Given the prevalence of “rust-shitting ephemeral” as an epithet, I take it the Associated Worlds has yet to encounter iron-metabolising sophonts?
Amusing side-note: humans are literal rust-shitting ephemerals. Why do you think it’s brown?
In any case, iron is not a great element to use in the active part of one’s biochemistry. As exothermic reactions go, combustion of iron is really quite anemic. More commonly found are hydrogen-breathers and sulphide-breathers who reduce iron oxide to iron (which consumes energy) as a byproduct of their other metabolic processes, or because they use the iron or, indeed, the oxygen elsewhere.
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