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"But Iron — Cold Iron — is master of them all."
—Rudyard Kipling, "Cold Iron"
One of the most mundane Depleted Phlebotinum Shells and the traditional bane of Fair Folk.
Iron may be treated as naturally magic-disrupting or just poisonous for certain creatures. Sometimes it's supposed to suck the magic out of the Fair Folk (similar to the way it sucks heat out of the body), usually accompanied with screams about how "it burns". More recent fictions sometimes say that it's got something to do with ferromagnetism, or related to iron's nuclear stability.
There's no agreement about what "cold" actually means in this context. Sometimes it just mean that the iron, at the moment, isn't hot. Sometimes it's cold-worked iron. Or something more complicated, like the iron that has never been smelted. Or this may be a poetic reference to any iron, just because metals that aren't hot feel cold thanks to heat conductivity. Which may be pulled as "magic vs. technology" symbolism. It may also be a reference to the fact that heating magnets to a certain point causes them to lose their magnetism , so "cold" iron is iron that still has its magnetic (magic) power.
Thunderbolt Iron may or may not be related: meteorite alloys are iron-based and frequently cold-worked because they cannot be tempered like steel anyway. Ironically, they are good in really cold climates, not only because the fuel for a smithy would be a bigger problem, but because they don't become brittle when carbon steels do.
Card Games
- In Munchkin Bites, 'Cold Iron' is a trap card that only affects Changeling characters.
Comic Books
- In the The Sandman story Cluracan's Tale, the title character (a faerie) is captured and bound with cold iron chains, in a cell with cold iron bars. He has to call on the Sandman to free himself.
- In Marvel Comics' The Mighty Thor, the dark elves of Svartalfheim are vulnerable to iron. This is explained by iron being "the metal of humans", so it kinda fits with the nature-vs-science thing mentioned above.
- Marvel demons are also often vulnerable to iron. Even Adversary, an Eldritch Abomination aiming to destroy creation and create a new world had to avoid contact with Colossus.
- In the Top 10 spin-off Smax, Gadgeteer Genius Toybox finds herself having to defeat a dragon in a magical realm where her gadgets don't work. Her eventual solution has a big technobabble justification, but essentially it's Cold Iron.
- In the Hellboy story The Corpse, Hellboy exposes a changeling by touching an iron horseshoe to its forehead. Later he tests the real baby the same way, just to make sure. Conversely, in The Iron Shoes (usually published alongside The Corpse, since the latter is not quite long enough to fill up an issue), some folklorists explain that a few fairy creatures don't mind iron and in fact are rather fond of it, including the title character:
''Live or die,
Win or lose,
Best beware...
MY IRON SHOES!"
Film
Folklore
- Putting a horseshoe over the doorway was considered a way to protect the home from intrusion of The Fair Folk- this has allusions to the story of the Exodus and the Passover. Sometimes burying a doornail was used this way too. Although often burying iron was a way to conceal the iron from The Fair Folk, and if you could get them to stand over it they would be trapped and bound until they agreed to your demands.
- There is an Italian wedding tradition that requires the groom to have iron in his back pocket.
Literature
Live-Action TV
- In Supernatural iron can be used to temporarily decorporealize a ghost, along with other uses.
- In the Doctor Who serial The Daemons, the Doctor successfully uses a trowel to fend off a gargoyle that merely thinks it's susceptible to Cold Iron.
Tabletop RPG
- Dungeons & Dragons
- 'Fool's Gold' spell made copper coins look like gold, but it fails when false gold touches iron.
- Depending on the edition, demons that could normally only be harmed by magical weapons could also be harmed by iron weapons.
- 3e+ has Cold Iron as a special material (like mithril or adamantine) for metal weapons. The rule of thumb is that you need this to harm (or at least, do full harm) to Fey or chaotic outsiders. The downside? It's one of the flimsier special metals (although just as strong as steel), and there's a static price that must be payed in order to enchant it, doubling the price of the the lowliest weapon enhancement (at least in 3e based systems). Still, it's arguably one of the best special materials for weapons.
- In Changeling The Lost, "cold iron" is anything that has a 95% iron content, and it negates any defense wrought by fae magic. The main book emphasizes that in the modern era, you'll rarely get anything like that unless it's a specialty work or from an earlier era. On top of that, you've got hand-forged iron, which is iron that's never been heated by human hands or means. This means most hand-forged iron weapons are rough and blocky, but they do hideous amounts of damage to the True Fae. There are many given accounts on why this is, but the most common one is that the Gentry once had a Contract with Iron; they got power for it in return for making sure it remained unshaped. Then humans discovered smelting, the Contract broke, and Iron is pissed.
- Likewise, in the predecessor game Changeling: The Dreaming, cold iron wounds do aggravated damage to changelings - and if they're killed with it, their fae soul will never reincarnate, effectively becoming a ghost. The only reason steel doesn't screw up the Kithain is because a changeling pulled a Heroic Sacrifice back in the day to ensure that it wouldn't.
Webcomics
Video Games
- In Final Fantasy IV the Dark Elf is vulnerable to iron, and has enchanted his cave to be heavily magnetic, requiring you to reach him without wielding anything metallic. When you reach him, at first it is a Hopeless Boss Fight but if you talked to Edward in the castle, he gives you a harp which breaks the spell, allowing you to wield metal.
Western Animation
- In Gargoyles, the Oberon's Children were all weak to cold iron, up to and including Oberon himself. This is utilized in a number of ways - iron chains to bind Puck and the Weird Sisters, an iron robot named Coyote to catch the mythical Coyote, and ringing an iron bell to take down Oberon when he agreed to use only as much power as one of his children for a contest (though when he was at his full power an iron harpoon to the chest only slightly injured him).
Real Life
- In the life cycle of larger stars, when they run out of hydrogen in their core to produce energy, stars star fusing other elements in order to maintain itself. The star keeps on building layer after layer within the core fusing heavier and heavier elements, and getting less and less return. Fusing iron will give no energy return. A few days after it starts to make iron in its core, it will go supernova. So iron is the star killing metal.
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