Middle Earth Ranger Forum

Okay, so funny thing I found the other day.

Remember back a few years ago when the Valiant Armory “Bristol” arming sword was all the rage around the forums? Greg had one, I had one, and at least one or two other regulars carried one as well (heck, I’ve still got mine, and it’s still my primary Ranger sword! Going strong!).
Obviously, something about the design appealed to a lot of us, and said “RANGER!” In some way. Maybe it was the compact size, or the elegantly swept crossguard, or the fishtail pommel that could easily be gripped in one hand or in two, and resembled the unusual “arc” shape of Weta’s Narsil pommel:
Well, for whatever reason, enough of us used this particular type of sword that images of various people using it while doing Ranger stuff started to get shared around various social media platforms A LOT (probably mostly on Instagram, and probably mostly by me). So much so, in fact, that at some point the folks over at Epic Armoury decided to use this specific design of sword for their line of “Ranger” LARP swords ( https://www.epicarmoury.com/weaponry/sw ... 8/p-20767/ )- with the notable difference of swapping the crossguard out in favor of one that was clearly patterned after Strider’s Ranger sword from the LotR movies (admittedly, a BEAUTIFUL sword designed by WETA smith Peter Lyon, although not actually present in the books).

SO - Valiant Armoury Bristol + Weta Workshop Sword of Strider crossguard = Epic Armoury “Ranger” sword. Following?


WELL THEN. The other day I was poking around the new Kult of Athena site, and I saw... THIS:

https://www.kultofathena.com/product/15 ... ing-sword/

So Now Deepeeka has apparently taken the design of a LARP sword, which was based partially on a sword designed by WETA for the Lord of the Rings movies and partially on a sword by Valiant Armoury, which was in turn based (somewhat liberally, as I understand it) on an actual 15th Century arming sword - and made a NEW sword that they are claiming to be a 15th Century Arming sword! All because we shared some pictures of us doing Ranger stuff on Instagram!

Hah! You can’t make this stuff up!

If that weren't t a deepeeka I'd be interested...

Sword design is weird though. There's only so many historical replicas you can do before you have to start dipping into other avenues of design.

What a strange circle of influence that is! I don't know much about later period swords so I can't comment on how historically plausible it might be but it looks real nice!