Weapons and Warfare

I want to invoke a late Bronze Age to Classical feeling with this setting (with my personal preference leaning more to the Bronze Age) which means avoiding a bunch of tropes such as knights in plate armour carrying longswords.

Most information here is gathered from Wikipedia or articles I've found online. Remember none of the writing on this blog is meant to be scholarly or accurate. I'm just underpinning the fiction with some semi-plausible explanations. I find that this helps me create a setting, that for me at least feels reasonably realistic, while still allowing room for a fantastical element. And often the truth is more interesting than what we think we know about various historical periods.

As I might have mentioned before, one of the reasons I'm creating this setting is because the standard Medieval fantasy scenarios have become a bit stale in my eyes and often incorporate anachronisms or false ideas about the time period. The Bronze Age still allows for many of the same kinds of adventures but in a fresh setting. I encourage people to investigate what the Bronze Age was like through some of the sources I link to because I've noticed many people mistakenly refer to the Roman Empire for inspiration when it existed at a much later time period with very different technology and culture.

Weapons

Here I've collected various weapons that I think fit the technology level and feel of this setting. I imagine spears and axes along with various kinds of clubs or Macuahuitl (a club with obsidian blades) will be the most common kind of weapon because they are easy to manufacture. Some of the weapons below weren't created until the Iron Age but they may provide inspiration for Bronze Age equivalents. The thing to remember is that bladed weapons had to be shorter and thicker down the middle in order to mitigate warping and bending due to use. See the videos linked to below to see demonstrations of how bronze weapons actually functioned and held up with use. Note I don't know who to credit for the image below. Let me know if you do.

Aklys
Battle Axe
Boomerang
Bow
Club (Lots of variations particular to cultures from around the world)
Dagger
Falx
Gladius
Javelin
Kama
Khopesh
Kopis
Kukri
Mace
Macuahuitl
Sling
Spear
Spear Thrower
Tepoztopilli
Xiphos

While many medieval fantasy settings rely on the tropes of leather, chain, scale and plate armour (while ignoring the very popular and effective Gambeson) the options here are more limited. The climate and topography do not lend themselves to cumbersome metal armour, which in any case would be expensive to make.

Bronze helmets could be in use by soldiers, with bronze chest plates, greaves and forearm guards for wealthier warriors or armies. Leather components can feature here and there but hardened leather is very rigid which is why full leather armour is supposedly not very historically accurate. Again it will be limited to a cuirass (body armour) plus protection for the groin such as the famous Greek and Roman style leather apron.

Bronze scale and plate armour could certainly exist (an example is the Dendra Armour) but it is probably reserved for the elite warriors or leaders and would involve trading protection for agility.

A type of armour that could fit the setting is Linothorax made from glued Linen (if you allow the growth of Flax in your setting). It is described in the Illiad and was perhaps used by the armies of Alexander the Great (although there is a debate as to whether it was more common than leather because it takes a lot of linen to produce and the process takes quite a lot of time and effort). I know Alexander the Great wasn't alive in the Bronze Age but this could provide a light and cooler type of armour that could fit an earlier time period.

The Aztecs had a type of armour that consisted of two inch thick cotton (which is native to tropical and subtropical areas around the world) soaked and then dried in salt water: Ichcahuipilli They also wore wooden helmets carved in the shape of animal heads. As with Linen this fabric is likely to be rare and expensive if you allow it.

A side note, the most common textile in use for day to day clothing and paper would be bark cloth, which is created by soaking, beating and fermenting, particular kinds of tree bark. See the link for a description of the process.

Armies

Standing armies require surplus food, labour, equipment and logistically planning to maintain so are  reserved for societies that are sufficiently advanced. The average ancient Sumerian city state might have had a population of 30,000 (the biggest ancient cities such as Ur or the Egyptian Thebes and Memphis might have had 60,000 inhabitants) and from what I've read that size of city could sustain 600 full time soldiers. For larger wars such a population could perhaps raise an army of 5000 commoners. But they would be poorly trained and equipped and every moment spent on war footing was time not spent working in agriculture or in workshops. And they weren't compensated, rather it was their duty to the state in the same way that they had to provide labour for public works.

Larger cities with populations as high as 100,000 or 200,000 as large as Teotihuacan and Tenochtitlan in Central America (or kingdoms and empires with large populations) might be able to organise larger armies but there are still constraints of logistics and being able to provide food and water. The organisation of these armies would perhaps also be more basic than what we imagine of the Classical Greek or Roman armies. It might be that most battles are a free for all, or on the other hand they might be highly ritualised with a designated code of conduct.

I think the fun with this kind of setting is that it allows for a lot of individual heroics and a lot of variety in how each culture conducts warfare. As I envision it this is a period of time where various cultures rose up and then collapsed over the course of thousands of years so there might be city states which have armies of individuals next to nascent kingdoms that are starting to organise to the point where they have a large professional standing army.

War Elephants

Since there are no horses in this setting elephants are the main beast of burden and battle. Elephants don't breed well in captivity so young elephants must be captured in the wild and then tamed and trained, it can take a long time for them to be ready for battle. Sources say that 60 year old Elephants were deemed the most suitable for battle.

It's hard to give an estimate of how many elephants might be in an army. The Nanda Empire in India (during the time of Alexander the Great) might have had thousands of elephants in use, but a city state or small kingdom might only have 25 to 100. An interesting point is that elephants were sometimes transported by rafts across rivers or in boats across seas and they can also swim.

Lots more information about the history of war elephants can be found here: War Elephant.

Further reading for inspiration

It's well worth reading the articles below to get inspiration on military culture, organisation, weaponry and armour. A lot of assumptions you might have about what armies are and how they function are probably based on Classical to Modern history.

Wikipedia: Aztec Warfare
Wikipedia: Maya Warfare
Wikipedia: Military of Ancient Egypt

Sumerian & Akkadian Warfare Part 1: Military Development
Sumerian & Akkadian Warfare Part 2: Army Organisation


Bronze Weapons Discussions

From the research I've done it seems that bronze weapons hold up pretty well to various kinds of use. Depending on the level of detail you want to play with repairing or recasting your weapons is something you may want to include. I've collected some videos discussing the topic below. There are more videos on bronze weapons on YouTube.