Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

[Myth27]

How thick was the metal of a plate of a very heavy armor of a late medieval knight ?

[Pauly]

How thick was the metal of a plate of a very heavy armor of a late medieval knight ?

Thickness wasn’t uniform, the low stress areas were made thinner and high stress areas made thicker.
Generally speaking 1.5mm to 2mm thick was the usual thickness of large plates, but there is be a lot of variation to thicker or thinner than that. You also have to remember that the full harness included mail and an arming doublet (or equivalent) underneath the plates.

Here is a link to a site that sells historical pieces of armor with thickness measurements.
https://european-armour.com/allenIndex.html

[Martin Greywolf]

How thick was the metal of a plate of a very heavy armor of a late medieval knight ?

Thickness wasn’t uniform, the low stress areas were made thinner and high stress areas made thicker.
Generally speaking 1.5mm to 2mm thick was the usual thickness of large plates, but there is be a lot of variation to thicker or thinner than that. You also have to remember that the full harness included mail and an arming doublet (or equivalent) underneath the plates.

Here is a link to a site that sells historical pieces of armor with thickness measurements.
https://european-armour.com/allenIndex.html

Depends on what you mean by "very heavy armor". Pauly is spot on in all things, but his numbers are those of field plate, i.e. armor you took with yourself to war. There were many specialized tournament armors, and their weight was significantly higher. The ballpark for field plate is 20-25 kg, tournament armor was usually around 40 kg mark, jousting armor was around 60 kg. That gets you 1-2 mm peak thickness for field, 1.5-2.5 for foot tourney and 2-3 mm for jousting.

Spoiler: Henry VIII jousting armor, ~50 kg

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Note that this one is vaguely shaped like the 30 kg tourney plate, has a giant crotch cutout, is missing gloves and is still almost double the weight

Spoiler: Henry VIII, tournament plate, 42 kg

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Spoiler: Henry VIII other tournament plate, 30 kg

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Spoiler: Henry VIII field plate, 23 kg

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So... take your pick which one counts as "very heavy".

[Catullus64]

I have a somewhat strange question regarding the weight of weapons, particularly shields. It's not too difficult to go online and find numerical ranges for the weight of objects like this, but I often find these numbers to be not very helpful, for two reasons:

1) I'm bad with mentally associating numerical weights with everyday objects.
2) Even an accurate weight doesn't tell the whole story about a weapon's handling; shape and distribution of weight make a big difference in how two objects of similar weight will handle.

Has anyone been fortunate enough to handle good replicas of different historical shields? I'd be very interested to know the difference in handling between, say, a Greek aspis and a kite-shaped knightly shield (both strapped to the arm), or between a Roman scutum and an Anglo-Saxon shield (both gripped in the center), and how those traits might be reflective of their differing usages.

[Vinyadan]

I have a somewhat strange question regarding the weight of weapons, particularly shields. It's not too difficult to go online and find numerical ranges for the weight of objects like this, but I often find these numbers to be not very helpful, for two reasons:

1) I'm bad with mentally associating numerical weights with everyday objects.
2) Even an accurate weight doesn't tell the whole story about a weapon's handling; shape and distribution of weight make a big difference in how two objects of similar weight will handle.

Has anyone been fortunate enough to handle good replicas of different historical shields? I'd be very interested to know the difference in handling between, say, a Greek aspis and a kite-shaped knightly shield (both strapped to the arm), or between a Roman scutum and an Anglo-Saxon shield (both gripped in the center), and how those traits might be reflective of their differing usages.

I have not, but I have some frequently heard information. The hoplon/aspis was used in formation and only about half of it covered the bearer, the other half covered the man on his side. Which side, that's a different matter (I have seen depictions of shields on the right or the left). The hoplon had an arm-ring (porpax) close to the centre and a thread to the side (antilabe) to hold with your hand, and sometimes the ring is even depicted closer to the side with the thread. Another often read observation on it is that it partially rested its weight on the shoulder of the bearer.

So I'd expect it to feel and be handled in a rather different way than many other shields.

[Palanan]

I have a question that’s a little broader than specific weapons or armor, but figured this would be a good place to ask.

Can anyone recommend a book which includes a detailed survey of how Roman provinces were governed? I’m interested in how the provincial administrations functioned, whether and how much provincial settlements were able to govern themselves, and how the provinces interacted with Rome and Romanized Italy.

I’m open to sources which go into any aspect of this, whether classical authors or modern scholarship. I’m aware there’s a lot of geography and centuries of governance involved here, so I’m open to anything which touches on even modest portions of this.

[Vinyadan]

I have a question that’s a little broader than specific weapons or armor, but figured this would be a good place to ask.

Can anyone recommend a book which includes a detailed survey of how Roman provinces were governed? I’m interested in how the provincial administrations functioned, whether and how much provincial settlements were able to govern themselves, and how the provinces interacted with Rome and Romanized Italy.

I’m open to sources which go into any aspect of this, whether classical authors or modern scholarship. I’m aware there’s a lot of geography and centuries of governance involved here, so I’m open to anything which touches on even modest portions of this.

Depending on which languages you speak, you can try with the bibliography from this article: https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia...rcheologia%29/

[Martin Greywolf]

Has anyone been fortunate enough to handle good replicas of different historical shields? I'd be very interested to know the difference in handling between, say, a Greek aspis and a kite-shaped knightly shield (both strapped to the arm), or between a Roman scutum and an Anglo-Saxon shield (both gripped in the center), and how those traits might be reflective of their differing usages.

This is another of the how long is a piece of string questions. It cannot be answered, except maybe in a very, very long book.

To make some attempt at it... well. Your first mistake is assuming there is such a thing as aspis that handles a certain way. There isn't. Sure, there is a type of shield called aspis, definet by its shape, but two different examples of aspis will handle very differently, have different thickness and so on, and this is for a fairly rigidly defined shield. Something like a kite shield has a few hundred variations, some can be handled easily, some are essentially tower shields etc.

Weight alone is easy - you start at half a kilo (for some wicker shields) and go up to ten (heavy kite shields and roman scutums).

Very generally, you have two categories of shields, passive and active. Passive shields are so big and heavy you hold them in front of you and fight around them - Roman scutum, kite shields, large pavaises and the like. These are surprisingly easy to use, because you don't move them around much and frequently let them rest on the ground, but it is still a big, heavy object and marching with them is... an experience.

The active shields, you have to move around - bucklers, targes, rotellas and so on. They are small and light enough to do that, but at the higher end of weight range (~5 kg)... Let me put it like this, fighting sword and heater shield, provided you use that heater shield properly and don't let it rest against your body, is the second most physically demanding melee weapon combo. The first is using spear in two hands and a shield.

And then there are the really small shields that really shouldn't be counted as such, your bucklers and small targes. They don't protect against projectiles and aren't expected to stop a pole weapon - they are more like a parrying dagger in many respects, rather than a shield.

[Yora]

How long would it have taken in the 1910s for troop ships to carry soldiers from New Zealand to Turkey?

[Vinyadan]

How long would it have taken in the 1910s for troop ships to carry soldiers from New Zealand to Turkey?

Seven weeks to reach Egypt. You can check how long it took them from Egypt to Turkey.

https://ww100.govt.nz/masseys-touris...force-in-egypt

[Yora]

That is significantly longer than I expected. Fast ocean liners between Europe and North America could make 1000 km per day. At that speed, going from Sidney to Cairo wpuld be possible in 15 days. Seven weeks is three times as much.

I also found a report of a convoy from Los Angeles to Hawaii in 1944, which took 12 days for the 4000 km. Which matches the ~350km per day from the example above.

I think this makes for an interesting data point for plausible travel times between planets for space empires. If it made sense to call in troops from a small colony of juat 1 million (thpugh traveling together with the more numerous Australian troops) who might arrive in 10 weeks, then you can plausibly put small but well equiped colony planets really far out into space.

[Pauly]

That is significantly longer than I expected. Fast ocean liners between Europe and North America could make 1000 km per day. At that speed, going from Sidney to Cairo wpuld be possible in 15 days. Seven weeks is three times as much.

I also found a report of a convoy from Los Angeles to Hawaii in 1944, which took 12 days for the 4000 km. Which matches the ~350km per day from the example above.

I think this makes for an interesting data point for plausible travel times between planets for space empires. If it made sense to call in troops from a small colony of juat 1 million (thpugh traveling together with the more numerous Australian troops) who might arrive in 10 weeks, then you can plausibly put small but well equiped colony planets really far out into space.

The troop ships were in convoys, because of raiders like the SMS Emden, which restricted their speed to the slowest ship in the convoy. Generally this was around 7 knots in WW1. Even after the Emden was sunk there was always fear of Q-ships or the possibility of other raiders being sent.

Fast ocean liners were used as troop transports in the North Atlantic, but they were sent unescorted and relied on their speed to keep out of trouble.

Also the convoys consisted of coal burning ships which needed more frequent refueling than oil burning ships and the refueling took much longer.

[fusilier]

That is significantly longer than I expected. Fast ocean liners between Europe and North America could make 1000 km per day. At that speed, going from Sidney to Cairo wpuld be possible in 15 days. Seven weeks is three times as much.

I also found a report of a convoy from Los Angeles to Hawaii in 1944, which took 12 days for the 4000 km. Which matches the ~350km per day from the example above.

I think this makes for an interesting data point for plausible travel times between planets for space empires. If it made sense to call in troops from a small colony of juat 1 million (thpugh traveling together with the more numerous Australian troops) who might arrive in 10 weeks, then you can plausibly put small but well equiped colony planets really far out into space.

They didn't always travel in convoys. Also, they may have made a lot of stops on the way which would have slowed them down. While not giving much in the way of times, this webpage gets in details of how the WW1 troopships from Australia operated. Although most of the information is about ships heading to Britain.

https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/wars-...tion/transport

[Martin Greywolf]

Also keep in mind that the ship speed may not be the bottleneck that is slowing the whole thing down. If there aren't enough guns to send with the troops, if there is some sort of political agreement that needs to be hashed out, if the place the troops are heading for (or any stops along the way) is short on water/food/coal... It's why you tend to see admirals travel around extremely quickly compared to soldiers - they hitch a ride with whatever ship leaves the soonest, and *are* actually travelling more or less at ship speed. Ordinary troops, on the other hand, well, you better hope that the port you get stuck at for two weeks because of supply issues is Mallorca rather than Murmansk.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Palanan
I have a question that’s a little broader than specific weapons or armor, but figured this would be a good place to ask.

Can anyone recommend a book which includes a detailed survey of how Roman provinces were governed? I’m interested in how the provincial administrations functioned, whether and how much provincial settlements were able to govern themselves, and how the provinces interacted with Rome and Romanized Italy.

I’m open to sources which go into any aspect of this, whether classical authors or modern scholarship. I’m aware there’s a lot of geography and centuries of governance involved here, so I’m open to anything which touches on even modest portions of this.

Originally Posted by Vinyadan
Depending on which languages you speak, you can try with the bibliography from this article….

I’ve been meaning to follow up on this. I appreciate the linked article, but most of the bibliography seems to be focused on ancient architecture and urban design—which is very interesting, but not what I was going for.

Any other suggestions on books describing how the Roman provinces were governed, and how that interacted with the governance of individual settlements within those provinces?

[Gnoman]

That is significantly longer than I expected. Fast ocean liners between Europe and North America could make 1000 km per day. At that speed, going from Sidney to Cairo wpuld be possible in 15 days. Seven weeks is three times as much.

I also found a report of a convoy from Los Angeles to Hawaii in 1944, which took 12 days for the 4000 km. Which matches the ~350km per day from the example above.

Traveling 1000km a day requires a sustained speed of 22 knots. 350km a day is 8 knots.

Getting speed on a ship is not a trivial task, and increases are not linear. The Olympic-class ocean liners (Titanic being the most famous of these), massed 52000 tons, made 23 knots, and carried 6000 troops during wartime service - somewhere around 10 tons per passenger. SS Justicia, a different converted liner, massed 32000 tons, made 18 knots, and was able to carry 4000 troops - 8 tons per passenger. USS Henry R. Mallory, (one of the ships used to transport the American Expeditionary Force) on the other hand, massed 11000 tons, moved at only 15 knots, and carried 2200 troops - 5 tons per passenger. Perhaps a more telling example is the Edward Luckenbach, a pure cargo design (albeit much more modern than the rest, having been launched in 1916 with the latest and greatest engine tech) grossing 8000 tons at 15 knots, carrying up to 2200 troops - 4 tons per passenger.

Or, in other words, you could get seven Edward Luckenbach with the tonange of an Olympic, while an Olympic carries less than three times as many troops. This is partially because the latter is geared more toward luxury, but a larger part is that they have to spend a ginormous amount of their mass on generating the enormous amount of power they need to generate that speed.

Note that these are flank speeds - what the ship can do if it is going all-out. Note also that Titanic was considered an extremely fast ship and was going for a crossing-time record on her maiden voyage. That level of speed is not an expected standard - running steam boilers at maximum pressure for long periods of time tended to make them explode. Fuel consumption also goes way, way up. For extended voyages, you aren't going flat-out.


The other issue is that ships in wartime don't often sail in a straight line. They zig-zag so that a raider or U-boat has a harder time intercepting them from a given sighting - a straight projection of their course won't lead you to them. That adds a lot of travel time.

Really, 350km a day is awful generous and would have required either excessive risk of interception or putting heavy strain on the engines.

[Yora]

My interest was really mostly about what amounts of transit times people accepted historically to maintain stable links to the government, not so much ship speeds.
Shipping the ANZAC troops to Turkey was the longest distance I can think of for movement of combat troops in the middle of a war.

[Gnoman]

Fair. I was mostly trying to demonstrate why the times were what they were, and why the listed example was a fairly fast crossing.

[Mechalich]

My interest was really mostly about what amounts of transit times people accepted historically to maintain stable links to the government, not so much ship speeds.
Shipping the ANZAC troops to Turkey was the longest distance I can think of for movement of combat troops in the middle of a war.

The amount of time could be quite long. Many of the large European colonial empires were spread out enough that, should something like a major rebellion occur, it would take years for a response to occur. A useful non-political example, is the case of the Mutiny on the Bounty. The Bounty departed England in Dec 23 1787; the mutiny occurred on Apr 28, 1789; some of the mutineers settled on Tahiti and were apprehended in Mar 1791 by the HMS Pandora; those mutineers were returned to England, court martialed, and hanged in Oct 1792. This case demonstrates that even over a seemingly minor matter the empire was able to maintain control at a distance of many months communication and travel.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Yora
My interest was really mostly about what amounts of transit times people accepted historically to maintain stable links to the government….

You might look at some of C.J. Cherryh’s Alliance/Union novels, which feature trade routes among nearby stars which take months or years to travel via FTL. She’s meticulously mapped out the ramifications to governments, colonies, and stations over a number of books, and how governments maintain or don’t maintain control over those timescales is one of her underlying themes.

[Martin Greywolf]

You might look at some of C.J. Cherryh’s Alliance/Union novels, which feature trade routes among nearby stars which take months or years to travel via FTL. She’s meticulously mapped out the ramifications to governments, colonies, and stations over a number of books, and how governments maintain or don’t maintain control over those timescales is one of her underlying themes.

We had that thing in real life, we called it pre-industrial era. Looking at pretty much any large state before steam power and telegram were a thing will give you a good idea, whether it is how Roman empire dealt with region borders and its postal systems, how Mongols handled this (and their postals system), China and it's don't make me come over there tributary system, and probably the best for research if you aren't willing to go looking for obscure dissertations, British Empire with its colonies, always at least months away from London.

The gist of it is that you don't really transport troops - you have various colonial forces on the spot, and only large conflicts force you to dip into core of your army, which does take months to get to where the trouble is, relying on the colonial forces to hold on until then.

Looking at WW1 in this context is not a good idea, no one was expecting a conflict of that size to happen, and everyone had zero experience with logistics of it. A better place to go would be WW2 and take a couple of knots of speed away from ships, by then, people more or less knew what the hell they were doing.

[NRSASD]

I’m running a 1830’s France game, and I suddenly have a character with a FN Model 1910. How does that compare to a flintlock pistol? Specifically, I’m talking about accuracy, range, and impact on the target. I’m trying to figure out how to rule how much “damage” it does, and while I have stats for the flintlock, I don’t know enough to compare.

If this is relevant, it is Gavrilo Princep’s FN Model 1910.

[halfeye]

I’m running a 1830’s France game, and I suddenly have a character with a FN Model 1910. How does that compare to a flintlock pistol? Specifically, I’m talking about accuracy, range, and impact on the target. I’m trying to figure out how to rule how much “damage” it does, and while I have stats for the flintlock, I don’t know enough to compare.

If this is relevant, it is Gavrilo Princep’s FN Model 1910.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FN_Model_1910

That's ridiculous. The clue is in the name.

The damage on a hit might be slightly down, but the rate of fire would be up from five minutes to reload a single shot to firing a magazine (six shots) as fast as the trigger can be pulled, the ease of use would be better and the accuracy at short to medium ranges might improve considerably.

On the other hand, where is the player getting cartridges from? They shouldn't be available at that time, nobody makes them because they don't know how, and there are no guns to fire them.

[Gnoman]

I’m running a 1830’s France game, and I suddenly have a character with a FN Model 1910. How does that compare to a flintlock pistol? Specifically, I’m talking about accuracy, range, and impact on the target. I’m trying to figure out how to rule how much “damage” it does, and while I have stats for the flintlock, I don’t know enough to compare.

If this is relevant, it is Gavrilo Princep’s FN Model 1910.

I'm going to assume this is some sort of time-travel or dimension-hopping thing, because -as halfeye alludes to- the FN 1910 was invented 80 years after your time period.


That said, comparing the two isn't that difficult.


The specific 1910 you're using is chambered in .380 ACP. This round is small and weak enough that the usual comparisons between black powder and smokeless don't matter that much - the round is light, but not faster than you'd get with black powder. Compared to the sort of big-bore pistol you'd see in that period, half damage is probably Good Enough! if you're going very abstract. For a more detailed comparison, the easiest thing to do would be to check the derived stats used in GURPS.

There, you have a typical military-grade flintlock pistol at 2D6 with the Large Piercing damage type (1.5x multiplier to damage that gets past Damage Reduction), and the .380 at 2d6-1 with a Piercing damage type (no modifier to damage). Which makes them almost identical at punching through armor (.380 is not a fast round and thus lacks a lot of the advantages you normally see in modern guns), with the more modern weapon doing about 2/3s the damage. This works if whatever system you're using is a bit less abstract.


That said, every other factor favors the M1910. The flintlock is a single shot, extremely large (there were very few small pistols in that era, and most were along the size of a Desert Eagle or similar), has rudimentary sights, and takes a long time to reload. You might be able to outdo the two shots a minute that a period longarm would do, but not by that much.

Meanwhile, the 1910 is very small (which not only makes concealment easier, but makes it much handier to use, and thus more accurate), has better sights, carries six rounds, and reloads so much faster that the difference in fire rate is effectively incomparable. In the time it takes to fire the flintlock twice, you can probably have fired as many magazines as you can carry.

Replacing the ammunition, however, would be effectively impossible. Even if you have a mold to make replacement bullets, and save all your casings, neither nitro propellants or percussion primers exist in 1830. Unless you have a supply link back to wherever you got the pistol from, you have all the ammo you started with and that's it.

[NRSASD]

Thank you! And yeah, dimension hopping is a thing. More specifically, a player wished for "a pistol to kill royalty" and that seemed like too good a fit not to pass up.

[Martin Greywolf]

You might be able to outdo the two shots a minute that a period longarm would do, but not by that much.

I don't think so. Long arms being larger often makes them easier to reload, not harder. You can let your musket rest on the ground and most of the motions you need to make are nice and large. A pistol is a small, fiddly thing that you have to brace against weird things, best reloaded at a table.

Even if you have a mold to make replacement bullets, and save all your casings, neither nitro propellants or percussion primers exist in 1830.

Percussion primers are just about becoming a thing (invention is 1807-1820-ish, depending on what you count as percussion), but the real problem is gunpowder. Unless you have some sort of smokeless powder, it will make your gun jam within about 50-100 rounds. That's with modern black powder mixes, whatever gunpowder you have in your world may be worse in the fouling department and make it jam sooner.

To solve this jamming problem, you'd have to take the whole gun apart and thoroughly clean it, which takes time and requires konwledge (or a lot of figuring out) on how to do it, or you won't be able to put that gun back together.

[Gnoman]

I don't think so. Long arms being larger often makes them easier to reload, not harder. You can let your musket rest on the ground and most of the motions you need to make are nice and large. A pistol is a small, fiddly thing that you have to brace against weird things, best reloaded at a table.

I'm not really familiar with pistol drill of the period, about all I know is that it was possible but cumbersome to reload on horseback (such as in a caracole).

Percussion primers are just about becoming a thing (invention is 1807-1820-ish, depending on what you count as percussion), but the real problem is gunpowder. Unless you have some sort of smokeless powder, it will make your gun jam within about 50-100 rounds. That's with modern black powder mixes, whatever gunpowder you have in your world may be worse in the fouling department and make it jam sooner.

To solve this jamming problem, you'd have to take the whole gun apart and thoroughly clean it, which takes time and requires konwledge (or a lot of figuring out) on how to do it, or you won't be able to put that gun back together.

[/quote]

Black powder will also have severe issues in a package that small - without compressed powder (not introduced until the late 1880s) the amount of BP you can fit in a .380 case is going to be extremely anemic.

Meanwhile a primer isn't just a percussion cap shoved into the base of the cartridge. The formulation's different, which changes the way it reacts. In any case, it took until the 1840s for caps to really start becoming common - ten years earlier they were an expensive and dangerous novelty.

[Catullus64]

I'm developing a fictional culture, and want to lavish plenty of detail on their material possessions. In particular, I want to portray a how a violent culture on the knife's edge of subsistence still chooses to invest resources and effort into beauty and artistry. While I'm not exclusively concerned with weapons, that is the focus of this thread. So I thought I'd come here to learn something. Tell me about what you consider some of the most beautifully decorated historical weapons and armor; tell me interesting examples from history or archaeology of how fighters decorated and beautified themselves, or how they otherwise personalized their tools of war. Pretty much any pre-industrial culture is a welcome source of ideas, even if my own fictional one will end up being more narrow in its influence.

[Pauly]

I'm developing a fictional culture, and want to lavish plenty of detail on their material possessions. In particular, I want to portray a how a violent culture on the knife's edge of subsistence still chooses to invest resources and effort into beauty and artistry. While I'm not exclusively concerned with weapons, that is the focus of this thread. So I thought I'd come here to learn something. Tell me about what you consider some of the most beautifully decorated historical weapons and armor; tell me interesting examples from history or archaeology of how fighters decorated and beautified themselves, or how they otherwise personalized their tools of war. Pretty much any pre-industrial culture is a welcome source of ideas, even if my own fictional one will end up being more narrow in its influence.

In any culture the rich dudes had the beautiful richly decorated weapons. Just for clarification are you talking about regular soldiers/tribesmen with highly ornamented weapons?

[Martin Greywolf]

In particular, I want to portray a how a violent culture on the knife's edge of subsistence still chooses to invest resources and effort into beauty and artistry.

Usually, it doesn't. If you are on the edge of starvation, one of three things is liable to happen in the next 5 years: your people move to somewhere nicer, the situation drastically improves, or some of the many possible disasters strikes and finally wipes you out.

Second thing I take issue is violent cultures as such. If you take a good look at any cultures that were claimed to be violent, you will find that there was little difference between them and most of their contemporaries. This goes for vikings, Roman empire, assorted nomadic tribes and several others we aren't allowed to discuss here - hell, even modern culture, the least violent one there ever was, maintains massive armed forces. There aren't any non-violent cultures either, since those tend to get absorbed into the violent ones pretty much immediately, and the level of violence tends to be kept at a nice, sustainable level.

This is pretty important for you, because no culture will have "violence" as its trait, even if it is militant, or warrior-like, or have raiders as an established part of it, there will be more to it, and that informs your material culture quite a lot. A raiding culture, like vikings or nomads, will value items from far away lands, since they show that you are good at their preferred method of warfare. A militant state approximating Romans will put more value on state trophies earned in war. An individualistic warrior-oriented culture (e.g. knights, Landsknechts) will demand its warriors to put a significant chunk of their income into sprucing up their equipment and making it stand out.

It will also determine what is depicted on the decorations, nomads will try to mimic far away styles, Romans will be more focused on showing officers commanding armies in great victories, knights will be more into depictions of individual feats of prowess. This won't affect all of these (there are scenes of kings commanding armies in illuminations of chronicles), but they will dictate what the majority of them shows.

Pretty much any pre-industrial culture is a welcome source of ideas, even if my own fictional one will end up being more narrow in its influence.

I mean... google "<culture descriptor or name> decorated weapons" and you will find what you want, especially for high status pieces.

In general, you will see four principal means of decoration: paint, plating, covering and carving.

Paint is clear enough, slap some paint on it, maybe put some pictures on instead of simple patterns. What the paint uses as its base will determine how long it lasts, and how water resistant it is, but we have solid evidence of this being done pretty much as long as there was paint. As an added bonus, it protects the item from rust.

Spoiler: Painted helmets in theory and practice

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Plating is the same as paint, but with metal! Methods of attaching this vary, but the idea is to put some other metal on your steel weapon and the more expensive the metal, the more rich you are. You can start with iron on steel for slight contrast and end up with gold damascening. As an added bonus, it protects the item from rust. (well, some of it does)

Spoiler: Plating in practice

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Covering is using some sort of fabric-like material and gluing or otherwise attaching it on the object in question.This is a nice middle ground in expenditure between painting armor and plating armor with gold, so you are pretty likely to see a lot of it. Unfortunately, it being the armor of the working knight also means there are very little examples of it left, and ti isn't popular enough to spawn many replicas. You're likely to see it done with leather (because leather is cool, apparently), historically, linen and velvet were the most common. As an added bonus, it protects the item from rust.

Spoiler: What little there is

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Carving is, well, carving some pattern into the weapon of your choice, and while this can be done with steel, it is popular with wood - especially since you can do this while on capaign to stave off boredom. Shaping the object itself is a subcategory, and since that counts (in my head, at least), putting in bits of metal to put gems into also does. As an added bonus, it protects the item from ru... wait, no, it doesn't. For once.

Spoiler: WW1 rifle, carved by solider on campaign

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Spoiler: Some premediated carving

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