“ You pass through a woodland with a floor that seems remarkably clean of debris. Suddenly your attention is drawn to a twisted bit of wood by the trail side, a short broken twig with several stubs of branches along its length and most of the bark missing. When you reach it, the twig blurs and turns into a small brown lizard, caught in the middle of its body-twisting run. The little reptile darts away down the trail with impossible speed, no doubt magically enhanced, and is lost to sight in a moment. Now someone knows you are coming...”
“ The frozen wastes stretch for miles around. Something waddles through the snow. It's a penguin: An emperor penguin. It waddles slowly, meandering toward the sea. The ranger freezes. 'Stay very still,' he warns. 'Don't move at all.' 'What is it?' I ask, breathlessly. 'It's the most dangerous creature in the whole Yahoo Tundra, and that penguin's about to kick its butt...' (Sorry, Epi! I couldn't resist!)”
“ One thing you must realise is that there is no such thing as pure iron/steel these days. Iron/steel isn't nearly as strong now as it was in medieval times. However, with that said, iron in early medieval times was so soft you could hack right through a helm with a sword and leave a nice lil mark on the skull (depending on the grade of iron used on the sword and the helm, ofcaurse). After many hundreds of years of fine tuning, however, the only use the sword had was to puncture the plate. That was very difficult, however, since the grade of steel was so hard... only blunt instruments and weighted axes had any use against plate armor in later medieval times. Makes me wonder why rapiers were so popular then and why less people wore plate (Other than it's obsene costs... a nice suit of armor would cost as much as a nice lexus does now... and a kings suit would be as much as a rols royce).”