Quote:
Originally Posted by Anders
My pardon for the thread necromancy, but I just read R.E.Howard's The Devil In Iron, and it contains a knife "forged of a meteor which flashed through the sky like a flaming arrow and fell in a far valley." We also learn that "against that unearthly knife the magic of Khosatral was impotent." Khosatral is some kind elder god who has formed himself a body made of (normal) iron - only the knife is able to dispatch him. So meteoric iron being antimagic is at least 85 years old (the story was published in 1934).
|
No, not what happened. The Yuetsi shaman who forged the knife used it to amgically bind Khosatral Khel in a sleep-like state. Conan, having no idea hw to work magic just used it gut him.
So it was definitely anti-KK but not generally anti-magical since it was part of magical spell.
Also, "Elder God" might over-rate KK. He had no special powers beyond the strength and durability of his manifestation. Even Conan wonders about a devil having to break a door down like a normal man. Probably just an extra-dimenional "demon" of low to middling rank.
Even jsut "meteors" isn't that old an idea. You can see G:Arabian Nights for theSword of Antar 'Adi (which was strongly amgical rather than non-magical)?) but "educated" Europeans didn't even beleive in stones falling from the sky until the late 1700s.
So it was probably into the early 1900s when meterors penetrated the mass consciousness but even when they were truly amgical rather than sut Superscience they weren't necessarily anit-magical. See the Golden Age Green Lantern for an example.
The general anti-magical properties of regular iron go back into folklore but anti-magical iron as seen in DF? I think it post-dates depeleted necronium from Technomancer. :)