Glorantha technology and Glorantha material technology

[soltakss]

On 23/04/2018 at 7:27 PM, David Scott said:

carry on - it still counts as technology and materials.

Oh, in that case, can we talk about which bows are best, or, even better, which are better, bows or slings? 

[soltakss]

On 23/04/2018 at 7:48 PM, David Scott said:

Born in the saddle, you get your own mount when you are big enough. Skill and practice of a lifetime on an impala. It's not second nature it is your only way of existing. I believe it's impossible for us imagine such integration between mount and rider. Most people are very disconnected nowadays with this kind of relationship. The only people who come close in our society are those who ride professionally every day as job - like park rangers or police or if you work full time in stables (and ride).

Real world steppe nomads were like this, born in the saddle, raised in the saddle, could ride before they could walk, had an instinctive relationship with horses and so on. All would be good for the Beast riders of Prax and the Pentian Horse Riders.

[Jeff]

5 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Oh, in that case, can we talk about which bows are best, or, even better, which are better, bows or slings? 

Whichever one your character has a better skill at is best, of course.

[soltakss]

On 22/04/2018 at 11:58 PM, Joerg said:

Just quoting the cultural dress for impala riders. Riding Godiva-style hasn't been reported as especially chafing in the few videos I have seen on the topic (on German TV - due to US sensibilities, I doubt you can find those online except on porn sites), whether with saddle or without.

Hmmm, remind me to look for German videos. Makes the Unicorn Riders look even more interesting.

[soltakss]

9 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Oh, in that case, can we talk about which bows are best, or, even better, which are better, bows or slings? 

It looks as though you have already started that ...

 

Javelins still count as missile weapons.

 

[Noita]

On 4/25/2018 at 5:59 PM, g33k said:

Take a bow (now arrows), just to draw some visual lines.  Can you easily line up a shot straight backwards?  Seated vs standing in stirrups?  Etc.

Then come back and report your experience, so everyone here can flame you.  :-)

 

Yes. You don't even need to be on a horse to see if you can. Plant your feet wide and turn backwards whilst drawing an imaginary bow. I'm pretty limber as Im at the gym a lot, but I wouldn't want to hold that position for long. Plus you'd want to be going fast, not something to be doing whilst trotting.

[M Helsdon]

1 hour ago, Iskallor said:

Yes. You don't even need to be on a horse to see if you can. Plant your feet wide and turn backwards whilst drawing an imaginary bow. I'm pretty limber as Im at the gym a lot, but I wouldn't want to hold that position for long. Plus you'd want to be going fast, not something to be doing whilst trotting.

A horse archer performing the 'Parthian shot' won't be loosing an arrow directly backwards at 180 degrees to the direction their mount is travelling, and they won't be holding the pose for very long.

There's a 6th century BC Etruscan figurine of an Amazon... Some claim this shows a Cimmerian horse archer, but that's impossible to prove.

[Joerg]

This figurine shows quite a few details for the rider who seems to be clad in leather scales with a short cape covering the shoulders and a conical cap which probably indicated her origin to the maker and the customer of the figurine, but the only piece of tack is the bridle and the bit for the horse. The horse is shown at the conventional leg constellation in art for a slow trot rather than in gallop.

I wonder how much contact there could have been between the Etruscans and the horse riders. We know that the Etruscans kept a fleet of two-tiered "penteconters" (basically biremes) at the battle of Alalia, but their naval trade seems to have been on the Tyrrhenian and not into the Aegaean or the Black Sea where they could have encountered such horse folk.

Considering the image of the elephants in that carving of an Elephant and Castle in Chester Cathedral, Coventry,

unfamiliarity of the artist with the subject can produce quite an error (IIRC from my visit 38 years ago there is another one, even weirder, I think in the castle where Mary Stuart spent her last days). This artist or at least the person providing the art direction appears to have had some first hand exposure to such a rider (or at least a native depiction of one). I wonder where. 

 

This could be an image of a Galanini warrioress. The horse is sufficiently small, the armor indicates a less clement climate. All of this would apply to Pentans or Grazers, too, but I think they are too patriarchalic to put a bow into a woman's hands. The Galanini and the unicorn women are the only horse rider cultures that I can think of might allow such weaponry to women, and the armor would melt its wearer in Prax, so Ralios is where I would look.

[M Helsdon]

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

I wonder how much contact there could have been between the Etruscans and the horse riders.

Some authorities consider the piece to have been made, or copied from, the work of a Greek artisan, and the Greeks were certainly in contact with the nomads at that time. It was a very high value item: originally made as a vessel to mix wine, and then used as a burial urn.

In some myths the Amazons originated in North Africa, though the Eurasian steppes is more likely, and supported by archaeology, where a large proportion of burials of around the same time of this figurine were of women buried with weapons. The costume and bow appear to be authentic.

Edited April 28, 2018 by M Helsdon

[Zit]

On 4/25/2018 at 4:59 PM, g33k said:

Take a bow (now arrows), just to draw some visual lines.  Can you easily line up a shot straight backwards?  Seated vs standing in stirrups?  Etc.

Then come back and report your experience, so everyone here can flame you.  :-)

 

ok, I'll try it again tomorrow on my icelandic pony (which is much like ancient horses and steppe ponies). I may not find a bow, though. I may also not dare doing it at gallop either, since neither my horse nor myself are trained for that.

I don't see any reason not to believe the old pictures and sculptures depicting a Parthian shot. You probably can train a horse to move forward while you shoot backward. Horse can learn a lot of tricks. You can probably train our body to turn : much of us are probably unable to, but what about people having been trained to it since their childhood (although I just tried on my chair and I was able with bare hands to aim an imaginary bow at a target 180° behind me) ? It is anyway possible to do it without holding the stance for a long time. This implies "instinctive shooting" without aiming, like hunters often do. Nomads had several bows of different strengths, probably one for horse archery and one for foot archery. Note also that using the thumb to draw the bow seems to allow to keep a small angle between the shoulders and the arrow, which helps further.

I wrote rules for steppe nomads and my proposals were:

Any archer can do a Parthian shot while mounted if he has stirrups but with a penalty, and not at all without stirrups. A trained horse archer (here some special skill, trait or stunt has to be introduced) can do the Parthian shot at normal score with stirrups, and with a penalty without stirrups.

No aiming is allowed.

Bow strength as well as size have to be limited.

Speaking about stirrups, one thing they made possible was probably heavy cavalry: jumping onto a horse while wearing an armor may prove difficult, and Praxians have no cranes. The introduction of stirrups is also probably related to that of saddle (and especially wooden ones).

 

Edited April 28, 2018 by Zit

[M Helsdon]

20 minutes ago, Zit said:

Speaking about stirrups, one thing they made possible was probably heavy cavalry: jumping onto a horse while wearing an armor may prove difficult, and Praxians have no cranes. The introduction of stirrups is also probably related to that of saddle (and especially wooden ones).

The heavy cavalry saddle predated the introduction of stirrups by at least four or five centuries, as did the appearance of cataphracts. Lighter armored, but still armored, Assyrian lancers are even earlier, predating the introduction of stirrups by perhaps a thousand years (the earliest depiction of armored cavalry dates to around seven or eight centuries at least). Their horses, were, of course, smaller than later cavalry horses.

These reliefs at Naqsh-e Rustam predate the introduction of the stirrup by a few centuries, and depict combat between heavily armored cavalrymen using two-handed lances. Bahram II was the fifth Sasanian King of Persia in AD 274–293.

Edited April 28, 2018 by M Helsdon

[Joerg]

 

1 minute ago, Zit said:

ok, I'll try it again tomorrow on my icelandic pony (which is much like ancient horses and steppe ponies). I may not find a bow, though.

Take some orthopedic rubber instead, just enough that you have to work against a significant pull. Pointing an arm somewhere and pointing an arm somewhere while pulling back with some force are two very different propositions. Normally, archers "cheat" by locking the bow arm into the joints at the shoulder, reducing the amount of muscle activity to keep it stretched significantly (and removing a lot of instability resulting from muscle vibrations fighting to keep the force away).

1 minute ago, Zit said:

I don't see any reason not to believe the old pictures and sculptures depicting a Parthian shot.

If shooting 120° to 150° backwards, I don't see any reason for disbelieve, either - that's just the rear part of the left broadside opening. Shooting directly backwards requires twisting your hips, and that should be impossible while keeping both on pressure to the horse flanks.

 

1 minute ago, Zit said:

You probably can train a horse to move forward while you shoot backward. Horse can learn a lot of tricks. You can probably train our body to turn : much of us are probably unable to, but what about people having been trained to it since their childhood (although I just tried on my chair and I was able with bare hands to aim an imaginary bow at a target 180° behind me) ? It is anyway possible to do it without holding the stance for a long time. This implies "instinctive shooting" without aiming, like hunters often do.

I doubt there was much of the modern "draw the arrow to almost release point, then fine-tune the point into perfect alignment with the target" as there is in modern archery. Doing your shot in one flowing movement removes a lot of the mistakes that other approach forces on the archer.

1 minute ago, Zit said:

Nomads had several bows of different strengths, probably one for horse archery and one for foot archery.

More likely one for war and a lighter one for hunting smaller game, or birds. Shooting the arrow fully through the target leads to annoying loss of arrows. Foot archery most likely happens only during looting or from behind defense works, and will in all likelihood use the war bow also used from horseback.

1 minute ago, Zit said:

Note also that using the thumb to draw the bow seems to allow to keep a small angle between the shoulders and the arrow, which helps further.

I haven't tried a "behind the head anchor" thumb release with my bows, yet. I wonder whether they used thumb rings or the naked thumb.

The angle between shoulder and arrow can be adjusted by your posture. For shooting uphill (on foot), I turn away from the target to a more closed posture, making it easier to keep the bow arm locked in the shoulder. For shooting downhill, I face the target, up to having the lower end of the bow between my legs for extreme downhill shots.

1 minute ago, Zit said:

I wrote rules for steppe nomads and my proposals were:

Any archer can do a Parthian shot while mounted but with a penalty if he has stirrups and not at all without stirrups. A trained horse archer (here some special skill, trait or stunt has to be introduced) can do the Parthian shot at normal score with stirrups, and with a penalty without stirrups.

No aiming is allowed.

Bow strength as well as size have to be limited.

Not sure I agree with the strength limit. I don't see huns or mongols switching bows when turning their horses around, and on their charge they started shooting at extreme bow range.

If "no aiming" means "you cannot get a bonus for keeping the drawn bow on target", I agree. But it is a characteristic of instinctive shooting that you need something you target with your shot.

Bow length is an issue that reduces the angle of the left broadside that you can release an arrow to. Some of this can be mitigated shooting forward by tilting the bow, but shooting backward that tilt would be counter-productive, but a good rider and decent (longbow) archer should be able to use his bow without additional penalty than for being on horseback in an angle between 15° forward and 150" backward (anti-clockwise).

 

 

[Joerg]

31 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

Some authorities consider the piece to have been made, or copied from, the work of a Greek artisan, and the Greeks were certainly in contact with the nomads at that time.

That would be the likeliest explanation, yes. And the Greeks were a lot more scandalized by the betrousered woman warriors than most of their contemporaries.

31 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

In some myths the Amazons originated in North Africa, though the Eurasian steppes is more likely, and supported by archaeology, where a large proportion of burials of around the same time of this figurine were of women buried with weapons. The costume and bow appear to be authentic.

I think so, too. I am less convinced about the horse gear, though. The term for saddle appears to be quite ancient - it is pretty much the same across Germanic, Slavic and Romanic languages, and Greek, so either it was known to our horse nomad (linguistic) ancestors of the Yamna in the Danubian plains already, or it was loaned from whichever horse-riding culture brought the notion to their successors.

Gendering of urn burials has been shown to be quite inaccurate, and I get the impression that a weapon find automatically made a burial a male burial in archaeological reports of urn finds. Otherwise, it is rather conspicuous that there is lots of evidence for male burials in Anglia, but hardly any for female burials. We may be missing quite a few females buried with weapons. Whether they used them abroad or only in home defense is a different question - we don't have much in the way of written reports on the peoples outside of the Roman and Greek world.

For the Greeks, female warriors stood against everything their culture told them about the relationship between males and females. The Romans appear to be cut from a similar cloth, or they appropriated this stance with the adoption of elements of the Greek culture. Etruscans might have been less strict, the family burials don't show significant status differences between fathers and mothers.

 

 

[Zit]

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

The heavy cavalry saddle predated the introduction of stirrups by at least four or five centuries, as did the appearance of cataphracts. Lighter armored, but still armored, Assyrian lancers are even earlier, predating the introduction of stirrups by perhaps a thousand years (the earliest depiction of armored cavalry dates to around seven or eight centuries at least). Their horses, were, of course, smaller than later cavalry horses.

These reliefs at Naqsh-e Rustam predate the introduction of the stirrup by a few centuries, and depict combat between heavily armored cavalrymen using two-handed lances. Bahram II was the fifth Sasanian King of Persia in AD 274–293.

This is what I read about steppe nomads, but it may be true (or not) only for them because of their way of life, but I wont't argue on this. And I meant the rigid saddle, not the art of cushion saddle used before. Which kind of saddles and armours did these older cataphracts have ?

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

Not sure I agree with the strength limit. I don't see huns or mongols switching bows when turning their horses around, and on their charge they started shooting at extreme bow range.

 

You're right. I actually used it has a limit for horse archery at all. I've read it and I got it confirmed by an horse archer (he mentioned about max 80-90 lbs). Nomads brought at least 2 bows at war. The second (or 3rd) bow was most probably a spare one, but sometime was much stronger and supposedly to be used only on foot. When you see how a foot archer has to draw a >120lbs long bow, you can imagine it is not possible at all on horseback.

It is here not about taking time shooting tens of arrows right in the middle of the target, or during a full battle, but about fast shooting of only a few arrows during a tactical move, so even if uncomfortable, uneasy, less efficient and tiring, it may have been used.

All our discussions are anyway suppositions only, and even YRWWV. For a fantasy world, you can actually chose whatever you prefer. For instance, state that in Glorantha, Impala riders are can turn at 180°. Or even humans. After all, they can magic.

Edited April 28, 2018 by Zit

[M Helsdon]

3 hours ago, Zit said:

This is what I read about steppe nomads, but it may be true (or not) only for them because of their way of life, but I wont't argue on this. And I meant the rigid saddle, not the art of cushion saddle used before. Which kind of saddles and armours did these older cataphracts have ?

Depends on the period. We don't know much about the saddle prior to the Roman four pronged saddle, but they probably inherited it from elsewhere, and the Sassanid saddle had a cantle at the back and two clamps curving over the top of the rider's thighs, fastened to the saddle. The first cataphracts the Roman's encountered were those of the Seleucids and unfortunately we don't have any information as to the sort of saddle they used - though it must have been sufficient to keep the rider securely mounted.

Armor was of iron or bronze scale, often covering not only the rider but the mount as well. These were very heavy cavalry.

The late Peter Connolly did a great deal of work recreating Roman saddles, based upon preserved leather remains from Vindolanda and other sites, and the bronze plates from another location; the wooden tree was not preserved, but using the leather he was able to reconstruct what it was like. It is very probable that other ancient saddles were similar.

[Zit]

I guess they needed some help to get on the horse (which may be considered as a shame for a nomad ), which is quite annoying if you have to change your wounded mount during the battle, which probably happened often. So back to Glorantha, if we consider that Praxians do not have stirrups, any heavy armoured Praxian player character should take this into account. Except if the beast (e.g high llama and may be bison) is trained to lay down to allow its rider to get on its back, like camels IRW. But if the neighbours (Sartar, Lunar Antilopes...) have stirrups, I bet the Praxians would have adopted them as well.

[David Scott]

4 minutes ago, Zit said:

So back to Glorantha, if we consider that Praxians do not have stirrups, any heavy armoured Praxian player character should take this into account. Except if the beast (e.g high llama and may be bison) is trained to lay down to allow its rider to get on its back, like camels IRW.

The slant I’m taking with stirrups for Praxians is:

tall beasts usually have a single mounting stirrup (usually made of bone). The remainder vault. 

Metal Stirrups pairs are available as imports and are used where needed, 

culturally the more senior you are, the less likely to use stirrups. Waha didn’t use stirrups.

after watching many horse mounting videos, vaulting, legup and pull up by another are much more likely

id like to think that high Llama riders spear vault into place  

 

 

[metcalph]

7 minutes ago, David Scott said:

id like to think that high Llama riders spear vault into place  

They'll probably need to cast Protection 2 for the landing.

[Zit]

I like the idea as well. But for doing this they must wear light armour, unless they can use magic to help. Like trying to get the Jump spell from the Trolls in the rubble. Or may be a strength spell.

[Joerg]

High Llama riders are the Praxian Beast Riders who spend most time out of the saddle, holding up fodder to their browser rather than grazer steeds, if that old description still holds true. With the recent discovery that herdmen do basically the same for their Morokanth masters, this might be no longer canonical, though, but if it still holds true, then the High Llama riders need an intrinsic magical ability rather than relying on a spell to get back onto the backs of their steeds. That, or some aid like a loop of leather hanging from the saddle providing a foothold. (Maybe a "rope" ladder for pregnant females...)

[David Scott]

28 minutes ago, Zit said:

I like the idea as well. But for doing this they must wear light armour, unless they can use magic to help. Like trying to get the Jump spell from the Trolls in the rubble. Or may be a strength spell.

Unless they are over their encumbrance, there is no problem. 

[David Scott]

11 minutes ago, Joerg said:

then the High Llama riders need an intrinsic magical ability rather than relying on a spell to get back onto the backs of their steeds. That, or some aid like a loop of leather hanging from the saddle providing a foothold. (Maybe a "rope" ladder for pregnant females...)

A mounting stirrup will suffice. Cool riders vault using their spears, special stick etc. Pregnancy isn’t a disability so a mounting stirrup will be enough. 

[soltakss]

How do you get on a camel in the real world? The camel kneels down for you to mount. High Llamas would do the same. I am sure it is easy enough for Bisons and Rhinos to be trained to do something similar.

If we are not careful, we could get into the asburd "If Praxians don't have stirrups, how can they ride their beasts?" territory. Praxians ride their beasts, except for Morokanth. They must have ways and means of doing so. Personally, in my game, I don't care if they have stirrups or not, as they just do things. I don't really care about the mechanics of how they do them.

[M Helsdon]

55 minutes ago, soltakss said:

If we are not careful, we could get into the asburd "If Praxians don't have stirrups, how can they ride their beasts?" territory. Praxians ride their beasts, except for Morokanth. They must have ways and means of doing so. Personally, in my game, I don't care if they have stirrups or not, as they just do things. I don't really care about the mechanics of how they do them.

Fortunately, we have canonical illustrations that show that some Praxians use toe loops/stirrups.

[David Scott]

2 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Fortunately, we have canonical illustrations that show that some Praxians use toe loops/stirrups.

and this is the other major reference picture from Nomad Gods:

You can still buy this: https://www.chaosium.com/nomad-gods-rule-booklet-pdf/