England Fantasy

Why Fantasy Weapons Are Fantastic

Fantasy weapons are often named so simply as an aspect of psychological warfare. It served to bolster the power of the wielder or the importance of the weapon in varied ways. Thor, the Viking god of war, is distinctive only because of his hammer, Mjolnir. The sword Excalibur was King Arthur’s primary weapon and symbol of royalty. The sword actually proved his lineage to kingship after Uther Pendragon who was his father. The symbolic sword Kusanagi is one of Japan’s Imperial Regalia, symbols of the Emperor’s divine descent.

To make them supernatural and the wielder invincible, the weapons are endowed with magical or extraordinary powers either actually or in legends. Durendal, Roland’s indestructible sword, was said to be his most trusted companion. The Welsh legends has the sword Dyrnwyn, which was said to burst into flames on use and helps the user if the purpose is good, but burns the holder if he intends to use it for evil aims. Meantime, the Irish has Fragarach, the sword that can penetrate all kinds of medieval armour that are otherwise unaffected by ordinary weapons.

In the more modern times, two fantasy world war weapons may be the Me262 ‘Schwalbe’ or the Me163 ‘Komet’, and the ‘Paris Gun’ which was often confused with the ‘Big Bertha’. The Me262 was the first-ever jetfighter to fly the skies and bring down enemy airplanes (the RAF Gloster ‘Meteor’, a similarly-designed jet fighter, did not reach air combat operations until late 1944). The Swallow began combat operations in the middle of 1944, and one 262 damaged a Mosquito in 26 July as the jetplane’s first combat win. Meanwhile, the Meteor was first assigned an anti-V1 role, downing two rockets on August 4, 1944. The rocket-armed Komet, a jetplane faster than the Swallow, saw limited role in the air war and did not figure prominently in it.

Meantime, the Paris Gun (Paris-Geschütz) was a long-barrel siege gun used to pound Paris, 120 kilometers away, in World War 1. The primary purposes was to instill terror in the hearts of Parisiennes so French resistance to German advance would weaken. Maybe the objective was achieved, because the citizens of Paris first believed they were being hammered by a new kind of super airweapon because there was no noise before the shells fell. On the other hand, Paris was not evacuated by civilians, and the German Army failed to occupy the city.

Fantasy weapons are by definition the fanciful or fantastic, or at least thought to be so. They should be extraordinary or even supernatural enough to be exceptional over similar ordinary weapons. Legend, fictional or real, fantasy weapons serve to bolster the confidence of the wielder, inspire the nation or group, and create a hero figure which aspiring minds can identify with. In stories and books, heroes using such weapons are usually triumphant or come to a tragic, romantic end such as Roland, but in real life, fantastic weapons most times fail to achieve the lofty purposes they were made for.

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