Iron and Elder Races

From: Joerg Baumgartner <joe_at_toppoint.de>
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 97 17:19 MET


Commonly in myth, only iron as metal has magical/harmful abilities. I never heard about fairies shying away from rust, let alone blood...

Hemoglobin, rust, green and brown bottle glass, etc. all contain iron in compounds. In fact, iron is quite common in the soil and in water, and is one of the most frequent elements in the earth crust, the most frequent heavy metal.

Sandy wants trolls to have black blood. Possible even with hemoglobin in it...

A troll iron poisoning would occur when cunningly hidden iron is set free in the troll's digestive tract and survives long enough to touch the organs. I guess the stone stomach could be exempted from this since it digests (among others) rocks, other metals and dwarfs as well. Its acids should do short enough work on iron to cause nothing more than either mild intoxication (similar to eating dwarf, although less pleasant) or stomach ache, acid burps, or whatever. If it ends up in the food tract (hidden in meat, wood or vegetable, as small spikes or so), the troll would suffer terribly...


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