Fantasy heroes and swords

[Mythic Scribes]

It seems that most fantasy heroes use swords. Why is that? It there some special symbolism or meaning to that weapon?

I tried writing a story with a magic quarterstaff, but it didn't seem right.

What weapons are your fantasy heroes using?

 

[Chilari]

Guns. One of my characters is a gunsmith, the story is set in a sort of late pre-industrial era, and the weapon of choice is the musket, though some characters have rifles and pistols, and there's a blunderbus in there too.

Swords are a useful device to the writer. They do not require much imagination - everyone knows what a sword is - and they're very cinematic. They can make for very interesting fights, and can be used as a symbol of power, authority, warrior spirit, strength, skill, wealth... all sorts of things. Someone who carries a sword, and can use it, must be special because they're expensive items frequently linked, in Earth's history and mythology, with kings, chivalry and heroes.

By comparison, a gun can be considered boring. There is less flexibility to action sequences with a gun, because it can be over very quickly, and it's less dramatic to have a gun fight because the combatants aren't right up in each other's faces. The thing I like about guns is that they can be a very immediate threat if one is pointing at your face; you can't dodge a bullet like you can dodge a sword. It also means I can play with characters expectations and attitudes when they have a gun - a deadly ranged weapon which can keep a disarmed character from trying to escape because the act of attenpting escape could very easily result in death; but a sword requires the weilder to be in close proximity in order to have any power over an unarmed character. I prefer the futility of a character when presented by a group of potential enemies armed with guns to the equivalent with swords; as I said, there is a much higher chance of failure and death following an escape attempt.

It also enables me to have very sudden, unexpected deaths with no way for the other characters to prevent it, because the character is dead before they're aware of what the bad guy intends. Similarly, the bad guy is dead before he realises shooting a friend to one of the armed characters in the scene is a bad idea, even if that armed character is one of his own men.

Also words. Words are the weapon of choice for a few of my characters (though they also have guns, for the most part). One character in particular has been taught from a young age to be very selective with her words, since it was expected that her husband would be an ambassador or somesuch because she was the king's graddaughter (though not in direct line to the throne - had she married, her husband would have become about the ninth or tenth in line to the throne)

 

[Philip Overby]

I like to use swords, but I also like to use all other sorts of weapons. I think martial weapons lend better to extended action scenes. If that is what you're going for, then use swords, spears, axes, and the like.

But guns, as Chilari said, don't lend themselves as well to back and forth action. They can make some dramatic moments and still be used in big, epic battles, but normally it only takes one or two shots to kill someone.

I like to use guns also because I don't normally like to restrict my worlds to being Medieval or European or Industrial or whatever. I just think "Hey, I want a guy with a gun." So he appears.

But overall in fantasy, the sword has become the weapon of choice because it looks cool, authors like to write about them gleaming and glistening, and having a sword fight is always fun! (see every fantasy movie ever and Star Wars for good examples.)

 

[Chilari]

Yeah, Star Wars is a great example of the cinematic power of a sword. In practical terms a sword is inferior to a gun, particularly a laser gun which doesn't require reloading or for that matter any ammo at all, but make it so that magical people can deflect laser bullets with their laser swords, and it's justifiable to have something as awesome looking as a sword in what is, essentially, a science fiction film (or science fantasy to certain purist sci-fi writers I know). They even used the light sabre in the promotional posters - particular episode 3, with Anakin and Obi Wan crossing swords on the middle, and Yado and Mace Windu showing off their light sabres either side. And okay, the light sabre became a symbol of Star Wars as a franchise, but that's because of the symbolic power of the sword motif.

 

[Ophiucha]

Psh, guns have lots of back and forth if you follow the laws of Equilibrium.
Anyway, my characters use guns, mostly because my world is quasi-industrialized. Depends on the area, of course. Small farming villages are more likely to be using muskets, whereas big cityfolk probably have nicer, more 1800s-era guns. There are a few immortal characters, too. Two of them use old weapons - swords and a crossbow - but the other is rather active in the world and uses guns, as well. I think the reason swords are so popular is simply because of the nature of fantasy. Most of it is medieval. Knights in shining armor slaying dragons, Tolkienian, all that jazz. Swords are the obvious weapon of choice. Unless your protagonist is an elf or a dwarf, of course, in which case they would have a bow or an axe. It's just the standard. I don't think it has any other real meaning.

 

[Donny Bruso]

I think between Chilari and Ophi, you've pretty much hit the nail on the head. The sword is the stereotypical fantasy weapon. Everyone knows what it looks like, so instead of describing some weird and complicated weapon you've invented, the author takes the lazy route and just says, "He carried a longsword with a jeweled hilt" or some other such trite nonsense. Face it, as writers, we're kind of lazy by nature. Sure we want grand, sweeping stories that will get publishers beating down our doors for the rights to our next great novel, the one that will be read in English Lit 101 a hundred and fifty years from now, but we want to do it with as little actual work as possible, lol. There is tons of material out there on swords. How they're made, different fighting styles, and so on. There's a museum not half an hour away from me that will teach you how to swordfight from historical sources. Try finding any of that on say a morningstar. Not so easy to find.

And that is how stereotypes get created. "It worked for him/her". Hence dwarves carry axes, elves carry bows, and humans carry swords. Ironically, you can even see a bit of this stereotype in all human fantasy. In A Game of Thrones, Tyrion (a dwarfed human) fights with an axe. Human nature is to take the path of least resistance. Do something memorable and change it up.

 

[Chilari]

I must admit, I do own two wooden swords. One is a Japanese bokken sword, the other a 2/3 scale replica of a broadsword I bought at Kenilworth Castle gift shop. I don't really have space to use them anywhere, I just like having them. I don't own any replica guns or anything like that, though when I was a little younger I tried to make an arrow with a stick from the garden, a pen knife and some feathers, but it never really worked out.

 

[Ravana]

The sword is the archetypal fantasy weapon because it has always been a status symbol, so it was nearly always used by the heroes in "fantasy" dating back three thousand years or so–the Iliad, the Mahabharata, the Shahnameh, Arthurian legends.… It was a status symbol because it was expensive: too much metal, requiring careful crafting, and useful for nothing other than fighting… the only people who'd own one were the nobility, those equipped by nobility, or those who'd snagged one as loot from a battlefield. (In fact, carrying a sword could be a death sentence for a peasant, as they only way they could have obtained one was through ignoble means.…)

That having been said: once metal armor became common, the sword was often little more than a status symbol. No matter how sharp it was, it couldn't slice metal armor (it was still great for massacring lightly-armored peasants, of course). This is why those swords that were used in combat continued to get heavier, so that they could cause damage by bashing armor in, whether it penetrated or not (and why most battle swords didn't bother with sharpened tips), right up to the time that metal armor itself became obsolete courtesy of gunpowder… and then the swords suddenly got light again, the tips were sharpened, and we got the beginnings of modern fencing.

Throughout most of history, the weapon the standard infantryman would be carrying was the spear… and possibly nothing else, though most would have some sort of knife as well, probably a personal possession rather than something supplied to him. Better-equipped armies would carry a heavy-bladed short sword as a sidearm, mainly for finishing off downed opponents, for hacking at the other guy's spear, or for use in desperation when your own spear was lost or rendered useless. In many times and places, an axe would be the sidearm, possibly even the main weapon. Polearms, as a category distinct from spears, would have been carried only by wealth-equipped troops: again, their heads were too difficult to make and too purpose-specific for them to be owned by commoners.

As for the tin-can nobles: they may have owned swords, and carried them, but when they encountered one another in battle they'd be just as likely to rely on a mace (no reason to blunt or bend your valuable sword uselessly: there were always those peasants to pick off later), or some variant thereof: flail, war hammer or pick, etc. Variations of all of these may well be employed by commoners as well, though the ones the nobles used would generally be fancier, flashier, and if they were really fortunate marginally more useful than the ones the rabble carried. Certain farm utensils a noble would never dream of touching make very effective weapons against armored opponents–a mattock will never, ever require a second hit on the same guy, as long as the first was solid: armor won't even slow it down. In fact, that's where it will display its main disadvantage–needing to pry it out after it imbeds itself in the guy's armor (and body). That, plus it isn't terribly useful against someone who isn't armored… sure, it'll do just as much damage if it hits, but odds are if you're up against another peasant, he's going to be carrying something he can hit you with a lot faster than what you're packing.

And never underestimate the utility of a big stick. Particularly against armored opponents: if all you're going to be doing is bashing them anyway, the only question that remains is how much weight you can concentrate at the point of impact. A metal head helps with this, but is hardly necessary.

So, really, swords "seem right" because of the mystique attached to them from, well, our entire written cultural history. Which is as good a reason not to use them as to use them, depending on whether you want to invoke this shared background or want to make a pointed departure therefrom. If the item in question is a major plot point, then make it whatever seems right–and I've created "magical weapons" in almost every form available from global history, plus a couple that never existed just for good measure. (And if you think it's easy to design a weapon nobody else ever has, you clearly need greater familiarity with some of the bizarre things that have popped up at one time or another.…) But if the item is a major plot point, and it isn't a sword, then you will be generating at least some measure a contrast with the reader's expectations as well… so if that isn't part of your goal, and you have no other reason for it to be something different, then it may as well be a sword.

 

[Ravana]

It also enables me to have very sudden, unexpected deaths with no way for the other characters to prevent it

The only difficulty here being that you have to be able to justify when they aren't used–similar to the sort of limits one needs to keep in mind when allowing magic use.

Of course, guns can be more easily self-limiting, depending on the technological level you're allowing… if it takes twenty seconds to load, can't be carried ready to fire for any length of time, and isn't accurate beyond twenty yards, then, yeah, a gun can cause a sudden, unexpected death–but you can also easily account for why they don't always do this. If, by contrast, you have rifled six-shooters (or worse, magazine-loading rifles), you're going to be hard pressed to come up with combat situations that can be compelling and not feel contrived.

Keep in mind that, in historical settings, the kind of gun described above would be more of a status symbol–or the equipment of a professional army–and would be far more expensive, difficult to produce and harder to come by than even a sword would be. Which doesn't mean it has to be that way in your world… but you'll probably want to consider the implications of any deviation you do make in this matter.

 

[Chilari]

Don't worry, I do apply such resrictions to my guns. The particular case where I have a couple of characters being shot dead quite suddenly is at short range - within a single room, in fact - with different guns while the victims are standing still. An earlier scene has a character missing with a rifle because he's in a hurry, and not having another shot because he doesn't have time to reload. In fact I anticipate having several situations where a character is effectively unarmed because his or her gun isn't loaded or just got wet, or where one character has a rifle and another has a tiny little pea-shooter of a pistol.

Though following this discussion I am tempted to have a character carry a sword which they never use, and later reveal that this is because it's badly made and only for show, or not real at all, but a hilt and a sheath. Or have a character try to use a sword but discover too late that it is no match against a loaded pistol 20 feet away.

 

[Donny Bruso]

Or have a character try to use a sword but discover too late that it is no match against a loaded pistol 20 feet away.

Makes me think of Indiana Jones, hehe.

 

[Ravana]

Or have a character try to use a sword but discover too late that it is no match against a loaded pistol 20 feet away.

Infantryman: "You brought a knife to a gun fight?"
Marine: "You brought a gun to a knife fight?"
Special Forces: "Hey, check out this nifty knife and gun I got off those two guys over there.…"

Yep, sounds like you have a handle on the guns. As I said, it's the same with magic: you need to be able to explain why everybody doesn't just go around using them to blow each other away. Fortunately, for guns, there's plenty of historical record to fall back on. Those considerations are why swords continued in use for so long after the introduction of handheld firearms… and similarly why bayonets were developed, and continue in use even in today's age of reliable firearms and ammunition. As I've pointed out to others: "Swords don't run out of ammo."

 

[Mdnight Falling]

ooOOooo nice question! The heroes in my book are using everything! Well really it depends on which hero you're asking about . Some use nice sharp pointy things, others are magick based, and others use hand to hand, some don't fight at all LOL. It really depends on what kind of fantasy we're talking about. When I think of fantasy, I think of elves and dwarves and whatnot, not guns and tanks. I won't even read modern fantasy unless it's something like Twilight LMAO.

 

[Ravana]

One clever piece of writing I've seen in the not-too-distant past had an APC and crew "falling down a rabbit hole" (or however the author worked it… Brian Daley, the Coramonde books, if anyone's interested). Not something that's destined to be a "modern classic," but an interesting example of what can be done mixing the modern and the fantastic.

 

[Mdnight Falling]

I will have to check it out..

as to modern weapons in fantasy works.. I'm not a fan... I like the old fantasy not modern fantasy better in my writing... swords, natural ability, magic, etc... Later for tanks bombs and guns >.<

 

[Mdnight Rising]

i dunno something about a sharp edge of steel that gets my blood pumping.. i too am more into old fantasy versus modern fantansy

 

[Mdnight Falling]

i dunno something about a sharp edge of steel that gets my blood pumping.. i too am more into old fantasy versus modern fantansy

Says the man with the aresonal of sharp pointy things sitting in the closet LOL

 

[Ravana]

Says the man with the aresonal of sharp pointy things sitting in the closet LOL

Closet? Why on earth would you keep them in a closet? Too hard to get to that way.

 

[Mdnight Falling]

Closet? Why on earth would you keep them in a closet? Too hard to get to that way.

We have a 9 year old who likes sharp pointy things and a 4 year old who likes weapons LMFAO! so we have to keep them out of reach x.x! at least till we get some show stands to hang them on the wall

 

[Falunel]

Seconding the reasons discussed earlier. It's not just embedded into the writer's mindset, though- it's also in the reader's mind that the primary fantasy weapon is a sword, and that anything else is just... out of place. One of the dangers of making up a brand new weapon is that it won't "stick" with the reader unless it's pulled off well; the stranger and more unfamiliar the weapon, the more difficult it becomes for a reader to visualize it in a scene, and the bigger the chance is of breaking the "willing suspension of belief."

Now, the question of why the sword continues to endure can be a sort of chicken-or-egg dilemma; does the theme persist because the writer is too lazy to invent a new weapon, or because of an unreceptive audience? I'd place it with both, though probably a bit more with the writers.

Hopefully that made sense. ^^;