by John O'Bryan
EASE OF USE: (lifetime of training required)
BIRTHPLACE: Wales
USED WITH: Bodkin-tipped arrows, which could penetrate chain mail and could allegedly pierce plate armor at close range
ADVANTAGES: Volume! And accuracy.
DISADVANTAGES: Hardcore training regimen fucks up your skeleton; made obsolete by firearms
MANCATCHER Sometimes a knight didn’t want to splatter somebody’s blood all over the green grass of Normandy. Sometimes he wanted to capture the person alive, so he could collect a ransom or bounty. In this case, the knight might want to slip a mancatcher around the victim’s neck. This wretched piece of weaponry is essentially a giant metal claw with spikes inside. It’s allegedly nonlethal, though you can easily see how a guy could impale himself while trying to work free of the spikes. After a victim was subdued by the mancatcher, the knight would typically bind the person’s hands for the ride home. Or if he was feeling like a dick, he might leave the person inside the jaws of the mancatcher for the entire horse ride. Ouch.
USED ON: Nobility; anyone with money; disorderly drunks
SIMILAR TO: Sasumata, the Japanese “spear-fork”
USER REVIEWS: “If I remove the mancatcher from your neck, do you promise to stop screaming?”
SHILLELAGH Everyone knows the Irish love themselves some fightin’. Historically, if they weren’t pummeling each other with fists, they were whacking each other upside the heads with knobby, wooden sticks. These sticks, known as shillelagh, have a mythical origin almost as old as Ireland itself. The story goes that when the Celts and Normans first invaded Ireland, they were considerably larger than the indigenous people who were already living there. Some of these “wee folk” didn’t assimilate into the new Celt or Norman society. Instead, they would whack the invaders with sticks and disappear into the forest.L The conquerors began to refer to these tiny folk as leprechauns.L They would soon discover that the munchkins also had magical powers and golden treasures, and would fix your shoes if you left them on your doorstep.DEFINITELY L Whatever legendary origin you want to believe, the fact is that shillelagh fencing was a longstanding tradition in Ireland, lasting well into the nineteenth century. The rod was later modified to serve as a walking stick for travelers who needed protection on the road. It was used to settle disputes in a gentlemanly manner, especially at county fairs, where all kinds of friendly territorial violence would erupt. If you wanted to fight dirty, you could fill the head of your stick with lead for a “loaded shillelagh.” Surprisingly, these stick fights resulted in very few serious injuries, with the winner typically helping the loser to his feet and buying him a round of whiskey.
DATE OF ORIGIN: First documented in the 1300s
BIRTHPLACE: County Wicklow, Ireland
PRONOUNCED: Shuh-LAY-leh
MADE FAMOUS BY: Leprechauns; the Notre Dame
Fighting Irishman
USER REVIEWS: “Oh, fer fook’s sek, ya wanker! I’ll hit yeh with me whacking stick!”
L = Legend
CLAYMORE As far as big-ass two-handed swords go, the claymore is probably the most famous. It got its big break in the 1990s, when it was cast as the star of Mel Gibson’s Braveheart. Before long, the claymore had gone Hollywood. It had completely forgotten about its humble origins in the Wars of Scottish Independence. Back then, the claymore was much smaller and didn’t yet have the amazingly cool crossguard that we associate with the sword. Over the next couple of centuries, the claymore put on some serious length, eventually becoming as long as a short adult male. Swords of this length were terrors on the Highland battlefields. In a melee fight, the claymore could keep the British troops from closing the distance, chopping them into haggis before they could get close enough to use their longswords. The Scottish Highlanders could even break armor and shields with this thing, and they swung their claymores with such ferocity that the handles needed spiral leather wrappings for the warriors to keep their grip. But wielding such a manly weapon does have its drawbacks: You don’t get to carry a shield, which makes you vulnerable to attacks from the infamous English longbow. And in the event that you have to flee quickly from a volley of longbow arrows, you’ll probably have to drop your heavy claymore in order to haul ass.
DATE OF ORIGIN: 1400s
BIRTHPLACE: Scotland
GAELIC NAME: Claidheamh mòr (don’t ask me for the phonetic spelling)
MADE FAMOUS BY: Mel Gibson, who defended Scotland’s independence for over two hundred years
ALSO AVAILABLE: Basket-hilt, or “clamshell” hilt claymore
SIMILAR TO: Zweihänder, the big-ass two-handed German sword of the sixteenth century
BOMBARD Throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, firearms slowly made their way across the Middle East and Europe. These were mostly weak cannons like the pot-de-fer (“iron jug”), which queefed out a metal arrow every few minutes. Gunpowder was not a significant factor in European warfare until 1453, when the Turks showed up at Constantinople with the biggest guns the world had ever seen. The largest of these came to be known as the Great Turkish Bombard. It was a massive mofo that required ten thousand men and seventy oxen just to get it to the fight. Instead of arrows or bolts, these Turkish monster cannons fired large iron balls, some of which weighed over a ton. After bombarding the walls of Constantinople for two solid months, the Turkish army easily poured through the gaping holes in the city walls. They kicked the crap out of the Holy Roman Empire (which at that point was feeling more like the Holey Roman Empire, am I right?). Black powder weapons were no longer just noisy firecrackers that scared horses—they were thunderous tubes of death that could level civilizations.
EASE OF USE: (requires a massive team of operators)
DATE OF ORIGIN: Smaller bombards in the 1300s, serious bombards in the 1400s
EVOLVED FROM: Pot-de-fer, the weak-ass queef cannon of the French and English
FAMOUS EXAMPLES: The Great Turkish Bombard; Mons Meg (Scottish); the Tsar Cannon (Russia)
MATCHLOCK ARQUEBUS The earliest handheld firearms could barely put a dent in a well-crafted suit of plate armor. But by the middle of the fifteenth century, handheld firearms started to get a little more powerful. The badly named arquebus was one of the earliest matchlock firearms, meaning it was fired by touching a match to a hole. It was the first gun to be widely used by European militaries, since it could pierce the plate armor of a knight. Granted, at a distance of more than a few yards, the shot of the arquebus would probably bounce off a piece of decent plate. But at close range, an arquebusier could send Sir Lancelot to the mausoleum. Adding to the frustration of knights everywhere, the arquebus didn’t require a lifetime of training like the English longbow. It must have killed the knight—both literally and figuratively—to be brought down in battle by a serf who was shoveling shit in a stable three months ago. This is why the arquebus would become the bane of chivalry. It wasn’t nearly as accurate as the longbow. It was slow as hell to reload. And yeah, it could easily explode in the hands of the person trying to use it. But it wiped the smirks off the faces of medieval knights, and the shit-shoveling peasants got to laugh for once in their miserable lives.
EASE OF USE: (requires some training; user must have dry gunpowder)
DATE OF ORIGIN: 1400s
PRECURSOR TO: Wheellock firearm
ADVANTAGES: Doesn’t require years to master; can be fired from narrow holes during siege defense; scares the bejesus out of enemy horses
DISADVANTAGES: Inaccurate; can’t be used in rain; low-velocity shots won’t pierce plate mail at long distances; slow to reload; might blow your hand off
Chapter 11.
MEANWHILE, IN THE REST OF THE WORLD . . .
AMERICAS, AFRICA & POLYNESIA 1300–1700
BEFORE THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, Europeans gave little thought to what was going on outside their own precious continent. Google Maps hadn’t been invented yet. And since people thought the world was flat, perhaps they figured there wasn’t much point in wondering wh
at was happening out there past the edges. Or maybe they were just self-centered assholes. Either way, there were things happening in the far corners of the world, and a lot of it was just as bloody and barbaric as anything the Europeans could come up with. These undiscovered heathens were creating highly effective weapons of their own. Sure, many of these guys didn’t have metal, leaving them to rely on materials like wood, bone, pine cones, and other stuff you’d find in a compost bin. But don’t snicker: these weapons worked, taking down no shortage of tribal adversaries, wild game, and, soon enough, wandering white men.
THE AMERICAS
MACUAHUITL The Aztecs ruled central Mexico from roughly the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. They were crazy as hell, engaging in mass human sacrifice and fighting other Mesoamericans the way modern men fight going to the proctologist. Aztec warriors often wore brightly colored feathers and jaguar-skin jumpsuits. If that didn’t scare the shit out of the opposing fighters, then the macuahuitl in the warrior’s hand definitely would. As we discussed in Chapter 1, obsidian is the black glass of death that can separate heads from bodies, and the macuahuitl is covered in it. This weapon is sometimes referred to as the Aztec sword, though that’s not entirely accurate. The obsidian edges do cut like a sword, but part of the macuahuitl’s power comes from its girth. The mass of the club delivers the impactful blow of a mace, and the obsidian razors in the edge of the weapon provide added slashing damage. It’s essentially two weapons combined into one strange, brutal razor-paddle. The macuahuitl is so brutal and so razory that an Aztec allegedly decapitated a conquistador horse with it. One can assume the conquistadors probably invoked the wrath of the white man’s god and shot the horse-killer in the face with a gun. Then took his land, enslaved his people, and wiped them out with exotic viruses. So, even-stevens, then.
DATE OF ORIGIN: Early versions in Mayan reliefs, circa 600–900 CE
ADVANTAGES: Very sharp edges; can also be used as a club
DISADVANTAGES: Obsidian bits often break or dislodge on impact; much slower than a sword
HARPOON On the other end of North America, way up at the top of the map, life was very different. The Inuit people of the frozen north preferred killing whales instead of each other, and the harpoon was the preferred method of whalicide. Harpoons were used way back in prehistoric times. They were fairly simple but so effective that they quickly spread to every arctic culture, including those of Scandinavia. Now I know what you’re thinking: “Harpoons are for spearing whales and fish. You can’t use those on people.” Well, keep living in your little fantasy world, pal, because if it can mirk a large sea mammal, it can mirk you, too. Inuit harpoons were typically comprised of barbed “toggling heads,” meaning once the victim was impaled, the tip of the harpoon would break off and turn askew. This made it impossible to remove. From there, the prey had nowhere to run. The hunter would pull on the attached cord, haul the victim in, and crush it to death with a club or walrus—whichever he had on hand.
USED BY: Ancient Thule and Inuit tribes; Scandinavians
FAMOUS VICTIMS: Whales, seals, and salmon
EVOLVED FROM: Spear
PRECURSOR TO: Harpoon gun, which is even more awesome
USER REVIEWS: “Dying like a fish is totally embarrassing!”
TOMAHAWK When someone says “American Indians,” the first three things most people think of are Pocahontas, broken treaties, and the tomahawk. No other weapon is so emblematic of Native Americans, and no other weapon was more valued by them. The ancestors of the tomahawk were ancient monolithic stone clubs—single pieces of flint that were chiseled into rough, hatchet-like instruments. Over time, the construction became more sophisticated, with the flint blades becoming finer and the handles becoming separate pieces of timber. After the arrival of the white devil, Native Americans began using iron-bladed tomahawks, which were most likely acquired in trades with French explorers. Tomahawks could generate savage power with relatively compact bodies, making them great for close-quarter combat. These hatchets weren’t exclusively for fighting, either. A tomahawk could be used to chop wood or drive stakes into the ground, and some models featured a built-in pipe that allowed the warrior to blaze up between battles. This pipe-and-tomahawk combo became a visual reminder of the dual possibilities of war and peace. Instead of fighting, you could always smoke a bowl with your palefaced conquerors and get along with them—for approximately three hours. Then as soon as the pipe part of the tomahawk was empty, you’d be right back to splitting skulls with the other end.
DATE OF ORIGIN: 1500s
ETYMOLOGY: Algonquin
MADE FAMOUS BY: Every Western movie ever made
EVOLVED FROM: Monolithic stone clubs
ALSO USED AS: Domestic tool; rallying cry for assholes at Atlanta Braves games
THROWING KNIFE Generally speaking, throwing your knife at an enemy is a bad idea. Best-case scenario: the knife lands, and you’re left without it. Worst-case scenario: the knife misses, and your enemy picks it up and stabs you in the neck with it. But let’s face it—throwing knives is toobadass not to do. The Native Americans knew this, too. That’s why they carried more than one with them—so they could chuck one off and still have one left. The earliest Native American knives were made of flint. Even in these precolonial days of stone tools, the indigenous Americans were honing their throwing skills. Spot an enemy, hold your knife between your thumb and three middle fingers, generally by the end that has less weight. Then—fwoooop—throw it at your target. Knife throwing can be done in an end-over-end rotating manner, which requires the wielder to carefully judge the distance before throwing, or in a shot-put style, which produces no rotation at all. Either way requires a shitload of practice but, if done correctly, should leave your enemy surprised (and dead).
EASE OF USE: (this is going to require some practice)
EVOLVED FROM: Throwing sticks
ADVANTAGES: Bad as hell
DISADVANTAGES: You lose a knife
SCALPING OR HEADSHRINKING
Which Is Better?
If you’re an aspiring Native American warrior, chances are you’ll want to keep a trophy from the battlefield. In North America, this usually meant scalping—removing a piece of the victim’s scalp with one’s knife. But the Shuar people of South America practiced the art of headshrinking—an elaborate, mystical process that was done to avenge the death of a loved one. Both practices are intended to fortify the mojo of the slayer by giving him the life force of the slain. But alas, most people only have one head. This means you can’t both scalp and headshrink your victim. So which should you choose?
SCALPING:
Pro—Easier to do than headshrinking. All you need is a knife and a head.
Con—Some other warriors might think you’re lazy for not cutting off the whole head.
Pro—Lots of cultures have practiced scalping, which makes it a tad less barbaric in the eyes of the world. In fact, many scholars say that most Native American tribes didn’t begin scalping until European settlers did it to them first.
Con—Victim can actually survive. Nothing’s creepier than seeing your old scalping victim walking around town with his skull exposed!
Pro—Owning a severed scalp is kind of like having a pet.
Con—Your dog is probably going to end up humping the scalp.
HEADSHRINKING:
Pro—You get to consume natema, a concoction made from hallucinogenic herbs. This allows you to visit the spirit world so you can see which person is responsible for killing your loved one. You also get to trip balls.
Con—Shrinking the person’s head is a long, disgusting process that involves lots of intricate steps: removing the skin from the skull, treating the skin in hot water, drying it, molding and sewing, etc. And all of this must be done while coming down off the natema. Bummer.
Pro—Warrior can sell shrunken heads to sadistic white collectors, like the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum.
Con—Most countries have clamped down on shrunken head t
rafficking, so the head might be difficult to sell. It will probably just end up cluttering your apartment.
Pro—Great for Halloween. Spooky as hell.
Con—If you forget to sew the mouth shut, the head’s spirit can call for vengeance against you. Plus, the spirit will hang around all day without chipping in for rent.
