Fantasy heroes and swords

[TinyHippo]

I'm trying to use weaponry that makes sense in my stories.
Medieval fantasy: Spear/shield and longbow all day long. Simple because those weapons put some distance between you and someone trying to kill you. The biggest part of your thinking during an epic battle, like the ones we tell, would be "How can I avoid dying?"

 

[Chessie]

This is precisely why my characters use daggers and short swords: because I'm familiar with them and won't seem like a total idiot to my readers. Carry on.

 

[Garren Jacobsen]

I have a pretty broad range of weapons. My Nano 2016 character will use both a sword and a six shooter. One mc used talismans and swords in a world of iron man like suits and space stations. Another mc in a different world uses WW2 era weapons. Yet another will use Colonial era muskets. Whall the guns? Because I love the smell of gunpowder in the morning.

 

[SaltyDog]

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?

One uses a short sword, another uses a rapier, and still yet another uses an arming sword. Basically my characters use a wide variety of steel weapons. No firearms though, and (So far) nothing that includes gun powder.

Swords are seen as a "Noble weapon." All the good knights and kings use them, so naturally a stereotype of the good guys main weapon being a sword would spring up and become wildly used. And hey, swords are also cool. (Who doesn't want to read about a massive knight in armor go sweeping through a bunch of enemies with an even larger sword?). We can instantly picture them in our minds eye. They are, I see, the standard weapon of fantasy.

 

[mecg_romancer]

I'm using swords as status symbols for the most part, as the main character for my short story even though Hes a knight He lacks a sword because He lost all his family's land etc. He instead uses a war mattock which is a cross between a mattock and an axe, it also makes more sense for my world building as He's just as often fighting monsters with tough natural armor as he is fighting squashy humans.

 

[halisme]

My culture doesn't have the romanticised view of swords. They like hammers and bows, and see swords as a sidearm at best.

 

[Tom]

One of the cultures I'm writing about, the Yianlai, fight primarily from horseback, so spears and bows are their favored weapons. Swords are seen as something to be used if you've been unhorsed, which is seen as shameful. If you lose your sword and have to resort to daggers--well, that's ultimate shame. My MC uses a bow when on horseback, but when fighting on foot he favors daggers for their versatility and speed. It also gives him an advantage due to that cultural view of swords and daggers; most opponents figure he's desperate and has already been halfway beaten, and underestimate him because of it. A Yianlai secondary character, Aeyu, fights with a quarterstaff she was given by another character. I wanted to give her a weapon that no other Yianlai character fought with, to show that she is breaking from tradition and declaring herself different.

Another culture in the same story, the Vazkyrohk, uses swords almost exclusively in combat. They come from a far northern climate that can't sustain large numbers of horses (especially war horses), so cavalry fighting is not something they're used to. Some also favor staves or spears instead of swords, especially warlocks, whose weapons also function as foci for their magic. This culture is not as big on bows as the other, seeing ranged weapons as somewhat cowardly. Fighting face-to-face is the most honorable form of combat in their society. The main Vazkyrohko character, Miekkhal, uses a stave at first, but later discards it in favor of a sword. I used the weapons switch as a metaphor for his reconnection with his roots and culture.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

You don't need a romanticized view of swords for them to be a prevalent weapon... they became romanticized in large part because they are extremely effective both offensively and defensively, although some would depend on tech level. They are a sidearm (in many cases literally) and the best ones until the advent of the revolver... single shots just weren't that great.

Swords of one sort of another are seen throughout pretty much every dominant culture in the world... there's a good reason for that.

My culture doesn't have the romanticised view of swords. They like hammers and bows, and see swords as a sidearm at best.

 

[TheKillerBs]

Slings. I just remembered this. My ranged nomad (sort of) conquerors are slingers, mostly because for such a prevalent weapon for very a long time in history, they are rather underrepresented in fiction.