Writing Weapons (1): Swords
The Thrusting Sword
Type of fight scene: entertaining, duels, non-lethal fights, non-gory deaths, swashbuckling adventure
Mostly used in: Europe, including Renaissance and Regency periods
Typical User: silm, male or female, good aerobic fitness
Main action: thrust, pierce, stab
Main motion: horizontal with the tip forward
Shape: straight, often thin, may be lightweight
Typical Injury: seeping blood, blood stains spreading
Strategy: target gaps in the armous, pierce a vital organ
Disadvantage: cannot slice through bone or armour
Examples: foil, epee, rapier, gladius
The Cleaving Sword
Type of fight scene: gritty, brutal, battles, cutting through armour
Typical user: tall brawny male with broad shulders and bulging biceps
Mostly used in: Medieval Europe
Main action: cleave, hack, chop, cut, split
Main motion: downwards
Shape: broad, straight, heavy, solid, sometime huge, sometimes need to be held in both hands, both sides sharpened
Typical Injury: severed large limbs
Strategy: hack off a leg, them decapitate; or split the skull
Disadvantage: too big to carry concealed, too heavy to carry in daily lifem too slow to draw for spontaneous action
Examples: Medieval greatsword, Scottish claymore, machete, falchion
The Slashing Sword
Type of fight scene: gritty or entertaining, executions, cavalry charge, on board a ship
Mostly used in: Asia, Middle East
Typical user: male (female is plausible), any body shape, Arab, Asian, mounted warrior, cavalryman, sailor, pirate
Main action: slash, cut, slice
Main motion: fluid, continuous, curving, eg.figure-eight
Shape: curved, often slender, extremely sharp on the outer edge
Typical Injury: severed limbs, lots of spurting blood
Strategy: first disable opponent's sword hand (cut it off or slice into tendons inside the elbow)
Disadvantage: unable to cut thorugh hard objects (e.g. metal armor)
Examples: scimitar, sabre, saif, shamshir, cutlass, katana
Blunders to Avoid:
Weapons performing what they shouldn't be able to do (e.g. a foil slashing metal armour)
Protagonists fighting with weapons for which they don't have the strength or build to handle
The hero carrying a huge sword all the time as if it's a wallet
Drawing a big sword form a sheath on the back (a physical impossiblity, unless your hero is a giant...)
Generic sword which can slash, stab, cleave, slash, block, pierce, thrust, whirl through the air, cut a few limbs, etc...as if that's plausible
adapted from <Writer's Craft> by Rayne Hall
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Your Ancient History, Written In Wax
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Danny knew he should have put better security around the Sarcophagus of Eternal Sleep. It wasn’t even Vlad who opened it this time! The fruitloop was too busy doing his actual mayor duties because for some godforsaken reason, the man got re-elected.
No, it wasn’t Vlad. And it wasn’t Fright Knight, either. Nor the Observants. Who opened the Sarcophagus, then? Danny didn’t have time to find out as Pariah Dark promptly tore open a hole in reality and started hunting Danny down.
The battle was longer this time. He didn’t have the Ecto-Skeleton, as that was the first thing Pariah had destroyed. The halfa had grown a lot over the past few years, and learned some new tricks, but apparently sleeping in a magic ghost box meant that Pariah had absorbed a lot of power. The bigger ghost acted like a one-man army!
Amity Park was caught in the middle of the battle, but the residents made sure it went no further than that. Vlad and the Fentons made a barrier around the town to keep the destruction from leaking. Sam, Tucker, and Dani did crowd control while Danny faced the king head-on.
Their battle shook the Zone and pulled them wildly between the mortal plane and the afterlife. Sometimes, residents noticed a blow from Pariah transported them to the age of the dinosaurs, and Phantom’s Wail brought them to an unknown future. Then they were in a desert. Then a blazing forest. Then underwater. It went on like that, but no one dared step foot outside of Amity. They couldn’t risk being left behind.
It took ages to beat him, but eventually, Danny stood above the old ghost king, encasing his symbols of power in ice so they couldn’t be used again. He refused to claim the title for himself. Tired as he was, Danny handed the objects off to Clockwork for safe keeping and started repairing the damage Pariah had done to the town. The tear he’d made was too big to fix, for now, so no one bothered. They just welcomed their new ghostly neighbors with open arms and worked together to restore Amity Park.
Finally, the day came to bring down the barrier. People were gathered around the giant device the Fentons had built to sustain it. Danny had brought Clockwork to Amity, to double check that they had returned to the right time and dimension.
Clockwork assured everyone that they were in the right spot, and only a small amount of time had passed, so the Fentons gave the signal to drop the shield.
Very quickly did they discover that something was wrong. The air smelled different. The noise of the nearby city, Elmerton, was louder and more chaotic. Something was there that wasn’t before, and it put everyone on edge.
Clockwork smiled, made a remark about the town fitting in better than before, and disappearing before Danny could catch him.
Frantic, Danny had a few of his ghost buds stay behind to protect the town while he investigated.
He flew far and wide, steadily growing horrified at the changes the world had undergone. Heroes, villains, rampant crime and alien invasions. The Earth was unrecognizable. There were people moving around the stars like it was second nature and others raising dead gods like the apocalypse was coming. Magic and ectoplasm was everywhere, rather than following the ley lines like they were supposed to.
Danny returned to Amity.
The fight with Pariah had taken them through space and time. Somewhere along the way, they had changed the course of history so badly that this now felt like an alien world.
How was he supposed to fix this?
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In the Watchtower, The Flash was wrapping up monitor duty while Impulse buzzed around him, a little more jittery than usual. The boy was talking a mile a minute, when alarms started blaring an alarming green. Flash had never seen this alarm before, and its crackling whine was grating on his ears.
Flash returned to the monitor, frantically clicking around to find the issue, but nothing was popping up. No major disasters, no invasions, no declarations of war. Nothing! What was causing the alarm?
Impulse swore and zipped to a window, pressing his face against it and staring down at Earth. “Fuck! It’s today isn’t it? I forgot!”
“What’s today?” Flash asked. He shot off a text to Batman, asking if it was an error. The big Bat said it wasn’t, and that he would be there soon.
“The arrival of Amity Park. I learned about this in school; the alarm always gives me headaches.”
Flash turned to his grandson, getting his attention. “Bart,” he stressed. “What are you talking about?”
Impulse barely glanced over his shoulder. Now that Flash was facing him, he could see a strong glow coming from Earth. “The first villain, first anti-villain, and the first hero,” he said anxiously. “They all protect the town of the original metas. They’re all here.”
“Here? Now??”
“Yeah? They weren’t before, but they are now. The first hero said there was time stuff involved, which was what inspired me to start practicing time travel in the first place.”
“I’m not following.”
“It’s okay. We should probably go welcome them before they tear apart Illinois, though. The history I remember says that some of them freaked and destroyed a chunk of the Midwest during a fight with each other.”
“WHAT?”
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