I don't know if that's always true, about the great swords. You can find illustrations of battles with great sword, from like the 1500s, where the combatants are using both hands on the grip. Seems to me it depends on what you're trying to do with it.
The way it's pronounced sounds as if the "y" should be an "e", and it's another example of "misspell a common word and make it fantastic". But, if you spell it the way it sounds: "Valerian is a perennial flowering plant, with heads of sweetly scented pink or white flowers that bloom in the summer months. Valerian flower extracts were used as a perfume in the sixteenth century. Wikipedia" How scary does that make Valerian steel?
I don't believe that this is historically accurate; it seems to be a modern re-construction of how the sword "should" have been used. It may be correct, but I don't think that you can claim that it, definitively, is. My chief criticism of this technique is the implication that the sword was a "pointed" weapon...I've never seen a sword from that era (pre c.1500) with a sharp point, leading me to believe that the weapon was an "edge" weapon, which would be swung, and the extra length would generate extra speed at impact, and the extra weight of a longsword would generate extra impetus, both increasing the effect of the impact. Also, the weight of the blade would have made a precise thrust very difficult - especially after ten minutes fighting! - and the speed with which it could be delivered virtually non-existent. Unless you were actually pushing it through the eye-slot of a helmet, it wouldn't have the force to do any damage. By comparison with a pike, the longsword was very short, and (being steel throughout) very heavy, so it doesn't make sense to use it in the same manner. The other thing that amuses me about GoT is how much blood is spilt in the sword fights; the sword cuts through steel, skin, bone, etc., and blood spurts out of the severed artery - and then goes on and does it to the next victim. The sword never gets blunt...the armour must have been made of such inferior steel that there seems little point in wearing it. Generally, the sword was used more as a sharpened club than as an edged weapon, and it was the force with which the blow was delivered that counted. The armour would have reduced the sharp-edged attack into blunt-force trauma, except where the edge managed to find a gap in the armour...which was why the best armour had the most intricate hinge mechanisms, and even the cheapest had chain-mail to paper over the cracks.
Oh, I agree with this completely! Though it's off-topic for this thread, the overuse of the "y" as replacement for "i" or any other vowel in fantasy is so cliché it borders on campiness. And it's aaaaaalways the "y" as a misappropriation of the letter "thorn" the way it was drawn in its latter years of use, which just adds to the silliness because that letter represents the "th" sound (either voiced or unvoiced depending on region and time period). If a book makes unnecessary use of the letter "y", my inclination will be not to read that book. If it's in the title of the book, my inclination will be to heckle that book. I make no apologies. ETA: Worst, yet probably most subtle, of the "y" offenses is when the fantasy writer shoe-horns it into their nom de plume. "Behold, I am become the Y".
Let's say I wouldn't put down the book if it so dastardly abused the 'Y', but this does bug me too. @Shadowfax I've understood it takes quite a bit to slice off someone's head/limb with a longsword, yet you tend to see that a lot in fiction (both written as well as on TV), but I've understood this isn't really how those swords worked or were used?
That's my point about GoT. There's one of the Arthurian legends, involving Sir Lancelot (I think) where he encounters another knight and they fight...Sir L ends up hacking the other guy's armour to shreds, i.e., it falls off him, and the guy now has a suit of leather armour underneath...
Did Martin take that into account? In general, are the fights at all realistic in the novels? On TV they tend to exaggerate 'cause it's supposed to look cooler or something.
In the video I posted earlier in this thread concerning the making of certain European swords, what you speak of is shown in detail. Japanese katanas are often displayed cutting through rolled and soaked bamboo mats meant to represent the amount of resistance a human body would give to being cut by a blade. We are meant to oo and ah over how the katana slices clean through the rolled mat, but the fellah in the vid shows a European sword (I think a Roman sword) with an edge sufficiently blunt that he can pass his hand over it as though it were the back side, not the cutting edge of a knife. He produces the same slice clean through the rolled mat as the legendary katana.
On Valyrian Steel, it's imbued with magic. So when Ice was originally forged, it was forged with magic. When Tywin had it melted down, both new swords (Oathkeeper and Joffrey/Tommen's) were still of Valyrian Steel. Because magic. That's what makes it different from Japanese Katanas and Damascus Steel.
paper, rock, scissors - sort of like sand used to stop bullets in a gun clearing chamber, right tool for the job Weapon trope - one arrow in Hunger Games takes out two flying machines, or good guys get zapped with missile and still can fight on.
Haha, yeah I had my character using a bow as her main weapon, as well as two daggers, before i read the hunger games and decided to switch up her abilities. Now she wields a two-headed spear (one on either end, and its a weapon that requires a good deal of acrobatics to use to its full capabilities) and has one knife for hunting, as well as a bow for likewise. Not such a good shot with it as Katniss though, and nor does the MC have the unerring accuracy soul symphony her brother does. (instead of magic, my story uses soul symphonies where the character has to harness the song they can hear within themselves, and by pulling away those notes they gradually harm themselves, and if used too much, ultimately destroys them.)
I've never understood the fixation on accuracy, be it an archer or gunslinger. Unless bullets or arrows are in short supply, I think it would be better to be quick than accurate. I once RP'd as an elf archer who couldn't shoot for shit, but she could rattle off fifty arrows in about as many seconds, the medieval fantasy equivalent of a machine gun. She was fun to write and, IMO, more interesting than the stereotypical "one-shot-one-kill-zen-master-archerdude." One throwaway bow and two quivers of cheap, poorly-constructed arrows, and she can make an enemy battalion duck for cover while Mr. Sniper is still nocking his first shot.
Although your number of arrows fired is obviously fantasy, it really was a big edge for the American Indians when fighting against the old muskets, etc. A good archer can shoot several arrows in the time it takes to load a gun. So you definitely have a point with quantity. Still I liked the intensity of the movie "Enemy at the Gate", didn't read the book but it was a great movie.
It's not a medieval fantasy thing, but what also bugs me is that if it's urban fantasy, the characters resort into using clubs and stakes and whatnot, instead of firearms or any other useful modern weapons, or that they always forget to behead the beast they've just "killed." Patricia Briggs was trying to make use of them in some of her books, but it felt like a prop she stuck to her female protag to somehow make her seem more badass or empowered 'cause she never got anything useful done with her Kimber, which was the character's only gun anyway -- and she was dating some ex-military weapons dealer! But I guess werewolves are so friggin badass you can't damage them at all with a sniper rifle from a safe distance... I get it in a way, if the story happens in a tightly gun-controlled place like the UK or there's some lead-don't-work-on-my-beasties loophole in place, but even then it's kinda frustrating to me. Afaik, it's much more difficult to learn to wield a sword or some such effectively in comparison to a firearm (not saying the latter wouldn't require practice), and especially for a woman, they're a smart choice 'cause you can be very dainty and still cause those foes plenty of damage.
One throwaway bow won't shoot for sh*t, and two quivers of cheap, poorly-constructed arrows will go anywhere - literally. They're more likely to hurt your own side! A decent archer would loose a dozen aimed arrows within thirty seconds...and how many arrows did your machine-gun archer carry? Even with a bolt-action rifle, I would reckon to get off 5 aimed shots in as many seconds - I say aimed, but I'm a rubbish shot!
Yup, both of those are utter bs that for whatever reason persist even though the reality is that longswords are light enough for 12yo girls to wield effectively and fights, be they unarmed or armed (with edged weapons or firearms), are usually measured in seconds... single digits. I can pitch in a bit as far as firearms go. There's a very good reason skilled professionals (e.g. SEALs, Marine Scouts, IPSC champions etc.) don't adhere to the "spray and pray" school of shooting: shitty shooting is shitty shooting, and the results tend to be like the Miami shootout of 86 between Platt, Matix, and the feds. Platt was shot 12 times before he went down, but he still didn't die until in the hospital because of poor shot placement. In the meantime, he wounded and killed a whole bunch of FBI agents on his own because he was a good shot. The only situation where spraying is a good idea (and pretty much the only situation where full-auto small arms fire is useful) is when laying down cover fire to allow your teammates to advance or retreat while you keep the enemy's head down, but you can do that with semi-autos too (leap-frogging, anyone?). Competitive shooters like Todd Jarrett, Rob Leatham, Karla Blowers etc. might look like they're sprayers, but they're not; first and foremost they're accurate. Once you're reasonably accurate, you start focusing on speed. That's how you become accurate and fast, not either or, because either or = shitty shot. There's also a reason why snipers in wars have confirmed kills measured in the hundreds while the spray 'n' pray crowd are generally those who make the bulk of those dead bodies. Sure, you might get lucky and a stray bullet hits who you're gunning for, but who would want to rely on luck when the odds are stacked against you and losing means death? I'd imagine similar principles apply in archery: those 99 wasted arrows or bullets that land all around your target don't help you one bit when you want that 1 decent hit. I'd rather take a teeny bit longer to aim my first shot and put the other guy down with it while he's still spraying the first few shots that hit anything but me. I mean, all those wasted shots help who exactly? Simple; the person being shot at. Just my 0,02€. Btw, out of interest, how did your character lug around 50-100 arrows and keep them readily at hand?
No, not actually. The blunt section (ricasso) above the quillions is for two things, grabbing when you need a little extra power on the blade, and helping you yank the sword out of someone. That man is standing in porta finestra, which is fine, and actually my favorite stance. But it's almost the only stance in which grasping the ricasso would make any sense. Pretending that it's the only stance from which to use a great sword is kind of stupid.
Normally I hate double posting but here we are. Swords do not have one use, and because the sword in the picture ends in a point it's pretty safe to say it is both a "pointed" and an "edge" weapon. I really don't understand why you've never seen a sword with a sharpened point. And I'm confused about how many ancient swords you've handled. Manuals on martial art are as old at 5th century and mention stabbing kind of a lot. If you really want to go back, there are etruscan vases that depict greeks with bronze swords stabbing the shit out of things. I have no difficulty stabbing anything with a sword like that (though I don't have my own blunted model). What's more, I'm not sure if you think that every stab has to be make with a tiny margin of erorr, or what. Yes it would be difficult to stab through an eyehole, but I've stabbed a sword through a car door, so I'm not sure what you're actually talking about here. And there are an awful goddamn lot of places on a fully armored body to stab other then the eye hole. The idea that these weapons were designed for a single purpose is a mystery to me. Versatility kills in a fight and sticking to one pattern of attack is liable to end the fight for you very quickly. If there was only one proper way to wield a great sword, or if the point of a sword couldn't be used for some reason, then the first guy to think outside the box gets to win every fight he's in. Human ingenuity is not a new invention, and we've been applying it to fighting techniques for a little over 5,000 years now. That said, there is a proper was to wield a katana, and it does not rarely includes stabbing anyone. The success of this is a very unlikely scenario.
So you and a bunch of your buddies on a castle wall see an incoming army, you can either fire one accurate arrow and kill one person, or unleash a volley and probably cripple/kill lots of people with a 0% miss chance (they're a large army, if you missed, you did it on purpose ). I remember reading somewhere that Medieval archers could loose a heck of a lot of arrows in a minute and accurate or not, what goes up must come down (remember that scene in one of the LotR movies where a massive army is attacking.....gondor....? The place where Boromir's father was holed up. It would be pretty difficult to miss in that circumstance, and even if you didn't have a castle with you, the enemy army is still one large assembled horde). Remember when romans had that shield formation where they covered their heads? They didn't do it because of bird poop
Also what's wrong with mystical material? I mean unless it has a plot device power it still needs a skilled wielder, Valyrian steel is no better than a hunk of sharpened metal if you can't swing it. BILBO'S sword however, now THAT I can understand, because his weapon shone when in the presence of orcs (goblins?). Using mystical material to explain ridiculous things however, I'm less understanding of, like the armor that can't be penetrated or the sword that cuts through all (hence making fights against people in armor easier for the author to handle). I remember a scene in the LotR movie (may've been different in the book) where Frodo gets struck by an ogre with a club. I don't know much about chainmail but if I'm correct, wouldn't the club's blunt force trauma have turned Frodo's insides to paste? Chainmail doesn't keep its shape like plate armor, it's flexible and moves, so it wouldn't be like if he was sitting in a really strong turtle shell (then again I don't know much about armor so maybe I'm wrong).
The Weapon too Big to Be Useful. The Jackal with Bruce Willis. The gun was awesomely bad as was Jack Black's role. I'm generally not a fan of awesomely bad but this one just cracks me up.
Somewhat on topic, here is a video of recreators demonstrating how knights in full armour could move, and some combat moves (using swords).
Without watching the video I find this very questionable from my own experience as a clicker (a tradesman who cuts up the leather hides into the parts of the shoe using a Paris curve knife) in the shoe industry. The knife I use needs to be extremely sharp, so much so that you are unable to see the edge of the blade when you look down on it. Japanese armor was typically made from vegetable tanned leather (think of the leather used on the soles of shoes as opposed to the softer chemical tanned leather used for the upper) requiring a very sharp blade to cut through. A Roman sword such as a Gladius would still cut the leather but would require a number of blows before it got through. The Gladius because of its short length was a stabbing weapon so to have a sharp edge close to the hilt served little purpose, the end was where the damage was done. My suspicion is that the bigger heavier European swords such as the Claymore similarly benefited little from having a sharp edge in battle. The use of chainmail and plate meant they had little chance of cutting flesh. However what they could do was break bones, a broken arm could disarm an opponent. They were as much a bludgeoning weapon as a cutting weapon (for use against archers once they had closed the distance) which made them more versatile than axes or maces.
