> Slingers are cheap, so basically all ancient armies had some. Even
the
> Romans when invading Britain, as can be seen from lead slingstones
found in
> various hill forts, bearing inscriptions in Latin ("Take That!").
> The british tribes also had a lot of slingers, of course, but I seem
to
> recall that they only used stones. So the hill forts had stones
coming out
> and lead coming in.
There's a parable there I am sure. But I did not know about the lead
& spiky sling bullets -- but suddenly the bullet moulds and costs for
bullets in D&D suddenly make more sense.
>
> Oh, yes. Slingers seem to have liked scratching messages on their
bullets,
> werever they come from, and sometimes they even had messages in the
moulds
> for casting the bullets. Curses were popular.
> I suppose they give an edge?
This would all be part and parcel of Thunder Delta Slingers... The bad boys en-masse of skirmisher world.
Hedkoranthi are nastier one-on-one but are fewer and farther between.
> Is there not some sort of special magical sling ammunition in Irish
myth?
> (Or am I just channeling some other game, or perhaps Moorcock? They
have
> some in his Corum books, made from the brains (?) of their dead
enemies, I
> think.)
Moorcock noted that he raided Ireland and Cornwall extensively for those works.
Talathum (SP!) were teh shrunken, preserved heads of vanquished enemies and were often used as magical weapons -- usually to inflict curses or horrible infected wounds...
...hmmm. There's an nasty animist Practice in there or a hero cult of Hedkoranth, I think.
Though I think the Heortlings stopped taking heads as trophies way back in the 13th century.
Jeff
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