Cack-Handed Crossbows Revisited

From: mob <mob_at_bayswater.schnet.edu.au>
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 10:28:35 +0500


G'day all,

Cack-Handed Crossbows Revisited

In v6 #173 I wrote some stuff speculating about the great missile-throwing machine at Harpoon, and the idiosyncratic templars (the "Cack Handers") who guard it. Since then I've actually knocked it into a short article, which Ingo says will appear in Tradetalk some day, or maybe the next German con's fund raiser book. While I was doing this, Benedict Adamson posted some great speculations of his own about the origins of the harpoon as an anti-dragon weapon ("A Miscellany of Documents Concerning Retirement Towers" in v6 #185). Thanks for this Benedict - I've made a number of changes to the piece, and particularly like the idea that the Sun Dome retirement towers might have originally been anti-dragon aerial defenses!

Benedict Adamson sez:

>In the description of the Old Sun Dome, in Sun County, its says the old library
>holds the `blueprints' of the `harpoon'. Now, the other books it mentions are
>treasures, so why mention the blueprints at all? The implication is that the
>blueprints are in good condition and on prominent display. This in turn implies
>Yamsur built the `harpoon' shortly before leaving for Dragon Pass,
>and it was originally at the Old Sun Dome.
>
>You knew about this all along !;-)

Actually, I'd forgotten I'd written about this in SUN COUNTY (p.120), but ain't it amazing how everything seems to tie in!

But I did like Keith Nellist's alternative "Spinal Tap" theory, that the Harpoon was based on a toy found in one of the giant cradles (..."these are in inches, not feet!")

Jane sez:

>The Towers for dragon-defence sound so wonderful that they must be true,
and fit
>quite nicely into this period: before or after the Dragonkill. Wasn't there
a Count
>known as Wyrmslayer??

Yep, there is. And if we want, we've got a cool way for him to kill the beast! (Note, the Light List also says one of his close successors was "infamously shot by an arrow", but this might be taking things a bit far...)

>Anyway, after that we have wyrm-worship raising its head and being squashed
>throughout Sun County history, as often as the plot requires. Including, of
course,
>that conspiracy of Daystar's in Pent Ridge. Long robes hide tails.......

Nice, ain't it!

Cheers,

MOB


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