The Story of Warg’s Bane:

Before the time of men, during the first age of Illantul, gnolls ran wild in ever corner of the land.  During these dark times, clans of gnolls would war amongst one another, but left the Eastern elves untroubled.  That is until gnolls from the mountains of Uhl unleashed their war jackals, called wargs, into the Vale of the elves. For over a year the elves were hunted in their own lands by countless wargs, as they tried in vain to rid the vale of the terrifying beasts.  When a young elf happened upon the site of a great battle between wargs and one of the elven land’s magical stags, he found the bodies of three and forty wargs surrounding that of the stag.  Amazed that one stag could have brought down so many wargs, the young elf knew the Vale’s magic must be at work and he took the great stag’s antlers to the smithy where they were carved into the handle of a specially forged blade.  Thus, Warg’s Bane was born.  The blade brought a quick end to every warg it touched and within a season the Vale was rid of the warg plague.  Legend says that the wielder of Warg’s Bane cannot be touched by any Canis related beast, and one touch of the blade brings an end to any of their kind, including those that have become lycanthropes.

Actual Design and Construction:

The original blade blank was forged by Windlass Steelcrafts using 1085 high carbon steel.   I rounded the blade near the ricasso and hand etched a silhouette of a warg standing at the base of the mountains of Uhl on both sides. The crossguard is fashioned from a single piece of ½ inch brass, which I carved into an abstract wolf’s claw.  The wolf’s head handle was carved from a native Indonesian deer antler by an artist in that country.  I hollowed a space for the hidden tang, fitted the base to the carved brass spacer, and pinned the carved antler to the tang with brass pins.  I used a grey scrimshaw ink to highlight the details of the wolf’s head   The brass spacer sits atop another spacer I carved from a piece of whitetail deer antler.  The guard and the entire hilt assembly are secured with steel line-up pins.

Specifications:

Blade length: 12 inches

Overall length: 18 inches

Hand grip length: 4 inches

Blade width at widest point: 1.625 inches

Guard width: 4.25 inches

Weight: 17 ounces

Balance point: 1.0 inch in front of the guard

 Sheath Construction:

The sheath is constructed of 4-5 oz premium veg tan leather and wet formed to the blade with hand stitching down the back spine.  The body of the sheath is stained walnut with black antiquing.  On the leather throat I tooled in the image of a wolf’s head, both the throat and the chape are stained light brown with black antiquing.