On the subject of appropiate role-models for Pentan Horse Nomads:
>If you want someone nastier, use the Mongols. They're the ones who killed
>entire cities. Some reports claim they killed more than 2 million people
>during the sack of Harat.
2 million seems rather high for an urban population. I suspect the confusion really stems from the use of myriad (in the arabic records?) which appears to have meant 10,000 rather than the million it does now. That said, there is a mysterious depopulation of northern china before or during the Mongol conquest of that land which only shows up in the census records. Some provinces record an aztec-like population slump and the recorded total loss is something like 35 million lives. Simplest explanation? The Mongols killed them all.
But the final word in barbarous cruelty (as opposed to a simple body count) of Horse Nomads goes to Timur the Lame who was also pointlessly destructive to boot.
Kevin Rose:
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> On long bows in Glorantha, I though that only the dragonnewts
>used longbows, per WF14?
The Dragonewt Bows are 1d10+1 bows in RQ3 Book V, not the 1d8+1 bows given in the weapons table in RQ3 Book II.
Ian Gorlick:
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Sandy had told the tale of Mongolian 'arrowproof' silk armour
>I've heard this story repeatedly, but I have a hard time believing it. I
>happen to like silk shirts a lot, but I wouldn't trust one to stand up to
>an arrow.
Whilst I can't answer Ian's (deleted) request for documentation, Spider Silk could be used (if it wasn't so frickin' expensive) as armour against bullets. I suspect that the silk shirts the mongols are said to have been wearing are not the puny one layered silk shirt we moderns wear, but a thicker type of shirt. All my own suspicions.
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