Lead Balloons
What most people don’t realize is that the phrase “It went over like a lead balloon” is actually a translation from Low Faerie. It’s not quite a perfect translation, though. The original is something more like “NO NO NOT THE LEAD BALLOON ARGGH HE POPPED IT MY EYES MY EYES BURN WITH NOTHINGNESS I CANNOT FEEL MY FACE” and then goes into mumbled bloody spittle as the poison really kicks in.
Yeah. The Fae hate and fear Cold Iron, sure. But they simply fear lead, in much the same way that we fear lumps of plutonium just lying around. You don’t waste time hating Magic-Eating Death in such concentrated form: you instead spend that time running away and hoping that you didn’t get too close. Unfortunately, lead isn’t poisonous at range… which is why some carefully-unsung mage-engineer figured out how to create a delicate sphere of pure lead that, when pricked with a pin (or simply tossed to the ground, would create a sphere of lead dust that would, amazingly enough, fill a standard one-foot hex.
Note, by the way, that this stuff is fairly toxic for Humans, too. Definitely in the long term, and very possibly in the short term as well: depends on how much gets inhaled. But the standard Fae response to somebody setting off a Lead Balloon is to seal the area, conjure a few fireballs in the enclosed space, fill the space with rock, and then avoid that specific area for the rest of eternity. And, of course, do their best to kill the mortal that’s throwing Lead Balloons around, so this is one of those weapons that you probably shouldn’t use unless you’re really invested in ruining a Fae’s day. Which, admittedly, is an easy mental state to get into.
If lead is toxic to faries then wouldn’t standard bullets be an issue for them?
The b*stards usually know some variant of a missile shield spell. You gotta area-effect them if you want to reliably score hits.
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Surely metalstorm counts as an area-effect .. a *lot* harder to hide under your duster, though.
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Mew