Magic is cool, and weapons are cool, so you know what would be the coolest? Magic weapons, which is what we’re talking about this week. Despite being nearly ubiquitous across all genres of speculative fiction, magic weapons can be tricky to work with. What are they for? What should they do? Should it even be obvious that they’re magic? We’ll talk about all of that, plus examine what happens in stories when a character loses their magic weapon. Hint, they usually get it back.
Transcript
Generously transcribed by SpacePineapple. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.
You’re listening to the Mythcreant podcast with your hosts Oren Ashkenazi, Wes Matlock, and Chris Winkle.
Oren: This episode was made possible by the support of our patron, Kathy Ferguson, professor of political theory in Star Trek. Welcome, everyone, to another episode of the Mythcreants podcast. I’m Oren. And with me today is—
Wes: Wes.
Oren: And—
Chris: Chris.
Oren: Okay. Everyone get out your best lightsaber noise effects.
(lightsaber noises)
Oren: And there you go.
Chris: I’m sorry, I don’t know how to make a lightsaber noise effect. I’m sorry. I know that makes me a fake geek, or something.
Wes: Yours is a subtle, but very deadly lightsaber.
(laughter)
Oren: Yeah, we can get into all that stuff about what the color of your lightsaber blade says about you.
Chris: Yeah, we’ll sort ourselves into Hogwarts houses.
Oren: Yeah, yeah. But no, because today, we are talking about magic weapons and how they affect your plot.
Chris: Nice.
Oren: Or maybe just magic weapons. I consulted the list of magic weapons, which is to say, I Googled a bunch of magic weapons, and this is all I found. This is the canon of magic weapons now, to tie this into the previous podcasts.
Wes: Before you list that, though, I think we should define “weapon.” ‘Cuz some of the things I was thinking about, I was like, wait, is that really a weapon?
Chris: Yeah. Is it anything that’s used to harm people, or is it anything that is shaped like a traditional weapon?
Wes: Right.
Oren: Well, there’s nothing I like more than spending the whole podcast arguing definitions, so let’s do this. (laughter) For the purposes of this podcast, I am prepared to interpret “weapon” generously. If it is shaped like a traditional weapon, even if it isn’t often used as one, like the Subtle Knife (Philip Pullman), I will allow it to qualify. Or if it is primarily used as a weapon or used to harm things, even if it doesn’t necessarily look like one, I will allow that, as well.
Wes: That sounds good.
Oren: For our purposes, those are both relevant.
Wes: Okay. I’m satisfied.
Oren: So what I’ve discovered is that there were basically two reasons to include a magic weapon in your story. One is for pure novelty. And then the other is that it affects the plot in some way. And ideally, it will do both, but it doesn’t always. For example, Sting in the Lord of the Rings is basically pure novelty. It doesn’t really affect the plot in any meaningful way.
Chris: But it’s actually useful, though.
Oren: It is.
Chris: It has a very utilitarian magic effect. And granted, I do think you could take that magic effect out, and probably things would still happen the same way, but theoretically, it could have a plot effect.
Wes: It detects orcs, right? Not goblins? Or both?
Oren: Orcs and goblins are the same thing in the Lord of the Rings. It detects orcs, and goblins is a synonym for orcs.
Wes: Okay.
Oren: So, from what I could remember from reading the books a couple of months ago, for the first time—(sarcastically) look at me—was that Sting glowing when there were orcs around actually isn’t as important as you would think it would be, because orcs are really easy to spot, and it’s not hard for them to notice that there are orcs around, and they usually have to keep Sting sheathed anyway, because they don’t want to be walking around in Mordor, and then suddenly, Sting starts glowing. It gives away their positions. (dramatically) “Hey orcs, we’re over here.” At least from what I recall, they don’t really use Sting for practical purposes very much. I think Sam uses it to hurt Shelob, but that really feels like that could have been any sword, ‘cuz his main thing is that he gets Shelob to fall on him. He has the sword held up and somehow doesn’t die.
Chris: Yeah. Still, I’m gonna argue that there’s another common purpose of magical weapons. Specifically, magical swords have a character association where I think that they are used just to give a certain connotation to a character. And that’s that magic swords have a very close association with Chosen Ones. In particular, and I don’t know if this started with King Arthur, but certainly King Arthur helped to popularize the idea with the whole, pulling the sword out of the stone, where a magic sword is commonly used to say that this person is the Chosen One, who is extra special. And I do think, in the Lord of the Rings, there are these named swords, and I’ve never been clear if they’re actually magical or not, but they come with lineages. And so it’s really symbolic when Aragorn has this new sword that’s been reforged from his ancestor king, right? That’s a sign that he’s reclaiming the throne of Gondor.
Oren: Yeah. Oh, man. Let me tell you about that. It is unclear in the Lord of the Rings if those swords are magic, but the Lord of the Rings, as a rule, tends to have a thing where, the more Tolkien describes it, the more inherently magic it is. That’s sort of a rule. So I sort of assumed that those swords were subtly magic. It wasn’t anything as obvious as “they glow with fire and do extra damage,” or “they’ll hit an extra 5% of the time,” or anything like that. But I got the feeling that they have some kind of inherent extra oomph that only the person who is worthy of wielding them can take advantage of, and it’s all extremely subtle, until suddenly Aragorn has magic healing hands. That was really unsubtle. I was like, come on, Tolkien.
(laughs)
Wes: What about Gandalf’s sword? That’s Glamdring, right?
Oren: Yeah, I think so.
Wes: For a wizard, I mean, he has a sword. Maybe the power of that sword is that a wizard fights like a level 18 fighter with it. Right?
Oren: Yeah, so it’s actually a sword of Tenser’s Transformation (Dungeons & Dragons).
Wes: There we go.
Oren: Well, it’s important to remember that wizards in Tolkien are actually just angels. They kind of look like what we consider a traditional fantasy wizard to be, but they don’t actually work that way.
Wes: Yeah, they only know a few cantrips (Dungeons & Dragons spell type), right?
Oren: They know some cantrips. They have mind control powers. That’s actually Saruman’s big thing, is that he can basically control you with his voice if you’re not really hip to his jive.
Chris: That’s true. But it’s common for swords, like the Sword in the Stone, to be a test where you can only wield this if you were heir to the throne, or something.
Oren: Right. Or it’s even just sort of an implication. There’s not even a rule that says only the right heir can wield the sword, but having the sword, everyone kind of infers that destiny would only let that happen if you were the true heir, right?
Chris: That’s true. It’s like the Zelda methodology, I feel like.
Wes: Oh, yeah.
Chris: In Legend of Zelda, you always have a cool sword that you get in there. It’s usually in a temple, right?
Wes: Yeah. And if you’re at full health, sometimes it shoots laser blasts.
Oren: Yeah, that’s a pretty handy effect for it to happen. It makes a (makes sound effect) doodloodoodoo. So that’s flavor. I would have actually honestly put those swords as novelty swords.
Chris: As novelty swords?
Oren: Yeah, for the most part, I feel like those are novelty swords.
Chris: No, I disagree. I think at this point, especially since the Chosen One doesn’t really have much novelty anymore. And maybe they did before, but I think it’s the purpose of giving character candy, and I wouldn’t classify candy as novelty.
Oren: Well, I never said it was good novelty.
(laughs)
Chris: But the idea … I think novelty, the way that I define it, it’s something that loses its value as you get more used to it. And I don’t think that’s true with candy. I think candy has a more emotional depth to it, shall we say?
Oren: Okay, that’s fair. And the other kind of weapon I was talking about earlier, though, the plot-affecting weapon, those tend to be things that have an obvious use that lets the characters do something they couldn’t do before. And the most obvious thing for a magic weapon to do, is it lets you kill a thing you couldn’t kill before. That’s not the only thing that they do, but it’s pretty common. Like, the Valyrian steel in Game of Thrones lets you kill White Walkers. Or others, (meaningfully) if you’ve read the books. The demon-killing knife in Supernatural; it does what it says on the tin. It kills demons real good, which they introduced, because I think at some point, they realize, “okay, we wanted our later seasons to be about demons, but we introduced the first demon in this episode, and killing one demon was an entire episode of task. So we’re like, all right, how’s that gonna work? I just give them a magic knife, whatever.”
Chris: And why didn’t they just continue the one episode per demon?
Oren: Because they’re bad, and they wrote a bad story.
Chris: To me, that keeps the demons intimidating. No, don’t give them a special demon knife. Let them carefully, strategically plan every demon kill because they’re so dangerous. That’s just me.
Oren: Well, I mean, that would have been better, but it’s not what happened.
Chris: They probably just wanted more action. We can’t have more action with lots of demon hordes if the demons kill them really easily. I do think that the weapons are very commonly MacGuffins, where we want the characters to go on a quest before they can defeat the Big Bad, and we need a reason. So, a weapon that is the only weapon that can defeat the Big Bad is a good excuse to make them go on some quest. It takes up the middle of the story.
Oren: Yeah. You gotta go get the Master Sword (Legend of Zelda). My favorite is when, sometimes they’ll do that, but they’ll forget to establish that you needed the weapon first. So in season seven of Buffy, near the very end, Buffy finds a giant magic axe that she can use to kill the First Evil. And we forgot to even reference that in the earlier episodes. So it was just like, “oh, hey guys, I found an axe. This will kill the First Evil.” And it’s really, really lucky you found that, Buffy.
Chris: That’s true. It just randomly falls into her hands. She doesn’t actually go looking for it.
Oren: Well, if I remember correctly, what happens is that the bad guys are digging it up for some reason.
Wes: Doing all the work for her.
Oren: Yeah, basically. And it’s really unclear to me if the idea was that they were digging it up because they didn’t want her to have it. And they thought maybe she would find it on their own if they left it there, or if they needed it for some reason. We don’t know, because this was near the very end of season seven, and explaining things was for losers by that point.
Chris: We really don’t know why they did that, but keeping weapons out of the hands of bad guys is also a pretty common plot hook. Basically, the Death Star.
Oren: Yeah. I mean, the Death Star is essentially a giant magic weapon. Couple of things you want to be careful with, of your magic weapons, is that it’s easy for them to become too powerful. And then, like any magic item, it’s like, oh, why didn’t they just use that thing? This happens a lot in TV shows, because they have to introduce a new thing every episode. So in Supernatural, they eventually introduced these—you could carve the special symbol onto a bullet, and then it would just trap a demon. And it’s like, why don’t you use those every episode?
Wes: Those are awesome.
Oren: Those sound amazing. And it’s like, no, we only use those once, guys. Those are really hard to draw. Did you see how small that had to be?
Wes: One magic weapon that I thought was appropriately powerful … the Vorpal blade is from Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”.
Oren: Yeah, it goes snicker-snack.
Wes: It goes snicker-snack and it chops heads off. But, I really liked … if anybody read that comic series, Fables?
Chris: I like a few, but not enough.
Wes: Yeah. So—
Oren: Are you prepared for my beef about Fables?
(laughs)
Wes: You can deliver it if you like, but spoilers, I suppose, but I like how the Vorpal blade—it goes snicker-snack and it chops heads off, but it doesn’t confer any protection on you. So when Boy Blue infiltrates the Homeland, it starts just taking people out. I was like, Yes, that’s fun. This Vorpal blade goes snicker-snack, and everybody dies. But he obviously doesn’t get away. But, I don’t know. I thought that was kind of a fun moment of novelty, and it served the plot of that particular book for a little while.
Chris: Do you mean that the point was that this blade is a really good offensive weapon, but does not provide any defense?
Wes: Right. Exactly.
Chris: It’s kinda like the Elder Wand in Harry Potter, where you can cast spells really good, but it’s real easy for somebody to just sneak up behind you and grab the wand.
Wes: Yeah. Put you in a choke hold and knock you down. Why doesn’t anybody punch anybody?
(laughs)
Chris: Or a gun in Harry Potter?
Wes: Yeah. Why wouldn’t Ron’s dad enchant AK47s, and then just go take out Voldemort?
Chris: This is technically scifi rather than magic, but one of my favorites is the Empathy Gun, in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Wes: Yes. (laughs)
Oren: Oh yeah, it’s fantastic.
Chris: It was a gun that … you shoot it at somebody, and it makes them understand what you’re feeling and going through.
Wes: (laughs) That’s such a great one.
Oren: Yeah. I mean, people tend to get obsessed with the magic sword in fantasy to the point that it’s almost a boring cliche now. And certainly, in some books, it is. if I see another super special Chosen One who has a katana in a European setting, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t be held responsible for what I do at that point. But the Empathy Gun is just such a cool example of a weapon that actually does something different and creative. I just really like it. It’s just cool.
Chris: Yeah. I will say that I’ve started watching the Dragon Prince, which is a Netflix cartoon from the creators of Avatar, the Last Airbender. And there are some neat—it’s very subtle, but there’s these MoonShadow Elf blades that change form.
Oren: Yeah, I like those.
Chris: And they basically can be used for climbing, because they’ll turn into a—I don’t know what you would call them, like climbing stakes and stuff, where they change into a shape that you stick them into a cliff side and then you use them to pull up.
Oren: They’re like multi-tools, basically.
Chris: Yeah, they’re like multi-tools, but they do it by transforming, to some extent.
Oren: Yeah. They’re like shape-shifting weapons. It’s a pretty cool thing. I liked them a lot.
Chris: But they don’t make a big deal about it. So it’s just kind of a subtle form of novelty in the background that is not calling too much attention to itself.
Oren: Yeah. You can just do some fun things with these weird little magic weapons.
Wes: What about magic weapons that serve as talismans for their power? Mjollnir is probably the best example of that for Thor; both in myth and, I suppose, in the Marvel movies. Because I liked it. I mean, I like hammers more than I like swords, because hammers. Because hammers. (laughs) And I guess we should probably just flag some Ragnarok spoilers. The best thing about the weapon in that, is that he actually loses it.
Oren: Well, but that is a clear story arc you can go with with a character who uses a weapon a lot, and actually this is something that is risky. I would be very careful about this, especially for newer authors, where they have a storyline where this character is partially defined by their weapon. Their weapon is part of them. And you want to naturally have an arc where they learn that they don’t need the weapon. And that’s what Ragnarok is. Thor has had this hammer for a billion movies now, and then in Ragnarok, it gets broken, and they have that great line: “What are you, the god of hammers?” “No, you’re the god of thunder.” Okay. It turns out I didn’t actually need the hammer, and that’s super cool. But then, (sarcastically) thankfully, we have Infinity War to come along and fix all that character development. He gets a new, better hammer this time. This time, it’s an axe, but it basically does the same thing, which raises all kinds of questions. “So wait, you’re telling me you could have gone and gotten this made any time, and you just didn’t?”
Wes: Yeah, I agree. I loved Thor’s character arc in Ragnarok, and I think I’m just going to have to sequester that movie as somehow not related to Infinity War. That’s a standalone. I don’t care. Everybody, just don’t talk to me.
Oren: Infinity War does walk back everything that was cool about Ragnarok, but there are other stories where you see this as a problem. Moana is actually a fantastic example, because the big plot in Moana is Maui being like, “I’m nothing without my hook,” and then discovering that he actually is something without his hook. He doesn’t actually need his hook, but then he gets it back at the end. Because we can’t have Maui without his hook. That’s his thing. And that’s a problem. You see that with a lot of stories where they’re like, where the character is like, “I’m gonna lose this signature piece of gear.” And it’s like, oh, but that piece of gear was part of your branding, man. Gotta get that back.
Wes: Yeah. What level, from a storytelling perspective, is that just a storyteller trying to craft a feel-good, satisfying ending? It’s like, yes, you’ve been restored. I don’t want it to be ambiguous, you know?
Oren: Well, it gets into this weird question of when a weapon stops being a tool and becomes a part of your identity. Because on the one hand, part of this whole concept of, “I can’t do this without that weapon” is kind of weird on the face of it. Because if the weapon is a powerful tool, then that’s legitimate. You might not be able to. It’s like, oh no, I lost my assault rifle. I can’t fight the enemy army without it. And they’re like, you need to go on a journey of self-discovery where the real assault rifle was inside you the whole time. (laughs) And it’s like, what? But that happens a lot with fantasy stories, where even though this fantasy weapon is clearly very powerful and provides a benefit that you don’t have without it, there’s a feeling of, “oh, but maybe you didn’t need it the whole time,” as opposed to learning to do without it, which is how I would probably do that story.
Chris: Yeah. I think, ideally, with this type of story, what you would have is a beginning with them and the weapon, and the idea that, to some degree, they have created an over-reliance on their weapon. Or they lose—they’re disarmed for instance—during a fight. And then instead of continuing the fight like they should, they spend their time running away to get their weapon back, or doing other things that show that they are feeling like they can’t fight without the weapon or are relying on it too much, then have them lose the weapon, go through the arc, and then they can get the weapon back. But you can show that even when they’re fighting with a weapon, that their fighting style is different. That they are more balanced. Now, when they are disarmed, they do some kicks and punches and get the weapon back when they should. Or something like that. And I think that the problem is that there’s a certain inherent unsatisfyingness about having character that feels like they ended right where they started. And I think the intent with these stories is that, well, no, they’re still in different places from when they started, because even though they have the weapon back, they still know that they can fight without the weapon, but if you don’t demonstrate that, if it doesn’t look any different, then it doesn’t often feel that way to the audience.
Oren: Yeah, it feels like you’ve reset the character. I mean, I must have read at least two or three different Star Wars novels where Luke decides he doesn’t need his lightsaber, but then he gets it back at the end and it’s like, oh, okay. I mean, he’s still got it though, ‘cuz we still need that branding image of Luke Skywalker with his lightsaber on the cover, right?
Chris: Right. I just think it’s a really easy character arc to create. Probably one of the reasons why writers like to do this, even though they can’t really pull it off very well, is the fact that if you have a character that starts the beginning of your work, and especially with something like Luke Skywalker, where we have this whole extended universe, and we don’t necessarily have the ability, coordinating that entire extended universe, to coordinate his slow character growth. He’s ended the original trilogy looking like he doesn’t really have an issue that needs to be resolved. And so, yeah, we have to create one at the start of the book. And having a character lose something like their weapon is just a really easy thing to do for their arc.
Wes: Hmm. Yeah.
Oren: Also, sometimes I have actually seen stories where the character loses a weapon that I was like, no, actually I would prefer it if you kept that. You were actually cooler when you had that weapon. And the one that comes to mind immediately is Sokka at the end of Avatar.
Wes: (groans) Yes.
Chris: What was with that? That was so weird.
Oren: Especially since we all assumed he went back for it.
Chris: Yeah, it turns out he didn’t.
Oren: Yeah, he didn’t. He apparently just didn’t ever go back for it. He didn’t have that sword anymore. And I was like, why would you do this to us? Why would you make this a thing? He’s so much cooler with the sword.
Wes: It’s made out of a meteor.
Oren: Yeah. It’s made out of star metal, which, I know that’s not actually how star metal works. Ooh, fun fact. If you want a universe where star metal is actually super cool, and you want it to be scientifically accurate, just set it in a world that’s Bronze Age. Or earlier. Because the big thing about meteoric iron is that it’s easier to get than iron that’s in the ground. And so, there are examples of cultures that have iron tools that are made exclusively from the iron they find in meteorites. ‘Cuz they don’t mine; they don’t have iron mines. So they just make that stuff out of the iron.
Chris: That’s how they get the iron.
Wes: Oh, that’s so cool.
Oren: So you just absolutely do that. Yes. This sword is made from star metal and by star metal, I mean iron, and it will kick your brass sword’s ass. Bronze sword, but you know, whatever.
Chris: Just going back to the Sokka thing. I think what was so unsatisfying about Sokka losing his sword is—and I do think that the sword goes back to the candy thing I was talking about earlier, where Sokka was the character that had the most spinach of the show. He had the least glory, all the other characters have bending. They have magic. He does not. And he’s kind of like the comedic relief. But increasingly over this series, we see how deserving he is. That he is keeping everybody together and that they need him, but also that he never gets any glory. And so, then, when he gets the moon sword and becomes a swordsman and starts practicing that, that is one of the few instances of glory he ever actually gets. And he deserved that and he earned that. He got a lot of good karma, and we satisfied that—partially, at least—by giving him the sword. So then, just to have it taken away again, is undoing that, and he doesn’t really get anything to replace it. We don’t see super Sokka glory, or a better, cooler weapon at the end. So that blade was really emotionally significant in the series.
Oren: Another thing to keep in mind when you’re making a magic weapon is to keep it in theme with everything else that’s in your setting. I’ve seen this happen, occasionally. This happens a lot in video games, in particular, where one character will have a gun and it’s like, oh, there are guns in this setting. Why doesn’t everyone have one? You know, things like that. A weird example that really bothered me when I was a kid was in Dragon Ball Z. One of the characters has a sword. Everyone else fights with fists. And I was like, why does that one guy have a sword? Are swords just better? If so, why doesn’t everyone have a sword? And if not, why does he have one? It was really confusing. So, that’s something to keep in mind. Theming is always important.
Chris: So, here’s a question. So, there’s a lot of settings where we don’t really want characters to be using guns or were, or more like, we want them to have an excuse to use swords. Even though this is a futuristic setting. Star Wars, for instance, cyberpunk settings, where we have katanas.
Oren: Yeah, cyberkatanas. Everyone loves those.
Chris: So, is there some level of magic we could give a sword that’s practical to excuse it. Like in Star Wars, we have lightsabers, and they clearly have some extra magic powers, as a manner of speaking, where they can cleanly slice through just about anything. They could also block laser bolts. But to me, it still doesn’t really feel like enough, because they’re not a range weapon.
Oren: Okay. So the question of, can you make melee weapons practical in a setting with advanced range weapons? And the answer is no.
Chris: Even with magic, they’re just not—
Oren: I mean, I’m not going to say it’s impossible, but the closest I’ve ever seen is Dune, which requires a really complicated and fairly arbitrary set of technologies where they have these energy shields that can block anything except for knives, for some reason. Because the velocity that you move through the mat determines how much they resist you. So “the slow knife penetrates the shield.” And to be fair to Dune, he came up with a catchy way to explain that. And that’s the best explanation I’ve ever heard. But even then, you get into some weird stuff, where it’s like, even if the range weapon can’t kill you, it could probably tie you up or knock you down, or something. And it would still be a significant advantage over a melee weapon. This has always been a problem in, for example, the Buffy universe, where vampires can’t be killed by guns. Yeah, but guns can still knock them over.
Wes: You might as well shoot them.
Oren: Right. And in the Star Wars universe, they can block laser bolts. And it’s like, yeah, they can block single shot, occasional laser bolts, but here, give me an automatic laser gun, and we’ll see if they can block that.
Wes: This is definitely not story related, but I remember the first time I played Knights of the old Republic 2. I was like, you know what? I’m only using blasters. I don’t care. And that was a really fun character. And I was like, man, you can just Force-hold everyone and then mow them down. It’s just like, why don’t all the Jedi do this?
Oren: Yeah, I actually did pretty much that exact same strategy. I think I used stasis, or whatever. Basically the same thing.
Wes: It’s fun.
Chris: Yeah. I mean, I do think it would be almost a little bit easier to have one character have a sword that is magic and special, and that’s why they wield it, if not everyone has swords, because the idea of having shields are uniquely linked to swords. ‘Cuz “they’re designed to deflect bullets” only works if you have very few sword wielders in your setting, right? Because otherwise, if everybody’s using a sword, then they’re just going to adjust the shield technology so it works against swords.
Oren: Right. It reminds me of the Borg (Star Trek), where it’s like the Borg, for some reason, are incapable of adapting to melee weapons. And why doesn’t Starfleet just give all of its dudes claymores?
Chris: Yeah, their shields are constantly changing phase to block laser bolts, but they can’t change phase to block a bat’leth.
Oren: And we’ve got an article on the site about how to bring swords to a gunfight, and it’s one of those things where it’s just very difficult. You can do it if you really, really want to, but it’s going to require a lot of explanation. And usually, there’s going to be some holes, so you want to steer audience attention away from those things, which is one of the reasons why I’ve never gotten into this whole Star Wars thing where you customize your lightsaber to have it do different things. Because, to me, that just ruins the illusion.
Wes: Yeah.
Oren: To me, if it matters whether my lightsaber is an extra six inches longer or not, it’s like, ah, nope, that’s too much physics. Now I’m thinking about all the reasons a lightsaber wouldn’t work. You know, that sort of thing. And with cyberpunk, I kind of feel like, if you’re really just devoted to having cyberpunk melee weapons, at the very least you could spread the love a little bit, right? It doesn’t have to just be katanas. You could have cyberpunk gladiuses and cyberpunk dao, cyberpunk hammers, cyberpunk broadswords.
Wes: Yeah. Cyberpunk hammers! Why not?
Chris: Speaking of which, one thing that we haven’t mentioned that is a good reason for melee weapons, is if like other weapons are actually illegal in the setting, which I think works really well with cyberpunk. And the government is actually somewhat effective at keeping them out of people’s hands.
Oren: Yep, that’s a good reason.
Chris: That’s the thing that we don’t often see. But with cyberpunk, the convention is that you have, usually, an oppressive government, or somebody in power of some kind. So the idea that this scrappy resistance group just cannot get their hands on guns—
Oren: Yep. And that’s why they take to the streets with pikes and broadswords. But speaking of, we are pretty much out of time, so that will be the end of this episode. Those of you at home, if anything we said piqued your interest, you can leave a comment on the website at mythcreants.com. Otherwise, we will talk to you next week.
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The swords in Bleach are often more powerful than guns, but mostly because they transform into not swords.
Oren, I think that you might be overestimating the power of new technologies during the time period when they are new (especially in comparison to the mature version of older technologies they were up against).
There is a lot of potential for debate of nuances, but iron does not make an appreciably better sword than bronze. It is steel that makes better swords. Perhaps you are assuming that these bronze age people can make steel or have the blacksmithing know how to create a steel edge on an iron sword?
It also seems like you are overestimating early firearms. I totally get your point about ranged weapons in a scifi setting, but adding prototype guns into a medieval or fantasy setting doesn’t actually break things. Compared to the best bows of their time, early firearms were cumbersome, slower to reload, less accurate, and unreliable. This means that in magical settings, magically enhanced bows should easily equal or surpass early versions of firearms and even fairly well developed firearms.
I will say that the guns people usually plop down into fantasy settings are more like modern guns than actual historic early guns (a lot of revolvers), but this doesn’t have to be the case.
Of course, having magic bows with improved armor penetration does brings up the question of why anyone uses melee weapons in a fantasy setting either. That gets tricky and comes down to the specifics of how magic affects weapons and armor in the setting. However, modern people do tend to overestimate the importance of short-ranged melee weapons in medieval settings. Clearly they were used and significant, but bows and spears were a big deal. If I recall correctly, a Samurai’s most important weapon was the bow, followed by the spear, and then followed by the sword (feel free to correct me if you know more about this).
Yumi. IIRC?
Steel is better than iron (for most purposes*) but iron is better than bronze.
Depending on what faculty of the sword’s abilities one is taking about:-
Young’s Modulus is used for rigidity, when you parry.
Impact Strength (which is a rare value and most engineers use one quarter of the Ultimate Tensile Strength**), is used to puncture through armour without damaging the sword itself.
You generally find that as technologies advanced (hotter furnaces), then stronger materials were used. Stronger materials are notorious for their higher melting points.
Iron swords are; appreciably better, perceptibly better, measurably better, than bronze swords. But in no way does that make the victory a mortal-lock.
* Iron, particularly cast iron, is better for the purposes of casting from a mold, than steel. But ease of manufacture usually is a secondary consideration when your life depends on the thing working properly when needed…much like the price tag.
** Quick use of a search engine will find values when needed.
Another reason not to use guns (apart from gun control) could be that they are dangerous to the user as well as the target. Say you’re on a spaceship and don’t want to shoot a bullet through the hull because you’ll end up killing yourself too. Or your phaser would ignite the athmosphere of this planet you’re on.
Of course this would break down if a group of people had enough incentive (and some time) to invent a weapon that works around that, say an energy weapon that hurts people but not spaceship hulls. But if these types of fights are unusual, that could work, especially if combined with cultural, legal or economic reasons (maybe the kind of gun that would work exists, but is too expensive for your characters). Or those weapons are rarely useful and only clumsy prototypes exist.