Claymore with armor from Dunvegan Castle, in the public domain
If you’re Sir Terry Pratchett and you want a sword — as a good knight should — you can’t possibly go about it in a typical fashion. That just wouldn’t do. So instead of looking for something expected like steel, Pratchett decided to draw inspiration from the skies and make a sword with a meteorite. From the News.com.au report:
Pratchett, believing the sword would not truly be his own unless it was made from metal he had produced, found a field with deposits of iron ore near his home in Wiltshire, west of London.
He gathered the deposits and smelted the iron ore himself.
The author, 62, who has sold about 65 million copies of his books, which include the Discworld series, said: “Most of my life I’ve been producing stuff which is intangible and so it’s amazing the achievement you feel when you have made something which is really real.”
Well, it does stand to reason that a knight would need a sword, doesn’t it? But, as the article indicates, the sword now poses a bit of a problem and Pratchett has placed it somewhere secret. Somewhere safe. According to the author: “It annoys me that knights aren’t allowed to carry their swords. That would be knife crime.”
(via BoingBoing)
