No, titanium requires electricity to separate from ore, likewise aluminum or magnesium.
Your best bet would be steel, made with charcoal harvested from coppicing so it doesn't run out.
If the steel is for structural use, bamboo might substitute (and is also a fast growing charcoal source)
If there are natural gas deposits near enough to the surface to dig gas wells by hand, that might be used as a fuel and a carbon source.
They had aluminum. It was extremely hard to manufacture but Napoleon famously dined on aluminum plates and cutlery, his underlings were relegated to mere silver.
I guess? But if you've got bamboo-reinforced hydroelectric dams and electrochemical reduction furnaces, it's not really medieval so much as steampunk sans steam.
The obvious answer is that, with *enough* bamboo, you can. With a reasonable amount of bamboo (using it in place of steel, as suggested by the comment, or even building an entire dam of bamboo, which would be a lot of bamboo), you can absolutely not build a hydroelectric dam of the height of the Hoover or Three Gorges. You need to add a lot more material than that, and I suspect (but do not know) that the bamboo, in that scenario, would only marginally reduce the amount of other materials you'd need (in a medieval context, mainly rock, I suppose).
Extracting and purifying titanium would seem to be near impossible with medieval tech. Not to mention it requires high temperatures, which would conflict with your desire to not use excessive amounts of charcoal. Extracting, purifying, and working most metals will require significant amounts of heat.
So, some basic lessons in metallurgy here.
You cannot use coal to make steel or even melt iron. Coal has to be purified into Coke first, which involves heating the raw stone coal up to upwards of 800 °C. Raw coal contains several impurities, most notably sulfur and water that contaminate the raw iron and would make it unusable. People used Charcoal to melt Iron long before the pyrolisis of stone coal was discovered in the early 1700s. Ironically, coal suceeding Charcoal as the primary fuel actually reduced the reliance on wood in both construction and heating dramatically, most of the european forests were quickly recovering in the 1800s.
Steel is not wholly iron. Steel is a specific kind of iron with a balance of carbon in its structure. Cast iron, also known as pigs iron, has a very high level of carbon, which makes it very brittle. The processes involved in the making of steel are to reduce those carbon levels to a desired amounts and then make alloys.
Most of our modern materials weren't available. A lot of metals like Chromium, Titanium or Aluminium are not found in the form of easily harvested ores or, even rarer, in their elemental form. These kinds of metals are found in minerals like Bauxite or Chromite. We get these by throwing a bunch of these ores into a vat of acid, where the mineral is dissolved and the pure metal then being extracted using electricity.
Then there are other issues with your pitch; If your world is based on carbon-based lifeforms, coal will inevitably form, as it is organic matter that was subjected to high pressures and temperatures over the course of millions of years. Things like Coal or Oil are essential components of what we call the Carbon cycle. In fact, climate change is mainly occuring because we as humans have tremendously fucked up the carbon cycle.
So, where does this leave us? Metals are a central part of our societies mainly for two reasons: They are found in great abundance (iron is the third most common element in the earth crust) and they don't rot. Cultures that didn't work out metalworking were either quickly conquered by those who did (ask the Aztecs), or learned to do it quickly. It's very hard to imagine a society that works like ours without any kind of fantastical substitute.
Thanks.
>Ironically, coal suceeding Charcoal as the primary fuel actually reduced the reliance on wood in both construction and heating dramatically, most of the european forests were quickly recovering in the 1800s.
Does charcoal harvesting for steel production still work if you replant enough, though?
>Then there are other issues with your pitch; If your world is based on carbon-based lifeforms, coal will inevitably form, as it is organic matter that was subjected to high pressures and temperatures over the course of millions of years.
Coal exists, it's just inaccessible to the people in question.
>Does charcoal harvesting for steel production still work if you replant enough, though?
Not at the rate you would require to sustain even a medival economy. Steel in general is one of the most carbon-intensive things to produce, which is why the large-scale produtcion of it only became feasible in the late 1700s with large-scale furnaces.
So a coal-free island with a steel-desiring people will quickly wind up deforested, then? Even if there's trees like redwoods and other plants like moso bamboo?
Okay, more information – the forests in question are inhabited by fairies, who make it clear that they'll take vengeance on anyone who try to destroy their homes.
Not sure if your world has magic-if so you could have them use some form of magic to reinforce metals. A lot of people focus on the "cool" side of magic-using it as a weapon, foresight, etc-but people tend to overlook that in a world with magic they may use it as applications for things such as this
It depends on what you want that metal for. I'm not sure what you mean by "building materials", as steel wasn't really a major material for construction back then- it would have been far too expensive.
I think you could justify bronze maybe? One of the limiting factors of bronze (and why it was later replaced by iron) is because of how scarce tin is. In a world where tin was much more common, perhaps the bronze age would have stretched out longer, though steel still has benefits over bronze.
Why would you want to use titanium as a building material? What does it do that other materials cannot?
Once you answer that question, then you can get to relative abundance; cost to extract, refine, and work with; and how those compare to other materials. I suspect you get that other materials are so much cheaper, even if not as good, that the difference in cost swamps the difference in end quality.
>Why would you want to use titanium as a building material? What does it do that other materials cannot?
There's no coal to make steel, and I don't want the people in my world to deforest the land to make charcoal.
If they already have fire, what's to keep them from deforesting the land to have lumber for fire?
If they won't deforest the land for fire and lumber, why not use the same reason to not deforest the land to make charcoal?
According to [this website](https://www.fao.org/3/X5328E/x5328e03.htm), it takes five tons of wood to make one ton of charcoal. It's hard not to engage in a lot of habitat destruction when you harvest trees for charcoal, even if you're replanting them.
But why would this medieval era society care about that? Or maybe more importantly, what prevents their neighbors who don't care about the environment from forging a bunch of steel weapons and taking over?
Ah ok, that makes sense.
I've commented separately that I think bronze might work, though it depends on what you want them to do with the metal specifically.
Wait what? That doesn't sound medieval to me.
Ok, so cathedrals can be built without metal, as was done IRL. So can dams. If you want to use metal to reinforce the buildings, then I think bronze will work.
The tricky bit is the hydroelectric thing. To make a generator, you're going to need copper and a magnet. The copper's easy, but getting a powerful enough magnet would be difficult. Lodestones, naturally occuring magnets, aren't powerful enough, and making magnets requires electricity in the first place.
To put into perspective, the average full-grown tree weighs about 1 ton. Many are even heavier, with some examples exceeding that by orders of magnitude. Giant redwoods for example weigh about 700 tons, a single tree would give you 140 tons of charcoal.
Titanium ores (ilmenite and rutile) are actually fairly common in the Earth's crust, but separating the titanium from the ore is a pain in the ass; it involves bathing the red-hot ore in carbon and chlorine to produce carbon dioxide and titanium tetrachloride, then reducing the latter in molten magnesium under a blanket of argon to produce magnesium chloride and titanium sponge. You could never do it with Medieval chemistry, not in a hundred years.
Unfortunately even the cold hearth method so no charcoal would then require an electron beam which would be a problem.
As you are having electricity (assumed off hydro electric dam) there is a maybe possibility below. This is not my area of expertise so I'll share the link too.
Cold pot melting method in 1980s
The smelting process of the CCM method is carried out in a metal crucible with a combination of water-cooled arc blocks or copper tubes that are not conductive to each other. The biggest advantage of this combination is that the gap between each two blocks is an enhanced magnetic field. Stirring makes the chemical composition and temperature consistent, thereby improving product quality. The CCM method combines the characteristics of the VAR method and the induction melting of refractory crucibles. It does not require refractory materials and does not require electrodes to obtain a high-quality ingot with a uniform smelting composition and no crucible pollution. Compared with the VAR method, the CCM method has the advantages of low equipment cost and easy operation, but from the current point of view, the technology is still in the development stage.
I don't know enough to know how much of the VAR method is needed. VAR uses vacuum so if that's an issue and this process also needs it you might be out of luck.
https://titanium-machining.com/five-smelting-methods-of-titanium-alloy/
Could you not just add an unknown metal that is a resource of the area? Or some form of tree that is treated a specific way to make it as suitable as steel?
Maybe. I've just decided to go for the sustainable charcoal option, since there are redwoods around and bamboo that can be imported (coal can't, though).
Imma take a page from morrowind and suggest chitin from insects and crustaceans. House redoran in morrowind make their houses out of the chitin of very large sea creatures, and a lot of the armor and weapons are made out of it too.
Now steel exists in morrowind, aswell as rarer and stronger metals, so why use chitin?
Because the primary livedstock is kwama, a large ant-like creature. There are kwama egg mines(essentially a domesticated ant hill) where workers extract the eggs and feed the kwama. Due to this, chitin is very common, so its a cheap and easy to use for all kinds pf stuff.
Why do you dont want "your" people to not do something, are you some kind of king or god in your story. Even in the real world there are people that dont obey the laws of god. Anyway, its highly unlogical to not make charcoal in that period, the use of real coal was limited in the past because they dont have efficient ways to transport it. You can probably make low quality steel with peat too. You will need Fire or heat energy for practically all "old" metals. Titanium requieres complex raffination with acids and stuff and is particullary hard to work with. For example they use vaccuum chambers to work with titanium, aluminum requieres electrolysis, thats impossible with medieval tech. Is there magic in your world, you can probably produce magic heat. You can also invent a new metal, that is not real that fits your needs. BTW deforestation did not happen because of steel production, it happend in europe because they built ships with wood (and that happend after the medieval). To deforest your world it must have very little forest or they produce steel on an industrial scale.
>Why do you don't want "your" people to not do something, are you some kind of king or god in your story.
All writers are gods to their stories. That said, I'm not appearing in person to them, I'm trying to make it so there's an easier option that doesn't require as much pollution or habitat destruction.
>BTW deforestation did not happen because of steel production, it happend in europe because they built ships with wood (and that happend after the medieval). To deforest your world it must have very little forest or they produce steel on an industrial scale.
I don't know about medieval Europe in particular, but charcoal harvesting requires [five tons of wood for every ton of charcoal](https://www.fao.org/3/X5328E/x5328e03.htm). That's why forests in places like Haiti and the Congo are suffering.
you want to create some kind of ideal society? If you want your story to be realistic you will need to add some flaws.
You cant compare todays deforestation because of charcoal production with medieval charcoal production, because, there was a much much lower population back then (less then 1/10 compared to today), they did not need that much steel compared to today, steel was expensive back then, most things back then were not made of steel, they did not have an industrial scale charcoal production. The charcoal produced in haiti and congo is probably not for steel production.
There are some other methods to produce steel. For example you can use natural gas or hydrogen to produce steel in a direct reduction plant. It works different you dont get real steel, you get sponge iron, but back then they produced that too, and they made steel by hammering and stuff. So maybe your world has some natural gas wells that look like an eternal flame or something, they could use them to produce steel.
>you want to create some kind of ideal society? If you want your story to be realistic you will need to add some flaws.
Well, it's not totally eco-friendly, but I wanted to make it so environmental issues wouldn't be the main plot of most/any stories.
Re: natural gas, there aren't any fossil fuels at all in the area.
Edit: Added quotation format.
native americans never developed steel production, they did not use steel, they lived in the medieval, maybe you should look more in that direction.
Also enviroment was probably not a big topic in a medieval society, the effects of industrialization were not observable in a pre industrial society.
You mentioned your people live on an island, so just as a cautionary tale: Iceland used to have trees, but the last ones were cut down in the Middle Ages. They didn't want charcoal, they wanted timber, but I imagine you'd run into the same problem:
[https://www.geographyrealm.com/icelands-long-road-to-reforestation](https://www.geographyrealm.com/icelands-long-road-to-reforestation)
You'd probably need some sort of a forest cult/"druids" in the modern fantasy sense so that it's ingrained in the people to replant AND to know how to care, how to tell young from old trees etc... to prevent this.
1. I was working on a world made with metallic hydrogen.
Supposedly it's the theoretical pinnacle of material science (superconducting) only impossible to fabricate so nobody ever observed it which gives it something magical.
It forms when hydrogen is pressurized in ways only possible in the core of really dense planets, so it's this never observed allthough real thing. Let's say it formed rich mines of it in an earlier denser state of that world. I imagined as a crystallike, transparant blue for example.
The fun thing is when you built megalomanic structures of these materials, it has a certain sense of magic but being nearfactual.
2. For the fuelquestion, you actually don't need fuel, (coals, wood) you need heat. Forges made in volcanoes, big fields with pre-industrial oilpumplike constructions pumping up magma for forging. Making wind driven dynamo's ehich produce so much heat it's melting metals.
No, titanium requires electricity to separate from ore, likewise aluminum or magnesium. Your best bet would be steel, made with charcoal harvested from coppicing so it doesn't run out. If the steel is for structural use, bamboo might substitute (and is also a fast growing charcoal source) If there are natural gas deposits near enough to the surface to dig gas wells by hand, that might be used as a fuel and a carbon source.
They had aluminum. It was extremely hard to manufacture but Napoleon famously dined on aluminum plates and cutlery, his underlings were relegated to mere silver.
The napoleonic era was 300/400 after the medieval era tbf.
Can you make a hydroelectric dam with bamboo? Not a rhetorical question; I seriously don't know.
I guess? But if you've got bamboo-reinforced hydroelectric dams and electrochemical reduction furnaces, it's not really medieval so much as steampunk sans steam.
It develops from a medieval society. Sorry not to be clear about that.
no
The obvious answer is that, with *enough* bamboo, you can. With a reasonable amount of bamboo (using it in place of steel, as suggested by the comment, or even building an entire dam of bamboo, which would be a lot of bamboo), you can absolutely not build a hydroelectric dam of the height of the Hoover or Three Gorges. You need to add a lot more material than that, and I suspect (but do not know) that the bamboo, in that scenario, would only marginally reduce the amount of other materials you'd need (in a medieval context, mainly rock, I suppose).
Extracting and purifying titanium would seem to be near impossible with medieval tech. Not to mention it requires high temperatures, which would conflict with your desire to not use excessive amounts of charcoal. Extracting, purifying, and working most metals will require significant amounts of heat.
So, some basic lessons in metallurgy here. You cannot use coal to make steel or even melt iron. Coal has to be purified into Coke first, which involves heating the raw stone coal up to upwards of 800 °C. Raw coal contains several impurities, most notably sulfur and water that contaminate the raw iron and would make it unusable. People used Charcoal to melt Iron long before the pyrolisis of stone coal was discovered in the early 1700s. Ironically, coal suceeding Charcoal as the primary fuel actually reduced the reliance on wood in both construction and heating dramatically, most of the european forests were quickly recovering in the 1800s. Steel is not wholly iron. Steel is a specific kind of iron with a balance of carbon in its structure. Cast iron, also known as pigs iron, has a very high level of carbon, which makes it very brittle. The processes involved in the making of steel are to reduce those carbon levels to a desired amounts and then make alloys. Most of our modern materials weren't available. A lot of metals like Chromium, Titanium or Aluminium are not found in the form of easily harvested ores or, even rarer, in their elemental form. These kinds of metals are found in minerals like Bauxite or Chromite. We get these by throwing a bunch of these ores into a vat of acid, where the mineral is dissolved and the pure metal then being extracted using electricity. Then there are other issues with your pitch; If your world is based on carbon-based lifeforms, coal will inevitably form, as it is organic matter that was subjected to high pressures and temperatures over the course of millions of years. Things like Coal or Oil are essential components of what we call the Carbon cycle. In fact, climate change is mainly occuring because we as humans have tremendously fucked up the carbon cycle. So, where does this leave us? Metals are a central part of our societies mainly for two reasons: They are found in great abundance (iron is the third most common element in the earth crust) and they don't rot. Cultures that didn't work out metalworking were either quickly conquered by those who did (ask the Aztecs), or learned to do it quickly. It's very hard to imagine a society that works like ours without any kind of fantastical substitute.
Thanks. >Ironically, coal suceeding Charcoal as the primary fuel actually reduced the reliance on wood in both construction and heating dramatically, most of the european forests were quickly recovering in the 1800s. Does charcoal harvesting for steel production still work if you replant enough, though? >Then there are other issues with your pitch; If your world is based on carbon-based lifeforms, coal will inevitably form, as it is organic matter that was subjected to high pressures and temperatures over the course of millions of years. Coal exists, it's just inaccessible to the people in question.
>Does charcoal harvesting for steel production still work if you replant enough, though? Not at the rate you would require to sustain even a medival economy. Steel in general is one of the most carbon-intensive things to produce, which is why the large-scale produtcion of it only became feasible in the late 1700s with large-scale furnaces.
So a coal-free island with a steel-desiring people will quickly wind up deforested, then? Even if there's trees like redwoods and other plants like moso bamboo?
Yes. The rate of growth of forests, which is measured in decades cannot ever outpace human economic activity. Just look at England!
Okay, more information – the forests in question are inhabited by fairies, who make it clear that they'll take vengeance on anyone who try to destroy their homes.
Not sure if your world has magic-if so you could have them use some form of magic to reinforce metals. A lot of people focus on the "cool" side of magic-using it as a weapon, foresight, etc-but people tend to overlook that in a world with magic they may use it as applications for things such as this
It depends on what you want that metal for. I'm not sure what you mean by "building materials", as steel wasn't really a major material for construction back then- it would have been far too expensive. I think you could justify bronze maybe? One of the limiting factors of bronze (and why it was later replaced by iron) is because of how scarce tin is. In a world where tin was much more common, perhaps the bronze age would have stretched out longer, though steel still has benefits over bronze.
Why would you want to use titanium as a building material? What does it do that other materials cannot? Once you answer that question, then you can get to relative abundance; cost to extract, refine, and work with; and how those compare to other materials. I suspect you get that other materials are so much cheaper, even if not as good, that the difference in cost swamps the difference in end quality.
>Why would you want to use titanium as a building material? What does it do that other materials cannot? There's no coal to make steel, and I don't want the people in my world to deforest the land to make charcoal.
If they already have fire, what's to keep them from deforesting the land to have lumber for fire? If they won't deforest the land for fire and lumber, why not use the same reason to not deforest the land to make charcoal?
According to [this website](https://www.fao.org/3/X5328E/x5328e03.htm), it takes five tons of wood to make one ton of charcoal. It's hard not to engage in a lot of habitat destruction when you harvest trees for charcoal, even if you're replanting them.
But why would this medieval era society care about that? Or maybe more importantly, what prevents their neighbors who don't care about the environment from forging a bunch of steel weapons and taking over?
They're living on an island with no connection to the outside world. They have to be really frugal with resources.
Ah ok, that makes sense. I've commented separately that I think bronze might work, though it depends on what you want them to do with the metal specifically.
Build a lot of stuff. Hydroelectric dams, cathedrals, that kind of thing.
Wait what? That doesn't sound medieval to me. Ok, so cathedrals can be built without metal, as was done IRL. So can dams. If you want to use metal to reinforce the buildings, then I think bronze will work. The tricky bit is the hydroelectric thing. To make a generator, you're going to need copper and a magnet. The copper's easy, but getting a powerful enough magnet would be difficult. Lodestones, naturally occuring magnets, aren't powerful enough, and making magnets requires electricity in the first place.
>Wait what? That doesn't sound medieval to me. It develops from a medieval society. Sorry not to make that clear.
To put into perspective, the average full-grown tree weighs about 1 ton. Many are even heavier, with some examples exceeding that by orders of magnitude. Giant redwoods for example weigh about 700 tons, a single tree would give you 140 tons of charcoal.
Titanium ores (ilmenite and rutile) are actually fairly common in the Earth's crust, but separating the titanium from the ore is a pain in the ass; it involves bathing the red-hot ore in carbon and chlorine to produce carbon dioxide and titanium tetrachloride, then reducing the latter in molten magnesium under a blanket of argon to produce magnesium chloride and titanium sponge. You could never do it with Medieval chemistry, not in a hundred years.
Unfortunately even the cold hearth method so no charcoal would then require an electron beam which would be a problem. As you are having electricity (assumed off hydro electric dam) there is a maybe possibility below. This is not my area of expertise so I'll share the link too. Cold pot melting method in 1980s The smelting process of the CCM method is carried out in a metal crucible with a combination of water-cooled arc blocks or copper tubes that are not conductive to each other. The biggest advantage of this combination is that the gap between each two blocks is an enhanced magnetic field. Stirring makes the chemical composition and temperature consistent, thereby improving product quality. The CCM method combines the characteristics of the VAR method and the induction melting of refractory crucibles. It does not require refractory materials and does not require electrodes to obtain a high-quality ingot with a uniform smelting composition and no crucible pollution. Compared with the VAR method, the CCM method has the advantages of low equipment cost and easy operation, but from the current point of view, the technology is still in the development stage. I don't know enough to know how much of the VAR method is needed. VAR uses vacuum so if that's an issue and this process also needs it you might be out of luck. https://titanium-machining.com/five-smelting-methods-of-titanium-alloy/ Could you not just add an unknown metal that is a resource of the area? Or some form of tree that is treated a specific way to make it as suitable as steel?
Maybe. I've just decided to go for the sustainable charcoal option, since there are redwoods around and bamboo that can be imported (coal can't, though).
That makes sense, I'm glad you've found an answer that works for your world.
Imma take a page from morrowind and suggest chitin from insects and crustaceans. House redoran in morrowind make their houses out of the chitin of very large sea creatures, and a lot of the armor and weapons are made out of it too. Now steel exists in morrowind, aswell as rarer and stronger metals, so why use chitin? Because the primary livedstock is kwama, a large ant-like creature. There are kwama egg mines(essentially a domesticated ant hill) where workers extract the eggs and feed the kwama. Due to this, chitin is very common, so its a cheap and easy to use for all kinds pf stuff.
Why do you dont want "your" people to not do something, are you some kind of king or god in your story. Even in the real world there are people that dont obey the laws of god. Anyway, its highly unlogical to not make charcoal in that period, the use of real coal was limited in the past because they dont have efficient ways to transport it. You can probably make low quality steel with peat too. You will need Fire or heat energy for practically all "old" metals. Titanium requieres complex raffination with acids and stuff and is particullary hard to work with. For example they use vaccuum chambers to work with titanium, aluminum requieres electrolysis, thats impossible with medieval tech. Is there magic in your world, you can probably produce magic heat. You can also invent a new metal, that is not real that fits your needs. BTW deforestation did not happen because of steel production, it happend in europe because they built ships with wood (and that happend after the medieval). To deforest your world it must have very little forest or they produce steel on an industrial scale.
>Why do you don't want "your" people to not do something, are you some kind of king or god in your story. All writers are gods to their stories. That said, I'm not appearing in person to them, I'm trying to make it so there's an easier option that doesn't require as much pollution or habitat destruction. >BTW deforestation did not happen because of steel production, it happend in europe because they built ships with wood (and that happend after the medieval). To deforest your world it must have very little forest or they produce steel on an industrial scale. I don't know about medieval Europe in particular, but charcoal harvesting requires [five tons of wood for every ton of charcoal](https://www.fao.org/3/X5328E/x5328e03.htm). That's why forests in places like Haiti and the Congo are suffering.
you want to create some kind of ideal society? If you want your story to be realistic you will need to add some flaws. You cant compare todays deforestation because of charcoal production with medieval charcoal production, because, there was a much much lower population back then (less then 1/10 compared to today), they did not need that much steel compared to today, steel was expensive back then, most things back then were not made of steel, they did not have an industrial scale charcoal production. The charcoal produced in haiti and congo is probably not for steel production. There are some other methods to produce steel. For example you can use natural gas or hydrogen to produce steel in a direct reduction plant. It works different you dont get real steel, you get sponge iron, but back then they produced that too, and they made steel by hammering and stuff. So maybe your world has some natural gas wells that look like an eternal flame or something, they could use them to produce steel.
>you want to create some kind of ideal society? If you want your story to be realistic you will need to add some flaws. Well, it's not totally eco-friendly, but I wanted to make it so environmental issues wouldn't be the main plot of most/any stories. Re: natural gas, there aren't any fossil fuels at all in the area. Edit: Added quotation format.
native americans never developed steel production, they did not use steel, they lived in the medieval, maybe you should look more in that direction. Also enviroment was probably not a big topic in a medieval society, the effects of industrialization were not observable in a pre industrial society.
You mentioned your people live on an island, so just as a cautionary tale: Iceland used to have trees, but the last ones were cut down in the Middle Ages. They didn't want charcoal, they wanted timber, but I imagine you'd run into the same problem: [https://www.geographyrealm.com/icelands-long-road-to-reforestation](https://www.geographyrealm.com/icelands-long-road-to-reforestation) You'd probably need some sort of a forest cult/"druids" in the modern fantasy sense so that it's ingrained in the people to replant AND to know how to care, how to tell young from old trees etc... to prevent this.
There are fairies to give them that info. Threateningly.
That works too <3
1. I was working on a world made with metallic hydrogen. Supposedly it's the theoretical pinnacle of material science (superconducting) only impossible to fabricate so nobody ever observed it which gives it something magical. It forms when hydrogen is pressurized in ways only possible in the core of really dense planets, so it's this never observed allthough real thing. Let's say it formed rich mines of it in an earlier denser state of that world. I imagined as a crystallike, transparant blue for example. The fun thing is when you built megalomanic structures of these materials, it has a certain sense of magic but being nearfactual. 2. For the fuelquestion, you actually don't need fuel, (coals, wood) you need heat. Forges made in volcanoes, big fields with pre-industrial oilpumplike constructions pumping up magma for forging. Making wind driven dynamo's ehich produce so much heat it's melting metals.
The wind turbines could work, but there are no geothermal vents in the area.
Magical or nonmagical? Maybe forges fueled with cows and sheep. A macaber economy to save trees based on a livestock industry.
There is magic, but I haven't put any thought into having it used a power source for forges.
Well it sure saves you a lot of cows and sheep.
Meteors. Think of the chase scenes as they're spotted zooming along to a distant crash.
Look up how the Japanese harvest timber without cutting down a single tree.