Od Studios -- Fictitious Armor
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Fictitious Armor -- by sector24, 2007-07-17 |
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Fictitious armor is a somewhat silly title for an article on a video game website. Of course the armor isn't real, it's just a game. Lighten up, jerk. But there is an undercurrent of understanding that the armor is based on something from our very real history. There may not have been magical chain mail of lightning resistance, but there was sweaty uncomfortable chain mail of chafing and occasionally saving my life +1.
This assumption is not entirely true in all instances. Some of the armor in video games is completely fabricated based on misleading or incorrect information. Some armor may have existed but there's no conclusive evidence to confirm it. This article will highlight a few of these armor types and shed a little light on their murky origins.
Hard Leather Armor
Hard leather armor is something of a mystery. It certainly exists in the modern day, and is very popular for combat reenactments among medieval and renaissance enthusiasts. But that doesn't mean it was an authentic historical armor. The first thing to point out is that there is no literary or archaeological evidence for its existence. In general, leather armor would have enjoyed a very brief period of use after the fall of Rome, during the Dark Ages. This corresponds to roughly the 6th century through the 11th century, after which chain mail reappears among the Franks, Saxons, Lombards, and other Northern European cultures. Leather from this time period would not have survived to the modern day, and written records are spotty at best.
So historically speaking, there's no conclusive evidence that hard leather armor existed. But a strictly historical take on leather armor is no fun, because if the armor could have existed during that time it would very much fit into the video game mythos. To really prove that the armor is fictitious, it's necessary to show that the armor had no practical use during the time period in which it would have existed. This requires a little more analysis.
To determine whether hard leather armor existed, we need to know how it is made. There are actually many techniques to harden leather, all of them involving vegetable tanning and heat. Tanning refers to the material or "tannin" that is used to treat the leather. Brain tanning for instance produces soft leathers. Interestingly enough, almost every animal on the planet has enough brains to tan its own hide. The notable exception is the buffalo, but the Native Americans were able to use the buffalo's bone marrow instead.
Anyway, vegetable tanning means that the "tannin" used on the leather is some kind of vegetable matter. It soaks into the leather, and when heat is applied the leather hardens. Properly hardened leather is very tough, able to not only turn away slashing and chopping attacks, but also thrusting attacks. In a world where there is no chain mail, this would be an ideal alternative.
There are numerous methods of heating the leather to produce hard leather armor. The simplest is to just leave it out in the sun and let it dry. This doesn't necessarily generate a sufficient amount of heat to harden it fully, this only works during the summer if you live in a hot climate. Another method is to submerge the leather in hot water or pour hot water over the leather and then let it dry. You have to be careful because if the water is too hot, the leather shrinks up and becomes useless. Unlike in video games, each piece of armor has to be made to fit a specific person's body size and shape, so while you allow for a certain amount of shrinkage, you have to make sure you don't ruin your piece. If you apply an obscene amount of heat, the leather plasticizes; basically it shrivels up drastically and is ruined.
The best way to heat the leather is in an oven, because you can set the temperature exactly where it needs to be to properly heat the leather without shrinking it. Unfortunately the ovens didn't have dials in the Dark Ages, and it was hard to get a fire the exact right temperature. Too little and it won't harden enough, too much and you've ruined it. Getting the precise temperature for hard leather armor would have been a significant challenge during the period in which it would have been used.
Some modern leatherworkers pour hot wax into the leather and swear that it makes the leather tougher. Others are not convinced that the wax does anything but apply the heat evenly and consistently. Regardless, wax hardened leather would have been extremely unlikely in the Dark Ages. While wax may be cheap in the modern day, it was quite expensive back then and soldiers would not have been able to afford it.
Hard leather armor is not conclusively fictitious, but it is highly suspect. If it did exist it would have been very hard to make or very expensive, neither of which is conducive to mass production for soldiers. It would also perform very poorly in wet weather, losing its hardness until the leather was dried and reheated.
Studded Leather Armor
Studded leather armor is loosely defined as metal rivets or studs sewn onto a soft leather backing. The idea is that there are so many studs, that when someone slashes at you with their sword, the studs turn the blade away as if you were wearing chain mail. It offers very little protection against thrusting attacks and arrows.
Just like hard leather armor, the leather would not have survived to the modern day. However, the studs would been found in burial mounds or on battlefields, and to date this is not the case. As far as usefulness, we really need to understand what is meant by studded leather armor. The word "stud" doesn't really define the size or shape of the object.
Studded leather has been artistically portrayed as spikes like you would find on a dog collar, pyramid shaped tetrahedrons evenly lined up at right angles, or lots of tiny metal discs kind of like pointy thumb tacks. We can rule out the dog collar spikes right away. Although they would look really cool, no one would wear the armor because it would probably weigh 40+ pounds. The pyramid design is the most prevalent in video games, but the shape of the studs guide the blade towards the leather, so you'd have to stagger the studs in such a way as they don't line up at any angle. Square studs would not allow this, and definitely not at right angles like they are portrayed in video game art.
Discs or tacks would be the lightest of the three, and it would be easier to stagger them so that a slashing attack at any angle would be blocked my multiple discs. It is likely that this is where the idea of studded leather originated. Some armors like brigandine have metal strips sewn or riveted onto the inside of a cloth or leather covering. In examples where there isn't an additional layer of material over the armor, you can see the rivets as little metal discs that attach the metal plates to the covering. If you didn't know that there were metal plates on the inside, seeing those little discs and abstracting them across the entire piece of armor would give you studded leather armor.
Now going back to history, it wouldn't make sense to use that much metal on a piece of armor that provided so little protection for so much weight. It would take a lot of time to make a single piece, and once the soft leather backing was damaged, the armor would become virtually worthless. During that time period the wealthy would probably have some form of scale mail, and if you were poor you'd be better off with armor made of cloth or canvas stuffed with horse hair, wool or cotton. Some of these padded armors could stop an arrow, and you'd have all that iron to make more spears and swords. Sadly, we must conclude that studded leather armor is quite probably a fictitious armor, and thieves are going to lose 1 AC by going back to regular leather.
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