| About ten years before the Clone Wars began some designers at the Thaonk Corporation began to become increasingly disgruntled by the fact that more and more often the corporation was turning out energized weapons. The last straw for them was chief designer Amka's A13-IS Ice Storm ice sword, a cross between the traditional melee sword and a blaster. While Thaonk Corporation had produced similar blaster-melee weapon hybrids, the designers had felt that at least the sword was sacred enough that it would never become a hybrid. Energizing the sword by either making it a vibroweapon or by some other means had been just barely acceptable, but a sword hybrid was just something they could not stand. As a result the designers left Thaonk Corporation and formed Gaoro Weaponswrights, a company dedicated to creating non-energized weapons.
The first weapon produced by Gaoro Weaponswrights was the Fan Axe. It essentially a semi-circular metal blade attached to a handle, resembling an Avun hand fan. In ancient times various Avun royal guardsmen carried the original fan bladed axe, which set the blade (measuring 71.12 cm. wide and 35.56 cm long) at the end of a two meter long staff.
The Gaoro Weaponswrights designers had this ancient weapon in mind, but they realized from their research that the reason this weapon had rarely been used as an infantry weapon was because it had been difficult to wield out in the field do to it's massive length and the very large, heavy axe blade set at the end. On the modern battlefield, it was reasoned, a soldier would want a weapon the could be fairly quick to bring to bear. They desgined their fan Axe as a much smaller weapon, one which could easily be wielded with one hand. The fan axe is 50.8 cm. from the top of the blade to the bottom of the handle, with the blade measuring 30.48 cm. in length. At it's greatest width, the blade measures 16.2 cm. Surprisingly, they were able to produce an extremely light blade for the overall size. The resulting weapon is one that many Avun choose to use in pairs. | 
