Technology

WIP

Weaponry

Cut off date is the early Renaissance in general, as represented by primitive firearms; most weaponry is mid to late Medieval.

Melee Weapons

Complex hilts are absolutely fine but provide no mechanical benefit.

Push daggers, cestus and similar brawling weapons are in use.

Rapiers and epee do not exist as they do not come into use until heavy armor has faded from use. We are too early into the firearms era.

Scimitar and Falchions are Partharian weapons, but can be found in the West.

Generally speaking, swords are expensive, and high quality swords are extremely expensive, in the preserve of high prestige retinue forces, knights and nobility. This also extends to weapons such as poleaxes. The primary weapon for the overwhelming majority of soldiers in the West is the spear, given its ubiquity, versatility and cost.

Bows and Crossbows

Most bows are self bows (made from a single piece of wood) and wielded with either a two finger or thumb draw depending on the traditions of the region.

Some areas with particularly strong archery traditions also have a good number of recurve bows. House Kaedon current supplies a composite recurve bow (developed by Dertan) which is said to retain the power and range of a longbow whilst being small enough to use on horse back. This bow has a fairly high skill requirement to properly use and has a relatively high cost however. Archers are devastating en-masse and have excellent accuracy but require a long time to train making them difficult to field for any region that doesn't have a strong archery tradition amongst its people.

Crossbows go some way towards reducing the training level required by archers. They are often more powerful than bows but have a shorter maximum range and a much longer reload time.

Vir Sidus Empire has repeating crossbows, but they are unknown in the West. These repeating crossbows require many complex parts and are quite difficult to manufacture and maintain.

Fire arrows are known of by all archery units and often used in battle, when archers can remain static enough to use them. These arrows are simple in form, consisting mostly of a arrow dipped in pitch or wrapped with cloth, that is set aflame before being fired.

The Qatunax have a more effective design that essentially combines the fireflask used by their slingers with an arrow. Qatunax fire arrows thus explode upon impact. Imagine small scale naptha jugs attached to hand thrown darts.

Firearms

Hand cannons are simply a short barrelled version of a musket. They have terrible accuracy, only have a single shot and have a long reload time but are devastating when fired at point blank range.

The first long firearms were called long cannons, analagous to Medieval hand gonnes. Kentaire improved on the design, which was captured during the War of the West and adapted. This more modern design is called the musket. The Kentairish design is slightly more reliable than long cannons, and a bit cheaper to make. Muskets, despite the name, are more like arquebuses. All muskets are matchlock, with serpentine levers.

Muskets are often employed with very long sword-bayonets that essentially turn them into spears or glaives. However, they lack some of the fine balance of dedicated polearms.

Although most banners that employ firearms have since moved on to muskets, long cannons are still in use, notably by the Kingdom of Gendiel.

longcannon.jpg

A primitive long cannon, now considered obsolete but still present in some armouries

musket.jpg

A Musket

musket2.jpg

Another Musket

Musket volleys can be devastating when well timed and executed. They especially hurt enemy morale; their loud noise terrifies horses and the smell, smoke and sound of the weapons going off is reminiscent of The Abyss to most soldiers of the West. What keeps them from being adopted by the mass is fourfold -
1) Flash powder is hideously expensive to produce, using rare materials and requiring alchemists to make.
2) The matches are likewise produced alchemically and very expensive, besides being prone to being rendered useless by inexperienced personnel.
3) Muskets have very short ranges and are not very accurate at all.
4) The expense of simply training soldiers to actually fire enough live ammunition to become proficient deters many.

These factors mean that it is often better to simply train troops with crossbows if training time is a factor, or with bows.

Artillery

  1. If the Romans had a weapon then it is within the abilities of the west.
  2. Ballista, catapult and scorpions are the most commonly seen siege weapons. Cannons are seen occasionally but are rare enough that they will always be specifically listed. Its worth noting that most fortifications do not yet have cannon as part of their defenses.
  3. Carroballista are a variation of the ballista that fires explosive bolts
  4. Trebuchets are a rare but developing artillery piece that is gaining popularity in parallel to cannons - their benefits include much better accuracy, lack of required flash powder and easier construction
  5. Cannons are the high end of artillery but are still in their earliest days. Hard to make and usually very static. Land and Naval cannons are absolutely not interchangeable.
  6. Flares are restricted to Kentaire.
  7. Mortars were invented by Kentaire just before the War of the West, designed to lob large projectiles high up in the air and over obstacles - usually castle or city walls. Although some were captured by Allied forces and they have since spread beyond Kentaire, Kentairish designs are more reliable and more accurate, though without the ability to communicate with spotters it is very difficult to have them effectively attack targets out of sight.
  8. Artillery is very static and difficult to move in any tactical timeframe. Dertan has developed a system of horse drawn 'limbers' that enable siege engines to be moved more rapidly. At the time of writing (july2018) this is a Sokar secret.

Ranged Weapons

Slings are in common use but the sling-staff is not known in the West. Slings shoot bullets made from dropped lead or stone. Slings come under the thrown skill.

Javelins are also very common, especially amongst light cavalry. The Qatunax are said to have a tool that enables javelins to be thrown further than is otherwise possible.

Unconventional Arms

Fire Lances - It is said that the qatunax have a bronze tube capable of spewing sticky fire onto their enemies.

Ulsen Fire (Designed by Belladonna) - This sticky fluid is a lot like Greek fire.

Fireflasks - The qatunax have a type of flask filled with a volatile liquid that explodes on impact. This is more like a molotov than greek fire.

Black Powder is an alchemical concoction for which the recipe is secret. It can’t be home made.

Bertram designed a series of explosive devices which include a type of smoke pot and throwable explosives. These devices can only be used (safely) by trained engineers. These devices are too heavy, expensive and complicated to have seen extensive use at this point.

Medicine

First aid/Battlefield

Medicine is quite advanced with a basic understanding of anisthetics and cleanliness and the common-place use of suturing.

Surgery

Surgery is still a horrible bloody and deadly affair that is avoided unless all other options have been exhausted. This is in large part because they have not yet been able to develop an anaesthetic that does not kill its subject.

Cures

There are some major alchemical inventions that greatly enhance healing but these potions are so expensive and hard to source that it is a rarity to see them even for those who have dedicated their lives to the healers art. These are:

  1. Opiate level painkillers - Potentially addictive but pure enough for general use.
  2. Bleedhalt - A paste that staunches bleeding and helps prevent infection making it easier to rescue the seriously hurt.
  3. Fleshknit - Increases a body's natural healing rate to about twice the normal level for roughly five days.
  4. Potion of vitae (Zahara's design) is capable of completely curing anything but the most lethal of injuries after taking a dose.

Alchemical medicines are generally seen as cheating when used in any competitive event.

There is far more information on this subject on the alchemy page.

Naval and Air Travel

Naval Technology

Unlike in the real world all of the ships are considered capable of travelling on those rivers large enough to be displayed on the map.
The in game navy is far ahead of land forces in terms of the uptake of firearms.
It is worth noting that ship weapons are not useable in land battles without extensive modifications.
Available ship types and the armanent of the vessels is covered in great detail on the Naval warfare page.

Air Travel

There are both airships and dirigibles. Airships are modeled after naval vessels and require large crystals to enable flight, which thusfar have only been found by enterprising adventurers deep in the Ergonian Mountains - Goblin country.

Airships number slightly over a dozen in the entire Civilised West and laws restrict anyone other than Royal authorities of using them.

Dirigibles are powered by a combination of crystal fragments and directed air, are slightly more common but unstable and still difficult to build, numbering generally less than a dozen per Kingdom. They generally aren’t found below the Ducal level, but service areas not usually visited by airships.

Four Corners has a fleet of four airships and a number of dirigibles that they hire out for transport, going to big centres in the kingdoms. This is extremely expensive, and typically only very rich nobles and merchants use it.

Airships generally travel to the main cities - royal and ducal capitals. Beyond these, dirigibles may fan out to connect county capitals and some more important baronies. Flight on both airships and dirigibles is extremely expensive, and tightly controlled by Royal and Ducal authorities.

The use of airship in warfare, at any level, is strictly forbidden. This includes using them to send signals. In addition it is unfeasible for anything more than a bodyguard (1-2 men) to be moved this way. Thus far, no one has breached these prohibitions.

Materials

Whilst society has developed most of the alloys and metals that we are familiar with today there are a few important details:

  1. Steel is still hand crafted. This makes it more expensive pound for pound than silver.

Mystical Metals

  1. Lightsilver - An alchemical allow of silver that holds an edge well enough to enable robust weapons to be constructed from it. Its manufacture is mostly controlled by the church and getting ahold of lightsilver in the quantities needed for weapon forging is a matter of contacts as well as money. Lightsilver is never forged into armor due to the cost and weight limitations but may be used to plate it. For most people this metal is simply one of prestige. However those with forbidden lore understand that it has further uses in the hunting of supernatural creatures and because it does not interact with sorcery.
  2. Sidhe Steel - A steel alloy, presumably alchemical, that can no longer be created. Its design has been lost. It has a distinctive high gloss black finish and is famed for its ability to cut through almost anything. Small sidhe weapons are very uncommon, and longblades (anything bigger than a gladius) are so rare that they are kept as family weapons by the highest echelons of nobility. Thanks to the risk of losing these weapons, it is rare for them to be used even when a house holds one in its name. As with lightsilver it has applications for both sorcerery and monster hunting which are hidden to anyone without forbidden lore or personal experience.
  3. Rosegold

An alchemical alloy of gold that was lost until recently when Dario d'Armaz rediscovered its crafting. In general it is desired for its rarity and prestige value. As with the above metals it has secret benefits and it said to enhance a wearers speed. The matrix of this particular metal is disrupted if reforged.

Architecture

  1. A good rule of thumb is that if the Romans could do it then so can you.
  2. Any pre-Renaissance castle design is fine and many renaissance ones are also acceptable.
  3. Cannon are still very rare in land combat and castle designs to counter such things have yet to happen.

Fashion

  1. Fashion is quite loosely defined with a rough cutoff date of 1680 and a strong emphasis on regional fashions.
  2. Corsets using whalebone are common and fine needles and weaving techniques are in use enabling elaborate embroidery, embellishments and fabrics to all see popular use.
  3. The most common fashion staples throughout the west are the doublet, tunic, surcoat, hose and trousers for men and kirtles, bliauts, houppenlandes and surcoats for women.
  4. There are no sumptuary laws to worry about.
  5. Women wearing trousers will not raise an eyebrow anywhere within the realms but a man in a dress might raise a few eyebrows.

Misc

  1. Clockworking is an extremely delicate and complicated art. Clocks are possible but anything smaller than a mantle clock is extremely rare and expensive. The smallest clockwork item is a clock that can be worn as an amulet (see nuremberg eggs for reference) and these are exclusive to House Charwin

Imports (move to economics page somewhere)

The following items are only available via import from elsewhere in the world:

  1. Kaffe/Coffee - Partharian
Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License