# Faerie weapons? - not made of iron!



## Jess A

Hello all,

In many mythologies, faeries are allergic to iron and iron alloys. I would like to keep this in my novel, which is set in a fantasy world based on 1500s-1600s Europe. However, some faerie races are warriors in the novel and are always at war with each other. What might their weapons be made of, avoiding iron? I still picture them with shining swords/axes etc, so something as close as possible - i.e. not so much bone or wood. Perhaps another metal that might not affect them in the same way (aside from the usual injuries caused by dangerous weapons...). Magically-forged swords sounds fun, but I would like a bit more of a basis to what materials have been used. Could magically-reinforced silver work? Sounds like a cop-out. It needs to be durable, strong, common enough to mine, not too hard to clean and maintain, and as lethal/durable as human weapons. I don't know much...if anything...about metalworking. 

Not looking for alternative fighting styles. I want information about swords, spears, axes etc. I just need to know enough to basically describe what they are mining to make the weapons and how they might be made/forged etc.

Cheers!


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## gethinmorgan

Hmm, depends on the kind of faerie you are dealing with ... and the assumption that they would mine the stuff they make their weapons out of. :bee::bee::bee:

The historic variants are all applicable - bronze, wood and horn, bone and stone, but why stop there? Magical glass? Solidified moonbeams? Unobtainium? Mithril?


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## Chilari

Bronze? It has certain advantages over iron in that it is less brittle, but not so easy to repair - it can't just be put back together but has to be melted down and remade. Bronze - and for that matter copper, which bronze is an alloy of - has the advantage of looking utterly cool and magical when molten, glowing and shining and almost as if it contains a life of its own, and also very shiny and almost sinsiter being as it is a red-ish gold as if it were in fact made of gold and blood. Be aware, though - the shape of a bronze sword will be different to an iron one because of the nature of the metal. if I recall correctly, a more leaf-shaped, curving, elegant blade will be needed rather than a straighter, more angular one. Research Mycenaean swords for an idea of what they might look like.

Then there's stone. Depending on the beliefs of the fairies you're using, you could have some particular special stones used to make, say, axes and arrow heads that have certain visual features found only in seams high up on mountains - it is thought certain Neolithic residents of Britain sought out certain pieces of greenstone from the Lake District from high up on one of the peaks which were shot through with impurities which made them look very cool indeed (but perhaps not especially useful) while ignoring the purer, more useful stone further down the slopes. But various stones, most notably flint, can be used to make sharp weapons and tools by chipping pieces off with a hammerstone. They come from the earth but don't require smelting.

Flint can be found under chalk quite often, but elsewhere too. It is formed of cooling molten rock and has an almost glassy quality. Obsidian, too, is formed the same way (in basic forms) and can be very sharp indeed. Tools from these things are shaped by literally striking the piece of flint with a stone. You strike where you want the edge to emerge and keep striking until you've got it the shape you want it. A skilled flintnapper could make a utilitarian axe in under an hour from a piece chipped out of the rock in a mine. For something a bit more refined I don't know.

In terms of armour, leather would be the obvious choice if avoiding metal, but perhaps not best suited to fairies if they're not farmers. The hide of any forest-swelling creature like a deer might be usable. Or you could use woven withies from a willow tree - not going to do much against an arrow but could stop an inexpertly or wildly swung sword.


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## Kvothe

Ebony? Glass? Moonstone?


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## Butterfly

Alloys e.g copper and tin, the tin making it stronger


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## Wanara009

Obsidian is a staple material for the South American armaments. It's basically broken glass and glass can produce the sharpest naturally occurring edge known to man and can stay sharp for a very long time--so long it's not used. The drawback is that it quickly wore away the sharpness when used. Alternatively, one could always use dense metamorphic stones like marble or slate for blunt weapons or even spear or arrowheads.

Also coming from South America is salt-treated cotton shirts, strong enough to stop arrows from short bows. Couple this wooden plate/scale armour, you'll get all the basic protection. Lacquered wood is also a good material for armor, especially when made into lamellar, scalar, or laminar armor.

You can also go the animal way with bone and horn weapons and armour ala Monster Hunter (TM). Note that this won't work well if your setting don't have animals with hide/scales that could resist blades like the Monster Hunter universe.

I'm not a big fan of crystals since it's very hard to shape and don't usually come in big, workable pieces except in exceptional circumstances. However, a small cutting instruments with crystalline edge/blade is possible. As such, you could make arrow and spearhead out of it.


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## Gurkhal

You can always got magical with them and say that they have weapon made from starlight and tears and things like that.

Otherwise I think that wood and various types of natural weapons might be what you're looking for. Or they could have some strange metal that humans don't know about.


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## Ireth

My Fae use bronze for tools and weapons, and sometimes alloys of silver for special stuff like elfshot.


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## Mindfire

Kvothe said:


> Ebony? Glass? Moonstone?



Only in Skyrim.


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## Steerpike

You can make up a metal. Mithril, star-metal, and so on.


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## Anders Ã„mting

I'd go with bronze. Only really, really awesome bronze since they are fairies and all. 

Polished bronze has this beautiful golden lustre I could see fairies appreciating, plus bronze is generally associated with older, more pagan times. Perhaps they use some special metalurgy/magic to make them stronger, lighter and more resistant to corrosion than normal bronze? Kinda like the dwarf weapons in Elder Scrolls.


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## Shreddies

Depending on the feel of the fairies, you could go with magically treated wood (for the handles) and amber (for the blades). The Shivering Isles expansion for Oblivion did something like this for some of its armor and weapons, I thought the amber weapon set looked pretty neat.

You could also bypass at least one of the problems with crystal that Wanara mentioned by having the fairies cultivate them. Like crystal farms, or something.

If you don't want something a too far into the realm of fantasy then Bronze might be your best bet. It's a Copper-Tin alloy, so no iron involved. Plus there are a few types of bronze that look almost like gold, only more reddish.


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## Anders Ã„mting

Shreddies said:


> Depending on the feel of the fairies, you could go with magically treated wood (for the handles) and amber (for the blades). The Shivering Isles expansion for Oblivion did something like this for some of its armor and weapons, I thought the amber weapon set looked pretty neat.



Though, the Elder Scrolls series in general have this slightly odd approach to glass/ceramic-like materials actually being forgable. (Volcanic glass, ebony, moonstone, amber, etc.) It works because it's an established part of the setting but it doesn't really make sense outside of it - what they call "ebony" clearly isn't even the same type of material as actual ebony*, for example, and what they call glass isn't really actual glass. 

What I'm saying is that this all amounts to making up a whole new material from scratch. They could have called ebony "blacksteel" or something and it would have made functionally no differance.

*I've always suspected they meant it to be obsidian, but got it mixed up somehow.


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## Mindfire

Anders Ã„mting said:


> Though, the Elder Scrolls series in general have this slightly odd approach to glass/ceramic-like materials actually being forgable. (Volcanic glass, ebony, moonstone, amber, etc.) It works because it's an established part of the setting but it doesn't really make sense outside of it - what they call "ebony" clearly isn't even the same type of material as actual ebony*, for example, and what they call glass isn't really actual glass.
> 
> What I'm saying is that this all amounts to making up a whole new material from scratch. They could have called ebony "blacksteel" or something and it would have made functionally no differance.
> 
> *I've always suspected they meant it to be obsidian, but got it mixed up somehow.



In the Elder Scrolls universe, "glass" weapons and armor are apparently derived from something called "malachite". Obviously not the same as the malachite from our world, though apparently Earth's malachite can be smelted.


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## wordwalker

Yeah, they mostly grabbed some impressive-sounding substances to name their materials after, no logic needed. (For instance, to make the larger moonstone armors in Skyrim, you also add an "ingot of quicksilver"...)

Then again, it does work as exactly that: a short list of cool words to consider.


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## Jess A

Hmmm....

You've all given me quite a few options to consider. Thank you for your great contributions! 

On faeries mining metals - yes, there are some faeries who might mine metals (not dwarves but a kind of underground creature), but this does clash a little with common perception of faeries. The other option is that they used to trade with humans - they did in the past - and humans were the miners.

On bronze, wood etc and magical means - I suppose I could mesh these together. I've never played any of the video games mentioned, so a lot of that stuff doesn't mean much to me  but the concepts certainly do. I could use a magic rock or volcanic rock drawn from the earth and forged with magic. Probably often done, but since it's not a huge plot point in the story (aside from it being non-iron), it probably doesn't matter too much. 

Or, as someone else mentioned above, weapons completely forged from magic - though I suspect human magic users or other faeries with magic might present a problem if they can 'unwind' the threads of magic from the weapons. I might take that idea for one two faerie kinds, but the warriors will likely use a type of special wood or metal magically forged so it has a solid substance.

Maybe I am being too logical - after all, as mentioned, this is fantasy! 

Thanks again.

Also, is there a limit on how many 'thank yous' I can issue? I would like to give everybody a thank you but in the past, the button has vanished after five people have been thanked (or something along those lines)


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## Jess A

Chilari said:


> In terms of armour, leather would be the obvious choice if avoiding metal, but perhaps not best suited to fairies if they're not farmers. The hide of any forest-swelling creature like a deer might be usable. Or you could use woven withies from a willow tree - not going to do much against an arrow but could stop an inexpertly or wildly swung sword.



On armour - the faeries do not farm on a large scale. Most of them hunt and gather or grow small amounts of food. They don't breed animals for slaughter. I was thinking some sort of light metal, but certainly you've given me some other options to think about. Maybe something forest-based. Wood-based even, but very modified.



Shreddies said:


> You could also bypass at least one of the problems with crystal that Wanara mentioned by having the fairies cultivate them. Like crystal farms, or something.



Ooh! Crystal farms sound great, I would love one for myself.


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## psychotick

Hi,

Mithril is the traditional elven magic metal isn't it - from Tolkein at least. But if you didn't want to go that way I'd tend to pick a metal for its coolness. Silver for example would look really cool, though as a metal it would such. But if you allowed it with something, maybe aluminium to make it light, you might be able to get a decent blade out of it. And you could give it a cool name like as previously mentioned, moonsilver.

Bronze I'd tend to stay away from as such, simply because everyone knows it and most people know it was replaced by steel for obvious reason. But if instead you used the copper part of the bronze alloy and mixed it with something else, say chromium, you could create an interesting alloy that might look damned good. Call it say eldritch copper or some such.

Also, I'd think again about the natural weapons, bone etc. I agree they don't sound too great at first glance, but don't forget, these are fairy we're talking about. If you can have mythical races, why not mythical beasts that they hunt. So imagine a sword made from the horn of a minotaur. Or a unicorn. Dragon scale armour.

Cheers, Greg.


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## psychotick

Hi,

Found this site on the wiki - it may help.

List of alloys - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stellite sounds like an awesome alloy by the way.

Cheers, Greg.


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## Jess A

Greg - all great ideas, cheers for the link, too! 

I did consider having them hunt a mythical creature for its bones. Special bones, of course. But I don't think there would be enough bone to go around to equip so many, and I want to avoid them over-hunting or farming too many creatures. For royalty, that might well serve fine. Yes the reason stated above is why I did shy away from bronze - I have a book on swords and it didn't sound too appealing in the book!


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## Shockley

You could go old-school fantastic metals - orichalc/orichalcum. It basically means 'mountain copper' and was probably a kind of copper that was particularly bright (or yellowish), but was associated with the Atlanteans for its strength and durability. 

 Or you could make up something, like faerie-silver (I like that) or glowcopper or somesuch.


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## Anders Ã„mting

psychotick said:


> Bronze I'd tend to stay away from as such, simply because everyone knows it and most people know it was replaced by steel for obvious reason.



If I recall correctly, the obvious reason is currently belived to have been a severe shortage of tin, not that iron alloy weapons were better. (They weren't really, not innitially.)



> But if instead you used the copper part of the bronze alloy and mixed it with something else, say chromium, you could create an interesting alloy that might look damned good. Call it say eldritch copper or some such.



Chromium copper exists. It is, from what I can tell, somewhat weaker and softer than ordinary phosphor bronze but with the same tensile strenght.

Keep in mind that bronze comes in several different alloys - in fact we mostly use the word "copper alloy" these days because it can tricky to tell bronzes from brasses. (Gunmetal can be considered both, for example.) Some bronzes are more suited for weapons than other.

Anyway, the point is that if your entire society happens to be allergic to iron to the point of it being impossible to handle, then bronze is _easily _the second best alternative. The fairies can't help that the one superior weapon technology happens to be made out of poison.



Little Storm Cloud said:


> Yes the reason stated above is why I did shy away from bronze - I have a book on swords and it didn't sound too appealing in the book!



I'm curious, what did you find unappealing about it?


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## Jess A

*Anders:* The book gives the impression that iron ore weapons are less prone to fracture/breakage. This isn't an ancient-time world either - I'm using a world similar to Renaissance-era Europe. As mentioned in my original post, I actually want the weapons to be every bit as lethal and durable and accessible (to the faeries) as human weapons.

Problem is, a lot of people have mentioned various alloys, but I know very, very little about alloys. So my knowledge is probably incorrect in any case. It has been a long time since I studied this sort of thing - and that was in high school. I know you have a very epic knowledge of swords. How superior were swords/weapons in the 1500, 1600s compared to iron alloy weapons made in earlier times? How does this compare to bronze weapons? 

I'm yet to determine whether humans can wield faerie weapons, and whether a specific type of faerie would mine the metals or trade with humans. Problem is, if they did trade with humans in the past, they don't much anymore, so they would be left short. This means they have to obtain the metal themselves. I would also like humans to find faerie-made weapons admirable. Perhaps the beautiful inscriptions, perhaps that they are in some ways actually superior to human blades. Pointing me again to magic influence or some mysterious metal. This fits with the plot better than the humans having superior weapons. 

Hope this explains a little more, thanks again for all your help everyone!


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## Shockley

> Anders: The book gives the impression that iron ore weapons are less prone to fracture/breakage.



 Depends on the quality of the blacksmith.

 For the longest period of time, copper was still superior to iron - iron was just cheaper to mine and easier to forge, and thus a nation utilizing iron over copper could generally throw out more soldiers. For a good while after iron replaced copper, your average officer still preferred copper weaponry due to its superior quality.


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## Butterfly

How about weapons made of crystal? A type that can only be found in faerie land and mined just like any other resource.


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## ThinkerX

Time for a really basic question here:

Who are the fey's primary enemies?  If it is other fey, then you'd want weapons made of something highly dangerous to fey - aka 'iron'.

So...axes with wooden handles and iron heads.  Maybe kept by fey leaders for intimidating other fey.  'Yeah, go ahead and look at it - thats real iron up there, the death metal.  Nothing you got will stand against it and I got the guts to use it.'


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## Jess A

Butterfly: Someone did mention crystal. I agree it is a nice idea. They could get special faerie crystal for sure.

Shockley: I did not know this about copper? 



ThinkerX said:


> Time for a really basic question here:
> 
> Who are the fey's primary enemies?  If it is other fey, then you'd want weapons made of something highly dangerous to fey - aka 'iron'.
> 
> So...axes with wooden handles and iron heads.  Maybe kept by fey leaders for intimidating other fey.  'Yeah, go ahead and look at it - thats real iron up there, the death metal.  Nothing you got will stand against it and I got the guts to use it.'



This is true, though the faeries do not often risk having iron in their 'worlds'. It would upset the balance. Certainly if in the human lands, they might use iron against another faerie, though usually the faeries who dare to touch an iron weapon (even with a different material to hold onto) have lived in the human lands for some time. For torture, the more charming faeries might employ iron with some risk. But as far as weapons go - unless they are trading with humans, or having human blacksmiths forge the weapons, it doesn't seem realistic to have them obtain iron without great trouble. They no longer trade with humans - not for a very long time.


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## Chilari

I suspect Shockley meant bronze, not copper. And it is certainly possible that a shortage of tin is what led to the iron age, rather than superiority of iron. because iron is more brittle, has a different type of strength (I can't remember what though) and required a different shape to things made of bronze to be equal in usefulness - though the earliest iron weapons were cast in the same manner as the later bronze ones so probably weren't particularly useful. Meanwhile, tin certainly was scarce. Britain became wealthy off tin mined in Cornwall and in fact was known by Herodotus' time as the "Tin Island" (except in Greek) which goes so show - if they had to travel that far afield to get hold of it, scarcity was always a risk. Thus there is every chance, before certain sources - new mines and so on - were discovered, there could well have been a shortage of tin, without which iron suddenly looks very attractive. But the means of smelting iron in the early period, and in fact of extracting it, were terribly inefficient. It didn't because really good until charcoal was used in the smelting to create steel, which made it a lot stronger by removing impurities.


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## Ireth

There are Fae that do use iron weapons, though they are both quite uncivilized and also equipped with magical protection from it. Redcaps are the only example I can think of; they use iron daggers and wear iron boots, and the caps that give them their name are enchanted to protect them from iron, as long as they wear them. Once the cap comes off, hello fiery pain and feet roasting in their boots.


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## Jess A

Chilari said:


> I suspect Shockley meant bronze, not copper. And it is certainly possible that a shortage of tin is what led to the iron age, rather than superiority of iron. because iron is more brittle, has a different type of strength (I can't remember what though) and required a different shape to things made of bronze to be equal in usefulness - though the earliest iron weapons were cast in the same manner as the later bronze ones so probably weren't particularly useful. Meanwhile, tin certainly was scarce. Britain became wealthy off tin mined in Cornwall and in fact was known by Herodotus' time as the "Tin Island" (except in Greek) which goes so show - if they had to travel that far afield to get hold of it, scarcity was always a risk. Thus there is every chance, before certain sources - new mines and so on - were discovered, there could well have been a shortage of tin, without which iron suddenly looks very attractive. But the means of smelting iron in the early period, and in fact of extracting it, were terribly inefficient. It didn't because really good until charcoal was used in the smelting to create steel, which made it a lot stronger by removing impurities.



It's quite tempting to have one of the cultures in my book mine tin and use bronze, due to all of this discussion. I have one culture it might fit quite well, because they're quite isolated from most of the others and trade more amongst themselves - they could be in a tin-rich area, or they could have a shortage and it prompts them to scout further for alternatives. Certainly learnt something this week!



Ireth said:


> There are Fae that do use iron weapons, though they are both quite uncivilized and also equipped with magical protection from it. Redcaps are the only example I can think of; they use iron daggers and wear iron boots, and the caps that give them their name are enchanted to protect them from iron, as long as they wear them. Once the cap comes off, hello fiery pain and feet roasting in their boots.



That's intriguing. I didn't know that either. I have a good faerie book which I might scout through for the Redcaps. I still think I will avoid most faeries using iron (except for torture; some of them aren't the nicest of creatures).


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## Fakefaux

My initial thought is that you simply don't need to address it. Most traditional stories where fairy warriors show up don't, after all. Unless it's directly relevant to the story, why point it out to the reader? Still, if there's a lot of warfare involving the fairies directly in the story, and not just as setting background, references to their weapons will likely come up. Even if it is background, you also might just want a bit of flavor for when a fairy warrior does show up.

One cheat is the concept of "cold" iron. This is really just an archaic term for any sort of iron, but many fantasy writers have chosen to interpret it as a particular _type_ of iron. Just what it means varies from writer to writer. I've seen some people claim it only means raw, un-worked iron. I've seen it reference only meteoric iron. Mind you, this all sort of detracts from the simple symbolism of iron repelling fairies; it's a product of civilization, of mankind's advancement, while fairies are a part of the natural world that civilization slowly tames/drives back.

Alternatively, keep the inherent contradiction in. Fairies have always been contradictory beings in folklore and myth. There are certain rules that apply to them, but these rules are very fluid, and for every two stories that stick to them, there's one that does not. Having your fairies be both vulnerable to iron yet still using metal weapons is a quick and easy way to get across that the nature of fairies is to be weird, confusing, and mysterious.


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## Jess A

Fakefaux said:


> My initial thought is that you simply don't need to address it. Most traditional stories where fairy warriors show up don't, after all. Unless it's directly relevant to the story, why point it out to the reader? Still, if there's a lot of warfare involving the fairies directly in the story, and not just as setting background, references to their weapons will likely come up. Even if it is background, you also might just want a bit of flavor for when a fairy warrior does show up.
> 
> One cheat is the concept of "cold" iron. This is really just an archaic term for any sort of iron, but many fantasy writers have chosen to interpret it as a particular _type_ of iron. Just what it means varies from writer to writer. I've seen some people claim it only means raw, un-worked iron. I've seen it reference only meteoric iron. Mind you, this all sort of detracts from the simple symbolism of iron repelling fairies; it's a product of civilization, of mankind's advancement, while fairies are a part of the natural world that civilization slowly tames/drives back.
> 
> Alternatively, keep the inherent contradiction in. Fairies have always been contradictory beings in folklore and myth. There are certain rules that apply to them, but these rules are very fluid, and for every two stories that stick to them, there's one that does not. Having your fairies be both vulnerable to iron yet still using metal weapons is a quick and easy way to get across that the nature of fairies is to be weird, confusing, and mysterious.



It actually is a plot device, which is why I'm going to the effort to make a post about it  There are some scenes where faerie warriors appear, and one of the MCs is a faerie warrior. 

The point about the iron is interesting. I do want many of the faeries to come across as mysterious and somewhat frightening to humans - though humans have, in the past, traded with them, and some faeries live almost in human society (not commonly). This is why I didn't want iron to be an extreme allergy. But it is a dangerous one if used in certain ways. Throwing an iron object at a faerie for instance will just make the faerie laugh. But stab a faerie and it's a whole different story.

I also want to look at a reason for the iron being an allergy. Having my faeries mine their own metals seems contradictory to them symbolising nature. But at the same time, their methods of mining would be very different and less widespread. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with them mining at all. I could avoid mentioning the reason for iron allergy at all and let readers go with that common assumption that you outlined above (faeries = nature, iron = man's attempted domination over nature, man's advancement). I don't know if I want to approach it any further than that.


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## Fakefaux

Are your fairies a race of physical beings, like us, who just happen to have magical powers? Or are they they more like the quasi spirit-beings of legend? As for fairies mining metal, make it a _part_ of their connection with nature. Imagine one of them commanding iron veins to grow out of the earth, like twisting vines that coil together in the shape of trees, which the fairies then "harvest." 

Mind you traditional fairies probably didn't need to "mine" anything. If they wanted it, it appeared in their hand.


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## Ireth

Fakefaux said:


> As for fairies mining metal, make it a _part_ of they connection with nature. Imagine one of them commanding iron veins to grow out of the earth, like twisting vines that coil together in the shape of trees, which the fairies then "harvest."



That's a really neat idea. I might just use it for my Fae stories. ^^


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## Jess A

Fakefaux said:


> Are your fairies a race of physical beings, like us, who just happen to have magical powers? Or are they they more like the quasi spirit-beings of legend? As for fairies mining metal, make it a _part_ of their connection with nature. Imagine one of them commanding iron veins to grow out of the earth, like twisting vines that coil together in the shape of trees, which the fairies then "harvest."
> 
> Mind you traditional fairies probably didn't need to "mine" anything. If they wanted it, it appeared in their hand.



Yeah, good idea. Might also go with a variation of that, as Ireth said, though probably not iron. Maybe with something else...hmm...

Some faeries are pretty much just physical beings. Others are less substantial - not spirits (those are something else in my book, though they're related). Faeries are quite varied but they have a few things in common. It's humans who have grouped them that way.


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## Alexandra

> Mind you traditional fairies probably didn't need to "mine" anything. If they wanted it, it appeared in their hand.



Too easy


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## Jess A

Alexandra said:


> Too easy



Definitely - it just wouldn't serve the plot. Mine is a fantasy world and the beings are based on traditional faeries, but with my own take on them.


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