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OOC post: sword-making and everyday life
May. 21st, 2008 02:34 pmSeems I haven't given the forge techniques that Teja would have come in with enough credit.-
I just learned from the book on migration period Germanic Warriors that they already had pattern-welded steel swords -- while nothing near as fine as Japanese folded steel, those swords were made from twisted rods of steel and iron, for flexibility. So forge-welding as such wouldn't have been such a revelation for my Milli!Teja, just the folding technique that the Japanese use, which is very much superior to anything known in Europe at his time.
It is not a big thing that I'd have to back-pedal frantically about, but I'll try and gently retcon it into future forge posts. Dahn, of course, would have been more concerned with the heroic and poetic aspects of describing a weapon, and the damage it does, than with how it was made. Dahn liked the big picture, and picked out small scenes from that to describe in vivid detail, but never worried about practicalities.
While the Romans and Byzantines are frequently shown at home, the only Gothic 'home story' I remember are Witichis and Rauthgundis in their villa near Faesulae; otherwise, it's all battles and official business and travel and temporary places, and Dahn can be as romantic and impractical about those as he likes.
We just get tantalising glimpses of the ordinary business of living -- Totila inhabiting the same house in Rome where Belisarius made his headquarters, and there, sitting among his scribes to help decipher Cathegus' papers, for example. I don't even know if Dahn realised what he'd ascribed to Totila by claiming he could fluently read the papers once the code was deciphered, holding the key in his head -- that takes some serious intelligence as well as mathematical ability, and sheer geekiness! It gives a whole new aspect to sunny heroic Totila, and I've already taken that throwaway and run with it. You get some serious mileage out of little pieces of canon like that if you get some background and fill it up.-
And filling up is done with research as I go along, and that's where I don't stop at 'Did they know that in the 1870s?' because really, I would break my brain. If there is newer research to be had about filling I need, I'll use that.-
I just learned from the book on migration period Germanic Warriors that they already had pattern-welded steel swords -- while nothing near as fine as Japanese folded steel, those swords were made from twisted rods of steel and iron, for flexibility. So forge-welding as such wouldn't have been such a revelation for my Milli!Teja, just the folding technique that the Japanese use, which is very much superior to anything known in Europe at his time.
It is not a big thing that I'd have to back-pedal frantically about, but I'll try and gently retcon it into future forge posts. Dahn, of course, would have been more concerned with the heroic and poetic aspects of describing a weapon, and the damage it does, than with how it was made. Dahn liked the big picture, and picked out small scenes from that to describe in vivid detail, but never worried about practicalities.
While the Romans and Byzantines are frequently shown at home, the only Gothic 'home story' I remember are Witichis and Rauthgundis in their villa near Faesulae; otherwise, it's all battles and official business and travel and temporary places, and Dahn can be as romantic and impractical about those as he likes.
We just get tantalising glimpses of the ordinary business of living -- Totila inhabiting the same house in Rome where Belisarius made his headquarters, and there, sitting among his scribes to help decipher Cathegus' papers, for example. I don't even know if Dahn realised what he'd ascribed to Totila by claiming he could fluently read the papers once the code was deciphered, holding the key in his head -- that takes some serious intelligence as well as mathematical ability, and sheer geekiness! It gives a whole new aspect to sunny heroic Totila, and I've already taken that throwaway and run with it. You get some serious mileage out of little pieces of canon like that if you get some background and fill it up.-
And filling up is done with research as I go along, and that's where I don't stop at 'Did they know that in the 1870s?' because really, I would break my brain. If there is newer research to be had about filling I need, I'll use that.-