[HoneyBadger]

Ofcourse there's going to be SOME forging going on, unless you're talking about Mictlan or Agartha or probably Arco or Sauromatia or C'tis or...well most of EA seem to be using-or could be assumed to be using-copper or bronze. One can assume that Ulm discovered steel-or iron that they're calling steel, or possibly perfected it to the point where it was superior to bronze, but even Jotuns may be using mostly stone and bronze weapons. Iron should be very scarce in EA. Even in the middle age, before the invention of the Catalan furnace, master smiths are going to be rare. Sure the local yokel can shoe a horse, but create a Flambeau? or a Gate Cleaver? or an Elf Bane? Even so, only 1 in 100 or 200 or more people are going to have the basic blacksmithing skills. Bronze and copper are more expensive in the long run, but they're going to be common. And iron did have mythical qualities, so did good weapons and armor, often enough. We're also not talking 13th century until perhaps late age, and I'm not convinced late age would run that late, since that's about when gunpowder started showing up in Europe. Until that furnace was invented however, you and that book are correct about the piles of scrap iron, but what you're not realizing is that scrap iron isn't by itself a resource in terms of Dom3 because that's metal that has been produced and is now being recycled. It's already accounted for and can be explained away as the source of Ulm's (and others) bonus resources.

I really suspect, if you give equal amounts of thought to old established concepts and new concepts, that a magic item capable Forge (capable of atleast producing obsidian glaives and basalt armour, and of producing under mage guidance even artifacts) supplied with rare materials and gems, and a master smith (in addition to atleast a dozen other highly skilled artizans, apprentices/journeymen, and pure artists) not only experienced in smithing and other arts to a high degree, but in low-level enchanting and field-combat engineering, equipped with several magically altered forges, anvils, and smelters, themselves made of magical or enchanted materals and/or designed by magical beings (or possibly even embodying magical beings themselves-imagine forging a dwarven hammer on the back of a bound earth elemental, or a hellsword on a black steel anval that imprisons the soul of a devil)-large specialized equipment in large specialized rooms for creating golems, iron dragons, juggernauts, field artillery and war machines-is no less reasonable as a separate entity than a temple overseen by educated, intelligent priests, incenses, icons, wines, catacombs, crematories, and/or cemetaries for the processing of the dead, secret, sacred chambers where the religion's mysteries occur, and where the Pretender may be summoned back on earth, and possibly small manufactories for the production of goods and books, and the temple's local lands and properties-which may be extensive, or a magical laboratory-probably in some kind of wizard's tower, or atleast heavily guarded against thieves, overseen by apprentices and master alchemists, filled with the rarest of materials and chemical items, as well as atleast a dozen expensive, fragile apparati, expensive devices made from gold, silver, and gems, a secure place to house living blood slaves in relative comfort, separate from one another, until sacrifice, autopsy rooms, torture rooms, and charnals for housing corpses, and permanent consecrated-or desecrated-areas for the summoning of angelic or demonic beings-not to mention elementals and undead spirits-areas which would have to be secure against both extremely powerful and dangerous beings such as demon lords, and tampering-intentional or unintentional.

I'm not suggesting throwing up a dozen buildings, it's just to me reasonable that wildly different things-like producing fine axes and spells which cause forests to turn mean, be a little more separated and a little more complicated, because it would add to the game, not because I want the game bogged down