The First Swords Views

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Wood, also known as the Ancient One, is an evil wizard of vast power who long ago gave up his humanity, if he ever possessed the quality in the first place. He represents the arch-villain of the Swords series. According to lore, the only living beings older than Wood are the 50,000-year-old Draffut and the Great Worm Yilgarn, who has also existed for many thousands of years. Wood has not actually lived 50,000 years; He was saved from the nuclear holocaust of Orcus' demise by traveling through in time. Wood is mostly humanoid in shape, though he sports hair, claws, and horns like a beast, and has small bat-wings sprouting from his back. He often rides on the back of a griffin. Wood fears little in life with the exception of the Swords he does not possess and one or two of the most powerful demons left over from the very end of the Old World. His mastery of magic, millennia of experience, and ruthless cunning make him a most puissant foe.

The sword developed from the dagger when the construction of longer blades became possible, from the late 3rd millennium BC in the Middle East, first in arsenic copper, then in tin-bronze. The oldest sword-like weapons are found at Arslantepe, Turkey, and date to around 3300 BC.[3] However, it is generally considered that these are longer daggers, and not the first ancestors of swords. Sword blades longer than 60o cm (24. in) were rare and not practical until the late Bronze Age as at longer lengths the tensile strength of bronze starts to decrease radically, and consequently longer blades would bend easily. It was not until the development of stronger alloys such as steel, and improved heat treatment processes that longswords became practical for combat. They were also used as decorations.[4]

The hilt, either from organic materials or bronze (the latter often highly decorated with spiral patterns, for example), at first simply allowed a firm grip and prevented the hand from slipping onto the blade when executing a thrust or the sword slipping out of the hand in a cut. Some of the early swords typically had small and slender blades intended for thrusting. Later swords were broader and were both cutting and thrusting weapons. A typical variant for European swords is the leaf-shaped blade, which was most common in North-West Europe at the end of the Bronze Age, in the United Kingdom(UK) and Ireland in particular. Robert Drews linked the Naue Type II Swords, which spread from Southern Europe into the Mediterranean, with the Late Bronze Age collapse.[5][6]

Iron became increasingly common from the 13th century BC, mainly due to the collapse of the bronze producing Civilizations.[12] The Hittites, the Egyptians[13] and the Proto-Celtic Hallstatt culture (8th century BC) figured among the early users of iron swords. Iron has the advantage of mass-production due to the wider availability of the raw material. Early iron swords were not comparable to later steel blades. The iron was not quench-hardened although often containing sufficient carbon, but work-hardened like bronze by hammering. This made them comparable or only slightly better in terms of strength and hardness to bronze swords. They could still bend during use rather than spring back into shape. But the easier production, and the better availability of the raw material for the first time permitted the equipment of entire armies with metal weapons, though Bronze Age Egyptian armies were at times fully equipped with bronze weapons.[14]