Arms 'n Armor

Arms and armor
Conquistador edition

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Sexy

The period after the middle ages and before Louis XIV popularized wearing ridiculous powdered wigs was the best looking in history.

I want to create a setting based on the Spanish colonial South-west, with native mythology and Christianity playing a large part of the 'magic' and being the source of the more fantastic creatures and monsters. Also I too love the pre-powdered wig era.

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Nice!

I've been thinking about doing something later in the Southwest too.

thats a Roundhead, not a conquistador!

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youtube.com/watch?v=dMEnBHef96c

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>30 years war
Why the fuck do people like this? I was a horrible war with awful protostants that could be described as the end of the middle ages (or at least the rise of nation states).

Like hey likes celabrate the end of fun and magic in the world. Man, Martin Luther ruined everything for everyone forever

anyone have some messer/kriegsmesser?

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I have a question for you, Veeky Forums.

I know the Falx had a reputation for fucking up Roman Segmentata armour. My question is, if forged using era-appropriate methods and with the average steel quality of the age, how would it fair against your standard suit of plate-armour?

Basically, would pic related do anything to something like ?

what was the serrated edge used for? dont usually see those one weapons which arent also used as tools

>Basically, would pic related do anything to something like
I'm no expert, but based on what little I know, I'd say probably not.

Considering how much stronger plate armour would be, and how it's purposefully built for deflecting sword blows, I doubt your falx would be able to penetrate it.

I'd suspect that it seldom did a number on the Romans by going straight through segmentata or hamata, rather they found some way around things, thought good old blunt trauma may have played some part.

Against plate armour things would probably be much the same, with attacks straight at the armour generally not getting very far, though you might be able to knock someone around with a really heavy hit to the head, strikes to the hands may crush fingers between gauntlet lames and whatever it's holding, etc.

Might be a hunting sword, with the serrated spine being for whatever sawing needs you come across.

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Did soldiers in the medieval period ever paint or mark their weapons as a way of personalising them?

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Iris?

While I could certainly imagine such happening, I can't think of any examples of common soldiers tarting up their weapons on their own.

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OP here, thanks for keeping this thread alive guys

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putting stuff on polearms maybe?

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That blade's got to weight a ton with no fuller in it. Looks like it's only been half-finished.

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Wouldn't there be some armour to cover the inner thighs and the wedding tackle?

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We see tassels, velvet, etched and gilt monograms, etc as it is, so I can certainly imagine someone of lesser means adding charms, mementos or decorations on his own. (Tassels may have served a practical fucntion of keeping fluids from running down the shaft, in which case a lost one would probably have resulted in a field repair, such as just tying a piece of fabric around the shaft where it sat.)

Once again though, I haven't seen anything such. Closest I know of are some Japanese blades with painted-on magical charms, which could of course have been done by a priest of some sort, but various koryu also appear to have taught their students such esoteric religious/magical practices, so the owner could have done it himself too.

Maille leggings, probably

Remember that real soldiers didn't actually use their weapons all the freaking time. They weren't MMO characters sitting around in Stormwind and showing off their pimped out gear.

Also, weapons broke and got worn out, or abandoned, lost, replaced etc.

I think the average soldier would have gotten nicer clothes if he wanted to show off or make an impression, you don't pull chicks by pinstriping your halberd or whatever.

messers doesn't have fullers all the time, especially the shorter ones. Then again a distal taper could help a lot with the weight problem.

thanks
how come messer look so damn sexy?

I suspect it's quite thin overall.

The horse and saddle take care of that. Though he may also want to keep a mail skirt or so around, because that's quite a lot of space between cuisses and faulds I think.

Suit made more primarily as infantry armour (English mostly) can have inner thigh plates and either faulds going down a lot furtehr, or a combination of somewhat mroe extensive faulds and tassets.

Because its an amazing period if you're interested in tactics and wargaming. It was the last war in which heavily armor cavalry fought, and ranged cavalry was still common. The interaction of pike and shot and cavalry is great.

No one is all that interested in what happened after Nordlingen, when it became a true clusterfuck, anyway. All the famous battles like White Mountain, Breitenfeld, Lutzen, etc, were in the first half. But even the later period is interesting if you like cavalry. It is one of the rare cases of Western European armies sometimes consisting of majority light cavalry.

Falchions and messers are often exceptionally thin. That one looks like a fuller would just punch a hole right through it.

It's why I asked. The only historical evidence I could find of them pimping out their gear was in clothes and little personal touches on armour. Even mercenaries with giant erection-simulating codpieces didn't have the means or desire to paint and recoat their weapons while at war, it seems.

How popular were falchions compared to arming swords throughout the medieval period? You usually don't seem them as much in art and media, but I feel like they were probably at least as common.

They're relatively rare as surviving specimens (once we slide into the 16th century things get a lot better there), and not terribly common in art either, so the safe bet to em seems to be that they were less popular than your basic, symmetric, double edged sword.

Nailing it down with much more precision than that may prove somewhat difficult, though there is one guy who drops by occasionally who may be in a position to provide at least an informed guess.

>what was the serrated edge used for?

Same use as on survival/tactical knifes - cutting ropes.

Closest thing we got are some scattered comments in roman texts about how pimped out gear is more cost-efficient than plain gear because the soldiers are less likely to lose it and will take better care of it as well.

Which wouldn't be much of a factor during the middle ages and early modern period when arms generally were either private property or were aquired on lease from the dude who hired you for this particular war.

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Because the messer is sexyness itself in sidearm-form?

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>How popular were falchions compared to arming swords throughout the medieval period? You usually don't seem them as much in art and media, but I feel like they were probably at least as common.

quite the opposite.
there's a vast gulf between the surviving numbers from archaeology, and those in art.

from studies I did, approximately 20% of medieval art contains at least one depiction of a falchion. Surviving numbers? far, far below 1% of all surviving medieval swords.

clear reasons for this disparity are hard to really nail down. My person suspicion is that there is a degree of religious symbolism going on. the sword is referred to again and again in biblical texts (psalms, gospels, etc), and in the writings of biblical scholars (Clement of Alexandria, John of Salisbury, etc.) as "the two-edged sword" - more often than "the sword". Combined with Peter Johnsson's theories on the nature of the medival sword and relation to the use of geometry, it may well be that the single-edged sword was for a long time considered profane, or un-christian. That's backed up in art, where we see it in the hands of sinners, roman soldiers, and, most tellingly, in the hands of muslims in depictions of the crusades, even though islamic swords were straight-bladed. The curved, one-edged sword is often (not always) a metaphor, a visual shorthand for the un-christian.

In all, I personally suspect that only maybe 1 in 50 swords were single edged at most. possibly as few as 1 in 200.

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I assumed it had more to do with it being a lower class weapon. Similar to how we have very few examples of cheap men-at-arms armor in the archaeological record, simply because it wasn't kept well or was recycled.

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Several types of messer have no fullers at all, and are still lightweight.

:^)

That, and also distastefully low class, and easily associated with the lower class, commoner soldier. And people HATED those guys.

They were the figure people fearfully imagined raping and pillaging their town, because it would be them doing most of it.

Vicious men, men without honor, beasts, almost.

In practice some Knights were real bastards too, but if you were going to be making propaganda or otherwise advertising the IDEAL of how the Knight was better than his henchmen, well, you'd clearly play it to the hilt, how chivalrous looking you were and every little feature of your expensive looking kit.

Which would include that type of sword.

It's an obvious symbol when it's potentially more expensive than all the equipment the ordinary soldier has together and maybe even his horse too, if he has one.

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if something was effective but for the lower classes then after one or two decades the pimped up version appeared for higher classes.
Or the pimped up version was toned down for lower classes.
So being for the lower class on it's own wouldn't guarantee much.

What would be a good armor to travel in for long periods of time?

There are a decent number of pimped falchions, just not as many as arming swords.

I imagine it's a mix of cultural and utility reasons, but I doubt they were quite as rare as they appear to be in art.

No armor. Take that shit off if you aren't expecting a fight.

Luckily I already had a doctor's appointment booked for tomorrow morning.

Padded garments and maybe a light mail vest stitched into a padded garment.

most of the evidence indicates that many of the falchions were very high-class weapons - inlay, enamelling, gilding and heraldry, and similar embellishments.

there's no evidence to support the "low-class" theory of them.

One element may be the confusion with the messer, which *did* start off as a lower-class item, the Bauernwehr, before it became more commonplace in the mid-15th C and rose up in social standing till by the end of the century, even royalty were given messers as gifts.

Messers, likewise were far more common than falchions - we have less than 40 surviving falchions worldwide, we literally have hundreds or even thousands of messer, tesak, and bauernwehr blades, and it seems to have been a much more culturally popular weapon in the central european states - the kingdom of Hungary, Bohemia, Austria. The Falchion, in general, is more a western european weapon - France, Italy, England, some of the low countries, and a bit of Germany.


as an indicator of how light even a large messer can be, without a fuller, this example is a 80cm blade, 105cm overall, based on an original., whole thing weighs 880g - less than 2lbs, moves like quicksilver, and cuts like hell.

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doesn't matter as long as you have a horse.
If not and you have to carry all the shit then obviously various textile armours would be the most comfy choice, but personally I wouldn't go above half-plate and that also greatly stretching it for longer travels as you also have to carry various other shits.
So if you don't have a horse either textile armour and/or a breastplate, may or may not a helmet/skullcap too

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>That, and also distastefully low class, and easily associated with the lower class, commoner soldier. And people HATED those guys.

there's absolutely no evidence that associates them to lower-classes in period. Victorian era? 20th C? Modern? yes. Actual period documentation which indicates the single-edged arms are associated with lower social classes?

none. And the body of archaeological evidence - swords of tenure presented to bishops, etc, contradicts that.

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Alright, thanks

Have a tarkus

I would also question the rest of the post. symbolism in the everyday life wasn't that big a thing as far as I know, and most of written sources about warfare and the lords suggest that everyone knew that everybody was a gigantic asshole if it come to war and related matters.
Like, cannibalism happened if you walked into the wrong village, or dozens of women drown if the leader of the army thought they are a nuisance.

helmet plus breastplate or mail shirt with minimal padding, quilted armor is hot af.

PS, mail without major padding does kinda such at protecting you from a lot of shit.

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Is that a really derived bollock dagger, or a spear head?

bollock dagger

I admit making a mistaken educated guess about what people associated this or that design with, but I'm talking propaganda here. Yeah, a lot of people really were assholes and you expected it, but if you are thinking about how you portray yourself, that's different.

The ideal knight existed in literature at least, and even if they were totally taking the piss or being completely insincere, people associated themselves with that prestige and image.

More than one king and/or court was NUTS about the stuff. So even if it was just being fashionable or paying lip service so the king like d you more, the imagery of being a knight in shining armor was a thing people aspired to.

If nothing else having fucking manners in court and not being a dick mattered quite a bit, as did the perception that you were loyal and brave.

Although these were always important, even before this particular flowery brand of Chivalry associated with literature and chansons and stuff came into fashion.

I also really think some people really bought it, even if they were arguably naive or unrealistic. Don Quixote is obviously an extreme figure, but there were probably people that leaned that way, and more than one King went down swinging when it was completely stupid for them to even be taking the field, not to mention completely unnecessary.

John of Bohemia died at Crecy, and he couldn't even really make it into the fight without being physically tied to his two most trusted men on either side of him, because he was blind. He didn't have to do that at all, and yet he did, and got praise for it.

>The ideal knight existed in literature at least, and even if they were totally taking the piss or being completely insincere, people associated themselves with that prestige and image.
yeah, victorian literature mostly if you mean the stereotypical knight we all know today.

But here is an interesting read for you, with tons of written sources about how war went back in the day, although I admit most if it is about the era where knights were already obsolete

I seem to remember one of my History of Literature profs told us that once courtly love and other clichés about knights were very mainstream, new knights who grew up reading that literature took it as truth and tried to fit the ideal.
Though this could be only the case for France, since this class was about French literature. Could make sense, because courtly love was a thing in France some time before it was exported to England, and probably elsewhere.

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Would they go into battles with all that stuff on, or was that just for tournaments?

Many of the troubadours were themselves knights. Very popular in France, especially Occitania.

The armour itself could have been worn to battle I'm not entirely certain about the crest, but probably that too.

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Weapons? probably not. I think they found a painted shield at Visby. Some people probably painted their stuff. People get bored and it was probably up to whether the person could or wanted to. It's like helmet art from Vietnam.

>Conquistador edition
Thats an Englishman you fucking pratt