Vahevia.com: Equipment Profiles ~ Weaponry

"When all magic fails, rely on three feet of steel and a strong arm..." ~ Warrior's Proverb

Weapons

Simple Weapons	Military Weapons	Ranged Weapons
Casavado Club Cradlefork Elbowrake Knives/Tarakites Mysistoe Blade Phegn Staff Trojieritu	Alvanash Arinajak Chakathra Chinbar Dyanasis Lotus-Vane Rohlarta-Kharn Shaki Tera-Keya Thunderchain	Mahõra Flint Blowgun Darts Ami'Horbus Leaves

Only an idiot or an extremely powerful spellcaster would dare step into the wilderness without a reliable weapon in hand. Weapons might ensure one's survival, but as any seasoned warrior knows: a weapon is merely a tool. It's one's own killer instinct and fighting skills that're the essence of combat. Few would be stupid enough to assume that simply carrying a powerful weapon without having the proper proficiency would garauntee survival.

Weapons come in a diverse assortment of forms, shapes and composition, and many are native to the culture of particular species. For example, it was the galagi who had fashioned and mastered the casavado's use, but countless warriors of other races have adopted the weapon's use as well. Other weapons are more "generalised", used by all races and fashioned differently to suit larger or smaller sized organisms... for example, a weighty cudgel intended for a human's hands might be no longer then a tree branch or table-leg, but such a weapon would be useless to something as tremendous and powerful as a selynah. Conversely, the efforts of even the strongest of humans would be laughable when trying to heft the enormous, 8'-long iron clubs that selynah warriors lift with ease.

Behind the curtain: Why the need for new weapons and armour?
Well, let's face it... Originally, I thought to myself- "This is an alien world lost in the darkest recesses of some distant, forgotten reality of nightmares and darkness." Why, the living hell, would they be using the exact same weapons as humans do in a distant world that doesn't even exist in the Vahevian reality? Just because Vahevia's fantasy? WTF?" I also considered how much more unique a fantasy setting would be if it used its own defining weapons... (So where else are humans known to pick up a Mahora flint and scorch enemies with an inferno of flaming embers? All done with organic materials?) With that in mind, I took the difficult task of designing new weapons, but I think I might've gone overboard in the old version of Vahevia. Foregoing the use of even simplistic weapons such as clubs and staves, I gave such weapons weird names and even weirder histories as "chaos stara" or whatever. Just to avoid having simple weapons called "quarterstaves" or "cudgels" because such things were used in generic D&D. Get a grip.

Well, things concerning these simple weapons are slightly different now. Vahevia *does* have quarterstaves, clubs, throwing rocks, and even knives (although they maintain the shaki's unique handle, like a punching daggar). Sure, these weapons are used in the real world and in traditional fantasy, right? But these are makeshift, improvised, or primative weapons that're used when there's nothing else at hand. Anybody can just pick up a hefty shank of wood and start swinging it around, right? So why bother calling it a "chaos stara" when things can be so much simpler by leaving it as a "club"? And in reference to the arguement of "why would weapons be the same across so many goddamned realities?" mentioned earlier, clubs and staves can be safely called what they are because mankind's most obvious instinct when cornered is to pick up the nearest rough, wooden object and start swinging it around. That's why I've given Vahevia back staves and clubs, as well as for simplicity's sake.

And what about knives? Weren't they called "tarakites"? Well, this is the only exception amidst a whole assortment of strange, alien weapons... I figured the name "tarakite" was too much of a mouthful for something as mundane and commonplace as a "knife", so I went back to using the name "knife" instead. Mind you, only the name was changed; Vahevian knives are still held the same way as their larger cousins, the shakis. But it's so much easier and newcomer-friendly to refer to the most basic of Vahevian weapons as a "knife" and still acknowledge the strange, alien design, rather then call it a "tarakite" and disregard the existance of knives altogether. *cough* Okay, y'know what? I'm starting to nitpick the nits on a nitpicker's nit. I've gone into *way* too much detail, but at least I've hopefully clarified matters for anybody patient enough to have read all the way through my long-winded rambling.