A low-grade armor and weapon material for a Fantasy setting

[Varyon]

Let me preface this by noting what I'm looking for in this thread - opinions on what I've outlined below, as well as suggestions on how to make it plausible enough to pass a basic sniff test.

I'm slowly starting to work more on my Oubliette setting (which is for GURPS DF / DFRPG, but the thrust of this thread is system-agnostic, hence why I'm posting in this forum), and one thing I'm considering implementing is a tier system for gear, based on the materials used. Part of this is having "Tier 0" gear that is, for all intents and purposes, outright free for delvers - but you get what you pay for, and this stuff really isn't very good (but it's certainly better than delving a dungeon bare-handed and in your skivvies).

The problem is... what sort of thing could honestly be justified as free? Obviously there's going to be a bit of effort in gathering materials and putting them together, but that basically gets subsidized by the local rulers with the justification that arming and armoring delvers is worth the expense - but a combination of miserliness and superstition means actual decent gear lacks such subsidies. Peasant levies and the like are probably typically equipped with such as well (meaning peasant uprisings would similarly be so-equipped, but those are relatively rare in this setting).

The primary material I've come up with, and which I still need a name for, is a sort of very hardy vine that grows thick and is rather ubiquitous - much of the wilderness functions as though it were a paved road in decent condition due to a thick mat of this vine (in fact, the Doylist origin of it is actually my development-in-hiatus Harpyias setting, which is Space Opera; there, it's been genetically engineered to form roads on newly-colonized worlds). The vine is harvested and weaved in a manner akin to wicker (indeed, wicker containers made from it are quite common) into armor (munitions-grade, anyone who can afford tailoring is probably going to want a proper armor material), basic weapons, etc. The vine hardens into a rigid woody structure shortly after being harvested, although there should be some basic treatment - I'm thinking perhaps boiling in water for a few minutes - that will keep it supple enough to serve as flexible armor, cheap rope, etc.

That should cover tier 0 armor and bludgeoning weapons, but what about sharp weapons? Certainly, one option is to just say that sharp weapons call for tier 1 or higher, but would there be a way to justify things otherwise? Cutting weapons might be able to get away with a design roughly akin to the macuahuitl, but what material would serve for the prismatic blades? Knapping stone feels a bit too labor-intensive to be justifiable as free (plus I'd rather not have characters using tier 0 cutting weapons needing to replace their weapons constantly due to the edges breaking off). I considered scrap metal, but I don't think that's going to be sufficiently-common in a TL3-4 setting (and any scrap you find would probably be worth more to sell for being recycled than to integrate into subsidized weaponry), plus you'd still need a decent amount of labor involved to make it sharp (-ish, this is low-quality stuff, after all). Anybody have a suggestion? Another idea I had was to introduce another ubiquitous wonder-thing of some sort where some part of it can be pounded paper-thin (or maybe it starts that way) before it naturally calcifies, becoming hard and, if thin, moderately-sharp. Or maybe this is something that can happen to the wondervine under certain conditions, maybe boiling it in salt water or something? Such would normally be a bit flimsy, but wrapping it up in the above wicker wondervine can give it a solid base, allowing it to be used to cut, stab, etc (not entirely unlike a sword with a sharp-but-brittle steel edge on an otherwise soft-but-strong piece of iron).

Does all this sound vaguely plausible? And does anybody have any ideas on what to name the wondervine and/or suggestions for how to make cutting and stabbing weapons under this paradigm?

[ericthered]

Possible names for the vine:

• Wickervine
• Wickervin
• Goodweed
• Tanglewood
• Serfwood

Sharp sticks are a thing, though that only covers points, not blades. blades might be tier 1+. swords become balanced clubs, axes become hammers.

If you want a wonder-item to create blades, my thought is a sedimentary rock that fractures into thin blades naturally when you slam it on the ground.

[The Colonel]

Really sharp leaves? I recall the old Fighting Fantasy setting had monkeys that used sharp leaves as swords, so you might be able to turn something similar into a edge for a weapon. Perhaps a natural calcite or silicate blade deposited on the leaf edge?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Possible names for the vine:

• Wickervine
• Wickervin
• Goodweed
• Tanglewood
• Serfwood

Those are good. Tanglewood won't work in this case, as the plant tends to naturally make for a good surface to walk on and the name implies it should trip up or impede you in some way, but the others would. While I like the name of Serfwood (it initially jumped out to me as the best of the bunch), I'm not certain if serfdom is really a thing in the setting... and if it is it seems odd to name something that for most people (at least the poorer commoners, but that's "most people") are primarily likely to associate with a traveling surface (the wondervine functionally forms roadways) after a class of people who are defined by their lack of mobility. Although I guess if I really wanted to use the name, I could have "serf" actually refer to semi-owned farmers/laborers (wiki notes them also tending to work their lord's mines and the like) who tend to travel a lot when tending to fields rather than living on the land they farm for their lord.

Originally Posted by ericthered

Sharp sticks are a thing, though that only covers points, not blades.

The wondervine is reliant on being intertwined for strength, and for a point you'd have to limit the tip of the weapon to basically a single straightened vine, which even if it's sufficiently-rigid would still be unlikely to stay intact after a single strike.

Originally Posted by ericthered

blades might be tier 1+. swords become balanced clubs, axes become hammers.

Yeah, if I can't find anything acceptable, this is certainly an option, but I'd like to allow for tier 0 blades if possible. I essentially want fairly similar options to be available at all tiers, it's just that the higher tiers are better.

Originally Posted by ericthered

If you want a wonder-item to create blades, my thought is a sedimentary rock that fractures into thin blades naturally when you slam it on the ground.

That would avoid the labor issue quite well, but it would call for frequent replacement of the prismatic blades, which is something I'd prefer to avoid. It's certainly worth considering as an option.

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Really sharp leaves? I recall the old Fighting Fantasy setting had monkeys that used sharp leaves as swords, so you might be able to turn something similar into a edge for a weapon. Perhaps a natural calcite or silicate blade deposited on the leaf edge?

I was actually considering a broad-leafed plant with leaves that can calcify into something blade-like. Or maybe it would work better if leaves are moderately long but narrow and end in a sharp point? We could call the plant Spearleaf or something like that. A tier 0 axe would have its head made mostly of wondervine wicker with a truncated calcified spearleaf serving as the edge. A tier 0 sword would instead be a balanced wondervine wicker club with a couple spearleaves running along each side (or just one side for a single-edged sword, with the one(s) at the end having its (their) point(s) partially exposed to be able to stab into the target. A tier 0 spear would simply have a spearleaf at the end of a wondervine wicker shaft. It's not completely ideal, as it requires introducing a new plant that basically only exists to allow for such weapons (the wondervine also makes travel easier and helps justify having effective tricycles by forming a decent road surface), but perhaps we can think of more mundane uses for the plant*.


*EDIT: Part of me chuckles at the thought of it actually being this world's version of spearmint. Maybe they have some means of extracting the oil while leaving the (rather larger than what we're used to) leaf intact, and it gets calcified/silicated (silicafied?) as a side effect.

[ericthered]

glad to hear the names might be useful.

Originally Posted by Varyon

While I like the name of Serfwood (it initially jumped out to me as the best of the bunch), I'm not certain if serfdom is really a thing in the setting... and if it is it seems odd to name something that for most people (at least the poorer commoners, but that's "most people") are primarily likely to associate with a traveling surface (the wondervine functionally forms roadways) after a class of people who are defined by their lack of mobility. Although I guess if I really wanted to use the name, I could have "serf" actually refer to semi-owned farmers/laborers (wiki notes them also tending to work their lord's mines and the like) who tend to travel a lot when tending to fields rather than living on the land they farm for their lord.

you could have "Serf" be an archaic term that doesn't get used anymore, I suppose. I'll have to see if anything else along those linguistic lines pops into my head in the future.

The wondervine is reliant on being intertwined for strength, and for a point you'd have to limit the tip of the weapon to basically a single straightened vine, which even if it's sufficiently-rigid would still be unlikely to stay intact after a single strike.

Normal wood will work for that, though, right? someone takes a tier 1+ blade, cuts you a pole, and whittles the end sharp. If you want it especially tier 0, just don't make it all that strait.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by ericthered

you could have "Serf" be an archaic term that doesn't get used anymore, I suppose. I'll have to see if anything else along those linguistic lines pops into my head in the future.

It could be that the original term has evolved to have a new meaning. An aspect of the setting is that dungeons (which form on their own and spawn monsters) tend to crop up near places where a decent number of people live, such as a village, and the monsters raid such a location. If we posit that a lord's grounds full of serfs living there are sufficient to cause a dungeon to crop up nearby, the fact that such areas would be harder to defend than a proper village might make the lord inclined to have most of their serfs live instead in a nearby village and commute to work, taking the wondervine roads/paths. That could certainly lend itself to the material becoming known as Serfwood (in addition to the fact that serfs would probably be inclined to make wicker baskets and the like out of it, and use these to transport whatever supplies, tools, etc they need to bring with instead of being supplied at the site).

I'm not certain how feasible that is, however. First off, that implies a fairly low population density can spawn a dungeon - or it means that it's just based on the total number of people living in a human-defined area (the noble's holdings) without considering population density. The latter could be justified by the dungeons being more magical than mundane, but honestly I don't think I like either of those for worldbuilding purposes. Secondly, changing to "serfs now commute to work" reeks of manipulating the dungeons, and there are some very strong superstitions against doing just that (and for good reason - polities that have implemented policies to do so, or to greatly exploit the dungeon's resources beyond what relatively-independent delvers can achieve, have found themselves swarmed by an untenable number of monsters pouring forth from a high concentration of dungeons in the area, and have been summarily annihilated; all those instances are distant enough in the past to be unverifiable, but nobody is really willing to risk assuming they're nonsense legends). And all that's not even considering how much time and energy would be lost having the serfs actually commute rather than living on the land they're working.

Originally Posted by ericthered

Normal wood will work for that, though, right? someone takes a tier 1+ blade, cuts you a pole, and whittles the end sharp. If you want it especially tier 0, just don't make it all that strait.

A shaft made of normal wood that can stand up to the rigors of combat would be better suited to making a tier 1 polearm, quarterstaff, spear, etc. In GURPS terms, a sub-par shaft of normal wood would be Cheap in materials and/or balance, but tier 0 is actually below even that - my current thoughts are that tier 0 weapons tend to cause reduced injury compared to normal tier 1 ones (tier 2+ generally just get a little bonus damage against mundane foes and make armor less effective, but many foes have traits that let them divide injury by some value, and tier 2+ weapons can downgrade or outright bypass this protection).

[dcarson]

For stabbing things like antlers can work. Antlers are shed every year so you can just collect them. Polynesians made shark tooth swords. I assume a dungeon setting has things with lots of sharp teeth.

[whswhs]

The ultimate in low-tech weaponry seems to be the proverbial sticks and stones. Throw rocks or bash the foe with tree branches. As for protection, pre-TL1 societies generally don't see to have much in the way of armor. A leather cap might help against getting your own head bashed in. Or you could always follow the path of Thorin Oakenshield, who used a branch of an oak tree to ward off blows after his shield broke.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by whswhs

The ultimate in low-tech weaponry seems to be the proverbial sticks and stones. Throw rocks or bash the foe with tree branches. As for protection, pre-TL1 societies generally don't see to have much in the way of armor. A leather cap might help against getting your own head bashed in. Or you could always follow the path of Thorin Oakenshield, who used a branch of an oak tree to ward off blows after his shield broke.

One of the ideas for this is that starting characters will be using weapons that function and are used exactly like those of better equipped ones, but made of lower quality, less effective materials. Someone who intends to use a kusarigama can start out with one, it will just be made of wondervine with whatever option I ultimately settle on for sharps to handle the kama's blade. It would be the same case for a halberd, an edged rapier, a horse-cutter/pudao/zanbatou, etc - the character doesn't start out with some simulacrum of the weapon (a stick with a rock on the end, something more like a long baton, and a big club, respectively), they start out with that weapon. Part of this is visual/thematic ("greatsword gua6s41xy" will always have a greatsword), but another part is that GURPS has some traits that are specific to the weapon design - some weapons might use different skills, for example, and there's also Familiarity to keep in mind; also many Advantages either are from the start or can be modified to only apply to a specific design of weapon, so a character who starts out with such a trait (like a Swashbuckler with Weapon Master (One Weapon)) would have it apply at all tiers, even if they want to use a weapon that can't be replicated just with sticks and stones. Armor I intend to be less precise about - there aren't going to be tier 0 versions of hardened leather vs mail vs scale vs brigandine vs plate etc, rather there's just going to be flexible and rigid (depending on how the wondervine is treated), available as Light, Medium, or Heavy armor.

That said, your mention of stones gives me an idea for how to handle things like maces - just have a ball of hardened wondervine wrapped around a modest-sized stone at the top, giving it more density (and thus having the balance be more akin to what a proper mace would have). The weight on the end of a kusari could be handled similarly. I originally intended to just have a big ball of hardened wondervine, but I think shoving a rock in there (heck, given you'll want a tight weave, you could probably get away with filling it up with gravel... or maybe even hard-packed soil) will get the balance more where it needs to be (out of necessity, the tier 0 weapons will be lighter than their tier 1+ counterparts, but so long as the balance is right things should scale up alright).

[Irish Wolf]

Perhaps steal a march from Minecraft, and have the blades of Tier 0 bladed weapons be stone with a wondervine grip? They can then be shaped into whatever form the weapon "should" have, and perhaps even be sturdy enough to survive an entire dungeon crawl before needing another blade knapped.