body, which carries within it a slightly different chemical composition from mortal humanoids. While Fey can usually resist most injuries from nonmagical sources, both the natural weapons of other Fey and this alien substance "iron" nullify their body integrity.

Not that it causes their blood to fizz or anything wild like that, though... It just hurts them when other stuff, like wood or mortal fists, don't. The Fey get slapped around, but stand back up as if nothing happened... sort of like a cartoon come to life.

Iron might be chemically 'locking in' their form, preventing them from recovering so quickly, aligning their molecules in a configuration that stays injured with every wound.

Also, as the various "iron allergy" rules we've dabbled in seem too diverse and ..well.. unworkable for any character, let alone a PC, I vote to scrap all mention of iron allergy.
Interaction with iron will be restricted only to bypassing Fey Damage Reduction, just as with Demons.
The common fear (lower) Fey express near iron would be a result of the simple fact that it's the only material that can hurt them so quickly, so easily, and so readily on the Material Prime.

[alesian]

Trying to come up with a chemical explanation for the fey weakness to cold iron is a mistake, IMHO. Science barely has a place in science-fiction, let alone fantasy.

Modern tales defining vampirism as a disease have basically become a cliche. And a bad one, at that. In his essay "The Uncanny," Sigmund Freud lays out the reasons that horror stories elicit a visceral reaction in human beings. One of the core reasons is that they force the protagonist to accept something that upsets their view of the world. Stories that are uncanny cause the acceptance of the supernatural-for example, Carmilla, in which the protagonist Laura discovers that vampires are real. In contrast with this, a story in which vampirism is given a scientific explanation, such as "Good Lady Ducayne" are not uncanny. Stories that hand-wave the existence of the supernatural lose one of the key elements that makes horror stories scary.

When you start to try to come up with scientific explanations for elements of fantasy, you run into trouble. For example, if the oxidation process works faster in fey realms, why does it only effect iron? Your essentially positing a realm that is toxic to normal life. What a lot of people don't realize about oxygen is it is highly destructive to biological structures. The aging process might in fact be cause by the body's fight against the ravages of oxygen-"The price of breath is death."

If you're going with a chemical explanation, you have to go the whole nine yards. What does it mean that iron "locks in" the fey's body? How does it do this? To explain this, you're going to have to go into parts of fey biology that won't really be that interesting, nor pertinent to the feybook.

Also, going a chemical route cuts off the interesting connection between fey and demons. Do they react the same way? Is it because they have a similar biology to fey? How can this be possible for inherently spiritual creatures?

[Talisman]

I'm going to have to agree with Alesian on this one...let's keep the science to a minimum. The fey are magic, and magic doesn't play by the rules of science.

(And, yes, I'm trotting out the "it's magic!" explanation...but with alesian's fey/demon connection, I think it works. It's only a bad cliche if overused).

[alesian]

And for further example of why a scientific explanation is a bad idea, look to the recent excerpt from "Elder Evils."

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4...0071203a&page=2

The second explanation for the dead sun sign of the apocalypse has been widely mocked because of how perposterous it is. Ceasing a planet's rotation does more than simply cause night and day to cease; it destroys the surface of the planet. This was actually one of the points brought up during the Scopes Monkey Trial!

So, the writers of that book try to come up with a "scientific" explanation, and end up looking foolish. It's a mistake we should avoid.

[Sig]

OK then, magic it is.

We could simply state "iron hurts them" and be done with that. Much of D&D depends on explanations such as this (as much as I don't like it).

[alesian]

ion't thin anyone's suggesting that we don't come up with an explanation. Just that we avoid attempting to use science as a basis for the explanation.