Vulcan

Re: Bones As Armour Once you're done turning the turtles into soup, I doubt they'd have anything to say about the use of their shells...

Re: Odd Swords -- Real or Fantasy? Keep an eye on the History Channel, they have been running shows about that very subject lately - even detailing the strategies and campaigns of the Israelite kings in their conquest of Canaan. But in short, the Old Testament wars were fought with spear, shield, and khopesh - it seems to have been the signature bronze age weapon of the area. But some of the classical tactics - even ones like attacking out of the sun and draw your enemy out of his strong position - were standard at the time.

Re: Odd Swords -- Real or Fantasy?

Re: Odd Swords -- Real or Fantasy? They may have been little (by modern standards, anyway), but I would bet that you would have a hard time finding anyone in the modern world in as good shape as an average warrior or soldier from history. We, as a society, are woefully out-of-shape. Walking a mile is a major undertaking for most people, never mind marching all day long. Doing it while carrying 50+ lbs of gear is out of the question for anyone except military personnel. And they have other options - choppers, APC's, trucks, etc. - to help out. The various disctractions of the modern age (radio, TV, computers... ) doesn't help out any either. The ancients had no such distractions, and little in the way of mechanical assistance. You walked a mile to the far end of the field before breakfast, carrying a bag of seed/fertilzer/whatever. At the end of harvest, you walked that mile back repeatedly, carrying the crops to storage. In between, you walked countless miles maintaining the crops. Need a drink? Go pull the water up from a well. Going to market? That could be several miles away. I would bet those Macedonian soldiers had no problem handling the sarissa properly. Of course, now that I think about it, the girls wouldn't have been wimps either, since they're the ones who had to go for the water, and to market, etc... Which was probably your point in the first place.

Re: Order of the Stick Oh. My. God.

Re: Odd Swords -- Real or Fantasy? She'd have to have arms like Arnold Schwartzenegger to hold up all that metal... Although... in a setting where bronze is the most common material for weapons and armor, then iron - or some more anomolous steel - vambraces would be very hard to damage, and wouldn't have to be ridiculosuly thick and heavy to do the job. Or you could go with a paired weapon combo for her - say, short sword and tonfa.

Re: Bones As Armour One other thing to bear in mind: most fish bones will be totally unsuitable for traditional bone armors because they are very thin and flexible. One could theorectically weave them together into something like wicker armor though... For something more like traditional bone armor, you would need to go to things like turtles, whales, seals, saltwater crocodiles and the like. And yet another thing: the sea is filled with various microbes and such that feed on pretty much anything organic - and bones are not immune to their attention. Bones are not likely to survive long periods (more than a couple years, IIRC) underwater.

Re: Bones As Armour And sea turtle shells make dandy shields and/or breastplates!

Re: Odd Swords -- Real or Fantasy? Not unless you make one up specifically for your character. A two-handed sword is designed long specifically to take advantage of the extra leverage the grip provides to extend reach and, by that extension, chopping power at the tip. A sword is basically a wedge powered by a lever. The longer the lever, the more force is delivered to the wedge at the point of impact. A short two-hander of the size you're looking for would surrender a lot of reach to most one-handed weapons (along with the utility of being able to do something else with the other hand), for only a modest increase in leverage for the block/bind, and little-to-none advantage in actual striking power. In short, historically you're going to get cut to ribbons using such a short two-hander. The katana (and the similarly-sized swords used by Conan in the movies) are about as short as you can make a two-hander and still have any useable advantage over a single-handed sword. Now in the time period you're looking at - the ancient Greek/Egyptian period - swords were significantly shorter, because the metallurgy would not support swords over 36" overall length - any longer and they tended to break very quickly. So, most swords had 5-6" in handle, guard, and pommel, leaving 30(ish) inches of blade. For proper function, a two-handed grip would need at least a foot of handle, plus another couple inches in guard and pommel. That leaves you with a 20ish inch blade, or roughly a two-handed dagger... A two-handed sword in this time period would be an anomoly - of course, that might well be what makes your heroine special. However it happened, someone managed to forge some honest-to-god steel instead of iron, and made a significantly longer weapon just for her... Edit: Thinking about it, giving her a real steel sword would also give her a huuuuuuuuge advantage in cutting power as well!

Re: Riddick's Eyeshine Don't forget to put 'visible' on the power , however you buy it (or distinctive feature, maybe) - his eyes are quite unusual in appearance because of the alterations made...

Re: Ancient Weapons and Armor So you're talking about the golden age of Athens and the big Egyptian Dynasties, well before 300 BC then...

Re: Bones As Armour Underwater you also have the option of using various shells for armor as well...

Re: Odd Swords -- Real or Fantasy? The really fun thing about discussing historical weapons is that the people who used the weapons didn't speak modern English - heck, most didn't speak any form of English. So we get a variety of names for swords that, in their original context, probably would most accurately translate as 'sword'... I thought that the Xiphos was the sword I was looking for, but like your searches, most of mine turned up the straight-edged versions, or occasionally ones that were just slightly wasp-waisted. The one on the link, on the other hand, doubles in width from the narrow section just below the guard to the broadest part of the blade 2/3rds of the way to the tip. One of these days I would love to get my hands on one of those and see how well it swings. (That, and a good replica of a Khopesh... )

Re: Bones As Armour Bone armor certainly existed historically, and was even moderately common in cultures that didn't have metalworking skills - for example, the various Native American tribes. Bone has some advantages for armor. It is a material that is readily available for any culture that eats meat. It comes in small pieces that are easily combined to give good coverage while retaining flexibility (and that flexibility helps combat the tendency of the bone to break upon impact). And yes, bone is quite hard and surprisingly strong, especially before it totally dries out. There is a pretty significant difference in strength between dead, dried out bone, and relatively fresh bone. On the other hand, fresh bone tends to be a bit smelly... Several years back, I saw a test where a bone 'vest' (in the style of the plains tribes of Native Americans) stopped a bullet from a black powder rifle with no penetration, even of bone shards - I just don't remember what kind. So even against 'modern' weapons, bone armor can provide some protection. On the down side: metal armors are more durable, and probably lighter for the protection given. Metal weapons will penetrate bone armor more readily than metal armors, especially in the stabbing role where they can get in between the pieces and get to the cords holding the pieces on. In short: bone is better than nothing, but given the choice every culture that had the option went with metal for armor instead.

Re: Odd Swords -- Real or Fantasy? Okay, I've found a picture of the sword I'm talking about here: http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_ironempire.html Scroll down just a bit, and there is a picture of it on the right - it is the first one on the page, and is apparently called the Xiphos. The text confirms it's versatility for both cutting and stabbing (although it correcty points out that the xiphos does lack the sheer chopping power of the kopis/falcatta design).

Re: Odd Swords -- Real or Fantasy? Vaguely. The one I saw was a bit longer (the pugio was only 18" or so), and even more severely wasp-waisted just above the 'guard'. I've got to keep looking, it was a really cool-looking short sword.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

Re: Odd Swords -- Real or Fantasy? The greeks made a sword with a leaf-shaped blade (a bit like an elongated spearhead) around 30" or so long. It was designed to stab, but had enough weight toward the tip to give it a rather authoritative chop. I've been hunting around for a picture, but thus far haven't found one...

Re: Ancient Weapons and Armor

Re: Ancient Weapons and Armor The Goths were a tribe of Germans that invaded Rome repeatedly. Call them the precursors to the Dark Age. The whole 'gothic' thing relating to black makeup is a modern thing, not sure how it got called that.

Re: Ancient Weapons and Armor It couldn't have been that bad - the Romans used it as their primary armor for much of the period. Lorica Segmenta (the segmented steel armor we commonly think of when visualizing Roman Legionaires) came about a bit later and was used for heavy infantry, when protection was at a premium. IIRC, anyway.

Re: Ancient Weapons and Armor The Romans used Lorica Hamata (a chain shirt with reinforced shoulders) through much of the early Republic - starting around 100 BC, as I recall. The Greek and Roman short swords were double edged, as was the typical Celtic 'longsword' - although single-edged 'chopping' and 'slashing' swords were pertty common. But yes, the average sword was significantly shorter in the time-period mentioned - averaging under 3', as opposed to the medieval period's 3-3.5'. -1 to the OCV bonues across the board would not be inappropriate.

Re: Quick Question Yeah, that was my group's assessment as well. In fact, when we needed stats for Batman, the Harbinger was used, with a few tweaks to psych limits, and changing the 'gun pool' to an overall 'gadget pool'...

Re: Odd Swords -- Real or Fantasy? Okay. If we're looking at a Roman tech level, metallurgy is still a bit on the primitive side. Swords rarely reach more than 3' overall, because the steel of the time won't support longer weapons structurally. The swords of the time range from the classic Celtic longsword, the Roman Gladius, the Falcatta, the Greek Hoplite-style short swords, and the actual historical Khopesh (not to be confused with the D&D version). All are pictured here: http://www.sword-buyers-guide.com/ancient-swords.html Go ahead and take a look, I'll wait here. Now, two things jump out. First, not one of those swords have very much in the way of a handguard. That is typical of all weapons of the time period. You block with the shield, and attack with the sword. Later guards were developed for occasions where one might be fighting without a shield. The other thing is that neither the celtic longsword nor the Falcatta have points worth speaking of. That's because they are primarily slashing and chopping weapons - the Falcatta in particular has very nearly as much chopping power as an axe! That leaves us with the various Greek and Roman shortswords, and the Khopesh. The Greek and Roman swords were very well designed for use in tight formations. The primary attack form was the thrust, and the long, tapered points facilitate that well. Additionally, the 'cutting tests' performed on the website I linked to show that they also have a fair amount of cutting power - bearing in mind that these are generally pretty big, strong guys doing the testing. Your female protaganist may have a bit of trouble duplicating those results, but these swords are still plenty lethal in the cut. But then, there's still the Khopesh. Looks kinda crude there, that old, tarnished bronze weapon. The blade, being sickle-shaped (but with the edge on the outside of the curve) gives it a primitive appearance, and so it was judged a primitive, clumsy weapon by historians - a footnote in the evolution of swords, as it were. Then recently, someone made up a modern one and handed it to an experienced medieval combat reinactor... And the assessment was a true revalation. It swings like a dream, and has a slash or chop much like the falcatta, but the reinforced point - and that subtle angle between the hilt and the point - make it stab like the best Gladius, only a bit longer (bonus!). The khopesh was recently featured on a Discovery or History channel special about Egyptian weaponry, I wish I could find a link to it off hand (you might try searching for it yourself, my google-fu seems rather weak tonight). Add into that the ability to use the curve of the sickle-shape to 'hook' an opponent's shield and wrench it out of position, and you have one heck of a weapon system! If you're looking to give your character a taste of the exotic, a Khopesh might be the way to go.

Re: Odd Swords -- Real or Fantasy? Sorry, Kristopher, I've been busy on other threads... There are several weapons that could serve, but they span across literally millenia of time. A bit more information on the nature and tech level of the world might help...