Nicholas Palazzo
Well-Known Member
About kopis and khopesh again...
I think the khopesh looks far more bizarre than the kopis. Bizarre to me is analogous to orcish.
Thinking pseudo-evolutionary i would prefer it this way:
The valar do know about weapons. They do have knives, spears, bows, maces... All based on tools.
The earliest elf- weapons are imitations of these styles.
When melkor first teaches the elves to make swords these are more kopis- like.. Duilin still uses one of these archaic blades. But feanor them decides to forge a more elegant looking blade- an enlarged xiphos variant. Then the noldor all start to wear this sort of blades and the earlier, more bent models get out of use instead of another, more falchion- like model in addition to the long sword type.
Later as the noldor meet orcs and trolls , and tje ircs are starting to use chain and ring armour too, they move on to more pointed blades closer to arming sword and estoc types, able to pierce scale and splint armor ( or troll hide).
The orcs at first also use kopis- like blades, the way melkor teaches them, but they start modifying them more to their taste and get to more khopesh, bent& sawtoothed types ( or the demons of angband do first) .
The khopesh idea came only out of the suggestion of utilizing the "plowshares into swords" imagery, and since Melkor is looking over Fingolfin's shoulder while it is being made, I don't have a problem using a curved blade for the elves here. As to the subjective idea of how "bizarre" a sword is... I'm not sure what to do with that. It certainly seems, to me, to be a beautiful, elegant, and deadly weapon. I have no logical argument that can defeat a subjective opinion of aesthetics.
As to the idea of assuming that Tolkien meant "large" when he said "mighty".... I don't think that we necessarily have to do that. The sword will be visually striking, and it is clearly a more versatile blade than the ones of Fingolfin's design.
As to the idea of the Noldor basing their early weapons on the designs of the Valar, I remind you that the Valar are not bound by physics in the same way the elves are, nor by materials. Keep in mind also that in Season 2, the hosts expressed the desire for the Ainur to not be wielding physical, manufactured weapons. This is why we discussed all of this then.