Ok, two things:
1) If GURPS says "Ghols were too stupid to learn to forge iron, instead they just nicked all their weapons off of the cleaver-wielding Dwarves (which is why they don't have them any more in the game)", I don't want to know.
2) You people have been playing WAY too many Rogue/Diablo-like RPGs. You know, the blacksmith in the village you start off in isn't the only person in the world who can smelt.
Ok, my point is: if the Trow and humans independantly learnt how to smelt and forge iron, why can't other races? I'd think that even the Watcher would have some smiths to make more axes - there might not be enough to rob. Ghols - well, unless they made them, where would they get them from?
And Mauls live hundreds of miles away from any humans - I really doibt that they tiptoed along one night to Madrigal at the start of SB, stole all the giant suits of armour and then trained themselves to fight in armour in a week.
Other people can forge too.
No, really, they can.
Oh, and I'm sure that every person in the world has no evil tendancies, and can't be bought off to make some metal for bad guys. And those Dark Archers, Brigands, the Mayor of Otter Ferry - oh yeah, they were actually Ghols in disguise - all this time they had been infiltrating human society, stealing their meat cleavers for the inevitable Day of the Ghols.
