FANTASY GENERAL 2 ARTIFACTS SERIES

The latter are only found in the forges of the frozen north.Īs for JK Rowling’s Harry Potter, in which the books grow increasingly epic as the story progresses, the series features an abundance of artefacts of power. The armour of the panzerbjorn is also a significant artefact as well as the essence of the bears’ physical and spiritual being. In the second book, The Subtle Knife, the blade for which the book is named opens gateways between parallel universes. In Philip Pullman’s Golden Compass trilogy, the first book is centered around the mysterious alethiometer, a truth-telling and predictive compass that only Lyra can readily interpret. As for where to find such items, “over sea and under stone” and generally secreted in unexpected places is the order of things. These include the grail, a codex to decipher it, and the “six signs” of Will Stanton’s Twelfth Night quest in the second book, also titled The Dark is Rising. Returning to Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series (as mentioned in the MacGuffin post), the five books centre on the finding of longlost artefacts that will support the power of the light and turn back the dark. In Garner’s The Weirdstone of Brisingamen the treasure is a stone and not the necklace of Norse myth, but it’s rightful resting place is also a cave. These may also be found, although not necessarily in their official Four Treasures guise, in other Celtic-inpsired fantasy novels, such as Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar series and Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising quintet. This makes Father Christmas’s sack a good starting point for those who seek similar gifts.Īlan Garner goes directly to the Four Treasures of Celtic myth in Elidor, which are found in a mound. Starting with children’s literature, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Father Christmas gives three of the four Pevensey children a sword and shield, a bow and horn, and a dagger and healing cordial respectively. The Lord Of The Rings is by no means alone in this respect. Lucy receives her gift of healing cordial However, since I’ve given swords pride of place in SF Signal and other posts in the past, today I’m going to focus on alternative artefacts of power. Serbitar and the Thirty, who are mostly if not all of noble birth, also primarily use swords.Īs for where one finds such swords, the aspiring sword wielder should look among goblin hordes and in lakes and caves, as well as thrust into stones or already in the possession of great heroes and powerful wizards. It is Rek, who becomes the Earl of Bronze, albeit through marriage, who is the great swordsman. “Hold on,” you may cry, “what about Druss, the legendary axeman in David Gemmell’s groundbreaking heroic fantasy, Legend?” To which I reply-nodding sagely-that although Druss is clearly one of the three leading protagonists in Legend, in the context of the book he is i) not of the high, knightly classes and ii) does not see himself as heroic, although others clearly do. when being made a knight by someone of higher status, the candidate was-and is-“dubbed” by means of a sword. Similarly, although knights might use other weapons historically, such as the battleaxe and mace, the sword was seen as a knightly and even princely weapon, i.e. In The Lord of the Rings, for example, we also have a significant number of other named swords, including Orcrist, Glamdring, and Sting… I believe this preeminence is understandable in a branch of Fantasy literature that is also known as “Heroic fantasy” and “High fantasy” although heroes may use many weapons, hand to hand combat in the realm of high deeds is most often with a sword. The reason for the frequent mentions is because swords of power seem to hold pride of place in epic fantasy. Dragnipur, the sword of Anomander Rake in Steven Erikson’s Malazan: The Book of the Fallen.Changeling, as featured in CJ Cherryh’s Morgaine ‘verse.Gonturan, the Blue Sword, made famous in Robin McKinley’s Damar books.Stormbringer from Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melnibone series.Those of you who are following this series will also be aware that it has a predecessor in a guest post (one of a mini-series of three) I put together for (the sorely and sadly missed) SF Signal, awa’ back in the mists of time, aka 2011 (gulp!) The post was titled “The Soul-Sucking Sword”, which constitutes an artefact of power if ever there was one (imho.) The specific swords featured in that post are: Given they’re frequently the object of heroic quests, this instalment of “Having Fun With Epic Fantasy Tropes” is closely linked to Instalment 8, “ We’re All Going On A MacGuffin Hunt.” Artefacts of power, and/or doom, are one of the great staples of epic fantasy and the myths, legends, and folklore that inform the literature.

Fantasy general 2 artifacts