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

[Pauly]

What would be the best way to cook food using fire while trying to hide your location if someone is looking for it? Would daytime or nighttime be better? What's easiest to spot from further away.

This is one person on foot, so there is a limit to how much they can carry and how far they can travel. She's living alone, hunting for food, but can't risk food poisoning because she's alone in the wilderness, trying to bring as little notice to her home as possible.

What tech level are we talking about?
In modern era gas canisters or compressed fuel such as hexamine burn without creating smoke.
In earlier tech levels dried wood or charcoal will both burn with no visible smoke, although starting the fire from kindling may create smoke. In most wooded areas you should be able to acquire sufficient fallen branches to create smokeless fire.

Generally speaking daytime is better unless there is some specific problem due to smoke such as a lack of dried wood. Firstly fires are very visible at night. Secondly preparing and cooking food just by campfire light/starlight is very inconvenient especially if you are shielding the light.

Another source of smoke to be aware of is smoke from the food being cooked and cooking utensils. The utensils will acquire a build up of food particles that will carbonize and smoke if they aren’t thoroughly cleaned. Food left unattended will burn and smoke. Roasting meat directly over the fire can lead to fat dripping into the fire and causing smome.

On food poisoning, storing food without refrigeration is a higher risk than eating freshly killed food raw. Certain parasites may be transferable if the food is uncooked, but as a general rule that is more common with domesticated animals than with wild animals.

[Sapphire Guard]

Fire pit was mostly what I was thinking, is there any disadvantage to it? (the obvious one being time and effort). If someone comes across it, it's going to be obvious what it is, but digging new ones regularly is just too much work.

It's a 'burn whatever you can find lying around relatively nearby' kind of situation. The process of making charcoal makes smoke in itself IIRC, and you have to sit around for three days watching it, she might stumble across a stash somewhere but she's not going to be able to make it. gas cannisters might exist but she's not likely to find one lying around. High quality fuels are not very likely, because whatever she uses she has to find or make herself.

If she's by the sea, is salt curing viable?

[Maat Mons]

Does she have access to a couple of old cans?

[Pauly]

Salt curing requires access to salt, which may be available from salt pans, but is generally a PITA to make from seawater IRL. One of my suppliers makes salt from seawater in Ishigaki Jima and their starting point is seawater from the calmest and clearest lagoons otherwise there are too many impurities,
Salt curing requires low humidity, which is why it is traditional to Scandinavia not Polynesia.
When I do salt curing in my restaurant with perfect ingredients and conditions it takes a minimum of 1 week to get a good effect. Maybe you could halve the time for survival consumption and you weren’t worried about the taste.

One alternative to a fire pit is a hibachi grill. They’re quite light and easy to carry and very fuel efficient.

[stoutstien]

Fire pit was mostly what I was thinking, is there any disadvantage to it? (the obvious one being time and effort). If someone comes across it, it's going to be obvious what it is, but digging new ones regularly is just too much work.

It's a 'burn whatever you can find lying around relatively nearby' kind of situation. The process of making charcoal makes smoke in itself IIRC, and you have to sit around for three days watching it, she might stumble across a stash somewhere but she's not going to be able to make it. gas cannisters might exist but she's not likely to find one lying around. High quality fuels are not very likely, because whatever she uses she has to find or make herself.

If she's by the sea, is salt curing viable?

If she can find ways to fish and they are lean air curing is very easy and can be done on the move. Oil heavy fish are harder but if you can get some way to pickle them that can work and could be a good way to store caches.

[Sapphire Guard]

As always, I remain impressed by the quality of the response in this thread. Thanks all.

[Maat Mons]

Alright, so glaives. I mean the polearms, not swords. I've seen glaives with projections for hooking, or for catching weapons. I've seen swords with S-shaped crossguards/quillions. It strikes me that, while a crossguard near the end of a polearm wouldn't be much use in protecting your hands, an S-shaped, crossguard-like projection just below the blade of a glaive could be used for hooking or catching weapons. Was this ever done, historically? So, for example, like this thing, but with a polearm haft instead of a sword handle?

Edit: Nevermind, I found one.

[stoutstien]

Alright, so glaives. I mean the polearms, not swords. I've seen glaives with projections for hooking, or for catching weapons. I've seen swords with S-shaped crossguards/quillions. It strikes me that, while a crossguard near the end of a polearm wouldn't be much use in protecting your hands, an S-shaped, crossguard-like projection just below the blade of a glaive could be used for hooking or catching weapons. Was this ever done, historically? So, for example, like this thing, but with a polearm haft instead of a sword handle?

Edit: Nevermind, I found one.

Look into bill or bill hooks. Little confusing as it's the same name as the agricultural tool it's based on.

There are so many different types of pole arm head variations real attempt to catalog them in totality. I have one book that has almost 9,000 variation of pole hammers alone.

[Frozenstep]

What kind of armors are there in the 20~40 pound (9-18 kg) range? Basically, I'm brainstorming ideas for "medium" armor, because in the setting I'm writing, some magics have their intensity scale inversely with the user's weight, particularly weight that is worn/carried rather then body weight. I've looked into stuff like "partial plate armor" setups, but could use more ideas. Looking for non-modern examples, I guess.

[Pauly]

What kind of armors are there in the 20~40 pound (9-18 kg) range? Basically, I'm brainstorming ideas for "medium" armor, because in the setting I'm writing, some magics have their intensity scale inversely with the user's weight, particularly weight that is worn/carried rather then body weight. I've looked into stuff like "partial plate armor" setups, but could use more ideas. Looking for non-modern examples, I guess.

Armor often was a sequence or continuum rather than a set of discrete distinguishable armors.
For example in the late medieval period an arming doublet was the minimum (cloth armor) a soldier would wear. Then over the top of the arming doublet he could wear mail. Then if he was especially well off be might wear a plate harness.
And the same man might on a quiet day go riding in his arming doublet. If he thought bandits were afoot he might wear his mail, then don his plate if it was a wartime campaign.
Then in addition to the torso you have similar issues with helmets, vambraces, greaves gauntlet, poldroons etc etc etc.

[tyckspoon]

What kind of armors are there in the 20~40 pound (9-18 kg) range? Basically, I'm brainstorming ideas for "medium" armor, because in the setting I'm writing, some magics have their intensity scale inversely with the user's weight, particularly weight that is worn/carried rather then body weight. I've looked into stuff like "partial plate armor" setups, but could use more ideas. Looking for non-modern examples, I guess.

It turns out this is roughly the amount of weight you can hang on the body of a person and expect them to be able to still consistently move and physically exert themselves for relatively long periods of time. If your armor is lighter than that, you probably start adding more of it for better protection. If it's heavier than that, the prospective wearers start ditching it because it starts seeming more worthwhile to risk being injured than to deal with transporting and wearing it. So.. in a very, very broad and probably useless sense.. the answer is 'all of them.' If you can make armor, the kit probably ends up being somewhere in that range. Maybe a bit heavier in total if you have good tech for distributing weight and are accounting for an entire suit of arms/hand/leg/foot pieces, less if you end up hanging it all off the shoulders or only have coverage on torso and maybe shoulders/upper arms/hips/thighs and are leaving the lower extremities uncovered or counting on a shield.

[Spiryt]

What kind of armors are there in the 20~40 pound (9-18 kg) range? Basically, I'm brainstorming ideas for "medium" armor, because in the setting I'm writing, some magics have their intensity scale inversely with the user's weight, particularly weight that is worn/carried rather then body weight. I've looked into stuff like "partial plate armor" setups, but could use more ideas. Looking for non-modern examples, I guess.

Generally you can have any armor in that weight, really.

Plate armor that's 3mm thick will be pretty much exactly 3 times heavier than the one that's 1mm thick.

There are some amazingly light suits of pretty complete plate harnesses out there, and there are also thick, monstrous ones weighing well over 80 pounds, made for jousting or trying to resists musket balls.


Mail armor could very extremely in weight depending on density, thickness of wire, rivets, overlap etc.

There are shirts of fine mail that weight well under 10 pounds, while fitting on decent size torso, with medium length sleeves.

Spoiler

Show

https://wallacelive.wallacecollectio...sp=F&sp=T&sp=0

And then there are remains of Roman mail from Stari Jankovci with massive rings that would weight at least 40 pounds if they've formed shirt covering the same area.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV1a2tc-ieA&t=3s

Then linen jack made out of 30 layers of linen is going to be roughly 3 times heavier than the one made out of 10 layers. And when you add in the fact that density of linen fabric available with medieval technology could vary greatly, depending on technology, quality and intended function, difference can be even greater, in fact one linen fabric can easily be twice as dense as the other.



So D&D and similar systems with their classification of armors into light, medium etc. is rather misleading. Pretty much everything, no matter of construction and material can be made very heavy or very light, and it indeed was often being made so.

[Maat Mons]

I was wondering about late medieval armor for lower-class soldiers. I found the Wikipedia articles for Almain rivet and munition armour. Are the armors pictured there fairly typical? What was worn on the areas not covered by plate? (The legs for the “three-quarters armour,” or the arms and legs both for the “half-armour.”) Chainmail? Padded armor? Just regular clothing? (Also, are “half-armour” and “three-quarters armour” widely used terms?)

[Gnoman]

I was wondering about late medieval armor for lower-class soldiers. I found the Wikipedia articles for Almain rivet and munition armour. Are the armors pictured there fairly typical? What was worn on the areas not covered by plate? (The legs for the “three-quarters armour,” or the arms and legs both for the “half-armour.”) Chainmail? Padded armor? Just regular clothing? (Also, are “half-armour” and “three-quarters armour” widely used terms?)

This is generally "early modern" era, not "late medieval", as this sort of thing requires the increasingly global trade that is one of the markers of the transition. This might help further searches.


More directly relevant, it was very common for the missing elements of plate to be covered primarily by ordinary (but fabulous) clothing. This reduced weight significantly, and it was gradually beginning to be understood that various factors made hits to the legs (cavalrymen's legs get a lot of protection from the horse itself, and people fighting on foot will generally be swinging at their opponent's upper body) and arm (the arm gets a fair bit of protection from the weapon itself) far less likely than hits to the body and head. Reducing or eliminating armor there gave up little effective protection for most soldiers, while greatly reducing the cost and weight of the equipment. This lower cost allowed a lord or mercenary captain to deploy more armored soldiers for the same amount of coin.

[Spiryt]

Mail sleeves were very popular piece of kit in late 15th century and throughout the 16th, present in all kinds of arsenals, transactions with armorers or traders etc. They would however be somehow expensive, so it depends on how "munitions" it gets.

If the price of this almain rivet is 7 shillings and 6 pennies, then it would be worth roughly 43 grams of silver, if I didn't screw something up with math.

While in 1575, cheapest mail sleeves in Kraków would be worth about 180 grams of silver, so would be actually many times more expensive than the set above. Most expensive mail sleeves could be over two times as expensive as cheapest ones.

There was quite a lot of inflation going on between 1546 and 1575, but still.

[Maat Mons]

Were there ever any halberds with hammerheads on the back instead of spikes or hooks? Alternately, were there ever any poleaxes in the 6-foot-plus size range? Alternate-alternately, were there ever any lucerne hammers or becs de corbin with axeheads instead of spikes?

[tyckspoon]

Were there ever any halberds with hammerheads on the back instead of spikes or hooks? Alternately, were there ever any poleaxes in the 6-foot-plus size range? Alternate-alternately, were there ever any lucerne hammers or becs de corbin with axeheads instead of spikes?

If you can imagine an arrangement of striking surfaces, somebody has put it on the end of a stick at some point or decided to find out what happens if you made that stick longer or shorter. If you ask 'did anybody ever do this', the answer is almost certainly yes. If you're looking for a historical record of it or wanting to know if such an arrangement was commonly used, well, different issue and one I am not prepared to give a confident answer on. (If you're wanting to know in relation to setting up something for a game, tho, it would be very difficult to come up with a polearm that is blatantly a-historical, pretty much any assortment of 'bit you can strike people with' + 'bit you can stab people with' + 'and now it's on the end of a long stick' will be fairly close to known polearms.)

[stoutstien]

Were there ever any halberds with hammerheads on the back instead of spikes or hooks? Alternately, were there ever any poleaxes in the 6-foot-plus size range? Alternate-alternately, were there ever any lucerne hammers or becs de corbin with axeheads instead of spikes?

Yes
Yes
Yes

If there is one family of weapons that came close to what fantasy tropes have it's pole weapons. They tried everything.

[Spiryt]

I honestly can't recall any halberd with any kind of hammerhead instead of spike. There were halberds with saber blade instead of top spike, and other quite crazy things, but rear head was pretty much always spike.

Since halberds were pretty much one piece blade by definition, going from thin, flat axe blade to hammer would be quite challenging.

Does anyone have any examples?

[Maat Mons]

Did these amalgamations ever become popular enough to earn a name? Not just a description like “halberd with a hammerhead.” I mean something like “great poleaxe,” “Khazad-dûm hammer,” or “bec de axe beak.”

[stoutstien]

Did these amalgamations ever become popular enough to earn a name? Not just a description like “halberd with a hammerhead.” I mean something like “great poleaxe,” “Khazad-dûm hammer,” or “bec de axe beak.”

Unfortunately unlike swords there wasn't anyone like Ewart Oakeshott who spent a large portion of their life going around classifying polearms.

I have quite a few references book regarding polearms and halberds and they are chalked full of pictures and illustrations of them that might have a rough year or armory of origin but otherwise unnamed.

[Thane of Fife]

Cameron Stone's glossary has a picture (under Pole Arms) of what looks like basically a halberd with a hammer head on the other side (though it's hard to tell given the angle of the picture). He just describes it as "Axe, French, middle of the 14th century."

[stoutstien]

Cameron Stone's glossary has a picture (under Pole Arms) of what looks like basically a halberd with a hammer head on the other side (though it's hard to tell given the angle of the picture). He just describes it as "Axe, French, middle of the 14th century."

Yep. My favorite one from that book was on of the German ones that translated to "armor opening stick" or something like that.

[Maat Mons]

But really, what weapon name can compare to the goedendag?

[Pauly]

But really, what weapon name can compare to the goedendag?

The bollocks dagger?

[Grim Portent]

Yep. My favorite one from that book was on of the German ones that translated to "armor opening stick" or something like that.

You have to love literal naming conventions.

It gives the impression that the weapon was impromptly named by a really tired drill instructor. It's got 'the pointy end goes in the enemy you dolts,' energy.

[stoutstien]

You have to love literal naming conventions.

It gives the impression that the weapon was impromptly named by a really tired drill instructor. It's got 'the pointy end goes in the enemy you dolts,' energy.

I'm kind of a huge blacksmith nerd and one of my pet theories is that they named them based on the descriptions that were given in the request.

Making a bill for war vs agricultural is a few Hammer swings, a different heat treat, and a sturdier socket connection. Wasn't really much point and giving it a new name. Though there are a few examples of giving them a different name so they could charge more which I always found hilarious. It's basically the same thing that you see today when you have advertisements for "military grade".

[snowblizz]

I honestly can't recall any halberd with any kind of hammerhead instead of spike. There were halberds with saber blade instead of top spike, and other quite crazy things, but rear head was pretty much always spike.

Since halberds were pretty much one piece blade by definition, going from thin, flat axe blade to hammer would be quite challenging.

Does anyone have any examples?

The problem with various polearms is that a halberd with a back hammer could be indistinguishable from a pollaxe. Also saying "well halberd is... by definition" is a very dangerous position to take. There will be tons of halberds that do not particularly conform to your definition.

I've seen halberds that have such small axe parts one wonders how it's a halberd, like an early halberd might be almost a spade sized piece with a couple of points whereas a late halberd is a half-moon blade at the front with lots of spikes in all directions. And a late halberd might as well be a partizan as function goes.

The thing is for the people who used them it wasn't a huge deal exactly how the dimensions and features of a pole weapon made it categorically different from another, so they really didn't hugely make distinctions. Neither did they with swords, Oakeshotte is of course a modern scholar trying to fit everything into neat categories that none in the past had any thought to do because it would have been meaningless to them.

[Perch]

Planing a camping on a sieged city, any tips on how to make the logistics, situations and encounters realistic and interesting?

[stoutstien]

Planing a camping on a sieged city, any tips on how to make the logistics, situations and encounters realistic and interesting?

I think regardless of what period you're looking at you'd have to realize that sieges are impractical on both sides and neither one wants it to last longer than it needs to.

It's low intensity and has a high resource cost which is probably the worse combination. It's mostly psychological warfare so it's hard to make it interesting as encounters unless one is actively breaking a siege one way or the other.