Turfster

Turfster

@Turfster

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Did translations once upon a time
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Turfster
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dante
@dante
dante
@dante

Boar Spears

(image from Wikipedia, rotated to not be super tall)

did you know that in the medieval era most spears used to hunt boars had to have a little crossguard down below the speartip? that was because if you hunted a boar and stabbed it, it would probably just keep on moving and gore you with its tusks. this would be a bad outcome for you, the hunter.

so a bunch of different cultures realized they could stop this from happening if you kept the pointy-bit of the spear far away from you, and thus after you stuck the boar you could keep it at arm's length. no boar tusks! no goring of the hunter!

it was a really useful design and also now I can never not think about it when I see a fantasy universe where everyone kills everything with the same type of bog-standard sword. if you lived in a world with weird monsters everywhere you'd probably develop unique weaponry to fight them! because you'd need it!

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in reply to @dante's post:

melinoe
@melinoe

i once tried making an rpg supplement (was never gonna happen like pre-transition, i was a mess lol) and a big function of it cos it was a monster supplement was equipment.

things exactly like that, like executioners swords designed to be oversized and heavy bc the point was to kill a beast someone else pinned, or was too big too dodge.

so long ago tho

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melinoe
@melinoe

it was like a series of really culturally and ecologically specific monsters, like a bukavac which has six horns on its head it breathes through. in the day it lurks in swamps and just keeps the horns above. at night it screeches with them endlessly till entirely villages collapse from exhaustion. or this ghost that explicitly acted like a glitching hologram video. or a psittatrix which like a parrot-themed cockatrice that mimicked its victims and had a long prehensile tongue it used to pull people in before crushing their skulls lol.

still have very fancy art for the bukie

image

but, yeah, so long ago. just little memories of what i might have done.

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KaterinaBucket
@KaterinaBucket

Even just like.. regular ass spears of basically any variety would both be obviously more useful against most fantasy monsters than any sort of sword, plus spears were way more common than swords in real life anyway. Swords were for personal self defense and 1on1 duels.
Funniest thing related this I've seen recently, Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous has like, a strategy layer and like.. council meetings in which you make decisions about the war. One of these is about how to upgrade your basic infantry guys, and "well, they're fighting giant demons, how about we give them pikes instead of arming swords" is treated as an unorthodox suggestion from a guy who's whole thing is ruthless efficiency and outside the box thinking. it's also objectively the best option

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