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P-Mack posted:Not exactly what you're asking about, but I've heard the phrase "cult of the bayonet" used to describe French military thinking pre-WWI. (Their men are going to die anyway, but battle is not the main reason.) HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Oct 27, 2014 |
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Oct 27, 2014 21:34
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HEY GAL posted:Speaking of, do bayonets get the same...I'm going to say "culturally-specific emotional and aesthetic weight" that pikes do? Does jukedndo count? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2JrQ-9o7Ko
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Oct 27, 2014 22:08
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HEY GAL posted:Oberwehr and Unterwehr/Seitenwehr. Just my half-awake 2 pfenning, but could these be very literal directional distinctions? Think about the location of the weapon on a soldier's body relative to the clothes. I'm going to guess that most guys would keep their dagger secured about themselves somehow, perhaps even under their top layer of clothing. Think about the distinction between "open" and "concealed" carry with modern handguns if that is a reference that works for you. Meanwhile you can't really stick a musket or gently caress off huge pike up your sleeve or in your belt or whatnot, can you? Another English example that just came to mind. Consider the difference between the words "underwear" and "overcoat" and what they imply about the item of dress. I'm a bit hazy but this kind of makes sense to me right now, maybe someone else wants to flesh it out more as an idea. edit: meanwhile your sword you can strap to your side. It's not some gently caress-off huge stick that can be clearly observed from half a mile off, but it's also not some sneaky little gently caress dagger that could be anywhere from in a boot to strapped to an arm. Only one real place to carry one of those and it's. . . strapped to your side, on your belt. edit x2: a person can also easily be separated from his "over-weapon" to use the class as I'm interpreting it. If you want the pikeman to stop being a pikeman for a moment all he has to do is let go of his pike. That poo poo needs to be carried, and if he's not carrying it he needs to set it down somewhere. A sword is both less of a hassle to move around while carrying on the side and more of a hassle to temporarily get rid of. Still, if need be, you can tell a guy to take his belt off or at the very least walk around with an empty sheath. The dagger he's got hidden in his puffy sleeve or in his boot is yet more convenient to walk around with and even more problematic to divest a person of without getting fairly intrusive (doing poo poo like pat-downs and weapons searches and the like). Again, consider the differences between the amount of effort involved in someone removing their overcoat vs. removing their underwear. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Oct 27, 2014 |
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Oct 27, 2014 23:05
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Cyrano4747 posted:If you want the pikeman to stop being a pikeman for a moment all he has to do is let go of his pike. That poo poo needs to be carried... Edit: You lean it against a tree branch when you take a break though, or drive it upright into the earth if the ground's soft enough in that region/on that day. Setting it down horizontally is fine only if you think you can pick it up again without running into someone else, so next to a road it can get troublesome. One clarification though: Untenwehr and Seitenwehr, whatever they mean, are synonyms. It's not like one is being opposed to the other, both are the opposite of Oberwehr. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Oct 27, 2014 |
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Oct 27, 2014 23:24
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HEY GAL posted:The Putney Debates, for instance, are from around the same time as the stuff I read and were engaged in by people who were somewhat higher up the military hierarchy then the dudes I study but were nevertheless mostly ordinary people. In addition to acknowledging that they're really interesting from the point of view of the history of political thought, I also think that in places they're really impressive as prose. You enjoy the prose of the Putney Debates?! The same Putney debates that have such lines as Rich posted:Some men [have] ten, some twenty servants, some more, some less.
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Oct 28, 2014 00:54
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This line:quote:Really I think that the poorest he that is in England has a life to live as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it's clear that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he has not had a voice to put himself under. Edit: quote:This gift of reason without other property may seem a small thing, yet I think there is nothing that God has given a man that anyone else can take from him. And therefore I say that either it must be the law of God or the law of man that must prohibit the meanest man in the kingdom to have this benefit as well as the greatest. I do not find anything in the law of God that a lord shall choose 20 burgesses, and a gentleman but two, or a poor man shall choose none. I find no such thing in the law of nature, nor in the law of nations. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Oct 28, 2014 |
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Oct 28, 2014 00:57
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HEY GAL posted:That's about attacking like a big old idiot though, not aesthetic/cultural appreciation for the weapon as an honorable object. Say what you will about the generals I study, most of them are relatively clear-eyed and think that throwing their men away on some dumb thing is a bad idea. (Soldiers are valuable.) Do you not count battling their own demons
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Oct 28, 2014 01:19
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Do you think generic Tolkien-esque fantasy is supposed to be set in magic Middle Ages? If so, how did non-rich medieval people accomodate guests? Did everyone sleep on the floor? Say at a village blacksmith's house. How could a village blacksmith arm a group of people on a short notice? Anything more fantasy than a pitchfork? With a long reach?
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Oct 28, 2014 02:45
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supermikhail posted:How could a village blacksmith arm a group of people on a short notice? Anything more fantasy than a pitchfork? With a long reach? Assuming by 'on short notice' you mean 'not enough time to make normal weapons', then it's kind of "take anything that could possibly already hurt someone and remove unneeded bits/adjust hurty bits", isn't it? Besides just picking up whatever tools were lying around that someone could conceivably be killed with, like axes, flails, possibly sickles... breaking apart the tines of the pitchfork to get multiple spikes which could each be stuck in their own shaft for makeshift spears is the one I've heard more than anything else. Harrows were made of lengths of wood with spikes facing into the ground, so I have to imagine those could be hastily broken apart and made into clubs. Could detach the individual blades of shears and set them on the ends of longer wooden shafts assuming you have any lying around, I guess. And you could make caltrops out of nails and chunks of wood(iirc early caltrops were wooden balls with 4 metal spikes sticking out instead of being made entirely of metal).
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Oct 28, 2014 03:12
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Oh, drat. I took a good long thunk and realized that I'm not doing anything near realism, more like subversion. But not actually satire, so no "scorpion sword of smiting +1". The blacksmith could have a number of real weapons stored. I think I may have already asked this question, but quite a long time ago. If you had to go against giant bugs, what would be your real Middle Ages weapon of choice? No siege weapons allowed. Possibly restricted by what a blacksmith could produce (meaning, not bows and crossbows?). I think what I came up with is pretty lame - a spear or a staff, but that's because I've been floundering between realism and fantasy. 
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Oct 28, 2014 04:23
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Greek Fire like fo sho
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Oct 28, 2014 04:32
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supermikhail posted:Oh, drat. I took a good long thunk and realized that I'm not doing anything near realism, more like subversion. But not actually satire, so no "scorpion sword of smiting +1". The blacksmith could have a number of real weapons stored. I think your best bet would be smoke or some sort of gas weapon, the chitin exoskeleton of an insect is gonna be pretty tough to penetrate and you won't do much damage even if you do. Meanwhile, they have almost no circulatory (heart/veins/etc) system and instead deliver oxygen directly to their tissues, breathing through pores (called spiracles) all over the exoskeleton. In reality this limits their body size and is why we don't have giant fantasy DnD insects or spiders, you'd need a much more developed circulatory system to deliver oxygen efficiently to a large body. Being small allows insects to functionally breathe air -> pores in skin -> tissues. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respiratory_system_of_insects So use smoke or some stinky herbs or DDT or something Edit: following from all that, just piercing or cutting our hypothetical Giant Spider isn't going to hurt it much. You really need to disable it by removing limbs, hit the brain, light it on fire, or gas it. There aren't much in the way of analogues to muscles, tendons, blood, and the heart. Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Oct 28, 2014 |
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Oct 28, 2014 04:39
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Speaking of which, I need to know about torches. Would my hypothetical average Middle Ages blacksmith take a torch with him if he had to have a source of illumination (or fire)? A wooden torch? How about a spare? If so, where would he carry the spare?
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Oct 28, 2014 04:43
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If you're talking giant insects aside from what's already been suggested I dunno what else you're gonna want beyond "something long" just to keep them at bay, but that's assuming that the chitin is indeed really really hard to get through, which I don't think is a given at all. You could always take a "the exoskeleton is made of something lighter than normal as part of what lets them grow this large" type approach so that busting them open with blunt weapons is more reasonable, and could reason that the load-bearing, thinner-than-the-rest-of-the-limb joints are vulnerable points for hacking weapons(in which case, pollaxe w/hammerhead for crunching and axehead for slicing leg joints).
LazyMaybe fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Oct 28, 2014 |
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Oct 28, 2014 04:52
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Pellisworth posted:Edit: following from all that, just piercing or cutting our hypothetical Giant Spider isn't going to hurt it much. You really need to disable it by removing limbs, hit the brain, light it on fire, or gas it. There aren't much in the way of analogues to muscles, tendons, blood, and the heart. Yeah, it's true. Assuming the exoskeleton remains proportionally strong, fighting big insects with a weapon would be a huge pain in the rear end. Probably the most realistic way of fighting one would be just throwing a net over it and then jabbing it with spears in the joints. A crossbow bolt or a close-distance arrow would also probably be able to punch through just about any natural armor. Greek fire would be more fun though.
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Oct 28, 2014 04:53
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IronicDongz posted:If you're talking giant insects aside from what's already been suggested I dunno what else you're gonna want beyond "something long" just to keep them at bay, but that's assuming that the chitin is indeed really really hard to get through, which I don't think is a given at all. You could always take a "the exoskeleton is made of something lighter than normal as part of what lets them grow this large" type approach so that busting them open with blunt weapons is more reasonable, and could reason that the load-bearing, thinner-than-the-rest-of-the-limb joints are vulnerable points for hacking weapons(in which case, pollaxe w/hammerhead for crunching and axehead for slicing leg joints). Bugs are horrifying little marvels of evolution. As mentioned they're limited in size by their basic biology, but there's a ton of redundancy and that exoskeleton is pretty tough. The big difference is there are far fewer ways to quickly kill an insect, really you either take out the brain or suffocate/poison it with smoke or some toxic gas or irritant. There are plenty of ways to disable an insect, sure, but they have 6-10* legs, around that many eyes, and it won't bleed to death because it's a crazy alien monster without anything approaching a human circulatory system. If you're shooting or poking it somewhere other than the brain you're probably just making it angry. *Just to be thorough with this hypothetical I am including spiders, scorpions, crabs, and lobsters which aren't insects (arachnids and crustaceans) but all the relevant biology is pretty similar. Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Oct 28, 2014 |
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Oct 28, 2014 05:01
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Sure, but I'm basically saying that if you're forwarding a fantasy setting in which giant insects are a thing, you're basically making your own rules from the ground up as far as suspension of disbelief and how insects actually function.
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Oct 28, 2014 05:19
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Pellisworth posted:Bugs are horrifying little marvels of evolution. As mentioned they're limited in size by their basic biology, but there's a ton of redundancy and that exoskeleton is pretty tough. The big difference is there are far fewer ways to quickly kill an insect, really you either take out the brain or suffocate/poison it with smoke or some toxic gas or irritant. There are plenty of ways to disable an insect, sure, but they have 6-10* legs, around that many eyes, and it won't bleed to death because it's a crazy alien monster without anything approaching a human circulatory system. If you're shooting or poking it somewhere other than the brain you're probably just making it angry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faFuaYA-daw&t=50s Yes, bugs are no longer giant for a reason. The largest ever arthropod was around twice the length of a human being, which is really big, but it's doubtful that it could ever move with much pace. You could run circles around an insect that large. Slim Jim Pickens fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Oct 28, 2014 |
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Oct 28, 2014 05:21
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So I picked up my old copy of Germania (the A. R. Birley translation), and this is what Tacitus has to say about the Framea: quote:They carry spears, or as they call them in their own language, frameae, with a short and narrow iron point, which are, however, so sharp and easy to handle that they fight with the same weapon at close quarters or long range, as required. Even the horsemen are content with just shield and spear. The infantry also hurl javelins, of which each man has several So "long distance" here presumably does not mean they throw their frameae, at least not as a matter of course. Interestingly, Birley mentions framea also showing up in Juvenal 13. 79, not referring to Germans. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 16:12 on Oct 30, 2014 |
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Oct 28, 2014 06:42
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HEY GAL posted:That's about attacking like a big old idiot though, not aesthetic/cultural appreciation for the weapon as an honorable object.  bayonet  ")
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Oct 28, 2014 07:14
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Pellisworth posted:I think your best bet would be smoke or some sort of gas weapon, the chitin exoskeleton of an insect is gonna be pretty tough to penetrate and you won't do much damage even if you do. Throw apples at it, it worked against Gregor Samsa 
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Oct 28, 2014 18:40
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Some wanted to hear more about composite bowmaking: The repairs that I did on the old core didn't fix the problem with the air bubbles. First I suspected it to be a problem with the coating and the application of the glue, but it is clear now that the "matching grooves" weren't precise enough, so you have sections that don't mesh together well enough. The glue contracts when it dries, so if you leave gaps, there will be bubbles, even if you have a surplus of glue applied. The old bows had non matching grooves that weren't too deep. The other cores that I prepared after this one were exactly like that and the glueline is flawless as far as I can judge. The preparation of a good glueline took like 3 days for both limbs. It's a mixture of a method that korean bowyers use that takes about a week (with a concentration of 1% glue or less) and the application of gradually thicker glue combined with the application of well regulated heat. This is how it shouldn't look like:  I will still go ahead and finish the bow to seasoning, although it will never be able to shoot arrows. There's alot to learn that's not in the book. This core taught alot of lessons, there's at least 2 further steps that I never did so far and need to rehearse before moving to the good cores. This one will never be done, but it can be a valuable stepping stone. Laying out the precise geometry of the core today, it became clear that shaping it will not be an easy task. We're talking about a precision down to way less than 0,5mm on curved surfaces
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Oct 28, 2014 20:36
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supermikhail posted:Oh, drat. I took a good long thunk and realized that I'm not doing anything near realism, more like subversion. But not actually satire, so no "scorpion sword of smiting +1". The blacksmith could have a number of real weapons stored. Spears are a good choice: for animals or animal-like fantasy creatures I would just say follow the pattern of hunting weapons and go for something like a boar spear or awl pike (eel-spear, a kind of reinforced spear with a circular handguard). The Flemish ‘pinned staff’ would be a good option as well. Things like pollaxes or anti-armour weapons might work for this specific example, but I would assume the regular villagers would much rather have shields. supermikhail posted:Speaking of which, I need to know about torches. Would my hypothetical average Middle Ages blacksmith take a torch with him if he had to have a source of illumination (or fire)? A wooden torch? How about a spare? If so, where would he carry the spare? Lindybeige has some good videos on torches in general, but this is otherwise not my area. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiuHr5YVJBI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQZqbGME5HY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMhMrnWslQs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPaj8lR786s
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Oct 28, 2014 21:50
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Railtus posted:Lindybeige has some good videos on torches in general, but this is otherwise not my area. Ooh, nice ones. I used to be subscribed to this guy a couple years back, but then his feed started flooding with random stuff I didn't care about, so I unsubscribed. Otherwise I probably would have less editing to do on my stuff (and less pestering in this thread). On a related note, I haven't been outside of a city in a while, and certainly not at night, but I remember a light source being preferable to no light source, although maybe it's because I was looking for small critters on the ground. Confirm preferable even regardless of critters?... I know it may be not very on-topic, but a) I don't want to run around looking for a suitable thread for a small question like that, b) in the modern society this question is kind of historical. 
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Oct 29, 2014 06:35
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Yes, it's really dark outdoors at night before street lights get invented. Only exception is in winter, during nights when there's a lot of snow on the gorund and the moon's up. By all accounts I've heard about medieval roads, you really want a light to see where you're going, if you end up venturing outside at night. Heck, even in cities, you'd want to hire a link-boy to light the way.
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Oct 29, 2014 08:27
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supermikhail posted:Ooh, nice ones. I used to be subscribed to this guy a couple years back, but then his feed started flooding with random stuff I didn't care about, so I unsubscribed. Otherwise I probably would have less editing to do on my stuff (and less pestering in this thread). If it's any interest to you there is an account of late medieval Irish being great night-fighters, no torches obviously, just their brats (a large cloak that's the forerunner of the great kilt) to keep them warm. They also used a special type of javelin with flights to give it a whistling noise.
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Oct 29, 2014 10:40
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Rabhadh posted:If it's any interest to you there is an account of late medieval Irish being great night-fighters, no torches obviously, just their brats (a large cloak that's the forerunner of the great kilt) to keep them warm. They also used a special type of javelin with flights to give it a whistling noise. Thank god you specified their cloaks or else I'd figure them to be handy with their dicks.
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Oct 29, 2014 11:38
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Frostwerks posted:Thank god you specified their cloaks or else I'd figure them to be handy with their dicks.
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Oct 29, 2014 12:30
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I thought you meant their sassy children at first.
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Oct 29, 2014 15:02
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I have some questions about Saxons in England pre-1066. For a few years, I've been working on medieval fantasy focusing on "fantasy Saxons never conquered by the Normans." I know a pretty good deal about Saxon warfare, clothing, weapons, etc. Not so much about the intricacies of Saxon society and the way the nobility and rulership worked. I want to use the accurate Saxon terms for rulers, so I've been using Thanes and Earls. However, there are no female equivalents for either that I've been able to find. Does anyone know of feminine forms of those titles or a semi-plausible way of creating them? For now I've been using Thaness and Ealdorwoman (from the earlier Ealdorman of course) but both seem clumsy to me. Also interested in recommendations for good Saxon history books.
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Oct 29, 2014 19:36
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I posted a thing in another thing, if anyone wants to take a look at it and never goes to TFR.
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Oct 29, 2014 20:28
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Rabhadh posted:If it's any interest to you there is an account of late medieval Irish being great night-fighters, no torches obviously, just their brats (a large cloak that's the forerunner of the great kilt) to keep them warm. They also used a special type of javelin with flights to give it a whistling noise. I've never understood what use whistling arrows could have on the battlefield other than signaling or irritating approaching horses. If that actually works on horses that were trained for all that noise I guess? Power Khan fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Oct 29, 2014 |
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Oct 29, 2014 20:40
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JaucheCharly posted:I've never understood what use whistling arrows could have on the battlefield other than signaling or irritating approaching horses. If that actually works on horses that were trained for all that noise I guess? The javelins were universally acknowledged to be pretty useless at actually killing anybody. "More noisesome than deadly" as the source puts it. The whistling javelins are mentioned in the context of night attacks on camps, where they were spooking the conscripts. Interestingly though there is a mention of Irish shot still equipped with javelins around the 1600's, the javelins being reserved for use against unarmoured horses.
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Oct 29, 2014 20:52
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Martello posted:I have some questions about Saxons in England pre-1066. For a few years, I've been working on medieval fantasy focusing on "fantasy Saxons never conquered by the Normans." I know a pretty good deal about Saxon warfare, clothing, weapons, etc. Not so much about the intricacies of Saxon society and the way the nobility and rulership worked. Maybe play around with the adjective aeðel, which means noble. I've also come across a term, forðwíf, which means a woman of high status. In my admittedly limited experience with Old English, however, both terms refer to a person of high social status rather than a formal title or position. There's also another word, gesiþ which IIRC is roughly equivalent to þegen. The female equivalent of this word is gesiþwif (in Old English wif means "woman," not just "wife"). Really, your instinct to do things like change "Ealdorman" to "Ealdorwoman" is pretty accurate to the way Old English works. As for good Saxon history books, I definitely recommend Henry Meyr-Harting's The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England and N. J. Higham's The Convert Kings. As the titles imply, both deal with the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, but from what I remember have interesting information on Anglo-Saxon politics and society as well. Edit: In case you weren't aware þ and ð are the equivalent of "th".
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Oct 29, 2014 21:02
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HEY GAL posted:I posted a thing in another thing, if anyone wants to take a look at it and never goes to TFR.  JaucheCharly posted:If that actually works on horses that were trained for all that noise I guess? How loud are those things anyways? Edit: Ask me about the first time I shot a football (SLOWLY) in the general direction of my horse to test whether I could ride her in a horse-football match. Answer: She did a leapfrog from standstill that was 1 meter high and 2 meters to the side. Shes not battle trained though 
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Oct 29, 2014 21:17
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I was thinking about whistling arrows, like the ones carried by Mongols, Manchus et al. Friends made some lately. Maybe they're useful for hunting, when you're on a battue.
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Oct 29, 2014 21:21
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Nektu posted:Whoa, those clay pipes where a real thing? I only knew them from this context:
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Oct 29, 2014 21:23
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HEY GAL posted:Or leave them in your wallet while giant Bavarians launch themselves at your body with 18' long sticks in their hands. One of the two.  (Just dont swallow)
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Oct 29, 2014 21:45
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Martello posted:I have some questions about Saxons in England pre-1066. For a few years, I've been working on medieval fantasy focusing on "fantasy Saxons never conquered by the Normans." I know a pretty good deal about Saxon warfare, clothing, weapons, etc. Not so much about the intricacies of Saxon society and the way the nobility and rulership worked. You might also want to try Daily Life in Anglo-Saxon England by Sally Crawford which could give you a better idea of what the everyday Anglo-Saxon person would do.
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Oct 30, 2014 00:36
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Rabhadh posted:The javelins were universally acknowledged to be pretty useless at actually killing anybody. "More noisesome than deadly" as the source puts it. The whistling javelins are mentioned in the context of night attacks on camps, where they were spooking the conscripts. Is it a case of a javelin simply lacking the kinetic energy of an arrow, which you can build up using elastic energy?
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Oct 30, 2014 01:20
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