Swords that Ain't D&D

LOL! I wasn't sure where to put this piece, as it deals with martial arts, but it deals with weaponry, mostly swords, and there will be no weapons training in, "the Work of Completion," not even a true martial-arts form - and after wondering if the more general "Don't Write Well," blog might be better - I'm still going to stash the piece here. A sentence in English of which Dickens might take pride! By the way - Dickens is still the best novelist in English letters.

So - let us take your run-of-the-mill, min/maxed "bastard sword, vorpal +5, soul-reaving," or whatever nonsense it is you rp'ers role out there. I will never rpg again, and there will be a further post on that, but I enjoyed the games, and there is plenty of room to be silly. However, my eyebrows will raise if you pick the min/maxed-bs as one of my players.

In actuality, the bastard sword was a slightly shorter Scottish-claymore with a haft shorter by scale by a good bit. The design was far superior to the claymore, but by the time the design came along, muskets arrived very quickly, and that was the end of the need for such swords. The function of a claymore type-sword was for the footman (AKA a slave who will wind up dead in any battle) and it was really a great big machete. To use another metaphor, it was a great big hatchet with a very long range.

Now, the Scots were mean with a claymore - I mean really - really mean, but the claymore used in combat was generally some lead or some copper formed into a rough-sword shape to be used as a battle-ax. They required very little skill to use, and that was a benefit, and they had a long range. When I was in Edinburgh, I saw many ceremonial claymores, and these were generally mostly of silver, but these beautiful blades were mostly for political rites or other ceremonies.

There were four other basic types of blades actually used in combat, and our fourth is only a possibility. The first was the rapier, (the rah-pee-ay) and it required a great deal of skill to use, but was no good against armored troops, and was therefore mostly used in duels between nobility, or to nod a wonderful woman I knew, in stage drama in a safer form.

However - think of fencing, where the safer epee (eh-pay) form of a rapier is used. They are constantly scoring double points, and the scores are so rapid you can miss the point if you blink. What this meant is that many rapier duels ended in a double-kill, and as a noble I might have sucked in my pride and avoided such a duel as, "discretion is the better part of valor."

The next was a saber, and in general a saber was a shorter-range version of this garbage-metal blade, again used as a machete. However, the saber took little skill to use, and other than ceremonial swords, some cultures spent insane funds and time forging incredibly sharp and deadly sabers. One example is in the Arab nations, and the other more famed one is among the Japanese Samurai.

In the Arab nations, a combat saber of high-quality had a deep curve, and used a bronze alloy that was sharp enough to defy our knowledge of bronze. The bronze was very deep and coppery in color, and that saber was a mean, tough SOB. It required some skill to use, and the Arabs developed a very sophisticated martial-art around the saber.

So we must dispel some delusions about the japanese katana-saber. A combat saber of high-quality in Japan was pattern-welded, and the process was so involved that not many such blades were made. Most samurai had no access to such a saber.

The pattern-welding process used in the katana was just as good as that used to make Renaissance pattern-welded longswords, which we will discuss in a later paragraph, and those Japanese sabers were so incredibly sharp that it defies the mind. That is real.

Also, like any saber, it doesn't take a great deal of skill to fight with a saber, but the Japanese Feudal era was more at war than Feudal Europe, and the sophistication of the Japanese sword-fighting of the time also defies the mind. That form of kendo is illegal in Japan today, and has most likely disappeared.

The next sword is one of my favorites - this is a bit vicious - and it was the Saxon broadsword. The Saxon broadsword was bronze and it was pattern-welded out of three cables made of wires. The cables were not so easy to make, but once they were made, this was the simplest form of pattern-welding in history. It followed that since the Saxons were a small tribe, that most Saxon warriors had such a broadsword, and even made of junk-bronze, they were real sharp.

The Saxon broadsword was no D&D mockup either. It was about two feet or so long, and maybe 8 inches wide, and the cabling made it have these tongues between the rods where the rods had been forged together. You're saying, "that dorky short-sword I saw in a book somewhere." That would be your mutilator. That is the true broadsword.

One of the great advantages of a saber is that it has a single edge. A two-edged blade can lead to a tendency to cut yourself while trying to cut your enemy, and this means that a two-edged blade requires a great deal of training to use. The Saxons were not known as a pleasant, gentle tribe of people and fought wars all the time, and you either sank or swam - in a pool of blood. People could lose limbs to these broadswords, and you could also impale an enemy on one, and the Saxons had a well-deserved reputation as a result.

Interesting historical trivia is that there is evidence of these Saxons in the Nordic and Baltic regions and the English Isles, and then evidence of the tribe evaporates. The most likely end to that tale is that they were a small tribe, and people got tired of missing limbs and impaled dead bodies and annihilated them.

I forgot a category, which was the Roman gladius. One of the funny things is that the Romans armed their basic legions with a version of the Greek phylae spear usually made of nothing but lead, a large square shield, and then a gladius usually made mostly of lead. The gladius was a sword about the length of that Saxon broadsword, and it was very simply a machete. It was a hackmaster.

However, even though the Romans used junk materials for the gladius, they carefully weighted them to fire forward. Consequently, the Romans terrorized people with far more advanced weapons for centuries with that gladius. The Romans were a very interesting people, and my own take on the classical Latins deserves an article somewhere - on some day.

Our final category was the pattern-welded Renaissance longsword. We're not sure if they were ever used in combat, although the examples in our museums are certainly plenty deadly. The pattern-welding process was long, arduous, and required highly-refined iron and high forge temperatures. We could do it today, but we have no need for such weapons. These Renaissance blades are sharper than any razor you will ever see in your life.

What makes one wonder if they were ever used in combat is their design. First, they were that sharp and they were double-edged. Second, the blades were quite flexible and the blades were nearly 4 feet long. If anyone ever used that sword in combat, they must have been trained from the age of a very young child, and there couldn't have been many of those blades made. You should do a google/image search for a Renaissance blade, as the glory of the artistry and design of these swords is breathtaking.

Still - there is no other form of longsword that would have had any advantages at a close range over a sabre or a Saxon broadsword that was ever known to be designed and forged. The Saxon broadsword was used for only a very short period of time, as the pattern-welding process - though reasonably crude - evaporated along with the Saxon tribe. The world has changed today, and it is probably good we no longer pull tasty-Saxon broadsword tricks on one another. Even the Mongols - who still love archery and their horses - hardly skirmish at all with each other anymore, and of course, the rest of us have APC's, grenades, assault rifles and tanks.

Let me just finish off with some things on archery. The Mongols who have a right to use a horse - they are those well-bred ponies I mentioned - get in the saddle very young, and the Mongols were the only people who used to fire short-bows from a galloping horse with some great accuracy. That was how they terrorized the Romans, was with their short-bow cavalry.

Another interesting piece is the longbow. Only two cultures in the world ever used the longbow, one being the Welsh - the only tribe on the English Isles that had them - and then the late Feudal Japanese. Wales is not dissimilar in some ways from parts of Japan, with these high crags interspersed by low valleys.

The longbow could wreck havoc from perhaps a half a mile away, and was not used anything like a shortbow. It was primitive artillery. The Roman legions who fought the Welsh would again and again be caught trying to find what crag the Welsh were impaling most of their legionaires with longbow artillery from.

For some reason, the Romans didn't high-jack the longbow, and neither did any other tribe of the English Isles. Some of that is geography, as it was a great weapon for such geography, and not for much anyplace else. Still, it befuddles a bit as to why some of these histories ended up as they did.

Oh and one last piece. The true ultimate short-range combat weapon is a combat knife. The advantage of the sword for times before the musket over a single-edged knife - not a dagger - was only because the sword gave one a longer reach in terms of range. The dagger was usually for post-battle clean up duty, or sometimes for duels. There was also the stilleto, which was simply a spike with a hilt, and that was a mean one as well.

Again - I remember the Ghurkas were at their stations in Edinburgh with their bali-songs when I visited. The Ghurkhas are from Burma and are very loyal to the United Kingdom, and they are one of the UK's shock troops. They fight using a version of Kali Eskrima, and bali-song means something like "the song of my knife." These are pretty scary people, and they all number at about 5 feet four inches.

Kali Eskrima is illegal to be taught in the states, even with rods for practice, and do not be fooled that you can safely train in Kali Eskrima. You will get hurt. What these Ghurkas can do with a bali-song is something I have never witnessed, but apparently it defies the mind. They of course do use modern weapons as part of their military duties, but they retain their traditional bali-songs - which are sacred to them.

The problem with a single-edged knife in combat is the same as with a rapier. Actually, it's worse, as two men with a knife usually never do anything but kill both of each other. The single-edged knife is also hard to use well. There are also combat knives superior in design to the bali-song. The reason the Ghurkas use their version is because of tradition.

The single-edged knife makes my jokes about Saxons look really pretty. The combat knife is a tool of butchery. However, the Ghurkas are noble people, and I mean no offense, but this is an ugly weapon.

In the states, a combat-knife or training with one is illegal unless you are in the military. A small buck-knife is legal to carry on your person - I mean small - and that is not a bad idea for self-defense. A can of pepper-spray is also not a bad idea - even for a man - if you have to move through parking garages or other unsafe areas. So we finish off another article, and now we will move along to the isometrics article at the other cross-blog "What is the Work?" - after another short break.