fandomhigh | Weaponry; Wednesday, Second Period [02/09].

Surprising no one, the class was still out on that open medieval tournament field, with racks of weapons gleaming in the simulated sunshine and a flock of practice dummies standing there ready to meet their brutal fates. And brutal it would be, for today, they would be talking about maces.

"Good morning, everyone!" Amaya greeted them cheerfully once it looked like everyone was present and accounted for. "Hope none of you have been skipping arm day recently, because, today, we're going to talk about Maces!" She took that opprotunity to brandish one happily, and then pounding the head of it (it wasn't a particularly spiky one) into her hand. "Our introduction into blunt, or bludgeoning weapons! You really can't go wrong with a mace. If I'm completely honest, all of that fancy work you can manage to get out with a sword or some other weapon might look nice, there's a lot to be said about a battle won through bloodshed, but you can't get more efficient than just conking someone upside the skull with a nice hunk of beautifully formed metal on a stick. Often with spikes!"

What more was there to love, really?

"Generally speaking," Amaya continued, "a mace consists of a strong, heavy, wooden or metal shaft, often reinforced with metal, featuring a head made of stone, bone, copper, bronze, iron, or steel. It's essentially a beefed up version of a club, back when people were discovering how to use metal in all sorts of tools and weapons and they considered putting some on top of a club and realized, yes, this, this will do much more damage, let's stick with this! Now those early maces weren't very effecient because the heads on them were contantly busting and breaking from the impact, but, over the years, as metalworking and blacksmithing developed, they were able to reinforce the heads to become stronger and take better blows, as well as leading to interesting designs, a variety of which you'll see here."

She gestured to the wonderful array of different shapes and designs on the rack behind her.

"Now one thing to remember about the mace is that it really came into popular coinciding with the development of more effective chain and plate armor." Was there a particular shine in Amaya's eyes a her lecture brought her around into the literal colliding of two of her favorite topics? Indeed, it was! "After all, those kinds of armors turned out to be an excellent defence again bladed weapons, so the use of blunt weapons such as a cudgel or a bludgeon like a mace worked pretty well to better penetrate or crush such armor! Technological advances in weapon design in direct response to the improvements made in armor! You love to see it!

"And you know what else we love to see? Maces in action! So with that, I'll open it up to any questions you might have before handing you over to Detective Diaz to show you how it's done."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Smashing!

Kurt Wagner

Guillermo de la Cruz

Alara Kitan

Does Amaya still think that the development of maces as a response to the development of armor is one of the coolest things ever? Yes, yes she does. You should definitely ask her more about that, surely it wouldn't lead to an even more detailed description or build into developments in armor in response to development in maces!

"Alright," said Rosa, taking up a mace for herself and approaching one of the dummies on the field, "maces. Honestly, a weapon like this, the basics is usually just swing and hit and you'll probably do some damage. It's not exactly a weapon that calls for a whole lot of finesse. But there are certain ways to approach your attacks that'll make it more effective while also lessening the chances of you getting hit as well. And so that makes it all a matter of timing and positioning. I'll demonstrate, and then you know the drill, it's your turn to do some damage on some dummies.

"These dummies," she clarified, after a moment. "Not your classmates."

Yes, she felt that needed clarification. You're welcome.

Alara found that she was getting quite into swinging the mace against her dummy, except she swung a bit to hard and it wasn't long before she completely broke her dummy.

"Oops," she blinked as she stared down at the mace and then at the dummy, at least she had managed to get in a few swings before she broke it?

This was another weapon that Guillermo was a bit more familiar with thanks to LARPING so he was finding it a bit easier to swing the mace against the dummy.

They're usually both there, but the funny thing was, for this class? It actually was a little unusual that something hadn't happened to one or the other more yet this semester...

It had been a while since Rosa had a new mace.

She was definitely going to be looking over some of the various maces provided by the danger shop to see if any really struck her as one she might need to have Blackstone whip up for her.

While Amaya, mostly, was really trying not to ponder the fate of certain maces and wondering just how they were doing out there in the world and what not, really...

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Weaponry; Wednesday, Second Period [02/09].

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