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Thunderbolt Iron: Difference between revisions
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[[Magic Meteor|Meteoric metal carries inherent significance.]] Anything made out of it will be some combination of magical, good, evil, or just incredibly strong.
Crafting meteoric iron is [[Older Than Dirt]]: iron from meteorites has been used to make tools and weapons since the Ice Age, when it was the only iron available. The trope that it is special or magical isn't documented from that long ago, but some scholars believe that the [[Older Than Feudalism]] story of the forging of Zeus' thunderbolts refers to meteoric iron. Anyone with academic journal access can read more about this
This trope can also be [[Truth in Television]]. Real-life meteoric iron often contains traces of the rare, superdense metal iridium, which significantly strengthens the metal, and there's a reason why they're called iron-''nickel'' meteorites now: they contain a lot of nickel, sometimes having a fine structure formed of interleaving alloys of nickel-iron and iron-nickel. And nickel strengthens a steel, so the old meteorite-hunt was justified. Before forging became advanced enough to make iron-alloys, this was one of only two ways to get them (the other being to dig them up and hope they're good enough), so this concept is linked with [[Cold Iron]]. Even when cold-wrought iron was outdated, at least it was a source of ready nickel.
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[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]
[[Category:Thunderbolt Iron]]
[[Category:Trope
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