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Old 06-17-2020, 09:51 AM   #51
malloyd
 
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Default Re: Meteoric iron immunities

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
I am curious how meteoric iron became associated with antimagic. In folklore, it is supposed to be inherently magical, which was why it was capable of overcoming magical defenses, as its divine magic was stronger than the mortal magic of sorcerers and witches. The idea that meteoric iron is antimagic is much more of a modern conceit.
The defensive properties of iron in general are pretty old. And present in medieval folklore too, in the form of lucky horseshoes or iron nails the prevent the faeries from getting you. Honestly I suspect most rare materials (and once upon a time iron was) that are at all distinctive have stories about how they both amplify and ward off magic somewhere. And really these are not antithetical properties - mystic amulets normally defend you from evil magic by virtue of being even stronger magic. The idea of anti-powers that prevent something from working at all might be the modern conceit here.

Edit: I wonder if there isn't some influence from kryptonite going on here.
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Old 06-18-2020, 12:47 PM   #52
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Default Re: Meteoric iron immunities

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Originally Posted by Anders View Post
Detect Meteoric Iron
Information

Cast this spell on an object. If you don't get any information, that's meteoric iron.

:)
This seems like some magical college student's last minute attempt at a semester's end project. I'm going to shamelessly steal it.
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Old 06-18-2020, 02:46 PM   #53
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Default Re: Meteoric iron immunities

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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
Edit: I wonder if there isn't some influence from kryptonite going on here.
Most depictions of Kryptonite I've seen, while it doesn't do anything besides mess up Kryptonians unless you do something weird with the stuff, have a lot more impact on Superman than just RPG-ish power-nullification. Something like severe to terrible pain.

...Which is also commonly true of applying iron to fae in modern works.

But meteoric iron and other similar antimagic metals usually don't torment magicians and magical creatures. Aside from possibly enabling someone to subject them to mundane torments that they would normally resist or avoid.
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Old 12-27-2020, 09:55 PM   #54
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Default Re: Meteoric iron immunities

Quirky question:

A DF gate to a parallel (though older) universe is set to just inside the horizon of an iron star. The gate owner is using it to bring back occasional cartloads of stellar iron.

Would this count as "meteoric iron"? And could it, in fact, pass through a gate if the gate were set up using magic?
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Old 12-27-2020, 10:14 PM   #55
malloyd
 
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Default Re: Meteoric iron immunities

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Originally Posted by SolemnGolem View Post
Quirky question:

A DF gate to a parallel (though older) universe is set to just inside the horizon of an iron star. The gate owner is using it to bring back occasional cartloads of stellar iron.

Would this count as "meteoric iron"? And could it, in fact, pass through a gate if the gate were set up using magic?
I'd generally rule that meteoric iron, or anything else anti-magical, can't pass through magical gates without causing some kind of trouble, but the trouble might vary depending on my mood. Usually it just doesn't pass through, but catastrophically collapsing the gate is an option too.

And no, this doesn't have the right symbolism to count as meteoric. All iron on the planet was after all produced in stars somewhere, so just coming from one isn't enough. I suppose that the fact that a chunk of iron can acquire specific (anti-)magical effects depending on how it ends up on the ground opens the possibility that arriving from another universe via magical gate might cause it to do *something*. Possibly something the magician involved in fetching it did not expect at all. But being antimagical seems fairly unlikely.
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Old 12-27-2020, 10:33 PM   #56
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Default Re: Meteoric iron immunities

I probably should have read the earlier posts more carefully. Kromm's posts make it clear that:

a) iron can be meteoric iron as per GM's fiat and Rule of Cool (therefore, mining iron out of a stellar mass can totally be "meteoric" if GM desires), and

b) if it's meteoric iron, its whole shtick is that it doesn't work with magic, so the magical-gate idea needs some further adjustment.

Quote:
As far as Dungeon Fantasy is concerned, the defining properties of "meteoric iron" are: (1) it's magic-immune, and (2) it's recognizably iron.

That's it, that's all.

The adjective "meteoric" is a fanciful one applied by simple folk blindly struggling and reaching to explain the weird properties of an otherwise normal-seeming material. It falls into the same category as "fairy" and "dragon's" and a bunch of other words thrown around with abandon. If you really believe that "fairy stones" were carved by fairies or that "dragon's root" grows only where there be dragons, I have a bridge to sell you.
Hence: yes on the iron star product = meteoric iron. No on the "can I use a magical gate to bring it out" question. Guess we'll need a psi gate instead...
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Old 12-28-2020, 07:49 AM   #57
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Default Re: Meteoric iron immunities

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Ah, "cold" is good! Is the iron itself cold? Was it worked cold? Who knows! That's the kind of fun with adjectives that fantasy settings need.
Another option - the iron was tested by running it through a magic flame. Iron that remains cold to the touch is separated out and sold at a premium, due to its magic resistance. Or maybe merchants do something similar to prove it's immune to magic, much as they once set alcohol (or an alcohol-gunpowder mix) on fire for proof tests. Charlatans will, of course, figure out all manner of ways to cheat the system.

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Originally Posted by SolemnGolem View Post
Hence: yes on the iron star product = meteoric iron. No on the "can I use a magical gate to bring it out" question. Guess we'll need a psi gate instead...
Using psionics to reach into such a dying universe strikes me as monumentally bad idea, as it seems ready-made as an origin for Things Man Was Not Meant To Know. Of course, for a GM, that may well make it perfect. Kromm noted you should be able to carry meteoric iron through a gate (it's just encumbrance), so provided you can figure out a way to survive a brief jaunt into the star, you can simply carry the stuff through. Or have some sort of purpose-made servant do it for you (in which case it only needs to survive long enough to bring the stuff through).
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Old 12-28-2020, 09:17 AM   #58
AlexanderHowl
 
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Default Re: Meteoric iron immunities

I would rule that such a star produces an anti-magic field that extends 1 AU.
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Old 12-28-2020, 09:27 AM   #59
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Default Re: Meteoric iron immunities

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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
All iron on the planet was after all produced in stars somewhere, so just coming from one isn't enough.
An iron star isn't an ordinary star, though. It's a stellar core that's not quite dense enough to be a neutron star, and has been around long enough for fusion to have ceased, remaining heat radiated away, and all the elements to decay into iron-56, or, if lighter than iron, to fuse via quantum tunneling effects bringing nuclei together in the dense core. This takes so long that they're only hypothesized to exist if protons turn out not to decay (around 10^1500 years). It's one of those wacky things that people playing with math speculate might happen if the universe expands forever.

So the "parallel but older" universe is very, very much older, and considerably different from ours. As a source for phlebotinum, it's probably even a weirder backstory even than "rock that fell from heaven". I wouldn't object if a GM wanted to use the Plane of Future Past as the fluff text for the existence of meteoric iron. It'd have to be a pretty fantastic campaign if the PCs expected to be able to actually go retrieve some from the source, though. And if they could pull it off, it would seem like they were powerful enough not to care about trivial toys like anti-magic iron.
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Old 12-28-2020, 10:26 AM   #60
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Default Re: Meteoric iron immunities

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
Kromm noted you should be able to carry meteoric iron through a gate (it's just encumbrance), so provided you can figure out a way to survive a brief jaunt into the star, you can simply carry the stuff through. Or have some sort of purpose-made servant do it for you (in which case it only needs to survive long enough to bring the stuff through).
That's what I was thinking. Riffing off of Ray Bradbury, I was wondering what the DF-era equivalent of a "magnetic scoop" might be. (Orichalcum mine cart?)

If magic can open a gate slightly within the surface of an iron star, but the iron of the star is immune to magic, then one interpretation is that the gate appears to open out onto a face of dense very hot metal but cannot by itself move the metal out. But a person, mechanism, or thing that does not rely on magic, could reach through the gate, collect a sample, and move it back through the gate.

In DF terms you'd probably not want to do this with a living hand or appendage. Perhaps some extremely-heat-resistant orichalcum or similar mechanical servitor could do this.

I'm not even sure what form of matter the iron would be on the inside of such a theoretical stellar mass. Plasma?

Edit: Anaraxes also brings up an interesting point:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anaraxes View Post
An iron star isn't an ordinary star, though. It's a stellar core that's not quite dense enough to be a neutron star, and has been around long enough for fusion to have ceased, remaining heat radiated away, and all the elements to decay into iron-56, or, if lighter than iron, to fuse via quantum tunneling effects bringing nuclei together in the dense core.
If the heat has radiated away, then presumably it would be cooler than plasma, though I'm not sure about the effect of gravitational density. Perhaps it's a metallic soup?
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