Weird Historical Amour and Weapons

Woops! Kind of forgot about my offer from earlier. Oh well, better late than never! Now, these are more properly a compendium of cool and weird weapons and armor, rather than just weird, but I'm sure you won't mind. I'll include brief descriptions where I feel necessary. Source: my tags from **** I follow.

Armor:

Weapons:
^A spring-loaded spear with four flintlock pistols

Katar with a pair of pistols, depicting Shiva and Kali



A particularly multifunctional axe with a gun in the handle as well as a removable dagger.

Similar to the above, but no pistol.

This one blew me away, perhaps the most spectacularly ornamented weapon of all time. A ceremonial sword made for the Maharaja of Jaipur, every gem you see on the sword and the scabbard is a diamond, with a total count of more than 2,000 carats, some gems being up to 36 carats individually. This one warrants more up close pictures:

I don't even know, dude.

Chinese hook swords (Gou).

A truly beautiful Sri Lankan dagger.

An amazing Mughal shamshir sword with a huge handle of pure, black jade.

Another shamshir of black steel and gilted designs along the blade.

An engraved Khanda sword.

A grand presentation sword from the Versailles swordsmiths.


An elegant rapier from the Elector of Saxony recalling Chinese blue and white porcelains.

A rare Scythian blade.

A Malay Rudus.

Indian Moplah.

Indian/Afghan Pulouar, with truly beautiful waving in the blade, an amazing trick given the already extreme curvature of the sword.

A brutal forked Tulwar.

Probably the most radical curve I've ever seen in a sword. Tatar origin.

Another product of the endlessly talented (and wealthy) Mughal patrons and their swordsmiths, this thing is covered in hundreds of tiny rubies inset in gold. More pictures of the details:

And probably the most insane looking Tulwar I've ever seen. I swear Indian smiths don't give a ****, they'll make fantasy swords if they want to.

A beautiful European blade from the Napoleonic Wars with one of the most lovely examples of bluing the steel I've ever seen.

A rare form of sword from the Deccan, very distinct rounded blade near the base, which is very sharp, made of Damascus or very fine crystalline Wootz steel.

Haha **** it.

Emperor Yongle's sword, from the Ming Dynasty. Those eyes are uncanny.

Prussian sabre.

An Ottoman Turkish sword of almost unparalleled beauty. I admit I had forgotten about this one, and tears came to my eyes upon seeing it again.

The same, with the gorgeous celadon-blue jade hilt.



That's all from my swords and armor tags that I felt were worth posting. I could do a whole new post of this length with just the daggers, particularly from India and Persia. The wealth and craftsmanship that went into their daggers is something not of this world. It's incredible to thing humanity made such objects in some of the cases.

Indian swordsmiths were nutcases. I reckon some idiot with a time machine accidentally dropped skyrim concept art in northern India around 1500 ad.

But really, god bless them. They challenged the limits of the imagination when it comes to building a deadly weapon: whereas European swordsmithing basically honed it down essentially to a single, simple, efficient design, Indian smiths created an explosion of diverse swords and weapons. That and they had access to the real Damascus swords, of Wootz steel, and the science behind those things are crazy. They're bound together with goddamn nano-tubes if I'm remembering the science correctly. Though I even forgot to include the Urumi, the Indian whip sword in this list, which is a shame.

How dare you criticise the magnificent European sword. Its blades are so varied and diverse, so magnificent and smörgåsbordian, that the mere thought of those beautiful metal shafts brings me to tears.
\Marius_Marich

The reason is probably the prevalence of deliberately unconventional, duel-focussed martial arts in India. Some of the weapons are so specialist you wonder who made them and why. For example the tulwar's hilt disc is designed to cut into your hand if you move your wrist, training you to use the curve at full arm's length. And the serrated swords are probably for cutting into fabric.
There's a similar thing with west African swords. Weird-ass blade with odd curves, kinks and tips ( ), probably for the same reasons.

Tiberius Decimus Maximus said:

Spoiler

I don't even know, dude.

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"Don't pursue Lu Bu."

that dagger kind'a rings a bell...

"A ceremonial dagger described by Jotnvtne consisted
of 3 daggers of which the top 2 had their blades sheathed in the handles
of the lower 2.This was carried by one of the 3 envoys sent to Louis IX at Acre in I252;
Another carried a funeral shroud wrapped round his arm, to be presented
to the king for his own burial should he reject the Assassin demands.
Another ceremonial weapon recorded by Joinville was a long-handled axe carried before the
Old Man of the Mountain, the haft of which was covered in silver and had daggers fixed to it in some way."

Ian Heath - Armies & Enemies of the Crusades 1096-1291

Tiberius Decimus Maximus said:

Spoiler

And probably the most insane looking Tulwar I've ever seen. I swear Indian smiths don't give a ****, they'll make fantasy swords if they want to.

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Tiberius Decimus Maximus said:

Spoiler

An Ottoman Turkish sword of almost unparalleled beauty. I admit I had forgotten about this one, and tears came to my eyes upon seeing it again.

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The whole post is amazing, but this is some crazy good stuff.

I've seen quite a bit of those strange combinations of axes, firearms and swords in real life but the Indian stuff always perplexes me again! Great stuff!

Tiberius Decimus Maximus said:

Spoiler

I don't even know, dude.

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This one reminds me of a so called "Sturmsense" (storm scythe) used during the second Turkish siege of Vienna by the defenders:

RC-1136 said:

This one reminds me of a so called "Sturmsense" (storm scythe) used during the second Turkish siege of Vienna by the defenders:

Spoiler

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Some kind of "crowd-control" weapon?

It seems incredibly clunky and unwieldy in anything but very specific tasks, even as a farmers tool.

I've seen something like that in several settings, it seems like it would be used from the top of a wall to push back ladders or skewer cllimbers

PinCushion said:

RC-1136 said:

This one reminds me of a so called "Sturmsense" (storm scythe) used during the second Turkish siege of Vienna by the defenders:

Spoiler

Click to expand...

Some kind of "crowd-control" weapon?

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So it seems.
It proved itself to be very useful to defend breaches in the wall. Following the description on the German Wikipedia the holes in the scythe-like blades are there to fix them with pin bolts to other Sturmsensen to form a whole unit made of those. I can't fully imagine how this would work but it seems that it did. Just push them into the attacking crowd, I guess.

Tiberius Decimus Maximus said:

But really, god bless them. They challenged the limits of the imagination when it comes to building a deadly weapon: whereas European swordsmithing basically honed it down essentially to a single, simple, efficient design, Indian smiths created an explosion of diverse swords and weapons.

Click to expand...

The Europeans weren't any different really, it is just that they had absolutely no regard to preservation or tradition so they recycled basically everything, meaning that all we have of the weird stuff are the depictions;



There is a ton of very weird stuff from the late medieval period, apparently, they even tried to bring scythed chariots back into the game;

Tiberius Decimus Maximus said:

That and they had access to the real Damascus swords, of Wootz steel, and the science behind those things are crazy.

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It was indeed magnificent steel but it was limited to the upper class and had major drawbacks that a lot of people tend to ignore.

Its superb hardness made it brittle because, unlike the "regular" swords, it did not have a spine soft enough to allow it to bend on hard impact.
Abu Yūsuf Al-Kindi mentions that the swords must be maintained with delicate care and never see any "winter" because the blade structure weakens and the blade reportedly shatters if used in the cold(for some strange reason).
Also, the dudes at the myarmory site reported several(alleged) incidents of antique wootz steel swords shattering upon being accidentally dropped to the ground.

There is a very good reason why both the Europeans and the Japanese(and everyone else really) kept the spines of their swords soft.

The Romans reported Gauls simply stepping on their swords with their foot to bend them back into shape, sure their swords aren't near the same edge hardness, but they still did the job nearly as well.

Tiberius Decimus Maximus said:

They're bound together with goddamn nano-tubes if I'm remembering the science correctly

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Wut 


About the weird, apparently the pommel was not only used against armored enemies;

Mamlaz said:

Spoiler

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END HIM RIGHTLY!

HE IS SLAIN!

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006Natur.444..286R

Source for wootz steel nano structures.

Mamlaz said:

There is a ton of very weird stuff from the late medieval period, apparently, they even tried to bring scythed chariots back into the game;

Spoiler

Click to expand...

Don't forget Leonardo da Vinci's medieval battle tank.


Which actually would have worked if someone had bought the design. Sure, the tank operators would be deaf after a couple battles, but that's a small price to pay for a GODDAMN MEDIEVAL BATTLE TANK. I guess to the military men of the time, a riding armoured machine with guns just sounded too good to be feasible.

Tiberius Decimus Maximus said:

They're bound together with goddamn nano-tubes if I'm remembering the science correctly

Click to expand...

I seem to vaguely remember something similar going on with (Milanese?) plate armour. The method of smithing and cooling the steel would shock the steel molecules into a crystaline pattern greatly increasing the strength of the material.

It wouldn't have worked. Look at the axles.

I'm not an engineer, but I recall watching a documentary where they made one and used it. It's not really that special, it's basically an armoured push-cart where the gunners are also pushers.