When comparing different types of historical troops (such as kataphracts and western knights) a common mistake is to concentrate on technology (weapons and armour). That is misleading. The important difference with troops is tactics and the way they are deployed. Knights were simply a more heavily armed version of traditional dark ages shock cavalry. They were primarily designed for cavalry to cavalry encounters. Kataphracts were developed initially by the Parthians in what is now persia and were mainly designed to be arrow proof. They could close to combat through the hail of arrows from the very common massed hors archers of that region. Thus knights have heavier chest armour to stop lances and swords while cataprachts have more all round armour (riders face, horses entire body etc.) to protect from arrows. Knights charged at the gallop, cataphracts at a walk then a trot. It is not very useful to compare the two directly against each other but we do know from byzantine manuals that western knights
could confidently expect to defeat kataphracts head to head.
To get back on thread this _is_ relevant to Glorantha. Cataphracts perfectly suit the dara happans with their pentian nomad enemies while western knights suit the western kingdoms where the plains based nomads are rare (historically knights could not deal with horse archers).
rgds,
phelim
eircom broadband is now up to four times faster than before.
Phone 1850 73 00 73 or visit
http://home.eircom.net/broadbandoffer