[Dragaera] Speculation on weapons and sorcery

[Ken Koester]

Howard Brazee wrote:

> Quite a bit of fantasy is written where compound bows are not to be
>
>expected, but slings were not thought of.
>  
>

At a guess--most westerners don't know as much/have as much of a feel 
for slings as they do arrows (& thank you, Mr. Shakespeare!)

>But there are *lots* of possibilities with the use of magic with sling 
>stones. 
>  
>
>  
>
I think I'd want an accuracy spell first & then an extra oomph spell on 
top of it.  Wouldn't really need an exploding stone, alhough that would 
be nice.  Um, cf. Zelazny's slinger battle near the end of =Call Me 
Conrad=.  They were splintering small trees to kindling before they were 
attacked by the cannibals.

>I wonder how siege warfare and sea warfare are fought in Dragaera.
>  
>

We see a bit of a siege of Castle Black.  Apparently, you handle it by 
teleporting in/out what you need & then levitating the castle (-:  Of 
course, teleport blocks would do for that one.  Actually, since 
widespread teleportation is a post-interregnum thing, historical sieges 
probably ran much along conventional Earth lines before then, and with 
teleport blocks now, they probably still do.  One impressive thing is 
how well Sethra appreciates logistics, the bread and butter (so to 
speak) of professional military planners.  You don't often see that in 
fantasy; Modesitt refers to it on a sort of individual scale & Cook's 
various protagonist military leaders always show a flare for it  (Bragi, 
the Captain, the Lieutenant & later Croaker), but I'm hard pressed for 
any other examples. . . .

Snarkhunter