Arin Knives

Survival At Its Most Basic

"A sword you carry for others. A knife? You carry that for yourself."

— Milo Wren, Venlin blacksmith

To the Arin, a knife is not a weapon. Not at first. It is an obligation—to carry one, to use it well, to care for it, and to never, ever be without it. From the low trails of the outer cantons to the vault stairs spiraling down through frost and stone, the Arin knife is a tool as essential as breath and boots. It is not something one is given to mark a coming-of-age, though most will remember the day they received theirs. It is not something one boasts about, though everyone who’s survived a harsh season has a story of the time it saved them. And it is not something a true Arin ever forgets to carry—because to forget it is to tempt fate. Unlike the short sword or the chokuto, knives and daggers are not confined to one shape, size, or style. They vary widely, shaped by region, trade, and purpose. What they all share, though, is the same brutal practicality. Arin blades are meant to do everything—open letters, clean game, skin a beast, cut your bread, or kill the thing that lunges out of the dark when you're down to your last breath.

Most knives fall into one of two broad categories: the working knife and the belt dagger. Working knives are fixed-blade, single-edged tools worn openly on the belt, at the thigh, or tucked behind the back. Their hilts are made of carved hardwood, bone, or wrapped leather. The blades are rarely longer than eight inches, but wide and solid enough to split kindling, cut frozen rope, or wedge open a frostbitten door. Some are forged plain. Others carry a notch at the base of the spine for fire-starting with flint. A few are curved, shaped to gut fish or carve clean lines through beast hide. Every single one is sharp enough to do what needs doing, quickly. The belt dagger, meanwhile, is more purpose-built. Compact, often double-edged, and carried in a sheath that blends seamlessly into outerwear or traveler’s cloaks. These are not ornamental pieces—they are last resorts. You won’t see them used for lunch or chores. But you might see one drawn in a vault corridor with no light but the glowstone flickering. You might see it in the hand of a courser holding his breath at the mouth of a narrowing pass. And you might not see it at all—just feel it when the polite local you assumed was harmless opens your throat with a flick before disappearing into the snow. Yet even so, the Arin don’t treat daggers with fear. They treat them with expectation. You are expected to know how to handle one, how to keep it, how to use it—not in aggression, but in response. You’re expected to sharpen it yourself, or else it says you don’t care about your own future. In some places, a dull blade is seen as not just careless, but disrespectful. Decorative blades exist, but only when layered with function. Changelings are known to craft knives with built-in compasses, folding lockpick tools, or blades that unscrew to reveal a thread spool and flint bundle. Smiths sometimes shape theirs with hollow-handles or thumb-ridges that can be used to signal or carve trail signs. In the deeper cantons, some knives are paired with bone scabbards painted with wax-melt glyphs—a quiet form of speech in a land where silence sometimes matters more than language. You’ll find knives everywhere in Arin life: in the belts of herders, tucked behind the counters of seamstresses, buried in packs of deep-vault runners, or tied into the boots of students too stubborn to be unarmed. No one asks why you have one. They ask what happened if you don’t. In the end, an Arin knife is not there to impress. It is there to serve. It is there when the branch won’t break. When the beast won’t die. When the fire won’t light. When the rope won’t hold. When the world comes down to a moment, and you don’t have time to reach for anything but what’s already in your hand. It isn’t a weapon. Not at first. But if you treat it like anything less, you won’t be around to learn the difference.

Mechanics & Inner Workings

"We bury them with their knives. Not because they need them—but because we would not take from the dead what they carried their whole lives."

— Orlen Yss, Undertaker

The Arin knife is a study in pure intent—compact, silent, unassuming, but capable of extraordinary work under pressure. No part of it exists for ornament, not even the ornamented ones. Its very shape tells you what it's for: cutting, carving, piercing, prying, surviving. The most common Arin working knives are single-edged, fixed-blade tools with a sturdy spine and enough belly in the blade to make slicing effortless. They’re thick enough to baton through kindling or lever open a frozen panel, but not so thick as to be clumsy. Many are flat-ground or saber-ground for strength, with a full tang to ensure they never break under force. The grip is most often wood, antler, or bone—wrapped in hide or cord, fitted to the user’s hand not for display, but for hours of practical use. Grip texture matters more than decoration. If it slips when your hand is wet, the maker’s reputation doesn’t survive. Some are straight-edged; others have a slight drop point for control. The trailing edge near the spine is often deliberately dull, meant for bearing down during precision cuts or bracing when slicing through meat, bark, or even hide. It’s not uncommon to see a subtle notch behind the guard—sometimes used as a rudimentary cord-cutter, sometimes just a reminder that no blade is ever perfect, and the best ones carry their own compromises with dignity. But it’s the inner workings—the hidden layers—that often matter most. Among changeling artisans, it’s common to see integrated features: tiny compartments carved into the handle to store flint, waxed thread, or a sewing needle; magnetized rivets to secure metal wire; even sheath-side utility, like a whetstone inset into the reverse of the scabbard mouth. Some knives carry a hollow grip sealed with resin caps, meant to store trail markers, waxleaf paper, or a drop of fire oil. Others are deliberately weighted to balance in the hand for throwing—not for combat, but for rescue, or to distract, or to pin something in place long enough to matter. There are smaller ones too—compact blades hidden in the cuff, boot, or inner lining of a cloak. Meant to be forgotten until remembered. Meant to be overlooked until the moment when someone realizes they should not have underestimated an Arin just because they weren’t holding anything obvious. And then there’s the sheath: almost always tight, almost always custom-fitted. The blade shouldn’t rattle. It shouldn’t be hard to draw, either. Some sheaths are slotted into tool belts or chest harnesses; others have twist-locks or silent-release mechanisms. They ride high, low, reversed, wherever they need to be to keep the hand close and the motion easy. Vault-born smiths have even been known to line the sheath with wax cloth soaked in blade oil—so the knife is cleaned and sharpened with every draw and return, silently, thoughtlessly, as part of the rhythm. None of this is showy. None of it draws the eye. That’s the point. A knife isn’t there to be seen. It’s there to work. And in the Agriss Mountains, it often works alone.

Manufacturing process

The making of an Arin knife is rarely a solitary act. It’s not the work of some lone genius at a forge. It’s the result of lineage, of accumulated precision—of someone who learned from someone, who learned from someone, who still remembers how to shape a blade that doesn’t need to be explained. Every canton has its own smiths, and most families have at least one member who knows how to forge or finish a knife. It’s not a luxury craft. It’s a necessity. The process begins with the steel. High-carbon, locally sourced when possible, though the vaults have introduced more exotic alloys into circulation—especially among changeling artisans who prefer metallurgical blends that take well to edge tempering and resist corrosion in subterranean conditions. The billet is heated and hammered out thin and broad, or narrow and rigid, depending on whether the blade is meant for camp work, butchery, or defensive use. The form is chosen quickly, instinctively. Arin smiths don’t draft blueprints. They know what the blade is meant to be, because they know who it’s for.

If the blade is meant for work, it will be thick along the spine, with a sturdy tang that extends fully through the handle. That tang is critical—no partial bones here. A blade that snaps at the hilt might as well have been forged in the Empire. The edge is ground in wide arcs or with a tight belly, depending on purpose. Serrations are rare, but not unheard of—usually added only by vault runners who know they’ll need them. Once the blade is forged, cooled, and honed to its purpose, the handle comes next. Here the materials vary: dense Arin hardwoods, wax-sealed bone, horn, compressed leather rings, even carved stone slabs for knives meant to be passed down rather than carried daily. Some are plain, sealed with oil or wax. Others are wrapped tightly in rawhide or cord, both to protect the grip and to allow for field replacement when the handle inevitably wears down. Changelings and deep-vault smiths often add additional details at this stage: a hollow cavity sealed by a fitted brass cap; a removable spine insert that doubles as a wire saw; a magnetized rivet to hold compass needles or identify vault iron at a glance. These additions aren’t indulgent—they’re functional, compact, and designed to serve a single, deadly purpose when the moment arrives. The sheath, like the blade, is fitted—not chosen off a rack. Carved from the same wood as the grip, or molded from boiled vaultleather, it must hold the knife tightly enough to silence it in motion but release it without thought. Many sheaths include a tiny waxed edge-strip to keep the blade clean on the draw. Some include a groove for a whetstone, or a trail-cut whistle carved into the base cap. These aren’t decorative. They’re just the last layer of preparation. No one rushes the process. Not because it's sacred, but because it has to be right. A bad blade might look fine. Until it breaks in a storm, or the hilt warps in frost, or it slips when you need it not to. And there’s no forgiveness in the pass for the smith who sent someone out into the world with a flawed knife. It’s not about honor. It’s not about pride. It’s about making sure the person holding it makes it back.

History

"Blades break. Swords fail. But the knife—that stays with you. And if it doesn’t, you didn’t plan to live."

— From 'Hard Lessons of the Pass', a survival tale

Knives have been with the Arin since long before the cantons had names. There was never a singular moment when someone decided to forge the first one. They simply were—born of necessity, reshaped by habit, carried forward from stone and bone to steel and silver. In every generation, someone needed a blade that wasn’t too long, too fragile, too ceremonial. Something that could slice meat one hour and open a sealed vault panel the next. Arin knives did not evolve from warfare. They came from daily life. From the sharp edge kept on a lanyard near the firepit. From the gutting blade passed between cousins in the field. From the broken spear tip that found a second life lashed into a grip of pine and leather. Over time, they became more refined—but never more complicated. The Arin never saw the point in a weapon that couldn’t cut rope, clean fish, or shave bark when needed.

During the early expansions into the vaults and undercanton regions, the knife became indispensable. A full sword was impractical in the narrow bends and crawlspaces of deep passagework. Knives, by contrast, could be kept close at the wrist, the thigh, the boot, or the collar. They were survival tools before anything else. More than a few people emerged from a collapsed tunnel or snowed-in shelter with nothing left but what they had in their coat and a knife clutched in their hand. In many cantons, it became customary for forge families to include knives in every set of traveling gear or dowry packs—not as a gift, but as a form of insurance. Even House Guards and local wardens, though more heavily armed, still carried their own personal blades—often small, heavy-hilted, and worn close to the body. In border reports and incident logs, “standard belt blade” is among the most common entries after medical kits and water skins. What sets the Arin knife apart historically is not that it changed the world, but that it never left it. It was not replaced by something shinier. It was not elevated to the realm of ritual. It simply remained—reliable, essential, unchanged. It has passed through thousands of hands, across generations and bloodlines, without ever demanding more than it gives. No medals. No names. No stories carved into stone. Just quiet survival, over and over again. And if there’s any better measure of a tool’s worth, the Arin haven’t found it yet.

Significance

"A knife doesn’t carry meaning. It becomes it. By where you keep it, when you reach for it, and what you choose to do when you do."

— Old Arin Proverb

The Arin knife is not significant because someone declared it so. It’s significant because it never wasn’t. In a land shaped by survival rather than conquest, where the terrain itself can shift from ally to predator between breaths, the knife holds a place nothing else quite can. It is not sacred. It is not granted. It is not earned through some ritual. It is simply carried. And in that, it speaks volumes. You wear a sword to be seen. You carry a knife because you expect to need it.

Its presence is assumed. It is the most common tool on any person, regardless of station. House Guards have them. Monks have them. Farmers and cantonsmiths and ledger scribes and caravan runners—they all have them. Because they all understand the same truth: you don’t wait until you need one to think about having it. Its meaning is layered in its ordinariness. The same knife that pries up a frozen buckle or cuts snare wire might also be the thing that saves your hand from a wolf’s jaw or kills the vault-spawn clinging to the ceiling over your bedroll. And no one will think twice about either use. That expected utility is the heart of its significance. The blade is not for ceremony or pride. It’s for use. That’s what makes it important. Even beyond its practical role, the Arin knife carries a cultural weight in its familiarity. Unlike other weapons, it doesn’t draw suspicion when worn. It isn’t seen as an escalation. Everyone has one. If anything, its absence would feel more dangerous. If someone isn’t carrying a knife, the question isn’t “why not?” It’s “what else are they carrying instead?” And still—despite that normalcy—no one takes it lightly. You do not idly draw it. You do not play with it. You do not lend it out to someone you do not trust. These are quiet rules, unspoken but firmly understood. The knife, like its owner, should never be taken for granted. Because in Areeott, nothing ever means just one thing. And the knife is proof of that, every time it’s used.