It seems like everyone and their granny has an ancestral sword that is enchanted orichalcum that they can give an enterprising adventurer. So what gives with the bandits having ancient weapons tech instead.
It seems like everyone and their granny has an ancestral sword that is enchanted orichalcum that they can give an enterprising adventurer. So what gives with the bandits having ancient weapons tech instead.
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What you listed there is all generally quote expensive gear. If you were a bandit you are poor and as such could not afford such tools. If you could afford such tools you wouldn’t be a bandit, and if you stole them you’d sell them for profit in order to stop being a bandit.
Bandits and criminals of crimes like theft and robbery are always near the bottom economically speaking.
The same reason that so many people still drive a 2005 Honda Accord.
If they had a super powerful enchanted sword, they would either sell it for a fortune they could live on or use it to become the leader themselves. Regular bandits tend not to end up with extremely valuable items or they would no longer be bandits.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
People don’t often resort to banditry because they’re already wealthy. Iron is plentiful and relatively easy to work, which makes weapons made with it cheap.
Even if a bandit were to come across a more valuable weapon, especially something like Mithril, they’re better off selling it and using the money to not be a bandit anymore.
It’s just not as common as you make it out to be. They are exceedingly rare and even more expensive. Oftentimes the knowledge how to work these materials is lost even.
This is a bit like asking why the guy who mugged you at an intersection used a knife and not an Abrams tank.
The materials you listed are expensive, some ludicrously so, and generally reserved for well-funded militaries. If you’re a successful enough bandit to afford mithril, you’re not a bandit, you’re a straight up warlord / monarch.
If you were a bandit in possession of a high quality weapon, you could sell it and buy land or some other store of wealth.
If it’s really good, go adventuring yourself with it and become a tomb raider rather than common bandit.
because they’re likely poor. that’s why they became bandits.
The reason so many people in sagas inherit enchanted mithril weapons is that people who set out to seek their fortunes with sharp sticks generally don’t win enough fights to get a saga written about them.
OP I think you’re missing a point here, which is even if magic super stuff is available, an iron knife will slit a throat just as well.
Sell the fancy enchanted sword and eat for three months. Then use the cheap one for threatening random wanderers.
If bandits could afford this kind of high level equipment, then they wouldn’t be bandits in the first place.
Because steel, moonstone, mythril, etc are a lot more expensive than iron. Sure one adventurer can kit themselves out with the good shit, they’re not bandits because they’re particularly well connected or wealthy. And you can see what happens when they come across the people who are.
Bandits don’t usually have the option of walking into a nearby store and buying whatever top-dollar goods.
When Gimli sees Frodo wearing a mithril shirt his eyes bug out like he was seeing the Hope Diamond, and he’s an experienced dwarf adventurer. If a bandit had access to mithril he wouldn’t need to be a bandit anymore.
For the same reason you don’t take a private helicopter to work every morning.
Shits expensive. Just the fact that it exists doesn’t mean everyone will have it readily available or be widely accessible.
If you’re an adventuring hero who’s fighting Kingdom or continent level threats , you’re much more likely to be hanging out with other people who are also equipped to handle those kinds of threats: ie kitted out in magical gear and artifacts.
Those things kinds of materials only seem more common place because the scale at which a lot of fantasy ends up reaching for its stakes requires the good shit to be readily available for the cast to keep up.
A bandit leader and his buddies are robbing carriages or breaking and entering. They don’t need moon steel, axes forged in the heart of volcanoes, or The Throngler. If they did have any of those things they’d just sell them and be set for life, they wouldn’t need to be bandits.
Because they are poor or shit enough to have turned to banditry.
One, a lot of the materials you mention are expensive and/or rare, probably to the point that owning some would mean you could sell it for more than you would make robbing folk.
Second, weapons made of that stuff tend to be very recognizable, iron is nondescript common as dirt, when a survivor gives a description, having a “big glowing sword with weird runes and a purple aura” is a dead giveaway.
For the distinction of Iron and Steel specifically.
Technically, we have only in the modern age the technology to make actual Iron.
Iron would be th PURE element. Steel is an alloy of Iron and Carbon and maybe some other stuff.
With medieval technology all the iron you extract from ore is extracted with charcoal, so some of the carbon will end up in the steel.
Colloquially we say Iron for steel of very low quality.
Because these are usually very rare and expensive resources, it is unlikely that ordinary bandits can afford them.
>It seems like everyone and their granny has an ancestral sword that is enchanted orichalcum that they can give an enterprising adventurer.
They do think it be like it isn’t, but it don’t.
Many fantasy worlds are inspired by medieval Europe, and are in some ways post-apocalyptic- if you note, all those enchanted swords are “ancient”, lost technology.
The idea comes from the fall of the Roman Empire- the fantasy equivalents being some sort of lost golden age/ elven empire/ dragon age/ etc…
That’s also why they have all these ruins filled with monsters and treasures.
Unlike in RPGs, bandits arent trying to go to-to-toe with armored knights or even patrolling guardsmen with their dinky iron daggers and clubs. They’re going after largely unarmed, unorganized, but relatively wealthy traders and farmers who didn’t bother to have any security more robust than “father/son with an axe”.
Additionally most bandits operate in groups. Solo bandits tend to have to go after even weaker prey than just farmers, like children, lone women, old men, or very inattentive fools. Either that or they have considerably better equipment, such as a longsword and maybe even some chainmail. But otherwise, it’s a lot easier to army a gang of 3-6 lads with clubs that are little more than tree branches or grab some knives from the pantry and hold people up for coin.
Even more violent bandits focus more on causing injury than killing. Because if they stab the father, the son now needs to defend his dying dad. This means the other bandits can take the cargo because if the son tries to stop them, they stab his dad again. They can kill the son and the rest of his family once they secure the rest of his cargo.
In a world of lambos, range rovers and Rolls Royces why drive a honda?
Iron is super easy to get, in some cases requiring literally zero mining infrastructure (eg: bog iron).
Conversely, mining mithril is so complicated that only dwarves, through thousands of years of exploration, experimentation, and tradition, have figured out how to do it.
Humans be like “I hit it with a pickaxe and the pickaxe broke. what do?”