The tenacious Claw of Naar

[NJA]

A big thank you to all here at Project Aon for helping to keep Magnamund vibrant and available over so many years. I’d never have known there was anything past Book 12 if not for Joe’s generosity and the excellent volunteers in this community.


I’ve been thinking recently about a certain incident in Vampirium involving an evil artifact and an unwise choice, and I’d love to hear how other readers have approached this.


Spoilers ahead.


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As far as I can tell, in Book 27, you cannot avoid trying to destroy the Claw of Naar, and so must endure the contempt that such folly deserves! (i.e. a damaged Kai Weapon and no explicit way to fix it in later books.) Andarin’s Warhammer—which I’d, um, happened upon in the old king’s tomb while tut-tutting over the violative ways of the Agarashi—served well in its place, but every time I read “you unsheathe your Kai Weapon,” the loss still rankled.

To see if I’d missed anything, I searched these forums and came across a very helpful post by Oiseau, which outlined some other options: perhaps you could say that Lone Wolf repairs your weapon before book 28 or lets you choose a new one; or you could decide that, actually, you quickly swapped your Kai weapon for something like the aforementioned Drodarin one and hammered the claw with that instead (I love that idea, haha).

So, has anyone else here done like me just lived with a damaged weapon, or are there other satisfying ways to avoid this?

[Black Cat]

This was answered on the Discord channel by August Hahn: the Kai Weapon is repaired for book 31. Why did it took more than 18 years for LW to fix it? I will quote August here:

It wasn't a matter of how long it would take to fix, however. It was more a matter of *how* your Kai Weapon was damaged in the first place. Lone Wolf is improving his skills constantly and learning new techniques. He simply did not know **how** to fix it yet.

I cannot get into the specifics yet, but there is a specific canon reason why Lone Wolf could not fix your weapon until the Dusk of Eternal Twilight. All will be revealed soon... ish.

So we'll get more info on that in book 32.

Since book 28 takes place right after book 27 (27 ends in Chai and you start 28 at the same place), you cannot switch Kai Weapon between adventures. As for a switch between 28 and 29, it's plausible...

[NJA]

Wow, thanks for that answer Black Cat! The inner geek in me is rejoicing that I now have even more reasons to look forward to Book 32

[allure]

One way to get around this is suggested on Wiki: swap Kai weapons. Bring a throwaway Kai weapon like the underwater sword Ulnarias for this book. This is not a major problem difficulty-wise, because the fights in Vampirium are easy/avoidable anyway. Then in the next book, swap back to your favorite Kai weapon.

Arguments against doing this are:

- There's a section in Dead in the Deep which suggests that you cannot swap Kai weapons (see the Wiki for the exact section).
- You end Vampirium in Chai, and start The Hunger of Sejanoz immediately after, so you presumably cannot return to the Kai Monastery to pick up a new weapon. You could argue that by The Storms of Chai, you'd have plenty of time to get your old Kai weapon back, though.