Bertrem's Guide to the Age of Mortals by Nancy Varian Berberick

Author:Nancy Varian Berberick [Berberick, Nancy Varian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7869-1437-1
Publisher: Fanversion Publishing
Published: 2016-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

MISSILE WEAPONS: BOWS, SLINGS, AND DARTS

The origin of the bow is a mystery. The early elves did not know of them, nor did the nomadic humans of the plains. The earliest mention of archery is in the military chronicles of the Silvanesti general, Lord Balif.

The Silvanesti had long been plagued by border raids and skirmishes with nomadic human tribes north and west of their homeland. Around 3995 PC a lull of several years ended when the barbarians returned in force. The whole northern border of the elf realm was in danger from mounted bands of humans armed with a new weapon, the bow.

Using diplomacy and superior strategy, Balif was able to defeat the nomads. Captured raiders told stories of the bow's origin. Supposedly the barbarians had encountered a dark-skinned race of humans far to the north, who came across the great ocean in boats to the shores of Ansalon. These dark seafarers were armed with bent wooden staves that threw small, sharp "spears" a considerable distance. The strangers were few in number but friendly enough. The nomads acquired a few bows, learned to make them, and took to archery with fierce excitement.

These early bows were short ones—acsemthani, the elves called them, "half-bows." They were cut to be half the height of the archer, or two and a half to three feet long. Tough, springy wood was best for bows—yew, hickory, pear—and stiff, straight-grained wood best for arrows. The nomads tipped their arrows with flint heads and fletched them with wild goose feathers. Bowstrings were cow sinew strands, woven into a thick string. Once the elves learned to make bows, they used the same woods but equipped their war arrows with rakish bronze points. The Silvanesti also used flax for bowstrings, which made their strings thinner yet stronger.

Like the discovery of iron, the bow quickly spread to every other people who came in contact with it. Men of Ergoth developed the longbow (semthani to the elves), where the staff was as long as the archer was tall. Curiously, the Ergothians made scant military use of the longbow. The empire was built by saber-wielding horsemen, and the complacent Ergothians never felt the need to change their tactics until it was too late. The greatest exponents of the longbow were the people of Nordmaar, and the Qualinesti, who also used them extensively for hunting the deep forests of their land. [The chronicles tell of Lauralanthalasa, Hero of the Lance, shooting and wounding a messenger of the Dark Knights as she and Sturm Brightblade stood together on the Tower of the High Clerist at the height of the War of the Lance.]

Short-statured folk found the hand-drawn bow unsatisfactory. Dwarves, kender, and their kind found of little use any size bow that would fit their height. It fell to another small race, the gnomes, to create the missile weapon for their sizes, the crossbow.

The tunnels and caverns of the gnome city inside Mt. Nevermind were hardly suitable to archery practice, but the gnomes discovered they loved propelling all sorts of strange missiles through the air.

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