(urth) Forging Terminus Est

[Lane Haygood]

I practice several blade arts like Filipino kali and Kukishinden Ryu Kenjutsu. Cutting with a sword is no easy feat, but I just don't see the benefit of a sliding bit of weight in a two-hander like TE.

Lane Haygood
Sent from my AT&T Tilt 

-----Original Message-----
From: Transentient <transentient at gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2008 10:36 PM
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) Forging Terminus Est



>     So I’ve changed my mind about the improbability of Wolfe’s  
> putting a mercury channel in Terminus Est.    I think a craftsman  
> could have forged the sword without resorting to unknown technologies.

I never really considered that there was an actual channel of mercury  
running down the core of the blade. I always assumed this was just how  
Severian described some bit of lost tech.

You don't need to do use anything like a channel of liquid metal in a  
sword to make it a good tool for cutting heads. All you need is a good  
edge. The rest is up to the skill of the practitioner; I am sure the  
executioner's guild trained Severian very well in how to cut so that  
the blade's balance is forward or backward.

(Surely I'm not the only one on this list who has practiced a Japanese  
sword art like Iaido or batto?) 
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