From: Dave Godwin wrote on Wed, 17 Nov 2004 18:48:31 -0800 >I took them to be atlatls: >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlatl Hi, I do not think we actually see any bows and arrows being *used* in the Phoenix Guards. Also specific question below for Carl and Jeff. >From the same website http://www.nps.gov/amis/eatlatl.htm Looks pretty much like the description in Dragon except where is the string and the green bendable wood. Dragon Chapter 15 paperback page 249 "Javelin shooters" Vlad thinking: "One of the javelins had fallen about two feet from my hand, and was sticking out of the ground, it was much smaller than the ones we were throwing, and had feathers near the back, and at the very end, the wood had a small notch." "Take a length of green, bendable wood", said Virt. "Put a string to it, and you can use it to shoot those things a long distance. Longer, even uphill, than we can throw our javelins downhill." Carl Parkes on Fri, 19 Nov 2004 14:23:29 +1100 under Subject: re Bows and sorcery thinks they are wommarra. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlatl mentions Australian woomera which it says is like the atlatl. Carl, spelling difference or something else? Jeff G. wrote on Thu, 18 Nov 2004 08:56:06 -0700 under Subject: atlatls (was Bows and arrows) >You can see these in use by Australian Aborigines in the Tom Selleck >movie "Quigley Down Under", Jeff, could you tell in the movie if there was string involved? Booksearch only comes up with archery in The Phoenix Guards and the only reference to arrows in 500 Years After is talking about clothing. I bet a sorceror figured out between the two books how to wreck archery so much that no one will ever use anything with a arrow on Dragaera again. Or maybe even before The Phoenix Guards Book on G'aereth and Gyorg please! On archery in the The Phoenix Guards. There is an archery range but we do not see what is actually being practiced there. Maybe they are practicing how to use sorcery against arrows. One side shoots and the other side casts the anti-arrow spell. They pretend in Chapter 26 to have archers and maybe Garland did not know the anti-arrow spell. See Dragon Chapter 4 paperback page 4 and 5 on flashstones: "where some sorcerer found a means of making every one of the enemy's "flashstones" blow up in his hand--which added a whole new level of spell and counter-spell, and made the common foot soldier leery about having anything to do with sorcery." The spell used against arrows might not have been modified for darts because poison darts are not thought of as a battle weapon and who would know they were being used. If sorcery had made bows and arrows obsolete, that could have caused someone to invent something with string and green bendable wood that shoots javelins. The spell might might not have worked on a smaller javelin which was still much heavier than a arrow. The javelin would have looked just like the spear in http://www.nps.gov/amis/eatlatl.htm Or maybe the anti-arrow spell had not been modified yet to work on javelin shooters. Bye. Linda G.