is Terminus Est really just a simple piece of hardware?

Cliff Judge · 17 May 2010, 16:03 · from 2010-May.txt.gz

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From: transentient at gmail.com (Cliff Judge)
Date: Mon, 17 May 2010 12:03:44 -0400
Subject: (urth) is Terminus Est really just a simple piece of hardware?
Message-ID: <AANLkTilGKkQfgMw6wVBbKPql6ntHJb4Xy2ffI1tup2DA at mail.gmail.com>

I plan on keeping my eye on descriptions of Terminus Est throughout the New
Sun books, but something about how Dorcas described it when she was
recounting to Severian what happened when he went down during the duel was
interesting.

I am wondering if the sword might be an artifact of much higher technology
than Severian gives it credit for. Certainly it must be cleaned, oiled, and
sharpened at various times in the book, but the description of a channel of
liquid metal inside the blade seems to ring with the general "lostech"
descriptions of many of the devices in the Mataquin Tower. When I get my
hands on the book I will transcribe the passage where Dorcase describes
using it to cut the avern that was about to bite Severian, it sounded like
more was going on then simply a transfer of weight inside the blade.
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