There's a reason why the dagger has always been associated with the assassin. Many of the assassinations of ancient times have been done with daggers, and even today the short blade and its skill is still being taught in many martial arts schools.

But for assassination, the dagger needs to have these attributes: it must be easy to conceal: it must be capable of causing death with a very great degree of certainty: and it must have great incapacitating power.

All these characteristics may be found in the classic dagger of assassination, the stiletto. While strictly speaking it is not a 'dagger' since a true stiletto has no sharp edges, it is usually called one. It is a long, slim blade, sometimes edged, but sometimes not. It resembles more an overgrown needle than a shrunken sword. It tapers to a very, very sharp point.

The classic assassin's technique is to keep the stiletto in his sleeve, and move to within touching distance of his mark: then thrust upward under the rib cage into the heart, and move off quickly.

Wounds to the heart are paralyzing, and thus there is a high chance that the victim will not cry out as he is stabbed. Indeed, there have been recorded cases where the victim did not even know that he was stabbed until the assassin was some distance away: he initially appeared to be having a sudden shortness of breath, and only after three or ten seconds could he scream that he had been stabbed. With stiletto stabbings there is very little blood: sometimes less than a nasty shaving cut!

This is why ancient assassins liked to carry out stiletto assassinations in a crowded street: it was very easy to 'accidentally' collide into the mark and at that point-blank range swiftly stab him into the heart, withdraw the blade as swiftly, and move away before the commotion broke out. Frequently the assassin was aided by helpers who would shield him before and after the assassination, and if a chase happened, would pretend to chase the assassin and hinder the real pursuers!

Some stilettos have been fitted with springs in wrist sheaths, so that when the blade is released by the assassin's hand immediately after the heart stab it retracts, pulled by the spring, into the wrist sheath. This is an idea you may wish to consider.

Regarding poison.. I will explain more on that later, in my other posts on bladed weapons. At present I will just say that it was rare for stilettos to be poisoned, for may practical reasons.

My next post will be on the basic sword, and swordfighting techniques.

Nearly every man, and quite a few women, have fantasized at one time or another during their life of fighting with swords. Most of us have never actually done so. A few of us have sparred, and a very, very few have sparred with masters of more than one technique...

I have had the good fortune to have learned under a master of both kendo and an expert in the German school of fencing, as well as the fortune to have watched and talked to fencers in the discipline of the saber and the rapier. And to have a short, but useful, study in the Italian school.

Furthermore, I have also read quite a lot on the subject...so I hope to share with you some basic facts, and insights, into the "King of white arms" - the sword.

Basic sword description.

The sword has basically four parts: the blade, the guard, the hilt, and the pommel.

Since I basically follow the Japanese and Italian schools, I will divide the blade into three parts: the lowest part of the sword, called the forte or the strong part, the middle third, and the top part of the sword, the weakest part.

You basically attack with the top third, to either thrust or slash. To chop is different: you use the lower part of the top of the blade, almost near the middle, to chop.

What is the difference between a thrust, a slash, and a chop?

A THRUST is when you use the sword like a spear, to push the point and the blade into the body of the enemy to injure vital organs deep in the body. Comparatively little blood comes out in a thrust: especially if the thrust is into a muscle, the muscle will spasm and shut off the flow of blood outwards. Thus, to achieve the immediate disablement of your enemy in a thrust, you should aim for the vital organs - brain, lungs, liver, heart.

There are two ways to increase the effect of a thrust wound, and both use nasty tricks. One trick is to twist the sword as you thrust it in: this will increase the size of the wound channel so that the muscle can no longer spasm and squeeze the wound shut, thus allowing massive amounts of blood to flow out. The other trick is to have a sword with an 'air channel' groove in the middle, and thrust into the lungs of the enemy. This will allow air to enter the lung cavity, which in the natural state operates in a partial vacuum. That will collapse the lung immediately. It will also puncture the lung so that the enemy will die drowning in his own blood. Ugh. Nasty.

Remember in battle the adrenalin flow will do strange things to people! There are accounts of soldiers in the heat of battle having a spear thrust directly through them and not feeling the pain for quite some time! So if, in battle, you thrust through the arm or thigh of the enemy, you should not automatically assume that the enemy will curl up and fall down. Some do. But some will continue fighting on at about 80% capacity.

This is why the lung thrust is so popular in thrust fighting: no matter how strong the enemy's mind and adrenalin anesthesia is, he cannot fight on if he has no oxygen to breathe.

The SLASH is used to saw a large, fairly shallow (although some slashes can be quite deep) wound into the enemy's body, and let him die of the following exsanguination (loss of blood). To slash well you need a lot of kinetic energy in your blade, so slashes are made with the blade going as fast as possible. Unlike thrusting swords, which have straight blades, slashing swords have curved blades, which make the slash much more effective.

Also, slashing swords need a lot more maintenance than thrusting swords - you can get away with a dull edge in a thrusting sword, but never with a slashing sword. This is why, for example, Japanese katanas and scimitars and sabers need to be oiled and polished regularly - long, boring work, which in the middle ages was given to apprentices. Or the soldier went to the swordsmith for regular maintenance, where his sword was sharpened and polished ( No, he was not Crassius Curio, and it was not Lifts-her-tail who was polishing it! ) while he went to have a beer in a tavern.

Lastly, the CHOP was used to cut through bone - or heavy leather armour. This is why the chop is more of a finishing, execution type maneuver: it was slower than the slash, because you need to swing your sword slowly and put all your strength into the sword just before contact (try chopping a steak in your kitchen and you will see what I mean).

Chopping swords were used like axes, and just like axes, they were heavy and strong. In battle, though, since they were clumsy, they were rarely used. They are more of an executioner's, or head-man's, weapon. On the battlefield they were usually used only when the enemy was in heavy armour: then they were used, not to break through armour - that was the province of the spear- but in a mace-like role, where the idea was to whack the helmeted enemy in the head with a heavy sword to give him a whopping headache. The point and the blade were only secondary here.

Chopping swords have a fairly dull edge, except perhaps near the very tip. This is necessary in steel armour fighting: the steel armour would chip off the edges in the blade of a fine slashsword in no time, making it look like a saw, and ruining it!

My next post will be on the defensive use of the sword.

You can block or parry an enemy's attack with a shield or shield-type armour, on which I will post more later, but in this post I want to talk about the defensive use of swords. And to keep things simple, in this post I will talk about how a single sword is used in defense, and move on to the much more complex use of two swords, or a sword and a dagger, in defense and combat.

Remember when I said that the lower third of the sword was the strongest part? I was not just talking about construction. Do this experiment. Get a friend to take a broomhandle in his hands and hold it like a sword. Now get another broomhandle to try to whack or push it to one side. It is easy to whack or push it aside when you are striking the top part of the broomhandle. Now try to do the same by striking the broomhandle near your friend's grip. See how much harder it is, now?

This is why the lowest part of the sword, near the hilt and the guard, is called the 'forte' in the Italian school of fencing. It is used for BLOCKS.

What is a block, and how is it done?

When the enemy strikes a blow at you, and you do not want to dodge out of the way, you can BLOCK his attack. Note that you cannot block a thrust attack with your sword: you can only block a slash or a chop attack! You try to take the weakest part of his sword, the top third (called the 'foible' in the Italian school) on the strongest part, the 'forte' of your sword.

There are many, many techniques and conditions for a block, but I shall simplify them to this: you should not try to block a heavy weapon with a lighter weapon, and you should NEVER try to block when your feet are close together - it is very easy to lose your balance and fall down! Remember that unless you are a very supple athlete with excellent anticipation of the strike and the training to use your arms, your back and your thighs as 'shock absorbers'. the entire force of the enemy's strike will move into your sword, through your wrists, and into your body - it's like taking a direct hit football tackle.

What can happen when you take a block badly - when you take it on the middle or even, god forbid, on the top third of your sword? Well, at the least your wrists will be badly jarred, and at the worst the sword will be knocked out of your hand. And/or you can even suffer sprained or BROKEN wrists! This is why the 'forward block' where the sword's forte is pushed forward just as the slash or chop comes in is very good: it gives the attacker less time and space to build up his sword momentum, and it gives your arms some room to recoil back and act as a shock absorber.

And remember. even a good block usually ends with the swords in contact with each other. This gives the enemy swordsman a second chance, a chance to lever the sword out of your hand with a power twist. I shall post more on this later, in sword techniques.

This is why all proficient sword fighters prefer far more to parry than to block. Even when you block sucessfully, you wrists hurt, your elbows are jarred, and your weapon...may well be chipped or perhaps even broken.

Note to writers: there are sword fighting scenarios where using blocks is absolutely unavoidable. Think of a 'defending a spiral staircase' scenario. Or being backed into a corner in a room. Etc, etc, etc...

Post, part two, will talk about the parry.




Blocks and Parries with single or double swords

What is a 'parry'?

A parry is where an attacking sword, instead of being stopped cold, is knocked aside by a sharp blow by your own sword to one or the other side of the attacking sword. Note that, unlike the block, you can parry a thrusting sword.

Unlike blocks, which are best done with the lower third of the blade, the parry is done higher up - with the middle third of the blade. Also, an element of timing is needed. Unlike the block, where you simply await the attack, the parry needs to be done simultaneously with the attack.

And also unlike the block, you move in the parry. The classic move is the the opposite side of where you are sending the enemy's blade. Let's take the simplest example. An enemy charges right at you and swings down his sword like an axe, aiming to split you in half from forehead to groin, centerline. You step to the left while at the same time whackin his sword away to your right: the partial shock imparted to your sword will send you even further to your left, which is all to the good.

Since the parry only uses the flat of the blade, and since it needs less force to neutralize the attack, you can use a light blade to parry a heavy blade without fearing a broken blade or a broken wrist. Be warned, however, that it takes more force than a novice can usually gauge to push a heavy blade aside. Only an expert should try to parry an attacking heavy blade with a light blade.

A parry also does not leave the blades in contact, which is important if you are trying to avoid the wind-up and spin-out maneuver which an opposing swordsman can use to spin the sword out of your hand.

The next post will examine the two-sword scissors block and the 'parry with one sword while thrusting with another' technique.


Two swords: or more correctly, sword and dagger.

I cannot understand why Beth, which got the medieval scene so correctly in other ways, not allow a simultaneous sword and dagger wield to be done - or perhaps it has been done, and I am unaware.

The standard way to fight in the middle ages and the renaissance was the sword and dagger used together, or the sword and small shield, the buckler (this is where the word 'swashbuckler' comes from!) used together.

The poorer, less trained warrior would use the sword and the buckler: the warrior with enough means to pay a master of fence for training would use the sword and the dagger.

Yes, it took training to use them together. I have fenced quite a few (heavily protected and padded!) matches with sword and dagger, and I can tell you from personal experience that it is quite difficult to learn.

In essence, you have to use the dagger to deflect and/or trap the enemy's sword, while counter-attacking with your own sword. Parrying with the dagger is usually just a tap, done in passing as you step aside, since you cannot use its short blade in the same way as the long blade of a sword to find the enemy's blade first and then tap it aside.

The dagger and the sword are more properly used, instead of just tapping aside the attacking sword, to trap and perhaps even break the attacking sword. Such 'trap daggers' have long, upward curving hilts, like the 'Sai' used by Elektra of the Daredevil graphic novel series, to trap and twist attacking blades. All off hand daggers, whether trap daggers or not, have strong guards - some even have basket guards - to protect the hand, for when parrying a longsword with a short dagger, you are basically punching at the sword blade with your fist.

Thus the swordbreaker parry is actually more of a block than a parry, and you do need to have strong wrists and forearms for this. You sweep at the attacking sword with your dagger hand in a half-block that does not stop the attacking sword 100% - rather, it stops about half the momentum of the blade, and allows the enemy blade to slide down your dagger blade till it is stopped by the guard. At once you twist your dagger so that the enemy's blade is trapped between the dagger's hilt and guard, and use this leverage to either break the blade or twist the sword out of your enemy's hand. At this point you can use your sword in your other hand to slide under the enemy's blade and add additional leverage: this position is known as the scissors, since it looks like that.

You may also block and trap the enemy sword with your own, and stab him with your dagger in the other hand - this technique is found in close and cramped area fighting.

My next post will be on shields, and armour in general.

The construction, the fitting, and the maintenance of various types of armour require not just a thread, but a book in itself. I shall not describe in detail the various combinations of leather, chain mail, and plate armour that is common to both the medieval ages and the Renaissance except to say this:

I think modern day writers are completely forgetting one fact that was evident in those times, and should also, I think, be evident in the world of Morrowind and Oblivion - the social status of armour. The stronger and harder the armour, the more the likelihood that the person wearing it was either of a high social class or was a champion of fighting, and sometimes both.

Plate armour was tremendously expensive: to be wearing it in battle was like, in today's world, driving around in a Ferrari or a Bentley - it was ancient 'bling' as well as a useful tool of battle. It also showed your opponent that you were a person of means and quite possibly trained by experts in how to fight: such a person was to be approached with caution, but was also viewed as a target for ransom. Soldiers and Bandits alike tried their best not to kill any enemy wearing plate armour, for such persons were worth ten to fifty times more alive than dead: the average ransom for a knight was the equivalent of fifteen years or more of wages for the average spearman. And his plate armour was worth another five.

Should a person be wearing well built full plate armour, he would be almost 100% safe against sword strikes. It is impossible for any normal man, no matter how strong, to slash or even chop through plate armour with a sword, even a heavy broadsword. For illustration, take an ordinary tin of sardines, and try to open it up - NOT with a tin opener - but by chopping at it with a kitchen knife. You will find it impossible to make more than a small rent in the tin (if you do manage to do any damage beyond a dent at all! ). A plate of steel armour is five times thicker and twenty times stronger than that tin.

I do not know about how strong Dremora Lords are - but if we take a Dremora Lord to be twice as strong and fast as...let's say...the legendary and still living Russian Superheavyweight wrestler Alexander Karelin, who at 285 lbs (130 kilos) had the strength of a 400 lb weightlifter and the speed and agility of a 200 lb cruiserweight boxer, even then a heavy sword swung by a Dremora lord would not slash or chop through first class plate armour more than an inch or so. The person wearing that armour would be far more in danger of broken bones from the shock of that superstrong Dremora strike than from a sword breaking deep enough through the armour to cut open his body.

This is why medieval fighters used hammers and maces against plate armour. The idea was to send shock waves through the armour into the brain or bones, and thus break or damage them.

And another myth about full plate armour should be dispelled: if built by a craftsman who was sure of his craft, it could weigh very little - a full set of plate armour weighing perhaps as low as 50 lbs. Even if the armour was designed to be highly protective and thick, it would weigh under 100 lbs. Of course, there were weak points in that armour - the armpits, the groin area, the back of the knees - but they were very small in area, and difficult to attack.
This means that for battlefield short distances at least, a well trained soldier could keep up with poorer, more lightly armoured soldiers. .

Having explained that full plate armour was so expensive that only the very rich could afford them, it follows that most soldiers, bandits, and adventurers in the medieval like world of Morrowind and Oblivion logically would be wearing a mixture of leather and chainmail armour. This is about half the weight of plate armour and gives about a quarter the protection.

HOWEVER...even simple leather armour gives quite a lot of protection, at a distance, against low trajectory arrow strikes. Thus if you want to shoot through armour against a soldier armoured with even simple leather armour who is more than 30 yards (27 meters) away, you will have to use a high angle, 40 to 65 degree high angle parabolic shot. This of course is impossible in tunnels. And such high angle shots are notoriously difficult to aim, and even more difficult to hit with small, man-sized targets - not only do we have the difficulty of off-boresight aiming, but also we have to take into account wind drift, which gets worse the higher the arrow flies. The famous English victories through arrow fire at Agincourt and Crecy relied upon volume of fire and the fact that shooting at a target the size of an entire army at 200 yards (180 meters) distance was impossible to miss. I shall explain more about the use, and misuse, of arrow fire when I talk about bows and arrows in a later post.

What's the point for the writer in all this? Well, I would caution writers NOT to write "I charged against an enemy wearing full plate armour and slashed his arm off with a single blow of my sword". Puh-leeze! You wouldn't get through the armour, not even if you were as strong as an Olympic gold medal superheavyweight weightlifter and you were using a claymore that weighed 30 lbs (14 kilos). You might break the enemy's arm, but you definitely would not chop it off! Or even cut his skin.

AND also I would caution writers not to clothe every two-bit bandit and highwayman in their stories with full plate armour. That's about as believable as going out for a drive and seeing that every third car is a Ferrari, a Bentley or a Lamborghini. That doesn't happen IRL, not even on the streets of Kuwait.

Now let's talk about shields.

Large shields are useful only against thrusting spears: against swords, large shields are more hindrance than help. This is why all cultures with primarily swordfighting warriors came up with the small, round shields called various names in various languages. For the purpose of this little treatise, we'll call this type of shield the 'buckler'.

The buckler was enormously popular in the day of the sword in Europe, from about the 10th century to the 16th. It was also found in the armies of Islam and Hindustan, and many other armies and cultures across the globe.

Defensively, it was used more to parry than to block sword strikes, being more efficient that way. The small size and light weight of the buckler meant that you could use it in 'forward defense' where you moved the buckler forward to sweep the enemy's strike out of the way

The buckler could also be used offensively. By extending your shield arm forward, like a boxer throwing a jab, you can use your buckler to either push or sweep your enemy's blade out of the way, opening the way for your own sword strike. You could also use the edge of your shield to punch the enemy, in effect having the equivalent of brass knuckles on your shield arm!

The buckler can also be used to mask your sword hand - thus preventing the enemy from seeing, for that critical one tenth of a second, the type of sword strike you are preparing to throw at him.

Finally - but this is a difficult maneuver, and requires lots of practice under the supervision of an expert - the buckler can also be used to twist and lever open the shield guard of an enemy who is also armed with a shield.

In my next post I shall discuss the spear and the javelin, before I go on to discuss practical sword and shield attack and defense techniques and tactical positioning in melee battles.

The Spear is, perhaps, the most ancient of all weapons of war. It was not only one of the first weapons used by stone age men, but it holds a place in honour in the weapons of war as the first weapon to be used by a mass of men fighting as a unit - it is the foundation of the army as opposed to a horde of men fighting individual actions.

It is only when you have fought against a group, even a small group, of spearmen standing shoulder to shoulder that you realize just how deadly a united group of spearmen acting in unison are. I have tested this myself, fighting with a katana against two spearmen standing shoulder to shoulder, and I have found that unless you are fast enough to get past the point and sprint in and attack from the side, you cannot win. This is not too much of a problem if you have enough time and space - but not all tactical situations allow you this luxury. And there is a solution to this attack - the third, reserve spearman, about whom I shall explain later.

It is simply impossible to break through from the middle unless you are so fast, and the opposing spearmen so slow and so unarmoured, that you can whack aside both the points, sprint into the gap now opened, kill one spearmen (in my practice, this means touching the padding of the spearman with my practice katana: IRL this is not as easy as that, as we have the problem of armour and human unpredictability to wounding to deal with) with one blow, and his companion with the backslash.

Returning to the solution of whacking aside one point and sprinting in from the side, this becomes more difficult when you have a third, reserve spearman with his spear held up vertically, marching just behind the front two spearmen. When you charge in from the left or the right he can wheel to face you and drop his point, and since you are charging forward you can easily become a human shish kebab!

And should you have three groups of two spearmen each advancing on you from the middle, left, and right, you are - heheh, I can't resist this - skewered! Literally. I would rather take on eight or even ten swordsmen single-handed than a tactical group of six spearmen. With swords, no matter how many enemies you are single handedly facing, you have a chance of defeating them all, since it is difficult to coordinate attack using swords - you have to watch out for the slashing of not only your enemies but your friends. With spears on the other hand, you have a separation distance that allows you to thrust at your enemy without worrying too much about whether a friend's thrust might find you instead.

Bottom line: even a master swordsman facing six second-class spearmen had a good chance of being badly wounded, or even killed, if he tried to fight them all at once.

The spear is the easiest, of all the white arms, to master. Its basic use can be taught in a matter of an hour or so, in contrast to the week or more of training needed for even the most basic use of the sword. This is why historically, the peasant militia have always been armed with spears.

This post is about weapons you throw.

The throwing spear was one of the first weapons that man used to attack from a distance, and it is possible that its history is even older than the bow and arrow. The advantage of the javelin over the bow and arrow is that the well-constructed javelin has a much higher armour penetration possibility than the simple arrow fired from a vow. Especially if you are throwing that javelin from a galloping horse!

Armour penetration is dependent on four main factors: how fast the projectile is travelling, how heavy the projectile is, how small the initial area of penetration is - or, in simple English, how sharp the projectile point is - and how much friction the projectile generates as it moves through the armour, which again in simple English means how slim the spear or arrowhead is. There are many other factors, of course, but these come into play at higher, gun - level velocities: for the purpose of our medieval combat, we can largely ignore them.

Now although the javelin is about four to six times slower than the arrow as thrown from the ground, it is twenty times heavier. This means that it can penetrate five times more armour than the arrow if it has the same warhead cross section. However, for many reasons the spearhead on the javelin is larger than the bodkin arrowhead point - at least twice, and sometimes three times as much. So practically, this means that the javelin could penetrate between over twice to about one and half times as much armour as the arrow. And if you are throwing the javelin from a galloping horse, you can nearly double the penetration capability.

The problem with the javelin is that it is easy to dodge, being a slow projectile weapon As such it was used mainly against targets that were not capable of maneuver, such as soldiers in a battle line. An army weapon, not an adventurer or assassin weapon. But I suspect the Imperial Legion, particularly its cavalry, would have javelins!

Now let us move to throwing weapons more suitable to our adventurer and assassin characters.

As I have mentioned before, the true throwing knife - by which I mean a knife that is designed for throwing - is a very specialized knife, and it has a special construction. It has a blade that is weighted - according to your style of throw - either toward the tip, or to the handle.

These techniques of knife throwing are so hard to master, and the chances of a mistrike so high, that I for one think adventurer and/or assassin characters should not use this unless they have trained for at least two to five years in its use. The 'spear throw' or 'military throw' especially, is very, very hard to master - it took me over a year to do it, and even then I was not very good! And classic style knife throwers cannot be good spear style throwers, and vice versa, since to train in one is to spoil your reflexes in the other!

If you must have your character be a knife thrower, know that he/she has to say what style he/she is throwing. In the classic style, the knife rotates once to as many as six times on the way to the target - and because of this, its penetration capability is very poor, especially against leather armour or even heavy clothes. And as for chain mail and plate armour, forget it. In fact, most throwing knives thrown in the classic style will not kill an ordinary man at once, which means the classic "the assassin sneaked up behind the sentry and threw a knife at him, and the sentry fell over silently, killed on the spot" is just a load of BS. Yeah, it may happen - about once in twenty times.

This is why the 'military throw' or 'spear throw' was invented. This type of throw is harder to learn, and involves different styles of wrist snap or finger control so that the knife is thrown straight, like a javelin. Now with a heavy throwing knife at short range this could kill a sentry in one throw - just about - but the problem is that this is a close range technique, not suitable for distances above twenty five feet (eight meters) or so. So if your ninja assassin is killing sentries in one knife throw, using the spear technique, don't write that he did it from a hundred feet away!

This is why I think the most suitable of the classic throwing weapons for the assassin is the sling. Yes, it does take some time to learn, but it has many, many advantages over the knife or even the bow and arrow in practical terms.

First, unlike the bow, it is absolutely silent.

Second, if we do not take ammunition into consideration, it takes up almost no weight and space at all! And even if we add the weight of the best type of ammunition, the large six ounce ( 165 gram) lead ball, twenty of them will weigh only seven and a half pounds, or about three kilos. And, of course, if we run out of those we can always use rocks - at close range they are just as accurate and almost as deadly.

And finally, the beauty of the sling is that it can be used from a distance against the head of a sentry from behind, and it doesn't matter at all if he is wearing a good helmet or not - a good hit means that he will go down instantly. This kind of 'behind armour effect' is an advantage that few other weapons possess. Furthermore you can swing that sling while crouching, which again is difficult to do with a longbow.

Even if you only hit his torso, you stand a good chance of breaking the enemy's rib or spine, and while it won't silence him, it will definitely render him incapable of resisting your further attacks.

I really think an Assassin should have the sling and lead balls as part of his/her standard equipment!

And finally...the bolas...

Why do writers neglect the bolas in their combat scenes? Like the sling, it is a dirt cheap piece of equipment, but also like the sling, it is 'the great equalizer' especially against an opponent wearing heavy armour!

Now, a strong and well trained man wearing heavy armour can run for a short distance almost as well as an unarmoured man, but there are two things he cannot do well, no matter how well trained and strong he is: he cannot dodge well, and he cannot jump well. And if he falls, it is much harder for him to scramble up to his feet again.
The bolas, swung and thrown at the feet of a heavily armoured enemy, would be very difficult for that enemy to dodge.

And if the bolas caught his feet while he was charging, down he would go - HARD - and it would not be easy for him to get up again, and while he was scrambling to get up, we would have plenty of time to do nasty things to him. Especially if we were armed with a rondel dagger or an armour piercing spear, of which I shall post more later.

My next post will be on specialized weapons, like the two mentioned above, and poleaxes.

To make a sling you will need:

Two lengths of leather, nice and supple. Old leather, definitely.

A pouch, made of heavy cloth. Or for best results, three leather pieces stitched together to form a pouch.

Good stitching to make the pouch and join the pouch to the two lengths of leather.

To practice, find heavy stone. Put stone in pouch. Hold strings with one string inside fist, another held outside fist between finger and thumb. Swing sling around head, then let go of outside string. Stone will fly.

That's the theory, and can be done by anyone in five minutes.

But to AIM the stone or ball accurately...aha! AHA! That's another matter entirely!!!

It takes YEARS of daily practice to aim the stone with speed and accuracy. Many modern day people start, and after a week or even a month throw up their hands in disgust. It takes years, at least two to five years, of nearly daily practice before you become an experienced slinger.

This was why in ancient times, as for example Alexander the Great's time, Commanders preferred to recruit professional mercenary slingers who already knew the art rather than spend years and years teaching their soldiers how to use slings.

In the bible it is said that David killed a lion and then an armoured giant, Goliath, with a sling. I am not surprised. He was a shepherd, and had years to practice and refine his craft. And as I have mentioned above, without heavy padding under the armour, that armour is not going to protect from the shock effect of a speeding stone - particularly if that stone is a ball of lead!

Of all the enemies of the medieval world, the heavily armoured knight was the worst feared...because, until the advent of the crossbow and gunpowder, his armour was almost undefeatable.

Plate armour, as I have explained above, is almost impregnable to both swords and ordinary arrows. It was not just the strength of the armour that defeated swords. There was also the fact that the armour was fluted and angled, and that the man wearing that armour was trained to move so that sword strikes would rarely fall directly on the armour, but would hit at an angle. Thus most sword strikes would glance off, and even when a sword strike hit the armour directly, the strength of the armour would most likely keep out the sword. And, finally, even in the worst case scenario of the armour being breached, there was still the matter of sword friction against the armour - since a sword blade grows wider from the edge to the middle and perhaps even the end of the blade, the deeper the sword blade cut into the armour the more friction it would generate. This meant that even a successful penetration of the armour would still not allow a sword blade to reach inside more than a few inches.

And, of course, we are writing our stories in the magical world of Oblivion, where Dremora in otherworld armour can be summoned. We shall assume that their armour is even stronger than plate armour.

So: how is that armour to be defeated?

It is an axiom that armour cannot be strong everywhere, not even on a modern day tank! On a medieval human or Dremora this is even more true, for a human cannot be armoured completely in all his joints - he would not be able to move, then. The elbows, the armpits, the backs of the knees, these are all areas which must have flexible armour... and another area is the chin and neck area.

Thus the armourbreaker short spear was created. It was designed to attack the chin of the armoured warrior from underneath, penetrating though the chain mail, into the chin and into the brain from underneath.

The spear itself is a hollow tube of steel, built for great rigidity and lightness. It tapers to a sharp point and is round, with no edge. Midway up the spear there is a cross guard that also functions as a hand thrust grip, and at the bottom there is a pommel that can also be used for a handgrip for the other hand to hold for the thrust.

The technique is to wait for the enemy, holding the spear under the cross guard with one hand and with the palm of the other hand cupping the pommel. The plate-armoured enemy will most likely rush directly at you, with sword upraised to deliver a crushing chop that will either split your helmet or give you a brain concussion. As he comes into range you will step into his chop, at the same time kneeling, and from a kneeling position thrust from beneath into the chin of his helmet, where the protection is not plate armour but flexible - and weaker - chain mail.

This has several advantages. Due to the weight of the enemy in his armour, he will not be able to absorb the blow by twisting out of the way - in fact his very weight will help the spear push though the armour. Since you are so close to him the leverage power of his sword will be very low, since he is hitting you with the base of his blade, and thus even if he hits you his power will be only a fraction of that power if he had hit you with the tip or middle of the blade. And if both of you miss, the fact that he has collided with you while you are kneeling and he is standing will most likely make him fall ass over teakettle over you...and a fallen enemy in heavy armour is a very, very vulnerable enemy.

If he is on the ground you can either spear him again with your short spear, or you can drop the spear, take out your rondel dagger and stab his face and eyes through the eyeholes. The rondel dagger is like the armour piercing spear with a handle and a guard. It is a rouded, very sharp spike, and is used for piercing chain mail at close range.

This is the tactic, and the weapons, to use in attacking heavily armoured enemies.

The poleaxe too is similar to this, but it is an even more specialized weapon that is mainly used for hooking heavily armoured knights off horseback. It is a spear with one or two long, strong and sharp pickaxe points near the tip. It is swing at a rider as he passes, and the hope is that the combined speed of your swing and his momentum on the horse will make the point of axe penetrate into the armour and therefore catch him like a fish on a hook, so you can pull him off his horse. This is not easy however - the enemies armour is not flat, but fluted and rounded, so there is a high possibility of the point sliding off his armour. And he could also parry your swing with his sword or his shield!

Hollywood has released more than one sniper movie, and there are too many games with sniper weapon modes and roleplay to count. And guess what can't be found in ALL of them?

What the REAL rifle sniper expert does with his ammunition...to wit: the hand-measuring of the powder in each and every one of the bullets he carries.

You see, the true sniper is a perfectionist: by which is meant he absolutely holds that two bullets, fired from the same gun in exactly identical conditions, must fly in exactly the same trajectory every time. And one of the things that can ruin that condition is the tiny variation of powder in the different cartridge cases of each round, and, to a lesser degree, the tiny variation of weight between one bullet and the next.

Therefore a sniping expert, when given a box of ammunition fresh from the factory, will disassemble all the rounds into their component bullet, cartridge case and powder, and first weigh each bullet on a micro scale. All bullets over or under the manufacturer's stated weight by even 0.1% are rejected. Then the same is done to the powder, only here the sniper is going by his own 'book' of powder weight for each cartridge. None underpower the cartridge, but some add perhaps slightly more powder. No matter what the sniper's personal preference, he always pours exactly the same amount of powder into the cartridges he will use, only here he is more precise - down to 99.99% accuracy.

What has all this got to do with bows and arrows, you may ask?

Well, just as today's expert snipers take painstaking care of their ammunition, so too the master archers of the past took especial pains that their ARROWS were as close to perfection as possible. They tried, as far as was possible with the relatively crude scales of their age, to make their arrows as uniform a weight as possible. Whenever and wherever possible they inspected each and every one of their arrows for straightness, for an arrow with even the tiniest amount of warp would fly off target or fail to penetrate as deeply as it should - and this defect would grow more as the range increased. They tried to make sure that their arrows were as stiff as possible, for an arrow that would flex in flight would have the same defects as an arrow already warped.

This meant that many of the master archers of the past were - like the expert snipers of today - their own fletchers. They preferred to make their own arrows for themselves, choosing only the best, the most seasoned hardwoods, carefully and painstakingly cutting and carving the arrow shafts, sighting along them again and again to ensure their straightness, fitting the warheads on them so that the point would be exactly centered, and feathering them as carefully. Some master archers would even offset the tail feathers to make the arrow rotate slowly in flight, to gain an extra amount of stability and accuracy at the expense of some range and speed.

It was, of course, almost impossible for the archer, no matter how skilled a Fletcher he was, to make ALL his arrows - the requirements of practice alone would defeat that! So what many master archers did was to shop only at reputable Fletcher's workshops, if possible, and even then they would still inspect (if time and conditions permitted) each and every arrow they had bought, and reject those they deemed unacceptable. Thus if you were passing through a town in medieval times which had a lot of good archers, you would probably see quite often an archer sitting down with a bunch of arrows spread out before him, picking up the arrows one at a time and sighting down along them, and separating them into two piles.

If they were supplied arrows in bulk, as for example on the battlefield, or if for various reasons they had to accept arrows of questionable quality, the practice of master archers was to do a quick inspection of the arrows they had been given, or which they had just purchased, and separate the good ones from the poorer quality ones. This was why the master archers of the past frequently could be found with two arrow bags or quivers, to separate the higher quality arrows from the lower quality ones. Depending on the type of shot they had to make, they would use one or the other. For example, they would use lower quality arrows for closer range unarmoured and weak targets in good conditions, and for targets such as large and strong armoured warriors at long ranges in bad, windy weather conditions, they would use their highest quality arrows to make the shot.

Oh...and one more thing...sometimes even GOOD arrows would deteriorate, and warp due to days of wet and damp weather followed by a couple of days of scorching heat! The archer had to re-check his already checked arrows from time to time! (This is why modern archers LOVE today's aluminum or carbon fiber arrows!)

In addition to separating arrows into hand-picked top quality ones and mass-produced junk, the archer would also separate his arrows into at least two types: the quick killing broadhead arrow and the slim, needle-like armour - piercing bodkin arrow. Both were necessary on the battlefield. The broadhead was necessary to create wide, fairly shallow wounds that would kill an enemy quickly: the bodkin was necessary to punch through leather or chain mail armour. (Forget about plate armour - it was not possible for 95% of archers to punch through that, unless you were a phenomenally strong archer with a 200 pound plus draw-weight bow and very special, ironwood shaft arrows tipped with a bodkin point) Note that poisoned arrows were nearly always bodkin arrows, because with poison the objective is to get the poison into the deepest part of the body.

Thus writers writing about archers, in the interests of realism, should write about archers who were always checking and re-checking their arrows, who would go to buy arrows only from their favourite Fletcher shops, and who were frequently pausing before or in the middle of battle to choose between one or another type of arrow.

Now let's talk about bows.

Alas, Morrowind and Oblivion do not allow Mongolian and Turkish style recurve bows. More's the pity, as these bows are more efficient, though far more complex to construct, than the simple longbows that our game does allow. They allow greater speed and power to be imparted to the arrow on a shorter draw length, which is very useful for the archer who is strong but has shorter arms due to his shorter height (read: Asian Archer).

So we are stuck with the longbow. And the longbow has limitations.

First, it cannot be used well from a kneeling position. Yes, you can fire it sideways, but that will degrade your accuracy significantly - so if you are thinking of hitting a long range target from a crouch with a longbow, forget it.

Second, a longbow cannot be kept permanently strung for a long time, or the elasticity of the bow will deteriorate: so if you are not planning to use the bow within the next few days, you should unstring the bow, and string it up again the day before battle.

Third, the longbow demands a long man to use it well. I always chuckle whenever I see a short, slim Bosmer declared to be a 'master archer'. Just the short length of his arms alone would disqualify him on that account. And the size of those Bosmer arms, too...puh-leeze. A warbow has at least 120 lbs of draw weight, and we know from old, preserved English Warbows that top-quality warbows had draws up to 220 lbs! And perhaps more, for the bows of great master archers have not been preserved to be anolysed in this day and age.

Now a 200 lb Warbow is just over six feet in length, and it has a draw of at least 28 to 32 inches. Even for a muscular 200-230 lb six foot tall man with long arms, that will need a draw not to his nose, but beyond his ear. Drawing a 200 lb draw weight bow to your ear, not just once but eight to ten times a minute, for ten minutes at least non-stop, needs TREMENDOUSLY strong arms and back - thus the master longbow archer needed to be a six foot tall man with shoulder deltoid muscles the size of bowling balls and a V-shaped back with bulging muscles... and an appetite to match those muscles. In short, above the waist the master archer would resemble today's bodybuilders or weightlifters more than a slim, willowy Bosmer!

(And now you see why female bowgirl adventurers are not realistic IRL, unless they are using recurve bows. And, of course, unless they have the strength of a 200 lb man in a 120 lb frame!)

(What about today's female archers, you may ask? Well, they're using 30 lb target bows or at most 65lb hunting bows. On the medieval battlefield these would be considered children's toys)

One final point about bows: the bowstrings of medieval times were very sensitive to water and moisture. If they got soaked, they would stretch just a little bit, thus ruining the balance, the accuracy, and the power of the bow. Medieval archers therefore always kept a couple of spare bowstrings in a waterproof pouch, just in case.

My next post will be about my ideas on Assassin, or Ninja, weapons.




Note on crafting a longbow : a quick peek in wikipedia mentionned a crafting time of ten hours for a master archer making a longbow. Of course it's the crafting part, it doesn't include drying the wood, for which a year or more seems right.

From Wiki, "The English Longbow"


Materials

They were made from yew in preference, although ash and other woods were also used. The traditional construction of a longbow consists of drying the yew wood for 1 to 2 years, then slowly working the wood into shape, with the entire process taking up to four years. (This can be done far more quickly by working the wood down when wet, as a thinner piece of wood will dry much faster.)

I suspect you are talking about modern methods of crafting longbows, which uses chemicals, and techniques which were not available in medieval times.

While the exceptional crossbow, like the exceptional longbow, did have draws to or even over 200 lbs, the average crossbow in medevial times had a 150 lb draw and could shoot a quarrel (the name of an iron crossbow bolt) through plate armour at 40 yards. Therefore my 120 lb bow shooting a steel bolt through a buckler at 5 yards is well within the bounds of possibility.

Regarding angled projectile rejection, this really depends mainly upon the shape of the point and - aha, this is something you may not know, it's a rather obscure and fascinating fact about projectiles - the speed/weight ratio of the projectile. Modern high speed projectiles flying at impact speeds of well over two thousand to even four and a half thousand feet a second are highly sensitive to strike angle: slower, heavier projectiles are not so sensitive. If you really want to study this arcane subject in detail I suggest you study the penetrating power of the really, really, REALLY heavy guns of WWII, the 15, 16 and 18 inch Naval Rifles found on the Queen Elizabeth, the Iowa, and the Yamato class battleships, against armour at low impact speeds and low impact angles. The armour piercing bolt is this, in miniature.

I was going to write a long treatise on Ninja Weapons...but I have work to do, dinners to go out to, friends and others to meet, and a certain PM to reply to at length. So I'll chop up this post into fragments.


The principles of Ninja weapons should be: power, silence, one-move kill, lightweight, compactness, and ... cheapness.

They need to be powerful enough to be a one shot kill because the ninja is, for various reasons I do not have the time to go into here, usually a small to medium sized man or a woman. Therefore his weapons must compensate for the weaknesses in his or her physique.

This is why many Ninja weapons are poisoned, and why ninjas have made a deep study of various types of poison.

The ninja will nearly always be outnumbered. Therefore he/she must attack in stealth, and silence is stealth.
As is compactness and lightness. Bulky weapons are easily seen, and are difficult to carry into narrow places and up walls and under hiding places. Heavy weapons are tiring to carry for long distances.

The ninja is an assassin because he isn't rich - so very expensive weapons are O.U.T. on his budget! He MAY carry one or two specialist weapons that are expensive, but he will take great care not to lose them and use them only when absolutely necessary.


THE FIRST GROUP: CHEAP, DANGEROUS, AND EFFECTIVE

( 1 ) The garotte

( 2 ) The sling

( 3 ) The disassembled spear



The SLING and its usage I have already described. See above post.

The GAROTTE can be nothing more than a length of rope with two handles used for strangling from behind, but this simple garotte has the disadvantage of bringing the strangler way too close to his intended victim. If the victim is trained and keeps his head cool enough for the correct counter, which is to reach behind your neck and attack the eyes of your strangler with your thumbs, there is a high - too high - possibility of the attack being unsucessful.

I have invented a ninja garrote which is basically a three section stick that snaps together to become a five foot long rigid pole. There are eyes along this pole, like a fishing pole has.

The head of this pole is a half moon steel curve with an ice pick horizontal wedge in the middle and the tip of the half moon crescent also hast two eyes.

The garotte rope is threaded along these eyes, and the operation is for the Ninja to silently run up behind the sentry, slip the garotte at the end of the pole over his head, then pull the rope at the end of the pole with one hand while simultaneously pushing the pole into the neck with the other. If done correctly, this will result in the ice pick snapping through the neck veterbrae and through the spinal cord while at the same time the garotte will snap around the neck and cut off blood and air to the brain. And in addition to this there will be a safety distance of about three feet between the sentry and the ninja.

For best results, smear a paralysis poison on the ice pick before attack, though I do not advocate the use of poison on weapons which you will have to reuse again. The hassle of avoiding contact with the restowed weapon and cleaning it carefully afterwards is just too great.

The collapsible spear is simply the garotte pole with a spearhead on top! In this way you don't need to carry two weapons - you can carry the 3 section, compact pole, and put a garrotte head or spear head on it as the tactical situation needs!

Thus you fulfill the requirements of stealth, cheapness, quietness, lightness, and compactness!

More on this...

This is the part where writers who are not too much into the technical points of weaponry, such as BSparrow and Helena et al, will appreciate. For it is a psychological and philosophical examination of the dichotomy that exists in the mind of the great Warrior.
In describing the mind of the great warrior, one has to understand that there is a duality in that mind: great anger and arrogance existing side by side with dispassion, humility, flexibility and caution.

No warrior can be one without that fierceness, which is the outcome of anger and cruelty, in his or her mind. Contrary to what we may think, battlefield studies have shown that humans do not like to kill: that they have to be trained to kill, for it is in the intrinsic nature of humans to avoid killing one another. Studies going back as far as the Napoleonic Wars have shown that even in the easiest way of killing, which is the firing of a musket into an anonymous crowd of enemies at a distance, men automatically shot to miss. It was only the veterans who were hitting the target every time - which gave a definite advantage to Britain, the only army in that war which was completely professional. This was why Napoleon did not try to use fire in his columns: he used the French columns in exactly the same way as a modern boxer used his right hand - to deliver a knockout blow while having found the range with a left jab. In the Napoleonic system the artillery was the left jab, the column was the straight right that finished off the job not by fire, but by sheer weight of numbers.

Knowing this, I think we will have to emphasize the importance of humanoid target training in preparing the warrior. Indeed all armies today emphasize this. The raw recruit is 'de-sensitized' to the shock of killing one's fellow man by plunging his bayonet again and again, and shooting again and again, into straw targets that are made up into the shape of a human.

'Sadistic' drill sergeants, who know the routine, scream and howl and sometimes even beat the raw recruit so that he will lose touch with the finer sensibilities of human hesitation, and become a machine that can kill without compunction...

It would seem from all this that the best warriors are cold blooded psychopaths - indeed I have deliberately drawn one of my warriors, the archer and bandit Stavak, to reflect this side of the professional killing machine. And yet if we look at history we will see again and again the very greatest of warriors were not just killing machines: they were humanitarians as well, with a surprising sensitivity and a feel for the common soldier.

History has shown us many examples, the Japanese 'sword saint' Miyamoto Mushashi for one, of warriors who were equally gifted with weapon or paintbrush, who could handle pole arms and poetry with equal ease. (No, I am not among them )

And the more we study these warriors, the more we begin to understand that the greatest of warriors are those that balance the dichotomies of cruelty and compassion, of hatred and healing, of leadership and love.

The cruelty of the warrior is a fire in training that burns away some, or all, of the humanity of the warrior: but the greatest of all warriors are those who have marched steadily straight into that fire, and come out again on the other side without having been burned or besmirched.

Thus the great warrior must hate his enemy enough to want to kill him, yet at the same time retain enough of humanity to spare a surrendering enemy.

The great warrior must have supreme self confidence - the cockiness to think that he could take on an entire army all by himself, which must be tempered with the humility that knows that even champions must fall and die one day. Without self confidence the warrior will be eaten alive on the battlefield: with too much arrogance the warrior will fall into the pit of his own pride. He has the arrogance to believe that he can walk on water, simultaneously with the knowledge that all warriors only walk the path of those who have gone before.

And he must simultaneously burn with rage in battle while at the same time holding an ice cold detachment.

Heart on fire
Mind on ice
A volcano in your briast
But frozen the mind rests.


I will reply to the antatomical points raised by the previous posters.

But a point on the warrior psychology, first.

Just like in Star Wars, there is a dark and bright side to every Force.

The spirit of the Warrior is no different.

The basis of the warrior spirit is anger, for no Gandhi can ever become a warrior, in particular a warrior of olden times who had to get up close and personal with his opponent. It takes more than just an intellectual argument in the mind that "unless I kill this person, death will come to many, including those I love" to enable anyone to actually ram a sword two feet and more into an enemy's guts, and twist it even as the dying enemy screams in a howl only those who have killed at close range know.

It takes primitive emotions. Fear. And Rage. Particularly Rage.

But from this foundation of Rage and Fear, some completely different psychological edifices can be built up.

The warrior consumed by total rage is the 'psychotic warrior' we see in movies and read about in literature, and whom a few of us have actually met in real life. (I suspect, Acadian, that you must have met or at least heard about quite a few in your thirty jarhead years.) Such men are drunk on danger: they feel alive only when they are near the opportunity to kill, for they value their own life little. Such men were the 'baresarkers' of Nordic Legend, who wanted to kill so much that they would strip off their armour and charge straight at the enemy, for the lessened weight of the armour would increase the speed of their attack. As they did not value their life the protection given by armour was of no consequence to them. This is the 'heedless of death' warrior that most, including you, MalX1, think of as the 'perfect warrior' - and indeed it would seem that Musashi too agrees in 'Go rin no sho' where he expresses the same sentiments...

But, in my opinion, such a warrior is not the perfect warrior. Far from it. Formidable, but far, far from perfect.

For a warrior consumed utterly by rage has three of the four things needed by a warrior. He has speed, strength, and stamina.

But he does NOT have the fourth - which is intelligence.

And without that, if the opponent has cool nerves and tactical skill, he will fall headlong into the first trap the opponent sets. The baresarker type warrior will win only over opponents who are already psychologically shaken by his frenzied rage even before the fight begins: thus the baresarker will slaughter hundreds of battlefiedl noobies easily, but against a real veteran he wouldn't last two minutes.

A subvariant of the baresarker is the true sociopath, or the even rarer psychopath. This is usually a baresarker of slightly higher intelligence and a psychological malfunction that makes him at war with not just 'the enemy' but with human society at large. Savak is a good example. Such men do not last long in any group, because by nature they are antisocial and hate humanity...it is a good thing that the US Armed Forces, especially the USMC, now have psychological profiles that can identify these men early on and move them out. These are the predators who in modern society become serial killers. In medieval times they would become lone bandits.

Then there is another type of warrior driven...not by anger...but by FEAR.

This warrior is the LOUDMOUTH BULLY.

You see them a lot in militaries all over the world. To hear them talk, there are none braver and tougher than them. And against weak enemies, they are truly and spectacularly brave. They are also sickeningly cruel to captured enemies and any powerless civilians they get their hands on.

Many - not all - but many young soldiers go through this phase. (Again, this is probably something you know a lot of, Acadian!) This is why all armies have officers, to control these soldiers from committing atrocities.

You can tell if a soldier is actually driven by fear or not when he is put into a life threatening situation. He begins to whine, to [censored], and in a real extremity will probably even shoot you in the back if he has to do that to escape and save his own life. In medieval situations, this type of soldier will be the first to run when he sees the battle begin to sway against his side.

And finally, there is that which makes a perfect soldier.

It is a soldier who makes anger and fear his SERVANTS, not his MASTERS.

There is only one way to do that, and it is through a philosophy. This philosophy may be through the form of a religion, or it may be through the form of a creed drilled into you by a master you respect, or it may be through a creed you yourself have created. Whatever the structure of your tower of philosophy may be, it has to be tall enough to see through the fog of fear and hate and strong enough to withstand the buffeting winds of tempation to either cruelty or cowardice.

It is such men who truly do not fear death, not in the way of blind hatred of the rage-drunk warrior, but in the way of one who sees death, yet calmly walks foward to meet it in the serene knowledge that life will bloom fresh from the slowly widening pool of your own blood ... it is such men who can truly claim to have found 'the way of the warrior'.

When I started this thread I had envisaged that all that I wanted to explain, and a reasonable amount of replies and queries to what I had to talk about, would take place in well under the 200 post limit. Indeed, I did not expect this thread to reach the numbers it has now...an average of 100 + views per day and already 133 replies. And I have still yet posted a little under half of what I had intented to post... and new questions, and opportunities for explanation, are already appearing in my mind.

It is my fault, actually. I should have known better.

Homer said it best. "Of arms and the man I sing" begins his great Poem, and four thousand years later here I am explaining the relations between arms, the men who bear them, and we who write about them. This subject is one that branches and sub-branches into a vast network of themes potentially touching all the aspects of human life, and as I write and readers comment on my writings, and each others' responses, this thematic network I mentioned above grows and grows into a life of its own, expanding to post after post...

Thus I already forsee having to make a continuation thread for this. Ah well. C'est la vie. It goes t'show you never can't tell.

Now about anatomy in fighting.

A warrior MUST know about at least the basics of human anatomy, especially a warrior who will be fighting more or less alone, a warrior who will be fighting more battles than duels.

I once read a novel on the Roman Army where the grizzled old centurion was teaching the fresh legionnares that "You have to know how and where to use the sword boys, because if you do, just six inches of sword in the right place and the Barbarian will go down nice and easy, but if you don't, you can stick the whole bloody two feet into that Barbarian and he'll STILL have the strength and the time left to take you with him to Hell before he goes down!" ( I am also reminded of the notorious Miami FBI shootout of 1986 and the die hard robber Platt.).

Thus, to be an efficient wielder of the sword you must learn not only the places in the human body which will cause a man to stop fighting effectively, but also the places which can be reached by a shallow cut and the places which need a deep thrust to breach. This is important. In a duel you can afford to get your weapon stuck in your enemy if by doing so you deliver a lethal blow. In a battle you cannot. For while the enemy may be dying from your brilliant thrust, another enemy may be charging at you to kill you - and you can't do a thing as your sword is stuck in the first enemy's body!

So what are the VITAL areas of the body that can be reached by a slash? Here again we have another problem. It's called body armour. Armour defends against slashes far better than against thrusts. And in a battle with moving targets, much of the energy in your strike may also be absorbed by the defensive recoil of your enemy.

So: find unarmoured, vital points to slash!

THE FACE Unless the opponent is wearing a full steel plate suit, complete with VISORED helmet, the face and the eyes in it are open to attack. Yes, they are also the most heavily guarded part of the human body, but the eyes are the prize target most sought by the swords man.

THE NECK Again, unless the opponent is wearing expensive armour with neckguards, the neck MUST remain free of armour if the head is to move freely. Some Chainmail, though, has a full head and neck covering. This is, however, almost as rare as full plate armour. The neck is home to the two carotid arteries and the thorax. Go for them with a quick slash, and that will be one less enemy to worry about.

THE SWORD ARM Not an instant kill, but disabling the sword arm by either slashing at the arm, elbows, wrists, or even breaking the bones of that arm through the armour by a heavy blow (even protected by bracers, the fragile wrist bones can be fractured or broken by a heavy blow) can bring about the enemy's retirement from the battle. One less enemy to worry about.

THE ARM PITS A much neglected area! But it is nearly always unarmoured. and the axillary artery is very, very close under the skin.

THE GROIN AREA Again, frequently found unarmoured. The grand prize, the FEMORAL ARTERIES, live there! Slice one open and it's the jackpot, you can run away after that and just let the enemy die by himslelf. Death in under three minutes.

THE BACK OF THE KNEES Perfect for a kneeling backhand slash attack. Nearly always unarmoured.

The trouble with most people's combat scenes is that first, there is usually very little setting. Combat can happen in a chance encounter, it's true, but most of the time combat is planned. And even in 'chance encounter' combat, the veteran has already filed away in his mind the tactics, the techniques he will use on that occasion, and he applies them almost unconciously.

Take Stavak, for example. When he sets out to ambush he prepares the ground painstakingly. First he chooses the ground with the best vision, not only for the ambush but for scouting around for possible distrubances and witnessess: then he prepares distractions and disguises, and even a dummy to fake his own death.

Yet Stavak, for all his preparation, also understands that Murphy and his law make frequent appearances in battle, so he has arranged tactical flexibility in case the unexpected turns up. As it did. When the swordsman on the horse stepped out of his plan by seeing him much earlier than planned, Stavak changes plans at once to cope with the new situation.

Sojourner, too, is an example of both planning and flexibility. He planned to draw away the two bandit tolltakers and fight them away from the Bandit Lair. But his encounter with Alfric the Bandit Chief was totally unplanned: as was his discovery that Alfric was using a weapon which was new to him. And the power and speed of Alfric, and his weapon, inflicted many wounds on him in the combat. Yet he had the presence of mind and heart to change his technique and tactics on the spot, and win in the end...and gain a new weapon as well.

Also, I would like the writers on this forum to BRING ENEMIES TO LIFE. By which I mean give some life and colour into your enemies, even if they're characters you're going to use only for half a page before they die under your hero's weapon! Roast Leg and Slug lived for only three or four paragraphs, yet I have tried to give a brief glimpse of their minds and personalities. As for Alfric, I hope - I hope - I have showed the deep cunning, the courage, and the loyalty of that fierce Bandit Chieftain, even in the confines of a short story!

Finally, remember that HEROES NEED TO BE VULNERABLE TO BE BELIEVEABLE, so that you will need to get your heroes wounded - and even in danger of death - from time to time! Even the carefully crafted ambush of Stavak ended in one arrow slamming off his head. Only his steel helmet saved him. Sojourner just before his victory had a slash across his cheek, two large wounds in his thigh, and a left arm that was badly sprained with perhaps a bone fracture! And this also ties in with what is common to both writers and game designers - CREATE A 'BOSS' AT THE END OF A LEVEL who will give you a hell of a fight! And if you can make that 'boss' believeable, and blend him seamlessly into the story, that will make your story much, much better...

There is more, much, much more, to the technique of writing good and seamless battle scenes, but this will do for the appetizer. Main courses will follow. Perhaps, if I have the time, even a dessert or three.



When you write a battle scene, the first question you have to ask yourself is: what is the experience of the combattants like? Experienced warriors will approach combat very differently from the newbies or even the strong rookies with a few fights under their belts.

When reading about wars from Ancient times all the way to World War Two and beyond, I am struck by one thing...

War. War never changes. (Fallout 3)

The way the veteran swordsman in the Roman Arena approached his opponent was exactly the same, in principle, as the way the veteran swordsman approached his opponent in the so-called 'golden age of duelling' - France in the sixteenth century - and the way the gunslinger of the American West sized up his opponent, or the way the aces of the Air Forces in World War two sized up the enemy they were about to duel...

The way the enemy moves tells a lot about his experience.

When the fighter ace of world war two saw an enemy in the air, he could tell in less than a minute whether he was facing a rookie or an expert by the way the enemy aircraft moved in the air, the way it would try to get into an excellent attack position or not, and whether the enemy would nervously open fire at long range or would move in, guns silent and deadly, until it could get into point blank range.

Same thing in the age of the sword, spear, axe and shield.

If the enemy is inexperienced, he will start his rush from a long way away, usually screaming oaths and challenges to try to bolster his own courage. The true veteran will move in at a fast walk, saving his rush, if needed, for the last second.

The inexperienced rookie will usually nervously grip his weapon too tightly. If you do this - technique tip here! - you will be too stiff and slow to respond and change the direction of your attack or defence instantly if you miss your strike, or it your weapon is knocked aside by the enemy's parry. So if you see an enemy clenching his teeth and gripping his weapon so tightly that his knuckles are white, chances are he's a rookie.

Rookies always react too slow and too violently to a feint. A feint at the beginning of a combat is a technique frequently used by experts to try to guess the caliber of their opponent. If he reacts too slow in the beginning, and then makes up by violently moving away too late, then he's a rookie - no doubt about it. Yet how many writers use the feint in writing combat? Precious few.

Many rookies are predictable in their moves in the sense that they nearly always do Combination B after Move A is completed. This predictability can be dangerous, very dangerous in combat: indeed, sometimes even veterans fall into this trap. The way to avoid this is to have what is called in Budo the 'empty mind' - the mind that is empty, free of any preconceived notions, ready to respond to any new situation as it happens. This is why many Japanese and Chinese martial arts emphasize meditiation as part of their training. You will note that Alfric, a veteran, is trapped by his own preconceived notions of a side strike following a spear jab: he is caught by the unexepected, an uppercut strike instead of a side strike - similar to a boxer expecting a hook, and who throws his gloves over his ears to protect from the hook, but gets hit by an uppercut instead.

More later...

Many, many decades ago, when I was a rookie who fancied himself a bit of a hotshot in combat, my master took me aside and smiling avuncularly, told me that the best way to become a hotshot was to study and practice, and restudy and practice again, the basics. I only dimly understood what he said then. Now in my fifth decade on this earth I am beginning to understand.

The point about unarmed techniques in armed battle is that they are a SUPPLEMENT and an EMERGENCY tactic, NOT the main tactic. No matter how impressive unarmed combat techniques seem when when viewed on the screen, if skills are equal fighting with weapons is always better than fighting without. This is the first, basic fundamental.

The second fundamental is that since weapons are wielded by the hands, the FEET are the supplement to weapons that can be used in armed combat. Here, we must understand the importance of balance, especially in armour, and the proper use of feet.

All kicks destabilize the kicker. This is a fundamental fact. And the higher the kick, the more destabilizing it becomes. Here I would like to point out that I consider a knee strike to the groin area as equal to a kick, with an equivalent destabilizing level of about a below-the-knee height calf kick with the foot. If the knee strike is higher - to, say, the head - then the level of destabilization is proportionally higher.

Now an armed and armoured fighter already has his center of gravity heightened because of the weight of all the arms and amour he is carrying. If in spite of this he tries to throw a kick to the head, then he will become HUGELY destabilized, and if in addition to this he tries to throw a back or front flip (sorry, MalX1, but I had to say that) then he will become unbalanced and the time taken to regain that balance is crucial. TWIRLS and turns are different: both feet are not far from the ground, only a few feet, and the destabilization is very, very brief.

(I always stifle a giggle when I see in movies an armoured hero or villian doing acrobatic jumps and even back and front flips. HOO boy. )

Therefore the kick used in weapons combat is one that is aimed at the ankle, front shinbone, and ocassionally the knee of the enemy, especially the back of the knee. While not a spectacular move, it is NOT to be scorned - this unspectacular kick can get some pretty spectacular results.

Scenario one: An enemy charges you and swings from above at your head. You sidestep, knocking his blade as you parry, and at the same time you direct a swift kick at his ankle. If you time it right you can send the enemy crashing down to the ground from this very simple move, and since you are using the side of your foot which is encased in a boot you will not be doing any damage to yourself!

Scenario two: An enemy blocks your attack and now your two blades are locked. You can step in, stun him with a knee strike to the groin, and then drop your leg and hook one of his legs as you push forward at the same time. Again the enemy goes tumbling down, and most likely he will drop his weapon in the process!

Scenario three: An enemy thrusts at your belly and groin. You parry low, and as he is lunging forward you sweep the back of his forward leg, at the knee area, with a kick. He will go down as the front leg is swept out!

More later...