> I don't think the Europeans had a single solitary
> advantage over the Mongols except for numbers, which was insufficient
> to save them.
Personal armour - no that it helped them much.
>>Mongols are short out of their Saddle > Pentans are short, too. They are not tall burly barbarians,
Why? As Greg has revealed, the horse nomads left the Dara Happan city of Nivorah (roughly modern Jillaro) when the Pelorian glacier advanced from the north, and mounted their chariot horses (for lack of wood?) Afterwards, they drifted between the two sets of glaciers, I suppose - Inora's growing from the Rockwood Mountains, and Himile's and Valind's (or by whatever name these were known) from the north. Why they should have turned further east than the Arcos Valley (protected from the worst of the glacier by the Jord Mountains) puzzles me - I doubt anybody would search refuge in the wastes left behind by Wakboth and Ragnaglar's host, unless they left Nivorah just before the victors of Stormbreak arrived through Talastar and Dorastor.
Anyway, they were Dara Happan of origin, and I expect them to interact with sedentary subject peoples in a manner similar to the Indoeuropean sky-worshipping horse rider cultures by building a distinct caste of rulers over the lesser castes of subjects.
So: When and where did they contact the Kralori? After Argentium Thri'ile? Why did they mix? (Or do they treat slave offspring in a similar way as the Praxians do? Would the son of a Kralori slave woman and a Pentan Yelm/Kargzant (or whatever) warrior be allowed to join the father's cult?)
Sandy opined:
> Kevin Rose
>>Composite bows are not overrated in RQ. The availiblity is >>somewhat overrated, but the lethality and range are somewhat less >>than what the effects obtained by earth bow using cultures. > Not long ago there was an article in the journal _Materials
Chest armour of which period? What strength longbows? What kind of
arrows?
If they tried the modern playthings of less than 120 lbs (like the
ones I try to cope with), maybe not, but a solid 120 to 200 lbs
longbow with bodkin ammo is likely to make an impression on any armour
not designed to deflect points.
> Coupled with the fact there is _no_ extant armor which
> contains a hole conclusively made by an arrowhead, this implies that
> no arrows fired from any bows was able to pierce plate.
Hmm. How many pieces of armour pierced by warhammers or lances were found?
> Even chain would have been tough.
IMO tougher - see below.
> Despite mighty tales of woe from Agincourt and
> Crecy, it seems pretty clear that the arrows themselves didn't kill
> the French knights. There are accounts of Crusaders walking around
> "like pincushions" with ten or more arrows sticking out of their
> armor, unwounded. These were composite bows, too.
Only somewhat recurved bows of rather low weight, as far as I am informed, not yet the turkish monsters of the later part of the crusades, but still the Arab or Kurdish forces.
Also note that the crusaders for some time wore chain rather than plate, which is worse at deflecting arrows but does have an effect similar to ballistic cloth.
>>Comp bows take a couple of years to build. > Agreed that RQ makes composite bows way too easy to get.
With horny Prax and its archer tribes nearby, the laughable weak composite bows the rules offer are no problem as a mass item.
A composite bow takes maybe a couple of years to build, if you take one of the master-pieces the 17th century turks used. (A comparable longbow made of yew takes already half a century for seasoning the wood, not counted the time growing it).
Sandy erred:
> [RQ] probably grossly overrates self bows (maybe there should be a
> 1d4+1 class of bow, then a 1d6+1, all the way up to a really
> well-made composite bow which would be around 1d10+1).
IMO a full-strength non-special hit from a longbow or real composite bow should be able to kill a character in ringmail hit in the chest, or at least mortally wound him. Under RQ3 this would be 2*5 hit points in the chest plus 5 points armour, i.e. 15 points of damage. With damage bonus not applied to bows, impossible without an impale - but this discussion rages on the other list.
I have nothing against a 1d4+1 class of bow - that's what the 12 to 15 year old boys use. Grown men, too, if they hunt little birds. However noone would expect a bird rifle to shoot through a door. A really strong longbow will at least penetrate a 1/2 inch layer of wood, and quite likely a 1/10 inch layer of bronze provided it isn't deflected. What will stop or at least slow it considerably will be loosely hanging leather, felt or other heavy cloth, or silk.
There really is little difference between a self bow and a longbow, except the length both of the curved wood and the draw of the archer. Bow-using foot hunters will likely turn towards longer bows even though they get a nuisance to use with branches hanging low, simply because they provide better aim with similar force behind it. Hunting bows could be weaker than war-bows, though, depending on the prey you stalk.
Truly heroic archers were common in most European legends or societies - Odysseus, Wayland's brother Egil, Olav Tryggvason's companion Einar Tambarskelve are renowned for special feats with this weapon. Even the Vingkotlings have their renowned archer - Jorganos Vingkotsson, grandfather of Jarani Whitetop (who wielded his bow in the defense of Arrowmound Mountain). Modern Orlanthi have Odayla as the cult of the hunters teaching bow skill and magic. Ok, these archer heroes rarely are the common blend of heroes, but they feature as heroic as well.
Solar and sky connected cultures have lots of archers, including the Impala and Sable tribes of Prax. Among them archery makes up a considerable part of their military, too. They fail to produce the semi-noble bow warrior the English yeoman was, though.
Glorantha has a few sufficiently effective archers, but no human ones. Elf bows are devils wrt accuracy, range and fire range, but pretty unimpressive when it comes to damage. Dragonewt bows are what I'd call adequate, whereas Maidstone Archers may be slightly overpowered (they make up for this by being dreadfully silly). Dwarf crossbows have quite a stopping power on short range, but accuracy on long ranges never was a dwarven skill or concern, being shortsighted.
Jorganos Archer, aka Joerg Baumgartner joe_at_sartar.toppoint.de
End of Glorantha Digest V1 #240
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