"Realistically" Speaking: Could a Living Creature be Adversely Affected by Iron? http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/49954 saturnflight So I'm working on a book involving Fae. And my concept of them is like Midsummer Night's Dream: humanoid creatures with some plantlike variation. I've also looked at including the 'dislike for iron', insofar as Fae magic can't work on it. To go with that, an overabundance of iron in a Fae's system would prevent them from using magic at all. I'm also using the presence of iron in a human's bloodstream for why humans can't do magic, but as I research that I'm not sure if it's realistic that a human's body would have significantly more iron in it than a plant. So, is this a feasable explanation? If iron was magic-suppressing, is it reasonable that the iron all around us would be in significantly dilluted portion so as to allow magic to be used? Could a plant-human hybrid survive on significantly lower iron levels than humans? Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:22:09 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/49954?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1120051 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/49954?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1120051 awesomeo Just make all fae allergic to iron like some humans are allergic to peanut butter or penacillin. Is seizes their systems up, maybe closes off their airways or forces cardiac arrest. And not all reactions are the same, so some fae just get woozy while others go all explodey. Why does it disrupt magic? It doesn't. Its just hard to concentrate when you heart is ripping itself out of your chest. Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:39:25 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/49954?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1120457 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/49954?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1120457 CBrachyrhynchos My vote is not very realistic. Probably the best solution to the problem with minimal handwavium has been Terry Pratchett's Lords and Ladies, in which the Fae can't stand iron because metalic iron warps the magical field around it, and elves loose the ability to sense reality around them as a result of contact with iron. Most of the iron in the human body is bound up as red blood cells. Also, plants need trace amounts of iron as well for photosynthesis. So I don't think that could work without serious handwavium. (Which you can get away with if the rest of your book is fairly strong.) Another factor to consider is that living organisms mostly use ionized iron or iron oxides which have radically different properties compared to crystalline iron metal. Ionized iron and iron oxides are a common part of many minerals, and are potentially toxic if ingested in the right form and in large quantities. Crystalline iron alloys are relatively rare in nature (the basis for the legend of meteoric iron*), and generally safe unless you count being stabbed in a vital organ as toxic. And if you are stabbed with an iron weapon, there just are not enough soluble iron compounds on the patina to poison much of anything. I think a better bet is to follow Pratchett's lead that there's something about how crystalline iron alloys affect magic. * If you've not perfected one of the massively energy-intensive methods of smelting iron ore, a nickel-iron meteorite would be a gift from the gods. Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:42:19 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/49954?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1120462 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/49954?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1120462 Notkieran Actually, prior to that, Mercedes Lackey had a similar thing going on in Born to Run, where elves that work with humans have learnt to compensate for the warping effects of iron, and quantified the amount each kind of iron warps their magic, and then they took on their enemies on their home ground where there were iron fenceposts everywhere, which also incidentally sucked any unaimed magic into an accelerator ring round and round the compound and then blasted it straight back into the enemies' faces... Good times. Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:19:29 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/49954?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1120821 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/49954?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1120821 saturnflight [quote=CBrachyrhynchos] Most of the iron in the human body is bound up as red blood cells. Also, plants need trace amounts of iron as well for photosynthesis. So I don't think that could work without serious handwavium. (Which you can get away with if the rest of your book is fairly strong.) [/quote] My idea is more that iron disrupts magic, but doesn't actually harm Fae. What I was hoping was that plants had a lot less iron in them (and less reliance on it), so that it was easy to say that humans can't use magic because their iron levels are so high as to block it. It'd just be inconvenient to actually have Fae 'poisoned' by it. But they could, of course, lie about how dire iron's presence is. Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:07:22 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/49954?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1121033 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/49954?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1121033 Notkieran It depends on whether you want a magical or near-scientific reason. If you say "iron in any form blocks magic", then you are treating iron in an essentialist manner-- it blocks magic just by being there in any form. Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:22:42 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/49954?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1121356 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/49954?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1121356 Raksab On Earth (or any planet that is a lot like Earth), iron is everywhere. The planet's core is literally made of the stuff, an unimaginably huge chunk of it. It's present in an awful lot of compounds, including (yes) hemoglobin, which is essential to life in most animals. (You need it so your blood can carry oxygen to feed your cells. Lose the hemoglobin or tie it up with carbon monoxide, and the cells rapidly start to die.) Why iron, anyway? Is iron so different from titanium or silver or tin? Lots of metals are thought to have magical (or anti-magical) properties. (Lead, for instance, makes a great radiation shield because of its density, and it has the bonus of actually being toxic in real life.) I think you're working too hard to make something fictional sound scientific. If it's that hard, pick a different substance. Thu, 09 Feb 2012 02:14:20 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/49954?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1125803 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/49954?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1125803 vampyre_smiles Iron is the traditional weakness of faeries. Sometimes this is changed slightly to, say, magnetized iron or metallic iron (so not the iron in blood), or iron that was forged by people. Thu, 09 Feb 2012 04:40:32 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/49954?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1125871 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/49954?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1125871 saturnflight Yeah, it's just traditional is all. But like I said, I'm not looking to have it be deadly or anything. Just that its presence, in significant quantity, prevents the use of magic. And if plants have less iron in them, or use it differently, then I can say, "Fae can use magic because they have less iron in their bodies than humans do", and just leave it at that. I don't want more science to it than that. Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:35:56 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/49954?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1126599 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/49954?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1126599 awesomeo If it helps... Fae are one of the factions in my urban fantasy. They are creatures of thought, ever-shifting and without a concrete hold on our reality. They feed off human thought and emotions. Their weakness is "cold iron" which is any metal worked by human hands. The act of taking natural materials and shaping them into something else via man's ingenuity and emotions actually imbues such materials with an energy that disrupts a fairy's body. The more personal the attention, the better. Thus a mass-produced assault rifle like an AK-47 or M-16 (which might have a dozen people working it at various stages) and the bullets it fires are less lethal than a sword forged by a master blacksmith and passed down from father to son for generations. The emotions wrapped around such a sentimental blade don't hurt either. At one point I have a police detective empty her department issued handgun into a bogeyman. He just laughs at her until she stabs him with the letter-opener her grandmother made. I also mention in the text how any human using guns against the supernatural typically goes to "mom-and-pop" gunstores that have been around for generations to get personalized weapons. A shotgun or knife from your local Wal-mart just is not going to cut it. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:47:02 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/49954?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1128951 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/49954?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1128951 VerityCandor Well, scientifically speaking, I don't think your explanation would work, because as far as I know, a lot of plants use and need iron - and actually vegetables like spinach and kale and stuff are sources of iron for people, as well. You'd probably be better off using a magical explanation for this, I think. Sat, 11 Feb 2012 13:59:25 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/49954?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1131650 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/49954?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1131650