Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXII

[Martin Greywolf]

Spear terminology is pretty simple - it's always spear. Not that there aren't significant variations in what they look like, but those are, at most, dealt with by descriptive adjectives, so a long spear is perfectly fine, it's just a spear that is longer than usual in a given place (that may be a 3-foot spear for Zulus, or a 12-foot spear for medieval Europe). Even then, this is sometimes not done, Maciejowski bible shows spears that range from 1.8 to 2.5 meters (approx 6 to 8 feet), calculated from average male height.

Once you start attaching fiddly bits to the spear, then a name changes - winged spear, boar spear, sudlice, billhook, halberd, the list goes on. Some of these handle like spears, others less so.

Another option to differentiate spears is to use terms that describe their use, so you get hunting spear or duelling spear.

As for actual reach, I can get about 2 extra feet (60 cm) out of a spear at the full extension of my normal thrust, and an extra foot on top of that when I'm lancing, but I tend to leave half a foot (15-20 cm) of a spear sticking out behind my rear hand, so an 8-foot spear would have 9.5 foot normal reach (and 10.5 lancing reach), if we ignore footwork. How that translates to threatened squares is anybody's guess.

[Carl]

I definitely need to work up that description, but before i post that i'll just re-emphasize somthing i may not have gotten across properly allready. Age old "i know what i mean but am i communicating this properly" problem.

What i'm really looking for is an idea of the kind of damage the kind of weapons i mentioned, (or somthing like a pole axe or halberd or whatever you prefer), would do to the sort of targets i mentioned. Not what would be most effective. As you'll see i've got a fairly clear idea of the kind of effect i want the various weapons to have on my creature of choice, but i'm looking for somthing that, (within the proviso of being more resistant to shock and blood loss than any real creature is going to be), is going to be about as hard to hurt generally. So the laymen who can't be bothered or just dosen't have the knowledge framework to work fully through the survivability implications of the descriptions of weapon effects can go "yeah that tough". Also note it's a strictly fluff, (lore in ye olden terms), description, not a rules thingy.

Satyr's are amongst the largest and most physically imposing of Fey types. They resemble typical descriptions most respects with the legs of a goat and the body of a man covered in light fur, however they lack any trace of the horns normally ascribed to them. Standing at between 7 and 8 feet normally they are large by human standards, and even broader and thicker of body and limb than even their formidable height suggests... *a large amount of "place in the fey hierarchy", stuff will go here, so i'll skip it as unnecessary* ...As can be expected their sheer physical size makes killing them in battle a particular problem as damage in scale that would be lethal to a human from sheer mass trauma is much less massive to a satyr and thus inherently more survivable. Their thick animal like hides add to this, whilst not remotely on par with true armour they are thick enough to add additional impediment to attempt to harm them with the full range of melee weaponry. Worse still however they are magical beings with the inherent levels of improved durability against physical and magical attacks. As noted satyr's are on the lower end here with no outright magic of their own beyond their nature. Nonetheless severing limbs or outright slicing them in half as can be achieved with varying degrees of success, depending on weapon and technique, against a human target is unlikely as are penetrating thrusts that could pass straight through the torso without considerable momentum beyond what could be achieved by a human on foot or similar. Nonetheless cutting blows that can deeply lacerate muscle and tendons in limbs, even down to the bone with the possibility of some gouging of the bone are possible. If the ribs and sternum are avoided blows to the central torso to depths of around or slight in excess of a half a foot or so are also entirely possibble. As is typical of all magical beings they are also sufficiently resistant to organ damage outside of the heart and brain and to blood loss and shock that neither will prove fatal with sufficient speed in a fight. As such outside of sufficiently damaging blows to aforementioned brain and heart it requires mass tissue and organ damage to the central trunk to be lethal. Equally their general bone thickness and magical nature means that whilst lighter crushing injury weapons may bruise and fracture bones and heavy blows may break bones, however it will take repeated blows to outright crush bones or inflict large scale blunt force traume to soft tissue and organs. Leaving aside obviously the points about resistance to blood loss and organ damage they are roughly equivalent to an X.

It's basically that ending X i'm looking to fill in.

[Coidzor]

What sort of things have actually been used to poison/contaminate water supplies that we're aware of?

Do we know how far back the practice of deliberately doing so goes?

[Mr Beer]

What sort of things have actually been used to poison/contaminate water supplies that we're aware of?

Do we know how far back the practice of deliberately doing so goes?

Corpses and certainly as far back as we've had both wells and warfare; probably longer.

[Berenger]

Besides corpses (or, even better, disease-ridden corpses), feces should work (again, feces of sick people may work even better than regular feces). As for the "how far back", I'd be surprised if Mr Beer wasn't right.

[snowblizz]

There's a story from Ancient Greece about a siege where they put a bunch of poisonous herbs in the river flowing to a city under siege.

Wish I could recall more details at the moment.

[Vinyadan]

Right now the earliest example I can think of was when Belisar wanted to poison the water sources in Ravenna, which was in the VI century, but I am sure you can find earlier occurrences.

[Galloglaich]

From galloglaich's post back a page:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...9e237f3bb7.jpg


That looks like an awfully thin section to hold a sword with in full combat, was that as unusual as it appears?

That is just the tang, the iron part of the hilt - it would have a wooden hilt over it plus maybe some shark skin or leather or something. The width comes from the wood though (the strength of course, from the tang)

That said you could probably fight with it just like that thought it might be a bit uncomfortable.

G

[Galloglaich]

What I'm going to say here is taken from several articles by people who re-enact medieval hunts by chasing boars with spears and swords and killing them. Yes, they are considerably more metal than pretty much anyone.

With a large animal, your problem isn't to inflict a killing wound - you can do that with a dagger. It's staying alive long enough to enjoy your kill. Ranged weapons solve this by being ranged, killing the animal reasonably quickly (that is, inside of 5-10 seconds ideally) and having the ability to repeat their shots (either repeating weapon like a bow or semiauto rifle, or simply bringing many dudes with crossbows, ideally both).

With melee, a boar, let alone a bear, needs about half a second to inflict some serious wounds on you. Your priority therefore moves to being able to manipulate the animal. This is achieved by inserting a pointy stick into said animal, bracing it against a bone and using it as a lever. One guy with a sword can stab a boar behind his shoulderblade and use the sword (or spear) as a lever to make the boar not face him.

Somewhat safer is the boar spear, that is a spear that has a large crossguard that stops the spear from going too far in, but still far enough that you have a leverage. This doesn't help that much with the leverage I described above, but does wonders from stopping a charging boar which impales itself on the spear from goring your bollocks off. So, added utility, you don't have to sneak up on the boar now.

With polar bear, you would use the same tactics, but need more people. While a boar weights about twice as much as a guy, polar bear can be ten times a dude's weight. Surround it with many people, stab it and use the leverage to keep it from charging in the first place. If not possible, form a pike wall against it with boar spears, one spear may well break from the impact, three or four may withstand it.

That said, it is possible to kill a bear one on one with a sword, just incredibly dangerous. Aim for his vital spots, or for spots that are painful for him to stop him from going near the small, hairless monkey with the painstick. If it decides to rush you, though, you're kinda boned. There's a nice account of a knight saving a life of a Hungarian king from a bear in just this way after the king's horse dragged its rider along after his foot got stuck in a stirrup. The chronicler was super enraged that the jealous courtiers stopped the knight from being rewarded properly.

As for blunt trauma weapons, bad idea. Not only do you not have the leverage (unless it's a pollaxe, but why not use the axe part then?), you also have the problem that blunt trauma works on humans thanks to dazing us, which gets a lot less effective as the target increases in size.

For one handed vs two handed, use two handed, ideally pole weapons. One handed weapon has the chief advantages of allowing off hand use (for shields or grappling, both almost useless against a bear) and being compact (okay, this one may come into a play if bear attacks you while travelling, but not when you're actually hunting it on purpose, "loaded for bear" is an idiom for a reason) - those will not help all that much here.

Spoiler: Big painting of hunting scene

Show

I think this hunting scene from 1540 is pretty illustrative of the reality of a hunt, including fighting with dangerous animals using the tools of the day.

In the upper left corner you can se a bear wreaking havoc on some hunters and a bunch of hunting dogs. One hunter is down, maybe dead, one dog is down, another one is in the grip of the bear and in the process of being torn apart. A mounted hunter in the upper left, probably a VIP, has a crossbow that he looks like he is spanning, he probably already took a shot at the bear. Footmen with spears and one lancer are attacking the bear as are several dogs.

The spears are those typical 'boars spear' types with a big blade and a crossbar.


In the upper right you can see some large boars being flushed out and similarly wreaking havoc, with a least one dog down. The beasts are similarly beset by spearmen and dogs, as are the stags and other prestige game in the center, with the VIP's mostly along the bottom safer on the other side of the river, armed with crossbows.

Medieval (and Early Modern) hunts were intentionally done this way to enhance the danger. The animals would be flushed out into a massive 'kill zone' by beaters and dogs, and then shot with crossbows and guns and finished off by spearmen and horsemen (armed with lances and swords) as well as different types of dogs trained to kill.

This is a similar scene in a stag hunt, where you can see marksmen on the safe side of the river and the prey animals emerging into a kill zone, with cavalry and dogs among them to finish them off.





These scenes give you a good idea of the peril associated with these hunts. Certain animals like bears, (especially brown bears or polar bears) lions, aurochs, wisent, boars and wolves, and even large deer and elk routinely killed hunters during hunting expeditions, which I believe were intentionally conducted in a manner similar to a military operation, as a form of training.

in Poland they used to hunt bears on foot with a spear with a stout crossbar, stab the bear and "prop it" against the ground, and let the bear wear itself out pushing at the spear. Obviously risky! They also used to dismount and finish off boar with special 'boars swords' or knives. You can certainly kill even a large bear with a decent sized knife - so long as it is distracted by dogs or you are strait up killer (apparently Cesare Borgia used to decapitate charging boars on foot with one sword stroke, to intimidate people he took hunting with him). Hunters carried big 'bowie knife' type blades, I think for butchering, such as you can see here in this detail of chamois hunters from the Triumph of Maximilian,



...as well as messers, swords, axes and other sidearms.

There is another similar marvelous painting of a hunting scene (I don't know who painted this or where or when, if anyone does please let me know), where you can see one of the VIP's on horseback in the center, on the safe side of the river flanked by two halberdiers. I would imagine those halberdiers are there to quickly "handle up" on any dangerous game animals like a bear or even an enraged stag that might threaten the VIP. A halberd would be a pretty devastating weapon against a bear I suspect.



G

[Galloglaich]

What sort of things have actually been used to poison/contaminate water supplies that we're aware of?

Do we know how far back the practice of deliberately doing so goes?

I suspect it goes way back.

There is a very chilling account by the Polish chronicler Jan Dlugosz of the massive poisoning of multiple water supplies (springs, creeks, wells and rivers) by the Mongols in the 14th or 15th Century, after they were militarily defeated in Ukraine and forced to retreat. If I can find it later I'll transcribe it and post here. He said thousands of people were killed before they figured out what was going on.

Jan Dlugosz attributed it to 'magic' and said that they had put some kind of severed heads on posts at the sites of the poisoning, but 'magic' would include things like poison or biological warfare. The Mongols seemed to use techniques like that a lot.

I remember there was an article a while back of a siege tunnel they had dug up in Syria or somewhere, in which I think Assyrian or Roman soldiers (I can't remember the details) had used chemicals to create poison gas in the siege tunnel, from way back in the BC time period. I wish I could be more specific but somebody else can find and post it

G

[Galloglaich]

I definitely need to work up that description, but before i post that i'll just re-emphasize somthing i may not have gotten across properly allready. Age old "i know what i mean but am i communicating this properly" problem.

What i'm really looking for is an idea of the kind of damage the kind of weapons i mentioned, (or somthing like a pole axe or halberd or whatever you prefer), would do to the sort of targets i mentioned. Not what would be most effective. As you'll see i've got a fairly clear idea of the kind of effect i want the various weapons to have on my creature of choice, but i'm looking for somthing that, (within the proviso of being more resistant to shock and blood loss than any real creature is going to be), is going to be about as hard to hurt generally. So the laymen who can't be bothered or just dosen't have the knowledge framework to work fully through the survivability implications of the descriptions of weapon effects can go "yeah that tough". Also note it's a strictly fluff, (lore in ye olden terms), description, not a rules thingy.



It's basically that ending X i'm looking to fill in.

If you are trying to figure out a natural equivalent to a 'sword proof' or 'spear proof' animal, you are out of luck I think. As mentioned before by myself and others, even a large bear can be killed fairly quickly by a blade. Some animals like elephants did seem to have some resistance to weapons due to their thick hides, but that was pretty limited - they would enhance this with armor.


If you want your Satyr's to be resistant either give them armor or you have to rely on magic. I know it's a common trope on TV that all kinds of creatures and monsters are 'barely effected' by things like being stabbed or shot, that doesn't really exist in nature.

Boars for example get really big and terrifying but they die like you are me if they get stabbed with a spear or shot by a .30-06.




G

[thedanster7000]

For a game: what weapons/armour would a 12th century English knight wield? I'm guessing it was before plate became commonly used and I'm not sure whether the longsword was in use yet. I'm also guessing kite shields hadn't been replaced by heaters yet?

Thanks for any insight.

[Galloglaich]

For a game: what weapons/armour would a 12th century English knight wield? I'm guessing it was before plate became commonly used and I'm not sure whether the longsword was in use yet. I'm also guessing kite shields hadn't been replaced by heaters yet?

Thanks for any insight.

about like that

[Carl]

If you are trying to figure out a natural equivalent to a 'sword proof' or 'spear proof' animal, you are out of luck I think. As mentioned before by myself and others, even a large bear can be killed fairly quickly by a blade. Some animals like elephants did seem to have some resistance to weapons due to their thick hides, but that was pretty limited - they would enhance this with armor.


If you want your Satyr's to be resistant either give them armor or you have to rely on magic. I know it's a common trope on TV that all kinds of creatures and monsters are 'barely effected' by things like being stabbed or shot, that doesn't really exist in nature.

Boars for example get really big and terrifying but they die like you are me if they get stabbed with a spear or shot by a .30-06.




G

Well they are magical creatures, that's why such a small being, (relatively speaking), is so hugely resistant to most forms of blow, their flesh is harder to cut or crush, and they resist blood loss, shock, organ damage better than any normal would. And whilst they're on the low end of the scale being a magical creature puts them on the same scale that thing like archangels sit at the top of. I'll let you imagine just how tough they are for yourself.

I just figured since bears and especially polar bears are notorious from what i hear for taking a lot of ammo to put down if you don't carefully place your shots in the heart or brain that the same would apply with melee weaponry and thus despite being even larger would be about as tough once you take out that they're not as hard to cut/crush. Guess not.

Also Satyr's absolutely can wear armour. But one of the points about the Fey courts is their pretty messed up at the moment, their odd reproductive methods coupled with some sociological issues due to lost knowledge give them a heavy bias towards satyr's atm and that leaves them short of the smithing capable hands to make enough armour to go around. (That isn't to say Satyr's are dumb or lacking too much in manual dexterity, but their intellects and manual handling skills instinctively run in other directions).

[rrgg]

Galloglaich has it right. Knights' equipment hadn't really changed that much since the time of William the Conqueror. Mail, one-handed sword, spear, large shield, etc. Mail armor that incorporated metal plates doesn't really show up until the second half of the 13th century. Towards the end of the 12th century you might start seeing knights wearing helmets with face covers, such as on the far left here http://imgur.com/a/bpQvO, and possibly early types of great helm, but for the most part knights would still be wearing norman-style nasal helms.

[Storm Bringer]

For a game: what weapons/armour would a 12th century English knight wield? I'm guessing it was before plate became commonly used and I'm not sure whether the longsword was in use yet. I'm also guessing kite shields hadn't been replaced by heaters yet?

Thanks for any insight.

As Galloglaich alludes to, the 12th century was the crusades era, so a lot of the references for then would show how western Knights were equipped. heavy chain armour, a lance and a arming sword was the normal equipment (plus all the sundry things a soldier on campaign actually needed to live in the field)

for a flim reference, see Kingdom of Heaven, which is set in that era.

the DnD longsword* was in use as early as roman times (the roman cavalry spatha is a DnD longsword), so its fine for use in that time period. kite shields were still in use, though a flat topped style like a large heater (in the osprey drawing Galloglaich posted, you can see the shield over the knights shoulder). the Heater came into use in the late 12th century, according to Wikipedia, so its not beyond the pale that he might have one if you prefer.


*a one handed, doubled edged straight sword used to stab or slash with.

[Galloglaich]

Well they are magical creatures, that's why such a small being, (relatively speaking), is so hugely resistant to most forms of blow, their flesh is harder to cut or crush, and they resist blood loss, shock, organ damage better than any normal would. And whilst they're on the low end of the scale being a magical creature puts them on the same scale that thing like archangels sit at the top of. I'll let you imagine just how tough they are for yourself.

I just figured since bears and especially polar bears are notorious from what i hear for taking a lot of ammo to put down if you don't carefully place your shots in the heart or brain that the same would apply with melee weaponry and thus despite being even larger would be about as tough once you take out that they're not as hard to cut/crush. Guess not.

I think the deal with large bears is just that - they are really large. Sometimes a bullet doesn't stop them immediately because it just punches through some part of them where there isn't any vital organ. But if you hit them in the brain, or the spine, or the heart, or any major blood vessel, they seem to die pretty quick. This is even more true with a knife. Even if they do miss the vital organs in most cases it will die eventually from a rifle wound. Just not sometimes soon enough.

Stories like this with large bears being killed by hunting knives are surprisingly common. You are going to end up hurt real bad, but - the knife kills quickly if you know how to use the knife (and have the wit to stab it where it will really hurt it). Helps to have a big knife.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/11...n_4194910.html

Same is true for all kinds of very tough but more compact animals like chimpanzee, gorillas or leopards or anything - they can do a hell of a lot of damage to you with their natural weapons, but their defense is limited - a blade or a bullet is pretty devastating.

So I really don't know how to fix your satyr except by a hand wave and an "it's magic". Quasi-scientific explanations for why beasts or monsters are bullet proof are kind of like most quasi-scientific stuff, basically just so much B.S.

G

[Carl]

@Gallioch: I feel like somehow my points aren't getting across to you and i don't know why they're not.

I think the deal with large bears is just that - they are really large. Sometimes a bullet doesn't stop them immediately because it just punches through some part of them where there isn't any vital organ. But if you hit them in the brain, or the spine, or the heart, or any major blood vessel, they seem to die pretty quick.

Yes i know that was my point all along. I just figured melee weaponry would have the same issue to the same degree which seems not to be the case from whats been said.

So I really don't know how to fix your satyr except by a hand wave and an "it's magic". Quasi-scientific explanations for why beasts or monsters are bullet proof are kind of like most quasi-scientific stuff, basically just so much B.S.

Well again thats the point. The explanation has allways since when i first asked this "because magic". Again thats the point. They're fey, aka the fair folk, the fairies, e.t.c.


My line of thinking went somthing like this if it helps you understand me.


1. A satyr is really hard to kill because their magical nature makes it difficult to deal sufficient large scale trauma to be fatal in any short period of time, (post battle is a whole other ballgame), unless you hit a vital point.


2. Some large animals are really hard to kill with guns IRL because their sheer size makes it difficult to deal sufficient large scale trauma to be fatal in any short period of time, (post battle is a whole other ballgame), unless you hit a vital point.

I just expected point 2 to apply to melee weaponry as well.

But from what your saying in general full blown melee weaponry actually has a much easier time than guns dealing the requisite large scale damage.

I was never looking for an explanation for how my satyrs could be so tough, or anything of the same size that could be so tough.

I was looking for somthing that in terms of amount of blows required from typical weaponry would be as tough.



Does what i was trying to say originally make more sense now? Like i said i think i've got my answer anyway and thanks for it. But it bugs me that i seem to have failed to properly expound on my original points properly in the first place.

[Galloglaich]

I was never looking for an explanation for how my satyrs could be so tough, or anything of the same size that could be so tough.

I was looking for somthing that in terms of amount of blows required from typical weaponry would be as tough.

In real life 'amount of blows' isn't really relevant. It's more like the accuracy of a blow. RPG's have hit points, sometimes a lot more than seems reasonable. Real life - it doesn't work that way.

Guns kill by making holes and by all kinds of shock and sort of intangibles - the latter people argue about forever and can be hard to quantify. There is definitely something to it. You just can't all depend on it. To be sure to kill, your hole has go be through a vital spot. Guns penetrate really well, but they make small holes. A half of an inch, or a third of inch, it's not that big of a wound channel. A 1/2" or eve a 1" hole in your leg probably won't kill you right away if it doesn't cut through your femoral artery or an equivalent vein, or shatter your femur.

So guns are odd, you can get shot through your neck and if it missed your spine, your windpipe, and your carotid etc., you may be just fine.

"Melee weapons" as you call them, have kind of an opposite issue. Their penetration is rarely as good as a bullet (depending widely on the weapon and the skill of the wielder) but they are bigger, made of harder material (steel vs. lead) and sharper, so they make bigger nastier holes or shear off bigger chunks. a spear might make a 3" - 6" wide wound channel, depending on the spear and how it hit - much harder for that to get through your neck without severing something important (not impossible maybe, but a lot harder). A sword could cut off a leg or a head with one stroke. So that still depends on where you hit. Because penetration is harder, and depends on skill somewhat, it also depends if you hit well enough to get through skin and bone.

Skill matters a lot more with hand weapons at least in terms of damage. Especially with cutting - you can cut a plastic 2 liter coke bottle badly and it just flies away with a dent. Cut it right and you shear off the top half and the bottom half is still quivering full of water sitting there. So if you know how to cut it does much more damage. Same with a thrust. To thrust through a rib cage takes some skill and / or strength. If you can't, you make a trivial wound, but if you go through, it's probably catastrophic.

However if you are positing a world where people hunt for a living and have some experience of fighting with swords and spears, that skill level won't be much of an issue in my opinion.

So regardless, it still mostly depends on where you hit, throat much more like to kill quickly than say, foot. Spear thrusts, sword cuts, they are a lot like bullet wounds in this one sense - it's more often either a graze that just didn't hit the right spot, or it's a horrible wound likely to maim or kill. It's not so incremental like hit points where it takes 4 hits or 5 hits. The reality is more skewed to extremes. If you are inept it might take 20 hits, if you know what you are doing past basic competence, you are more likely to only need 1 hit.

Does what i was trying to say originally make more sense now? Like i said i think i've got my answer anyway and thanks for it. But it bugs me that i seem to have failed to properly expound on my original points properly in the first place.

Sometimes questions originating in fantasy genre like these are just hard to translate into what you are actually asking in the real world. If you were asking what is the difference in damage between a gun and a knife or a spear, that is more clear.

G

[Brother Oni]

I remember there was an article a while back of a siege tunnel they had dug up in Syria or somewhere, in which I think Assyrian or Roman soldiers (I can't remember the details) had used chemicals to create poison gas in the siege tunnel, from way back in the BC time period. I wish I could be more specific but somebody else can find and post it

Poison gas was used against the Romans at the siege of Dura-Europos in ~256AD by the Sasanian Persians: link.

The Sasanians dug tunnels under the fort to attempt to gain entry, to which the Romans responded by counter-tunneling. The Sasanians then lit fires containing sulphur and bitumen crystals, which gave off choking toxic fumes. In the enclosed space of their tunnel, the Roman soldiers quickly suffocated and died.


The earliest recorded usage of water poisoning I can find is the siege of Kirrha in Phocis, Greece circa 595-585 BC (link) as part of the First Sacred War. The Amphictyonic League besiegers found a secret water pipe supplying the city by accident and poisoned it with hellebore, which rendered the defenders so weak with diarrhoea that they were unable to mount an effective resistance.

[Mr Beer]

If you are trying to figure out a natural equivalent to a 'sword proof' or 'spear proof' animal, you are out of luck I think. As mentioned before by myself and others, even a large bear can be killed fairly quickly by a blade. Some animals like elephants did seem to have some resistance to weapons due to their thick hides, but that was pretty limited - they would enhance this with armor.

If you want your Satyr's to be resistant either give them armor or you have to rely on magic. I know it's a common trope on TV that all kinds of creatures and monsters are 'barely effected' by things like being stabbed or shot, that doesn't really exist in nature.

Boars for example get really big and terrifying but they die like you are me if they get stabbed with a spear or shot by a .30-06.

Aboriginals wiped out the Australian megafauna over the entire continent armed with little more than fire-hardened spears* so yeah I can believe steel blades and crossbows were pretty effective against even such dangerous predators as bears.

* Some people disagree with this fact as they prefer to believe that tribespeople universally lived in a sustainable harmonious relationship with nature unlike evil polluting rapacious modern societies.

[Galloglaich]

This has nothing to do with any question, but it's a very nicely choreographed sword fight with longswords. Not sure who did it.

https://youtu.be/Cn36Pb8z3yI

[snowblizz]

Aboriginals wiped out the Australian megafauna over the entire continent armed with little more than fire-hardened spears* so yeah I can believe steel blades and crossbows were pretty effective against even such dangerous predators as bears.

* Some people disagree with this fact as they prefer to believe that tribespeople universally lived in a sustainable harmonious relationship with nature unlike evil polluting rapacious modern societies.

And plains indians hunted buffalo for centuries but white man and guns almost wiped them out in a few decades. Let's not overstate the tribal hunters. They weren't not exterminating various large prey becasue they were being ecologically sound either. They often lacked the ability to wipe species out that introduction of guns facilitated. The human/ecological impact on some megafauna is still debated as far as I know. Some species certainly were pushed off the cliff (quite often literally) by humans, or maybe human predation meant they couldn't cope with changes in the environment. And these weren't lone hunters either, they worked as a larger team (which was one of our strengths), and if they could, took every advatange nature had to make it easier, herding animals of cliffs, into bogs etc etc etc if they could. These are not the actions of people who can trivally lop the head off a charging bear or moose.

Hunting buffalo with lances and bows wasn't exactly easy either. You lived like a king for a while if you manged to take one down but in the mean time it was lean time. Being theoretically able is not the same as practically successful 100% of the time.

Furthermore I would point out hunting was considered prestigious precisely because it was dangerous.

If we want to create a metaphore for how tough these things are, why are we insisting adequate weapons are used. Just as .22 pistol isn't considered sufficient for hiking in an alaskan forest the magically endowed satyr would be as difficult to kill with your weapons as it would be to hunt grizzlybear with a kitchen knife.

[Vinyadan]

I think there is a thing about animals that makes them tougher than us. We live in a society, humans are social animals. We do not expect to be attacked and, when we are attacked, we assume the attacker to be human. So we have these things like asking for mercy or giving up, because we hope the attacker will accept our submission and stop himself.

Some animals, like wild dogs, also do something similar when interacting with each other. But most animals have a ferocious imprinting of survival on their own. A zebra bitten by a crocodile doesn't expect someone else to come and help and will fight and kick, and even if she has a huge gash on her back, she will put everything in surviving.

Animals act the same when hit by a bullet. Certain game can run for a long time with a bullet in its heart, because it doesn't know it's useless: it just knows that, to survive, it has to get away from the hunter. The same could be true for a bear. A human hit by a bullet might throw himself on the ground and wait for reinforcements or hope for mercy, a bear will just put more effort into running towards the menace.

Anyway, what about making a comparison with bulls instead of bears? Bulls are big and though, and you can find a lot of material about the killing of bulls. There is bullfighting, which mainly uses points, there are sacrifices with cuts to the neck or heavy blows on the back, and there even was a karate master who killed bulls with his hands (although the whole thing looks eerie to me, and I wonder who gave him those bulls).

[Carl]

@Galloglaich: Oh i'm well aware that good blows from weapons properly placed can do a lot of damage, one of you is fond every once in a while of posting a picture of a man using a two-handed sword to bisect a pig into two pieces. I just sort of assumed once you got upto a sufficiently huge creature, (like larger varieties of bear), such cuts would become of progressively less able to get all the way through and eventually against sufficiently massive targets reach the point of needing to come in from specific angles to be able bisect vital points. With similar points applying to thrusting or crushing injuries. Basically i thought vs IRL targets weapons, (i was using the term melee weaponry as a catch all coverall term btw), would run out of cutting/thrusting/crushing power more rapidly than they do when confronted with a sufficiently massive target. Of course throw in an opponent thats stronger than human norms and satyrs get a lot less durable, they can tear each other apart as easily as any two equivalently skilled humans can.

The other factor which i haven't mentioned before is i'm looking at this from a mass vs mass combat situation with "acceptable" levels of training, they can cut, thrust, parry, e.t.c. adequately, but the majority are not going to be able to determine or execute the perfect blow for each and every situation and there's going to be a lot of consequently adequately executed blows being taken against less than ideal target locations simply because thats the blows they can get in. Don't get me wrong take someone who's at the top of their game, give them the right weapon and an appropriate chink in a Satyr's defences and they can put them down in one well placed and executed blow to exactly the right spot delivered in exactly the right way. I just don't expect the combination of controlled chaos and the average skill level to make that viable for the majority of average people going up against them on a reliable basis in mass combat.

Hence my comment on amount of blows. It's not that satyr's flat out require a large number of blows to put down if you execute a technique perfectly with the right weapon against the right target point, i just don't expect the majority of blows to fall into that category, and i expect it's going to take a lot of imperfect blows to make up the difference through mass trauma, particularly given the points vis a vis being less vulnerable to blood loss and shock than even large animal IRL.

@Vinyadan: Oh there's absolutely a lot of truth to that though be careful not to overstate that and Satyr's actually take that further in some respects with their resistance to blood loss, (it's more how their wounds bleed, or rather stop fairly fast than an ability to lose their own weight in blood), and shock. But at the same time they aren't bestial creatures. Simple yes, but not stupid. I simply chose animal toughness comparisons because i knew nothing remotely that intelligent IRL, (i.e. human), could be massive enough.

[Martin Greywolf]

@Galloglaich's video: Oh, I actually met those guys in passing a few times, they are from Czech Republic, one of the top of the game re-enactor groups there, actually.

Bears, satyrs and spears: don't loose the sight of the main problem with a creature like this - it's not about you hurting it, it's about stopping it from hurting you. Even a puny human, when impaled on a spear, may well decide to walk forwards and beat his killer's skull in before he dies, letting something that is tough to put down quickly into a range where it can hit you is borderline suicidal. Boar spears are a must, preferred method would be massed archery, or combination of pinning it with boar spears and point-blanking it with bows.

If the tech level is high enough, pollaxe and plate armor may well be effective, you can use pollaxe's spike, with the hammer and beak bits working as a crossbar on a boar spear, and hope that armor will give you more staying power. That said, if the thing is fey, take an arquebus, load it with cold iron/salt/whatever shreks them in your verse, and giggle as you watch the carnage.

[Storm_Of_Snow]

What sort of things have actually been used to poison/contaminate water supplies that we're aware of?

Do we know how far back the practice of deliberately doing so goes?

To the best of my knowledge, it's long been considered a war crime.

Can't think of any actual version, but if you want fictional versions, there's the classic Judge Dredd story line "Block Mania", where an enemy agent is dosing the water supply with a drug that causes feelings of acute hostility and patriotism as a prologue to a full scale attack, and what get termed "Filth Columnists" in at least one Rogue Trooper storyline in order to break a siege.

And while it's not water, there was the incident where the catering for the film Titanic got spiked with something like LSD.

[Martin Greywolf]

To the best of my knowledge, [well poisoning]'s long been considered a war crime.

Not really - war crimes as a codified thing that will be used against you in some legal manner are a relatively new thing. Things that are war crimes on a more intuitive, sort of de facto level, are pretty damn old, but don't include poisoning of water sources - they usually deal with hospitality, messengers and surrender, and even that usually on a more localized level (good example of this is lack of such an enforcement on both sides in Ottoman-Hapsburg wars).

That is not to say that such a thing wasn't penalized - if enemy army caught you after you did it, well, they weren't happy, and even your own commanders could have a thing or two to say about destroying territory that you want to conquer back. While poisoning of wells can be undone, it's a pain in the neck to do, and tanks local economy even more, meaning less taxes.

That would be the main reason why it wasn't done as often - if you do it and then manage to come back, you effectively shot yourself in the foot there. There are cases when it is strategically sound thing to do (facing overwhelming opposition, expecting total defeat and genocide) and cases when emotions got the best of people (usually religiously motivated wars or revenge), the accounts of them are usually of two kinds - folks that did it use it to show hopelesness of the situation, folks who got it done to them use it to paint their enemies as foul knaves.

In the context of medieval Europe, looting a church was much more of a war crime (you got some international repercussions out of it - not that it stopped some people), hell, even crossbow use against Christians was (there was a papal decree forbidding it - which everyone unanimously ignored).

[Vinyadan]

To the best of my knowledge, it's long been considered a war crime.

Can't think of any actual version, but if you want fictional versions, there's the classic Judge Dredd story line "Block Mania", where an enemy agent is dosing the water supply with a drug that causes feelings of acute hostility and patriotism as a prologue to a full scale attack, and what get termed "Filth Columnists" in at least one Rogue Trooper storyline in order to break a siege.

That reminds Buzzati's story of the ideological bomb. During the Cold War, the Soviets and the Americans both develop a bomb that will infect the enemy with their own ideology. They throw it at each other and, after a few moments of euphoria in embracing a new view, the War goes on unchanged, only this time the Russians are capitalists and the Americans commies.

Interestingly sarin cannot be used to contaminate water, since it breaks down in it. (please don't try this at home).

[Carl]

Bears, satyrs and spears: don't loose the sight of the main problem with a creature like this - it's not about you hurting it, it's about stopping it from hurting you. Even a puny human, when impaled on a spear, may well decide to walk forwards and beat his killer's skull in before he dies, letting something that is tough to put down quickly into a range where it can hit you is borderline suicidal. Boar spears are a must, preferred method would be massed archery, or combination of pinning it with boar spears and point-blanking it with bows.

If the tech level is high enough, pollaxe and plate armor may well be effective, you can use pollaxe's spike, with the hammer and beak bits working as a crossbar on a boar spear, and hope that armor will give you more staying power. That said, if the thing is fey, take an arquebus, load it with cold iron/salt/whatever shreks them in your verse, and giggle as you watch the carnage.

Oh don't think i'm unaware of that, the little piece i threw together earlier just omits that and stuff like sociology or equipment discussions. Given their size and strength, (take a gorilla walking upright and scale it up a fair bit more to account for the height difference and your getting a good feel for the general dimensions). A typical two-handed sword for a human would probably be closer to a rapier than a longsword for a Satyr, their actual longswords being bigger and heavier still. And actual two-handed sword or worse some kind of polearm would be downright massive. As a rule of thumb based on other size difference factors they'd be about 50% larger, and bearing in mind square cube law about 3 times as massive, and they have the strength and speed to handle them as easily as a human does their normal sized equivalents. I doubt even plate armour can really stand up to that kind of power on a reliable basis. Thats another reason i expect a lot of rushed and thus poorly aimed blows to be thrown at them. Ofc the ones that do have armour are even more of a nightmare, though fortunately the fey don;t go in for a lot in the way of plate mail. Breastplates, and similar bits and pieces of solid armour joined by mail, scale, or similar armours yes. But full plate armours are probably pretty rare, though that more of a practical effort vs reward ratio factor created by the same social factors that make it hard for them to mass manufacture armour for most of their troops.

Also as an aside, whilst i haven't ruled out some kind of vulnerability, it isn't fully included either atm. Tech wise their opposition can vary a lot, the settings somthing of an after the end situation, but whilst i'll probably include at least one technological faction thats managing with fair struggle to hold onto a semblance of modern tech the majority have regressed a lot due to the merging of realms and the sudden appearance of all that mythological stuff wreaking the industrial base. For all intents and purposes judgment day has come and gone and this is the aftermath where humanity has decamped to living under the protection of various mythological entities, most of the religions modern and classical are now walking around for real, on top of elves dwarves, fey, undead, the Void Abyssals, (just about the only enemy everyone else has a kill it, kill it with fire and forget those other guys policy on), and their own tech levels are pretty mixed. Which isn't to say humanity is being in any way discouraged from rebuilding it's tech base, but magic has rather reduced many of the typical pressures, and as much as there's still a lot of conflict going on amongst the various factions, the worst of it's over. In effect old enemies aside the universe is settling down. As a result your looking at somthing of a typical fantasy level/high medieval, though i'm not sure on where gunpowders going to come out, probably a case by case handling. And dwarves are in a whole other category that defies classical definition. If your interested in looking at the current "state of the art" so to speak for elves and dwarves i've got a few posts on them in the spins on races thread, starting post 57 for elves and a bit after for dwarves.