The mistery of poles for piques in Prax

From: Sergio Mascarenhas <sermasalmeida_at_mail.telepac.pt>
Date: Mon, 8 Dec 1997 21:49:20 -0000

I just finished reading an excelent book called ''Weapons and Warfare in Renaisssance Europe'' by Bert Hall (The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore) about, you gessed it, weapons and warfare in Renaissance Europe. The book raises several issues relating to warfare in Glorantha (Yes, Renaissance saw the emergence of guns but after reading this book I started to think that warfare in Glorantha should be more similar to Renaissance then to mediaval warfare - wuth magic instead of powder weapons). I will present some of them in GD in the future. Here goes the first:

Praxian Yelmalio piquemen

1. I always assumed that the best RW inspiration for Yelmalio piquemen was classical Greek and Macedonian piquemen. After reading the mentioned book I changed my mind: Yelmalion are the swiss (renaissance swiss piquemen) of Glorantha.
2. Yelmalion fight with piques and piques need poles. Correct me if I'm wrong, but poles are made of a single piece of wood. A pique's pole can be something between 3 and 6 meters long. That requires either a tree with long branches or with a long tronc. Now, Prax is semi-desertic so you wouldn't expect to find there the adequate trees for pique's poles. I started to wonder where do Yelmalion find te poles for their piques. (If there isn't an acceptable answer, no poles => no piques => no yelmalion on Prax. But we know there are yelmalion on Prax, don't we !?)

The first possibility that occured to me was that aldryami from forest in the Big Rubble would supply Yelmalion with the poles. No way since the Big Rubble was closed for centuries by troll magic.

My tentative answer is the next: when yelmalion went to Prax they took with them the trees to grow poles for their piques. They grow those special trees along streams and near the Zola Fel river. This was one of the reasons why they married Yelmalio to the daughter of ZF as described in RoC (I'm quoting on memory).
The trees would be sacred to the sun dome people in Prax and we may think about several customs associated with them:
- - When a new boy is born the father plants a tree for is son. This is the
child special tree and when he grows into an adult he will cut it down to make his pique.
- - Special fertility spells would exist to ensure the normal development of
the trees.
- - A new village is only recognized when it has grown its pique trees (which
demonstrates that it become able to sustain its own military forces).

Of course, yelmalion enemies would have recognized the importance of the trees and would try to destroy them whenever possible deprieving their enemies of their weapons.

A final question: what about Agimori? Where do they get the poles for their lances and piques?

Best,

Sergio

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