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falconfate · 28 days

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Hello ranger’s apprentice fandom can we talk real quick about the stupidest thing Flanagan ever wrote

It’s about the bows. Yanno, the rangers’ Iconique™️ main weapon. That one. You know the one.

Flanagan. Flanagan why are your rangers using longbows.

“uh well recurve arrows drop faster” BUT DO THEY. FLANAGAN. DO THEY.

the answer is no they don’t. Compared to a MODERN, COMPOUND (aka cheating) bow, yes, but compared to a longbow? Y’know, what the rangers use in canon? Yeah no a recurve actually has a FLATTER trajectory. It drops LATER.

This from an article comparing the two:

“Both a longbow and a recurve bow, when equipped with the right arrow and broadhead combination, are capable of taking down big game animals. Afterall, hunters have been doing it for centuries with both types of bows.

However, generally speaking and all things equal, a recurve bow will offer more arrow speed, creating a flatter flight trajectory and retain more kinetic energy at impact.

The archers draw length, along with the weight of the arrow also affect speed and kinetic energy. However, the curved design of the limbs on a recurve adds to its output of force.”

It doesn’t actually mention ANY distance in range! And this is from a resource for bow hunting, which, presumably, WOULD CARE ABOUT THAT SORT OF THING!

Okay so that’s just. That’s just the first thing.

The MAIN thing is that even accounting for “hur dur recurves drop faster” LONGBOWS ARE STILL THE STUPID OPTION.

Longbows, particularly and especially ENGLISH longbows, are—as their name suggests—very long. English longbows in particular are often as tall or taller than their wielder even while strung, but especially when unstrung. An unstrung longbow is a very long and expensive stick, one that will GLADLY entangle itself in nearby trees, other people’s clothes, and any doorway you’re passing through.

And yes, there are shorter longbows, but at that point if you’re shortening your longbow, just get a goddamn recurve. And Flanagan makes a point to compare his rangers’ bows to the Very Long English Longbow.

Oh, do you know how the Very Long English Longbow was mostly historically militarily used? BY ON-FOOT ARCHER UNITS. Do you know what they’re TERRIBLE for? MOUNTED ARCHERY.

Trust me. Go look up right now “mounted archery longbow.” You’ll find MAYBE one or two pictures of some guy on a horse struggling with a big stick; mostly you will actually see either mounted archers with RECURVES, or comparisons of Roman longbow archers to Mongolian horse archers (which are neat, can’t lie, I love comparing archery styles like that).

Anyway. Why are longbows terrible for mounted archery? Because they’re so damn long. Think about it: imagine you’re on a horse. You’re straddling a beast that can think for itself and moves at your command, but ultimately independently of you; if you’re both well-trained enough, you’re barely paying attention to your horse except to give it commands. And you have a bow in your hands. If your target is close enough to you that you know, from years of shooting experience, you will need to actually angle your bow down to hit it because of your equine height advantage, guess what? If you have a longbow, YOU CAN’T! YOUR HORSE IS IN THE WAY BECAUSE YOUR BOW IS TOO LONG! Worse, it’s probably going to get in the general area of your horse’s shoulder or legs, aka moving parts, which WILL injure your horse AND your bow and leave you fresh out of both a getaway vehicle and a ranged weapon. It’s stupid. Don’t do it.

A recurve, on the other hand, is short. It was literally made for horse archers. You have SO much range of motion with a recurve on horseback; and if you’re REALLY good, you know how to give yourself even more, with techniques like Jamarkee, a Turkish technique where you LITERALLY CAN AIM BACKWARDS.

For your viewing enjoyment, Serena Lynn of Texas demonstrating Jamarkee:

Yes, that’s real! This type of draw style is INCREDIBLY versatile: you can shoot backwards on horseback, straight down from a parapet or sally port without exposing yourself as a target, or from low to the ground to keep stealthy without banging your bow against the ground. And, while I’m sure you could attempt it with a longbow, I wouldn’t recommend it: a recurve’s smaller size makes it far more maneuverable up and over your head to actually get it into position for a Jamarkee shot.

A recurve just makes so much more SENSE. It’s not a baby bow! It’s not the longbow’s lesser cousin! It’s a COMPLETELY different instrument made to be used in a completely different context! For the rangers of Araluen, who put soooo much stock in being stealthy and their strong bonds with their horses, a recurve is the perfect fit! It’s small and easily transportable, it’s more maneuverable in combat and especially on horseback, it offers more power than a longbow of the same draw weight—really, truly, the only advantage in this case that a longbow has over the recurve is that longbows are quicker and easier to make. But we KNOW the rangers don’t care about that, their KNIVES use a forging technique (folding) that takes several times as long as standard Araluen forging practices at the time!

Okay.

Okay I think I’m done. For now.

#to be VERY clear. I Am Not An Actual Expert.#i AM however drawing from my own experience and research #and literally i can find Zero literature about recurve arrow flights dropping faster than longbows #all i could find was that recurve range is worse compared to compound bows #which. OBVIOUSLY. compound bows CHEAT.#(said lovingly. ish. if you use a compound more power to you but also It’s Doing All The Work For You.)#this article was literally all i could find from a couple hours’ search comparing recurves and longbows #anyway recurves are cool. flanagan why did you do recurves so dirty.#for that matter why are all your women blonde.#(i’m not including brotherband here sorry)#(but also why did it take a spinoff series for him to create a named female character that wasn’t a blonde)#(flanagan explain)#god these books have so many problems. truly this is my ‘i could fix him’#thank you flanagan for getting me into this special interest. now Tell Me Why You Did It Wrong.#rangers apprentice #anyway if you REALLY want to read about some bangin historical horse archers #look up the parthians :)#specifically how they fucking Decimated an entire roman contingent :)#crassus getting absolutely demolished by mounted archer parthians is definitely my favorite bit of roman trivia

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marshmellowrio · 2 months

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Flight of the Night | Chapter 4

A/N: A bigger one, this scene goes on forever, ughh. This hasn't been proofread, like every other chapter I have posted (oops?).

Word count: 3.5K

I watch as Feyre addresses Azriel, “How did you meet?” Azriel turns to look at Cassian, I follow his gaze. Cassian is a way better storyteller than Azriel, that’s fact.

“We all hated each other at first.” A grin ghosts over his lips as he starts, his eyes flickering between the four of us, Illyrians. “We are bastards, you know. Az and I. The Illyrians… We love our people, and our traditions, but they dwell in clans and camps deep in the mountains of the North, and do not like outsiders. Especially High Fae who try to tell them what to do. But they’re just as obsessed with lineage, and have their own princes and lords among them.” He holds my gaze before continuing, pointing a thumb in Azriel’s direction. “Az, was the bastard of one of the local lords. And if you think the bastard son of a lord is hated, then you can’t imagine how hated the bastard is of a war-camp laundress and a warrior she couldn’t or wouldn’t remember.” I see the casual shrug of his shoulders for what it is, a way to dampen the vicious, ancient anger raging through his veins at the thought of his mother. “Az’s father sent him to our camp for training once he and his charming wife realized he was a shadowsinger.”

“Like the daemati,” Rhys says to Feyre, “shadowsingers are rare—coveted by courts and territories across the world for their stealth and predisposition to hear and feel things other can’t.”

Something I have been wary of for centuries. Being secretive around Azriel was a feat not easily accomplished.

Cassian continues, “The camp lord practically shit himself with excitement the day Az was dumped in our camp. But me… once my mother weaned me and I was able to walk, they flew me to a distant camp, and chucked me into the mud to see if I would live or die.”

“They would have been smarter throwing you off a cliff,” Mor snorts.

“Oh, definitely,” Cassian says, his grin sharpening. “Especially because when I was old and strong enough to go back to the camp I’d been born in, I learned those pricks worked my mother until she died.”

A silence falls, simmering anger hanging like a cloud in the air.

“The Illyrians,” Rhys cuts in smoothly, “are unparalleled warriors, and are rich with stories and traditions. But they are also brutal and backward, particularly in regard to how they treat their females.”

Azriel’s vacant eyes lock on mine, my face schooled in a stone-cold expression.

“They’re barbarians,” Amren says and neither of the males object.

I keep silent as Mor nods. “They cripple their females so they can keep them for breeding more flawless warriors.”

Rhys cringes. “My mother was low-born, and worked as a seamstress in one of their many mountain war-camps. When females come of age in the camps—when they have their first bleeding—their wings are… clipped. Just a small incision in the right place, left to improperly heal, can cripple you forever.” I tell myself to keep breathing, keeping the memories at bay and listen to the story. A story I’ve heard countless times, but never becomes easier. “And my mother—she was gentle and wild and loved to fly. So she did everything in her power to keep herself from maturing. She starved herself, gathered illegal herbs—anything to halt the natural course of her body. She turned eighteen and hadn’t yet bled, to the mortification of her parents. But her bleeding finally arrived and all it took was for her to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, before a male scented it on her and told the camp’s lord. She tried to flee—took right to the skies. But she was young, and the warriors were faster, and they dragged her back. They were about to tie her to the posts in the center of camp when my father winnowed in for a meeting with the camp’s lord about readying for the War. He saw my mother trashing and fighting like a wildcat, and… The mating bond between them clicked into place. One look at her, and he knew what she was. He misted the guards holding her.”

“Misted?” Confusion laces her voice. As Cassian chuckles sharply.

Rhys floats a lemon wedge into the air and flicks his finger, turning it into citrus-scented mist. I lean forward to catch the look on Feyre’s face, she takes misting entire beings better than I did the first time. She hasn’t seen him do it yet, but the insinuation of it, was enough to make me still when I realised the extent of Rhys’s powers.

“Through the blood-rain,” Rhys goes on, “my mother looked at him. And the bond fell into place for her. My father took her back to the Night Court that evening and made her his bride. She loved her people, and missed them, but never forgot what they had tried to do to her—what they did to the females among them. She tried for decades to get my father to ban it, but the War was coming, and he wouldn’t risk isolating the Illyrians when he needed them to lead his armies. And to die for him.”

“A real prize, your father,” Mor grumbles. I cast my head down, he never did me wrong. But his methods could be…harsh.

“At least he liked you,” Rhys counters. “my father and mother, despite being mates, were wrong for each other.” I grimace, I sometimes wonder how often a mating bond is set between two beings while they’re not right for each other. “My father was cold and calculating, and could be vicious, as he had been trained to be since birth. My mother was soft and fiery and beloved by everyone she met. She hated him after a time—but never stopped being grateful that he had saved her wings, that he allowed her to fly whenever and wherever she wished. And when I was born, and could summon the Illyrian wings as I pleased… She wanted me to know her people’s culture.”

“She wanted to keep you out of your father’s claws,” Mor says, swirling her wine. Azriel finally looks away from me and I let loose a breath, his memories finally clearing. I have no doubt I was involved in that memory from the way he had stared for the past few minutes.

“That, too,” Rhys adds drily. “When I turned eight, my mother brought me to one of the Illyrian war-camps. To be trained, as all Illyrian males were trained. And like all Illyrian mothers, she shoved me toward the sparring ring on the first day, and walked away without looking back.”

“She abandoned you?” I understand Feyre’s deduction but it still has me narrowing my eyes.

“No—never,” Rhys says, with as much ferocity as I felt for his mother’s memory. “She was staying at the camp as well. But it is considered an embarrassment for a mother to coddle her son when he goes to train.”

Cassian laughs, catching the look on Feyre’s face. “Backward, like he said.”

“I was scared out of my mind,” Rhys admits. “I’d been learning to wield my powers, but Illyrian magic was a mere fraction of it. And it’s rare amongst them—usually possessed only by the most powerful, pure-bred warriors.” His eyes flit to me and I give him a lopsided grin. “I tried to use a Siphon during those years. And shattered about a dozen before I realized it wasn’t compatible—the stones couldn’t hold it. My power flows and is honed in other ways.”

“So difficult, being such a powerful High Lord,” Mor teases.

Rhys rolls his eyes. “The camp-lord banned me from using my magic for all our sakes. But I had no idea how to fight when I set foot into that training ring that day. The other boys in my age group knew it, too. Especially one in particular, who took a look at me, and beat me into a bloody mess.”

“You were so clean,” Cassian says, shaking his head. “The pretty half-breed son of the High Lord—how fancy you were in your new training clothes.” I snort, I can totally imagine young Cassian thinking like that.

“Cassian,” Azriel’s dark voice cuts in, “resorted to getting new clothes over the years by challenging other boys to fights, with the prize being the clothes off their backs.” The flatness in his voice revealed how much he cared for the Illyrian ways.

Cassian chuckles, he had a completely different experience, just as horrifying, but different. “I’d beaten every other boy in our age group twice over already, but then Rhys arrived, in his clean clothes, and he smelled… different. Like a true opponent. So I attacked. We both got three lashings apiece for the fight.”

From my side of the table, I see Feyre flinch.

“They do worse, girl,” Amren cuts in, “in those camps. Three lashings is practically an encouragement to fight again. When they do something truly bad, bones are broken. Repeatedly. Over weeks.”

“Your mother willingly sent you into that?” Feyre asks with a soft voice. She has a lot to learn about Illyrians and their customs, I think to myself.

“My mother didn’t want me to rely on my power,” Rhys says. “She knew from the moment she conceived me that I’d be hunted my entire life. Where one strength failed, she wanted others to save me. My education was another weapon—which was why she went with me; to tutor me after lessons were done for the day. And when she took me home that first night to our new house at the edge of the camp, she made me read by the window. It was there that I saw Cassian trudging through the mud—toward the few ramshackle tents outside of the camp. I asked her where he was going, and she told me that bastards are given nothing: they find their own shelter, own food. If they survive and get picked to be in a war-band, they’ll be bottom-ranking forever, but receive their own tents and supplies. But until then, he’d stay in the cold.”

“Those mountains,” Azriel adds, his hard gaze locking on mine again, “offer some of the harshest conditions you can imagine.” I know he still feels guilty about what happened to me, but I only duck my head not being able to bear his loaded gaze.

“After my lessons,” Rhys ignores the exchanged looks, “my mother cleaned my lashings, and as she did, I realized for the first time what it was to be warm, and safe, and cared for. And it didn’t sit well.”

“Apparently not,” Cassian takes over. “Because in the dead of night, that little prick woke me up in my piss-poor tent and told me to keep my mouth shut and come with him. And maybe the cold made me stupid, but I did. His mother was livid. But I’ll never forget the look on her beautiful face when she saw me and said, ‘There is a bathtub with hot running water. Get in it or you can go back into the cold.’ Being a smart lad, I obeyed. When I got out, she had clean nightclothes and ordered me into bed.” She had done some good for all of us. “I’d spent my life sleeping on the ground—and when I balked, she said she understood because she had felt the same once, and that it would feel as if I was being swallowed up, but the bed was mine for as long as I wanted it.”

“And you were friends after that?”

“No—Cauldron no,” Rhys says. “We hated each other, and only behaved because if one of us got into trouble or provoked the other, then neither of us ate that night. My mother started tutoring Cassian, but it wasn’t until Azriel arrived a year later that we decided to be allies.”

Cassian’s grin stretches as he reaches around Amren to clap Azriel on his shoulder. A sigh falls from the shadowsinger’s lips and I smile fondly at the two of them. “A new bastard in the camp—and an untrained shadowsinger to boot. Not to mention he couldn’t even fly thanks to—”

I clear my throat interrupting him as Mor lazily cuts in, “Stay on track, Cassian.” He looks at the both of us, the apologize clear in his eyes, but he shrugged feigning indifference to Feyre. Mor kept her eyes on Cass as I shifted mine to Azriel, noting the tense shoulders and faraway look in his eyes.

“Rhys and I made his life a living hell, shadowsinger or no. But Rhys’s mother had known Az’s mother, and took him in. As we grew older, and the other males around us did, too, we realized everyone else hated us enough that we had better odds of survival sticking together.” Cassian finishes their story and I turn to Feyre.

“Do you have any gifts? Like—them?” She jerks her chin to Azriel and Rhys.

“A volatile temper doesn’t count,” Mor says and I grin at her, sometimes I wonder if we spent too much time together. Or if it’s Cassian that’s so predictable.

“No. I don’t—not beyond a heaping pile of the killing power. Bastard-born nobody, through and through.” I lean forward at the same time as Rhys, but Cassian continues, “Even so, the other males knew that we were different. And not because we were two bastards and a half-breed. We were stronger, faster—like the Cauldron knew we’d been set apart and wanted us to find each other. Rhys’s mother saw it, too. Especially as we reached the age of maturity, and all we wanted to do was fuck and fight.” I roll my eyes at that.

“Males are horrible creatures, aren’t they?” Amren says.

“Repulsive,” Mor clicks her tongue and I laugh softly.

Cassian only shrugs. “Rhys’s power grew every day—and everyone, even the camp-lords, knew he could mist everyone if he felt like it. And the two of us… we weren’t far behind.” He taps his Siphon with a finger. “A bastard Illyrian had never received one of these. Ever. For Az and me to both be appointed them, albeit begrudgingly, had every warrior in every camp across those mountains sizing us up. Only pure-blood pricks get Siphons—born and bred for the killing power. It still keeps them up at night, puzzling over where the hell we got it from.”

I feel Feyre’s eyes slide to me, probably remembering I am pure-blooded Illyrian. Cassian notes her gazing as well and confirms her suspicions. “ This fucking priss of a lady, as Rhys said, is the only pure-blooded Illyrian out of the four of us.”

“Shouldn’t you let her tell her own story?” I raise an eyebrow at Azriel’s low voice intercepting.

“If you are wondering,” I turn to Feyre properly. “I am not one of those, born and bred for that killing power.”

“You were bred for it.” Cassian intercepts, pointing out the fault in my statement.

I hum lowly, “While that may be true, sadly, for my parents anyway, I was born female. Not the son they wanted. My father is a camp-lord,” I see Feyre mentally note the present tense. “Although I was bred to kill, he wouldn’t allow me to train. He’s very traditional in that sense.”

Feyre’s gaze moves to my wings, trying to see if I bear any clipping marks, not that she’d know what to look for. Her scrutiny makes me tuck them tighter against me, straining the muscles as usual. “I haven’t been clipped.” Her gaze snaps up again to meet mine, my face void of emotion. ‘Rhys’s mother helped me in that matter, got me the illegal herbs she used herself when she was younger, stalling my cylcle. She helped me, along with these three, get away when my first bleeding came.”

“You got away.” It’s not a question. I frown, it doesn’t feel like that.

Cassian says, “Oh, she got away, alright.” Amren shoves his broad shoulder and I’m thankful for her respect for me.

“Something like that.” I respond to Feyre. Rhys and Azriel flinch in unison, I might’ve never actually talked about it, but they know.

Feyre furrows her brows, not able to hide her curiosity as to what went down all those years ago.

I don’t answer her questioning gaze, opting to stare at Rhys instead, I do not want to get into that with her on her first day with us. No matter how open Cassian is with her.

Azriel breaks the silence, taking over another part of the story. “Over a decade later, the War came. And Rhys’s father visited our camp to see how his son had fared after twenty years.”

“My father,” Rhys says, swirling his wine, “saw that his son had not only started to rival him for power, but had allied himself with perhaps the two deadliest Illyrians in history. He got it into his head that if we were given a legion in the War, we might very well turn it against him when we returned.”

Cassian snickers. “So the prick separated us. He gave Rhys command of a legion of Illyrians who hated him for being a half-breed, and threw me into a different legion to be a common foot soldier, even when my power outranked any of the war-leaders. Az, he kept for himself as his personal shadowsinger—mostly for spying and his dirty work. Turns out he already had Lyss in his tight quarters so she didn’t pose a threat to him. We only saw each other on battlefields for the seven years the War raged. They’d send around casualty lists among the Illyrians, and I read each one, wondering if I’d see their names on it. But then Rhys was captured—”

“That is a story for another time,” Rhys says sharply, making me lift my brows. We all had our boundaries in sharing past memories. Cass might be the most open one but that doesn’t mean he’ll tell her everything, there are some things even he wouldn’t tell her upon first meeting. “Once I became High Lord, I appointed these five to my Inner Circle, and told the rest of my father’s old court that if they had a problem with my friends, they could leave. They all did. Turns out, having a half-breed High Lord was made worse by his appointment of three females and two Illyrian bastards.”

“What—what happened to them , then?”

Rhys shrugs. “The nobility of the Night Court fall into three categories: those who hated me enough that when Amarantha took over, they joined her court and later found themselves dead; those who hated me enough to try to overthrow me and faced the consequences; and those who hated me, but not enough to be stupid and have since tolerated a half-breed’s rule, especially when it so rarely interferes with their miserable lives.”

“Are they—are they the ones who live beneath the mountain?” Feyre asks.

“In the Hewn City, yes. I gave it to them, for not being fools. They’re happy to stay there, rarely leaving, ruling themselves and being as wicked as they please, for all eternity.”

“The Court of Nightmares,” Mor says as all are faces grow tight, thinking about that horrid place.

“Ans what is this court?” Feyre gestures to all of us, and the darkness clears.

It was Cassian, who answers with bright eyes, “The Court of Dreams.”

Feyre contemplates for a moment. “And you?” She says, and I know it’s directed to us females.

Amren merely says, “Rhys offered to make me his Second. No one had ever asked me before, so I said yes, to see what it might be like. I found I enjoyed it.” Always a person of little words.

Mor leans back in her seat and I focus on her. “I was a dreamer born into the Court of Nightmares,” Mor says, twisting a curl around a finger. “So I got out.” I almost scoff at the simplicity of that statement. Her escape from the Hewn City was as simple as mine from the Illyrian camp.

I take a breath, “My father was camp-lord when those three were in the camp. Cassian was a nuisance, he followed me around everywhere to annoy my father. Even as a five-year-old he knew how to get on someone’s nerves.”

Cassian’s grin only reveals truth as he takes over. “And when Rhys and Az came to the camp, they joined in.” I purse my lips at his statement. “But she had fire, handed our asses to us, multiple times. Her father might’ve not let her train, that didn’t mean she didn’t find a way to do so anyway. Slowly, the annoyance turned into acceptance that we weren’t going to leave her alone as long as it meant pissing off her father.”

“He still seethes whenever we join her in the camp.” Rhys adds.

I smirk, “He still seethes because I outrank him now.” I hold Feyre’s gaze and see she knows there’s more to the story than what we’re telling, so I give her another crumble. “I am Cassian’s Second, Colonel of the Illyrian armies.”

A/N: Let me know what you thought! Maybe any theories on how this story is going to progress? Obviously this is a romance fanfic (I'm sorry if you didn't realise that already), but I wanted to give my character some depth and not just have her exist because of her love interest. Do keep in mind this is a slow-slow-burn. It will be some time before we will be happy go lucky, not to say that there won't be any tension. Because there will be, a lot of it. If you want to be added to the taglist, please leave a comment saying so!

Taglist: @inloveallthetime @mybestfriendmademe