Non-Magic Weapons

You are a peaceful fellow, good with words, great whit feelings and virtually divine with innuendos. You are a sensible fellow, more than a little sympathizer of non-violence. Is understandable if you imagine that you need not learn about weapons and how to use them, even after you find yourself alone on Sharitarn. However, there is a chance you may be wrong, and it is high enough to be taken under your consideration.

If you are a women, a human female biologically speaking, then you don't need to worry much about weapons because slavery is destiny in your case and no sharp skill with spear or sword, battle ax and shield or rapier is going to change that. For women iis avoid slavery or escape it _what takes huge amount of luck_they do so by talking their way to freedom, seducing, not fighting. Free women are not socially obliged to engage in physical confrontation, ever, except in some low castes and wild tribes; and even them only against other women.
On the other hand, if you are a free men you ought to defend yourself in armed combat. Expend life as slave property to not have to use violence is not always an option to you, because at any time people may decide that you are not valuable enough to be kept alive and kill you. The existence of male slaves annoys free people, women no less than men, and they do create opportunities for each male slave earn his freedom eventually (assuming the slave survived long enough).
Even if stay as a slave for life is option one in your books, and you are valuable enough property to not be killed by an irritated master or mistress, you should still consider to aim for freedom if you are a man. If by no other reason, them because the heaviest tasks are those given to male slaves, and that more poor food and no medical treatment makes life shorter for those slaves.
To get by as a free men without carry a weapon you must be a mage. And that is a hard distant goal, even for those who find out they have been born with the potential, and are luck enough to be adopted by a nation whit a Magic University.
You can try just CARRY the weapon and never learn how to use it, but that is far from advisable. Because there is this thing called duels happening on Sharitarn. And as a free man you will be challenged for duels, inevitably, some now and them. And you certainly can decline some of them, but you cannot decline all.

“Was that an honourable challenge?”

You may not realize it yet, but if you felt on Sharitarn from the Vortex and got yourself citizenship in a State City, that question probably has saved your live already.
Ostensible magic is the most powerful and amazing element Earthlings usually find when beginning their lives in the World Blessed by the Vortex. That and slavery, mostly female slavery. Unlike women serving as slaves magic is not visible as an everyday experience for most.
Duels are somewhere in between those categories, regarding the frequency you find them.
Challenge for duel is how free men settle their controversies, and hold their ground when they find something that is important enough to deserve that. Honour demands the acceptance of fair duel in many circumstances, honour also forbids the unfair challenge.
Take years for involuntary immigrants get the basics of what makes a duel fair in the eyes of natives.
One simple rule you can mostly trust is that a magic user do not challenge, cannot challenge, a non-magic user for a duel. Usually. You do find exceptional circumstances where the challenge is acceptable, that happens more often than not because the non-Mage Caste violated the common sense of civility beyond local levels of tolerance.
If you have no magic, you have to be either extremely unlucky or extremely stupid to be in a circumstance where you must fight against a spell-caster. Alchemists may challenge you, but they are entering a grey area and risking to loose the respect of community for abuse the advantage of use magical weapons against someone armed only whit normal ones.
Putting it in short 'say alive' terms:

do not challenge anyone

... unless this person has pressed you up to a limit where not make the challenge would be pusillanimous. Follow that advice and you have little risk to ever see yourself dueling against magic.
Unless until you leave city and find worse things to worry about than your fellow countrymen.

What leaves you with the mundane people and their mundane weapons to worry about.

That is our interest here

The fauna, flora, mineral resources, techniques of work them, all that do vary too much from one place to the next to allow an universal description of what you will find.
Shirshanes like to carry spears, sometimes twice longer than themselves (weapon know as “shirshane spear”) or even longer. Many human cities on the North of Main Continent like the axe, one handed and used whit shield in the case of Warrior Caste, sigraxes and noblemen. On most places the sword is the weapon of choice for most men, both high and low castes carry it in they day-to-day lives, but many designs fall under the category of sword.
I will base this relate mostly in what you will find on Lutianen, the Insular City, near to East Coast of Main Continent.

ESSENTIAL INFORMATION ABOUT NON-MAGICAL WEAPONS

POOR MAN'S SWORD.
Starting from the bottom, we have the copper swords. The city buy copper from cities and feudal domains in the extreme north of Kailau Mountains. Is the less expensive metal in the region and the one easy to forge. Poor people sword is a short copper sword with large blade. Who can’t afford even that, improvises a wood club, but that is really the bottom of social stair.


THE AVERAGE: COMMON MAN'S SWORD
Bronze swords are the decent choice, is what most low castes have with them. They are not much different to copper swords in design but cost a little more. Also, in the eyes of locals those swords look a little less like something that belongs in a kitchen.
Bronze axes are a valid but not usual choice on Lutianen. The poor Warrior Castes starts life using bronze shields and/or armours.

IMPORTANT: Nobody will refuse to sell you a shield or an armour, but keep in mind that you will be arrested and possibly impaled alive (only starts that way, the "alive" part kind changes in the middle of the process) if city guard catches you whit those things. Only Warrior Castes and a few others can use armour and shield inside cities, most citizens (Lows and High Castes) cannot.

Warrior Castes sometimes carry two hand weapons, even pole weapons like halberds, and there is no Law preventing you from do the same. Is hard to engage in daily activities mostly unrelated to combat caring a poleax however, for instance: in a pub you are supposed to carry your weapon with you when you go urinate. If you are not a Warrior Caste, think twice before choose as personal weapon something you can't just hang on your belt and forget.

Don't know how they do, but warriors keep their weapons in mind all the time: even when they are drunk. No pub owner on Lutianen ever saw a warrior come back in the next day asking for the two hand ax he forgot bellow the table. Must be something in their training.



AND FOR WHO IS SERIOUS ABOUT THAT

Iron is the next step. There is a gap between it and copper that is even larger than the one between copper and bronze.
Sharitarnes classify what they understand as iron in several categories, identified by colours, grey being the worse and red the better mundane iron. Is hard to say exactly what kind of iron correspond to what we have on Earth, those metals came from different Universes and work each variation demands specific skills.
Most Warrior Castes start their lives caring grey iron, change to black and many stay with that most their lives. Those who can, go all the way up to red iron.
Local artificers do know what steel is, and would not be too complicated to make it. However, is controversial if that would or not violate the Exclusion Law and eventually lead to the destruction on the entire city. Some techniques to make steel do not lead to people burning in magical green fire, but few want to take the risk when the limits are that undefined.
In terms of design iron weapons on Sharitarn offer huge variation. Red iron is equivalent to some Medieval Earth steel in terms of weight and durability, broadly speaking. Less important Noble Caste men carry mundane swords of that material.
There is no limitation other than be able to pay, and willingly. Any free man how has a red steel blade can carry it, and use it in duel. No matter his caste. A low caste common man with a iron weapon causes some perplexity sometimes, but not too much.


AND FINALLY: THE FANCY STUFF

For those who can afford it, the "nobleman’s weapon" is the rapier. With or without a small shied on the opposite arm, or a knife.
That is a nobleman’s choice because is just not possible to make rapiers with red iron, or any steal that does not clearly violates the Exclusion Law. One need light and strong metal for such long and pointy weapons, what is why they only appear on Earth during the Renascence. On Lutianen the most 'usual' solution are materials made by Creation Magic.
Since Back Centaur do has Creation Magic among its specialties, and even has an archmage who follows the Way, the price for materials created by mages is lower than it would normally be. Even them, magic is almost obscenely expensive. Takes an excellent Creationist to make the noble “white iron” used to make rapiers. Few metal workers deal with the material and among those not all risk to work with swords.
Be made of materials created by magic do not makes something magical. Those weapons carry no magic in them, just the physical proprieties granted by the spell that created the raw material, which are not in themselves magical.




MINOR CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT WEAPONS: FASHION (curiosities that will not save your life, probably)

Is not fashionable for a nobleman to use armour on the city, unless they are magical or made of some exclusive material. They have the right to do so, but don’t use it very often.
Noble women on the other hand sometimes use one single piece of armour, and this can be of any material as long as the piece is exquisitely designed and decorated by a master craftsman (preferable one other noble ladies know by name and professional reputation). Nobleman often carry small shields, shapes vary but hexagons are the most popular choice since the early days of King Cerbion’s rule. A gauntlet replaces the shield sometimes, and in this cases it covers the arm, but that is an outdated ancient style likely to provoke jokes from other Nobles.
Warriors and Mage Castes are the other two groups allowed by law to carry shields and wear armours.
Mages (the 'true' ones) do not use that permission because would be ridiculous. Magic weapons cannot hold Xar pure enough to make difference in the hands of a mage. What this fellows do carry is magical jewelry. In therms of function some of those gems are weapons and/or shields, but to mundane eyes they are just decorative.
Sigraxes carry weapons like any other free man does. Since they obviously have magic potential awaken, they gain an extraordinary advantage when carrying magical weapons or armours. Sometimes they enchant those items themselves for briefs periods of time, but the advantages of proper magical items created by Enchanters (who are mages and sigraxes followers of Enchanter Way) are hard to ignore.
Sigraxes do not use rapiers, usually.
They traditionally prefer to follow the habits of Warrior Caste in the subject combat. That may sometimes include the use of shield, in this case they will choose a model large enough to not look like “nobility” . Despite than attraction for the Red Caste style few sigraxes go above light armour, except they expect to face an actual battle. And even them they tend to prefer the lighter possible option among the magical armours powerful enough to make a difference.
Warriors fancy armour, a lot. To the point of comical love story.
You would not expect anyone to go around in a hot day wearing a heavy fullplate in time of peace. You would be mistaken in that expectation however. Because many warriors do exactly that in their free time, just for the pleasure of being “dressed like warriors”. They do their exercises in those heavy things, run with them during hours, and if was possible they would most certainly swim with them as well. Warriors are a strange lot.

Utility

First and for most weapons serve to kill people. Kill people serve for a lot of things, depending on context. 
 Not to kill people when you have the means to also has its place and time.

Access & Availability

Another option to make rapiers is to use rare materials brought by the vortex. 
   The Brotherhood is very strict this days in the application of their Exclusion Law, but they let pass most carcasses of advanced robots, vehicles, etc, from other Universes. The objects are never functional, any attempt to repair is punished with dead by Green Fire, but the Brotherhood tolerate loot.
      Is unsafe and usually also impossible for a mundane blacksmith or builder to deal with those materials.
    The alchemists are in less danger, wearing proper magic protection and using enchanted tool that inform them what the thing on their table is. The Exclusion Law do not affect spells, only technology, and if you wrap up your metallurgy in enough magic is unlikely for the Mage’s Brotherhood to interfere.
     Unless it happens to became a relevant factor to unbalance the power structure on Sharitarn, those changes are deal with, if they can be avoided they will be. That said: we are not talking about mass production here. A few hundred mundane swords and shields are unlikely to cause relevant change in global scale, no matter who light and strong they happen to be.
    One, or a dozen, rapiers made of nano-fiber do not change much in the world. Is not very different to use the visor of an advances war tank as wall in your castle. Instead of nano-fibers could be eyelashes of abyssal cyclops and wings of huge insects, respectively. Two examples of rare materials actually found on Lutianen.
     In the end of day is almost impossible to find any mundane material half as good as magic.
   The really important nobles have powerful magical weapons home, as family treasure, and cheaper ones to carry around. Even if they do not possess magic potential awaken carry a magical weapon implicate in status. Besides, they don’t brake unless the enemy has magic.
    Most weapons made of exotic materials are imported. Some are very old.