[Dragaera] Arrows vs Javelins

[dovekie]

On 8/5/06, Scott Crain <s_thomas_crain at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >Likely, Cropper Company is using something rather like a Pilum, and the
> >javelin shooter is more like a crossbow.
> >Majikjon
>
> Or atl-atl or a ballista... However, I don't think it's anything like bow
> and arrow (to answer Tom).
> /mrtn
>
>
>   On the contrary -- it's very much like a bow -- it -is- a bow.  'Take a long, flexible stick, put a string to it ...'  The quote is mangled, and I misremember the location of the text search gizmo, but that's basically it right there.  Unless -- and this is a big unless -- they're using the string-style atl-atl, but then the notch would be at the -front- of the 'small javelin', and not at the back, as Vlad observes.
>
>   S. Thomas Crain
>   Author-in-Training

Cleary it is a bow. Page 249 of the paperback: "it was much smaller
than the [javelins] we were throwing, and had feathers near the back,
and, at the very end, the wood had a small notch.
"Take a length of green, bendable wood," said Virt. "Put a string to
it, and you can use it to shoot those things a long distance.""

I'd imagine that there's no good word for it since Dragaerans went
right from rocks and sticks to high-powered sorcerous artillery. It
wouldn't surprise me at all if the bow was invented in the East, and
the Dragaerans simply called it a "javelin-shooter" the way they call
brandy "wine."  They're sticks with pointy bits that you launch at the
enemy, so they're javelins, just like alcohol made from fruit is wine.

-- 
"I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night."