Author Archives: Valyrian

Winter has arrived.

Preorder Ice, the Sword of Eddard Stark, here.

Maybe my previous post was too soon, the pictures got here quicker than first thought.

Tommorow (Saturday), at around noon eastern time, Ice will go on sale.

I, for one, love the sword. I know some people didn’t like the writing on the hilt, but that is what GRRM wanted, and I rather like it too, to be honest. Yes, it repeats what is on the plaque, but the Starks didn’t have a fancy plaque.

What I most love about the sword is the white grip. This was GRRM’s original idea, and I think it was genius. I’ve never seen a sword with a white grip, and it just makes it fit for me so well with the feeling of The North. I just find it so pretty, of the swords we’ve made so far, this is hands down my favorite. Needle and Longclaw were necessarily simple, with Needle being a gift for a girl, and Longclaw being remade from the meager resources at Castle Black. Ice though, Ice is a sword that matches the prestige of it’s owner.

As a preview I wanted to share with you my favorite part. This is a glimpse of the grip, the 24k antique gold rings and the genuine antiqued silver wolf cuff. I hope you find it as pretty as I do.

Damascus Longclaw might not make it by Thanksgiving afterall. There were some done, but we had a few concerns, and had them redo something. This is an expensive sword, the last thing we want to to send one out that isn’t perfect. As much as I want to pull my hair out over delays, I think waiting is better than rushing. Hopefully everyone who buys this sword will cherish it for years (and hopefully it will appreciate in value for you as well, as I think it will) so what is a few more weeks? Still, we’re only talking about a portion of the lot, anyone who ordered now wouldn’t get fulfillment from this portion and wouldn’t get it until 2011 unfortunately.

On the ICE front. Ice will be open for preorders by the end of the first week of November, within about 2 weeks. A plethora of pictures will be released by that time.

I just wanted to let people know we’re really close on opening preorders up for Ice. We have a prototype done, we just need GRRM to pick a leather for the grip and we can ship it off to him for final approvals, then it’ll go up for preorders (assuming he signs off).

So for those who wanted to get in line right away and might need to save up, I would start.

HBO released a ton of media last night for “A Game of Thrones” in conjunction with the True Blood season finale. There was a teaser trailer called “Raven”, a behind the scenes trailer, and a few glimpses during a HBO new show montage, including the penultimate image of the montage, which to me says HBO is putting this show ahead of all others.

Raven Tease:

Behind the Scenes (including a shot of Maisie Williams grinning at the camera as Arya):

The new show montage with that nice penultimate scene is here:

Finally, we have some pictures of our production of Ice to share with you. They aren’t finished pictures, the sword has a brown leather grip as a placeholder, instead of the finished antiqued white leather grip, but you can see some of the details, the gold plated crossguard rings, etc. The blade size won’t be readily apparent. Unfortunately with Ice being at the current state of production, along with GRRM’s hectic travel schedule for the rest of the year, it probably will not be out for Christmas deliveries, more likely very early 2011 (why does this always seem to be the case?).

On the Damascus Longclaw front, all we can say is we are working on them.

The news is not good. Production continues to take longer than expected.

I feel as if, for the continued delay, a more detailed explanation is deserved.

What you need to understand is that we don’t own a factory, we do the design of the product in house, but actual manufacturing is bid out to specialized factories. This is the norm in the sword business, and in most modern manufacturing, be they swords or computer chips or flat screen TVs. So, we hired a factory to produce the Longclaw Damascus based upon our specifications, they said sure, it’ll be ready in X months.

Well, they vastly underestimated the time required to make damascus to our desired quality. There is some cheaper quality damascus swords out there, but we wanted to put out something higher quality and so we requested something better. The better damascus is a newer thing and they just, apparently, did not have the experience to measure the time frame correctly, and we have been told their own metal supplier is also giving them problems.

They have also been thoroughly turned off on the whole product, they bit off more than they can chew and are now choking, not just on ours, but on damascus swords for other vendors too. You may have noticed that damascus is the style du jour for many swords lately. We of course wish to make them to be more accurate to the books, not just as special versions, but there is still a lot of demand out there presently which is squeezing quality supply.

Anyways, they have choked so badly on this damascus sword that they’re swearing off future damascus orders. This is probably just a negotiating tactic, but we are exploring other options for an Ice damascus edition. However it does mean our original goal of concurrently releasing two version of Ice is not going to happen.

What we are likely going to do is have a partial release of Damascus Longclaws sometime in early fall (in customer hands in September, we hope), to fill the people with the earliest preorders, with the balance coming two or three months later for the rest of the preorders and for open ordering if there are any left at that time (currently, around 60 sold).

Of course if anyone is tired of waiting they may cancel and receive a full refund. You’d lose your spot in line if you ever changed your mind to buy one again.

In unrelated news, we should have photographs and thus open preordering for the standard version of Ice in late August. And we will continue seeking options for the Damascus Ice, but it may be awhile before that is available. Finally the technical drawings for King Robert’s War Hammer just went off to GRRM for final approval, once gotten we’ll start building a prototype.

Maisie Williams will be playing Arya in HBO’s “A Game of Thrones” television series. GRRM sent her one of our Needle’s to practice with and he has the pictures up on his blog.

I personally think Needle looks good in her hands, we messed around with the length a little bit in the design process, trying to figure the appropriate length for a fictional girl, and it looks like we ended up spot on, or near enough as makes no matter.

Needle can be purchased here and is in stock.

Here are two of the pictures, not seen on his blog.

We’ve received word that the Damascus Longclaws will not be ready until July now. I must apologize for this delay. The factory we have contracted to make them just misjudged the amount of time it requires to make a proper Damascus blade, and our quality standards do not allow them to take any short cuts.

So, it is taking a long time, but on the other hand, it is being done right. Mixed blessing I suppose.

About half of the Damascus Longclaws are already sold to preorders by the way.

In the meantime, here is an extreme closeup of one of the blades.

We had originally planned to do Khal Drogo’s arakh, but might not. In anycase, we thought we’d ask you your opinion. Please vote here.