In message <gt48dt+o3ab_at_...> "Jane Williams" writes:
>Donald and I were discussing this a while back: Penny Love's novels
>are based around the concept of a pass over the Stormwalk mountains
>that's the last route for getting supplies to Whitewall. (In 1619. Hmm.)
>Well, we dealt with that by saying it was the last the heroes knew about,
>the last for this purpose, the last in this area, the last until they
>open up a load of others... but there's still the question of what they
>were bringing in, from Prax. You see, the books are very clear. Weapons,
>and armour. From metal-short Prax. Riiiight.
>
>I may have an idea, but I'd like to run it past Joerg(anos) in particular.
>Bows. Those rather lovely animal-nomad recurves that I assume are a lot
>like a Skythian or Mongol bow. Just what you want for shooting down from
>a wall.
>
>Does this make any kind of sense?
Assuming what Cults of Prax describes as "comp. bow" is that type.
The Impala, Zebra and Unicorn tribes are described as using them.
How many do you think they could produce in a season?
Then there's the issue of training, you don't train archers quickly
and even retraining existing archers to use the new weapon will
take some time.
>The armour, incidentally, I can only explain by thinking of exotic
>hides. Rhino-hide armour, that sort of thing.
Again how much of this is there going to be? The Rhino tribe is
one of the smallest and rhinos take a fair time to grow to maturity.
Bison and high llama aren't going to make significantly better
armour than local oxen.
--
Donald Oddy
http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/