Nomads & misc combat.

From: yfcw29_at_castle.ed.ac.uk
Date: Fri, 7 Apr 95 16:50:55 BST


Neil Robinson says :

>There was a mention of heavy cavalry with swords and axes, but no lances.

No stirrups.

Pam Carlson says :

>10) Modern Mongols still build cairns of stones, with a stick in the
>middle. They tie bits of silk on the stick and leave trinkets on the rocks
>as offerings. For example, the skull of a particularly fine horse would be
>placed on the pile to improve the quality of the local horses. For luck,
>you walk around the pile counterclockwise and say a prayer.

The ancient Celts used to walk around their holy sites widershins (counterclockwise) to bring luck too. Walking round the wrong way could bring terrible disasters.

Peter Metcalfe says of the Quidan people:

>Formerly known as the Khitians? I can never tell whether a romanized
>chinese name is Pinyin or old style. Always causes me major headaches.

Weren't the Kurgan people a bronze age nomad culture too, as popularized by the bad guy in Highlander. Probably a coincidence, but you never know! Such people are often only known by the name given to them by their civilised foes, who had the advantage of being able to write it down for posterity.

>>but I think Humakti are frequently law officers for 1 main
>>reason - OATH. Sure makes investigations easy.
>
>A one-use spell? I hate to see the tax rates! And besides the oath is
>used to force people to perform a specified action, _not_ to tell the
>truth! Lhankor Mhy has better spells for this purpose.

So we have Humakti Sheriffs and Lhankor Mhy Judges. Ill go along with that.

Sandy Asks :

> None of the SCA battles so far described have had anything
>near a pike square. A wedge may well have worked against the kind of
>short-spear armed guys that the SCA seems to field. I ask the SCA --
>no one has yet mustered a unit in which everyone was armed with 10
>foot or longer spears, have they? Since the SCA is primarily
>medieval, they'd have no desire to reproduce this, it seems to me.
>The Swiss pikemen are appearing near the end of the time that
>interests most SCAers, but if one of you knows of a case in which SCA
>forces carried long pikes and marched in step I'd be delighted to
>hear about it.

I was in the Sealed Knot for a year. They are a English Civil War reenactment society. Unfortunately for your purposes, I was a musketeer and so did not get involved in the pikies little tussles. I was too busy firing off volleys at other musketeers, and then closing in for melee with clubbed muskets and swords. Us musketeer always scarpered before the heavy hitting started.

Aden says :

>On another tangent, in Kendo your sword is your shield, and it performs this
>task not just by parrying, but by it's mere presence / position if held in an
>appropriate manner, as such a bonus for striking an unshielded opponent is
>not reasonable if your opponent has a significant enough weapon.

This is one of the reasons I don't bother rolling damage against parrys, unless the attacker is deliberately striking the parrying weapon. It's too much hasstle for the dubious realism it adds.

Simon Hibbs
yfcw29_at_castle.ed.ac.uk


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