An Axe to Grind (Axe Spec.)

By Thelen Ornjrarg

You Vengards are all always so obsessed with your swords this, swords that. Your fancy champions got to have swords. Your whelps always got to dream of finding your ‘Aernaltarn’s and ‘Dauntless’s. And it doesn’t make a lick of sense to me. What’s wrong with using an axe?! I don’t have any issue with swords, but I have to wonder what it is that stops you from seeing an axe does just as good. So I have taken it upon meself to enlighten you all.

It's design is as functional as it has been for time out of mind. A haft of good, sturdy wood topped with a head of metal with a generous beard. Already, the axe proves cheaper to produce than a fancy sword. But the wonders do not stop here, for the axe does the sword's job of cutting better than a sword. Try cutting down a tree with a straight blade. Didn't work, did it? Now use a good old fashioned lumber axe. See how the axe chewed through that bark when a sword just gets stuck? Now imagine it's some foe-man trying to gut you. Yeah. And don't think their only come in the admittedly most desireable form of a Northling Axe nearly as tall as a man. No they come in smaller sizes, so your youngin's can start practicing right quick, or if a warrior loses his hand so he can just strap a shield to the stump and get back into the thick of things....

(The rest of the book quickly devolves into a display of blatant favouritism towards axes above all other weapons, citing any advantages other weapons have to be 'crutches and cheap tricks useful only against shite warriors'. Despite this, any reader who looks closer would notice there is in fact sound advice regarding the usage of axes hidden away in the pages.)