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What a blow does

A blow is a quantity of energy, in joules, arriving on one part of a man. It comes from the body of the man who throws it, passes through his weapon, and is spent on the way in: some of it shoving the part it lands on, some on armour, some on skin, fat and muscle, and whatever is left on bone and on the organs underneath. Every step below happens in that order, and each step spends from what the last one left.

Where the energy comes from

The body behind it

A blow is the work of every muscle that takes part in it: the legs, the hips, the belly, the chest and the arms. The reference man, the one every number in the game was set against, can put 170 J of work into a one-handed swing, 300 J into a two-handed one, 95 J into a one-handed thrust and 140 J into a two-handed thrust. A bigger, more muscular man has more; a smaller one has less. The Build line on the unit panel shows his height, his weight and how much of it is fat.

The arms are always his to use. The legs and the trunk are learnt. How much of them a man can put behind a weapon is his form at that weapon's art, which his muster card shows beside his skill. A man with no form at all still gets 20% of his legs and trunk into the blow; a master gets all of it. This is why a practised swordsman cuts harder than a stronger man who has never held a sword.

The chain runs in series. Whatever the legs and hips produce has to pass out through the arm that holds the weapon, so a wounded weapon arm weakens the whole blow and not only its own share (see Wounds).

The weapon

Of the work his body produces, the weapon receives more the heavier it moves. At 1 kg of moving mass it takes half of his work, and a heavier weapon takes more. In a swing the moving mass is the weapon, counted at its balance point, and the arm that swings it; in a thrust it is the whole weapon with the arm and shoulder behind it, which is why a thrust is slower than a cut and carries more mass.

A swing has a ceiling as well: an arm can only move a light weapon so fast. An arming sword can go no faster than 14 m/s and a dagger no faster than 10 m/s. A man with more fast fibres in his muscle moves any weapon a little faster than that, and tires a little sooner. For a light blade the ceiling is what decides the blow: the reference man's dagger slash carries 40 J, about half of what his arm could have given it.

So a heavier weapon hits harder, and a denser metal makes a heavier weapon: a silver mace hits harder than an iron one. It also tires him sooner, because every blow costs more wind the more the weapon weighs. The joules, metres a second and momentum of each of his strokes are printed under his weapon on the unit panel, and every weapon's are listed in Arms and armour.

What takes it away

Last, the blow is graded for how squarely it comes home, which is mostly luck and a little skill (see Striking). The log gives each hit two figures, J at m/s and J lands: the first is what came home, the second what the part it found took of it.

The part it lands on

A struck part moves. Only part of the blow's energy goes into deforming the man; the rest shoves him. How much stays depends on how much of him stands behind the part the blow found, against the mass of the weapon: the whole trunk behind the chest, very little behind a hand. The chest counts for 35 kg of the reference man and a hand for 2.5 kg, so of his own arming sword's cut the chest takes 97% and a hand only 67%. A heavier weapon keeps less of itself back, so it loses more to a recoiling limb than a sword does. A heavier man braces harder everywhere. What is shoved rather than taken is not lost: it is the push.

Where on him the blow lands is decided by the aim and the side it comes from (see Striking). Every part is an ellipse in cross-section, and no part of a man is round: his chest is 320 mm across and 210 mm from front to back, so a point driven in at the breastbone has much less of him to cross than one driven in at the ribs, and what it reaches on the way depends on the side it came from.

A part has a length as well. The aim decides how high on the part a blow lands: a blow aimed high that finds the chest lands near its top, one aimed low near its bottom. And a blow is rarely level. It comes down or up at some slope, and it runs down or up the part as it goes in, so what it reaches depends on the height of the line as well as the side it came from.

Armour, outermost first

A blow meets a man's armour from the outside in: a harness on the arms or legs first, then the body piece, then the helm, then the padding under it all. Only the pieces that cover the part it found take part.

The gap beside a piece

A piece covers most of a part, not all of it. Each piece has its coverage (the tables are in Arms and armour), and each piece is its own chance: the blow may pass one piece by and still meet the next.

How readily a blow finds the gaps is not fixed. It changes with:

A piece beaten nearly to rags has more holes in it than its pattern, and covers less. When a blow slips past a piece, the log says The blow finds a gap in the mail shirt, with the chance of the blow landing and finding every gap it found so far after it, and the forecast shows the chance of it before you strike.

Cut through, or held

An edge or a point that meets a layer has to cut a hole in it. The cost in joules is the material's cut resistance, times the area of the hole, times the layer's thickness. A cut opens a long slot the length of the blade's bite; a point opens a small hole, but mail and plate are made to stop points, and charge them 10 and 8 times the base cost, where mail charges an edge 1.3 times and plate once: mail resists a point about eight times as hard as an edge, plate eight times. Quilted linen gives before an edge and resists a cut 3 times over. Every weave stretches a little before it parts.

Plate and board are almost never struck square. A curved panel met at a slant has more of itself in the blade's path, whether the slant comes from the curve of the plate or from a blow that came down or up at it, and past 38° a point skates off rather than biting. On average this makes a breastplate much harder to cut than its thickness says. Mail, leather and padding hang loose and take no slant.

If the blow has the joules, it goes through, spends them, and carries on with the rest. The log says It shears through the mail shirt. If it does not, the layer holds: the log says The mail shirt holds, gives the joules it would have needed, and adds and the force carries through as a blunt blow, which it does. From there on, the blow is blunt.

For scale: iron mail asks 202 J of an iron arming sword's cut across the chest, which is more than a strong man's cut carries. The same sword in steel needs only 101 J. Steel mail asks the iron sword for 2571 J, which no blow in the game carries.

An edge softer than the armour

That last number is mostly the edge's fault. An edge that meets a metal harder than itself does not cut it: it rolls over, and the cost climbs steeply. A steel edge bites iron readily; an iron edge on steel is all but hopeless; a copper edge fares nearly as badly against iron. Leather and linen are too soft to roll any metal edge. The muster's material table gives each material's edge hardness, and it is the column to read when you choose what a man's weapon and armour are made of.

Each blow on metal about as hard as the weapon, or harder, also takes a little of it away: an iron sword wears on iron mail. A weapon has an edge and a point, and each wears by what it is used for: a cut dulls the edge and leaves the point, and a thrust blunts the point and leaves the edge. A blow turned aside by a weapon is blade on blade, and each edge meets the other's metal as it would a plate: a bronze sword that parries steel, or is parried by it, is notched, and the steel is not. Which misses were parries is not rolled for; every miss wears both blades by the share of it the parry was. None of it ever takes an edge or a point below 35%.

When a weapon has lost some of its edge or its point, the unit panel shows it beside the weapon (edge 80%, point 70%). A blunter edge costs more against armour and against flesh alike, and a blunted point is a wider one, so it needs more of the blow to go through plate. Arrowheads are fresh with every shot. On the road, a day's rest hones a blade and the smith grinds it sharp (see The road).

A bodkin arrow is a hardened steel spike, and it is the head that argues with armour. The reference man's war bow puts 153 J into it: enough to punch through iron mail and, on most slants, iron plate, and usually turned by steel. A broadhead opens flesh wonderfully, goes through copper mail, and will not pass bronze, iron or steel.

Blunt force through a layer

A blow that is blunt from the start (a mace, a club, a hammer's face) or that has been turned blunt by a layer that held, meets each layer in a different way. It does not cut: it bends.

A layer first springs. It gives by as much as its metal can bend and still come back, over whatever length of it bends: a plate panel flexes over 130 mm of itself, mail over only a ring or two, 9 mm. The energy that takes is returned when it springs back, and all but 12% of the blow is stopped; that 12% is the shove that no armour can take out of a blow. Steel gives 2.4 times as far as iron before it takes a set, so a steel plate springs back from a blow that dents an iron one.

Past what it can spring, a metal layer dents. A dent drinks more of the blow, but it stays, the piece loses some of its soundness, and part of what went into denting it is pressed into the flesh beneath. The log says The helm buckles under it, where a layer that sprang says soaks up part of the blow.

Padding does neither: it crushes, and drinks a great deal of a broad blow as it does.

Every layer also spreads the blow wider for the next one, and a wide blow is gentler on flesh than a narrow one. Plate spreads it 3 times, mail barely at all (1.3). Mail stops an edge and passes nearly all of its force.

That is why padding is worn under mail. An ordinary cut of the reference man's iron sword on iron mail over nothing is stopped as an edge and, as a blow, breaks his ribs two times in three and cracks them otherwise. The same cut on the same mail over a gambeson rarely does more than bruise him.

Worn armour

Each piece has a soundness, shown on the unit panel as n% sound when it has lost some. A layer that is cut through, that holds against an edge, or that dents loses soundness. A worn layer is cheaper to cut, springs less and dents sooner, and one beaten down to a quarter of its soundness covers less of the part.

The helm and its lining

A mail coif, a helm and a great helm are each worn over 10 mm of quilted linen. The lining is a layer of its own, met exactly where its shell is met and never on its own. The steel turns an edge and spreads a blow; the linen lengthens the distance over which the head is brought to a stop, and that is what decides whether he is dazed. A leather cap has no lining.

Skin, fat and muscle

Whatever gets through the armour reaches the skin, then the fat, then the muscle, each with its own thickness, which the part list on the unit panel shows in millimetres. An edge or a point cuts each layer in turn and spends joules on each; a layer it cannot finish, it cuts partway into and stops. Each stroke reaches only so deep, whatever joules it carries, and a cut far less deep than a thrust: an arming sword's cut goes no deeper than 90 mm, its thrust 250.

A cut is as wide as the blade's bite across the part, so a long edge on a thin limb opens it most of the way round, and a point opens a narrow wound. A sharp edge cuts flesh more easily than a blunt one.

A blunt blow cuts nothing. Flesh cushions it, and a deep layer of muscle over the bone soaks up far more than a thin one: a thigh takes a mace blow as a bruise, and a shin, where the bone lies under the skin, cracks. A blow hard enough to crush the muscle numbs the nerves in that part for a few turns.

Every cut bleeds, and a cut through the scalp runs into the eyes. See Wounds.

Vessels and nerves

The great vessels and the nerves lie in the muscle, and a blow can reach them only once it has opened the muscle a good part of the way. Even then it has to pass near them. The game draws the straight line the blow took through the part, falling or climbing as it goes, and it opens only what that line passes close to at the height it passes: the femoral artery lies at the front of the thigh, the sciatic nerve at the back of it, and a cut that opens the back of the thigh will not find the artery; nor will a cut just above the knee, where the artery has gone round behind the thigh bone. A wide cut finds more than a narrow point.

A blunt blow never opens a vessel. Shattering a limb bone may crush the nerves beside it, and the bone bleeds inside.

Bone, met at a slant

A bone is the next thing in the line. An edge or a point does not always meet it: a point has a 40% chance of slipping between the ribs, and the log says so.

Parting a bone costs joules the way armour does, and a bone met at a slant has more of itself in the way. Unlike a plate, a bone never turns a blade aside: by the time an edge is on it, it is committed to the line it took. So whether a given blow parts a given bone is not a fixed answer but a spread of answers, according to the slant it met.

If the blow has the joules, an edge cuts the bone through and a point pierces it, which breaks it, and the blow carries on. If not, the bone is scraped, chipped or fractured, according to how much of the way the blow got, and a blow that fractured it goes on as a lesser blunt blow; one that only chipped it is stopped.

A blunt blow cracks, fractures or shatters a bone according to its joules against the bone's cross-section. A shattered bone bleeds inside, and in a limb it may crush the nerves beside it.

A broken bone in a limb stops that part working (see Wounds).

Organs

Past the bone, a blow that still has joules may reach the organs, if it can reach as deep as they lie: a short edge that opens the chest wall will not find a lung behind it. What it finds depends on where it came from. The heart lies towards his left, and a point driven in from his right never reaches it; the liver lies to his right, and a blow from his left never finds it. Each organ has its height too. The heart lies between the second rib and the foot of the breastbone, so a thrust at the lower ribs passes under it unless it climbs; the liver and the stomach sit up under the ribs and the guts below them. A blow may pass through a part and find nothing vital at all.

The brain lies behind the skull, down to the skull's base, and a blow at the jaw passes under it unless it climbs. A blow must usually break the skull first. A point slips past it about one time in five, and a point that destroys an eye can drive on through the socket. A blunt blow bruises and ruptures organs rather than cutting them, and needs far more joules to do it.

What each organ does when it is hurt is in Wounds.

Taking a limb off

A cut can take a limb off when it cuts the bone through, lies across more than half the limb, and still has the joules to part the far side. Everything below the cut goes with it. Hands and arms are what come off. A great axe in the hands of a master of the axe can take off a foot, and on its very best blows a leg at the thigh; nothing in the game carries enough to take off a head.

The push

Every blow moves the man it lands on, by the momentum it gives the part it found. Struck above the knee, he is turned about his feet: a blow high on him turns him further than the same blow low. If it carries his centre past the edge of his stance, he must step, and he staggers. If it carries him past what one step can catch (a lean of about 30°), he is knocked off his feet. Struck below the knee, the blow takes the leg he stands on, and the leg slides as far as the grip of his foot lets it: a sweep, not a turn.

A heavier man, and a man carrying more, is harder to move. A beast on four legs keeps three under it when one is struck and carries its weight low, so it is only tipped. It takes a heavy blow to stagger a man by the push alone: a great axe in an ordinary man's hands now and then, a maul one blow in three, a boar as often as a maul and a bear more than half the time, and a sword or a mace does not. Of everything in the game, only a troll's blow is heavy enough to knock a man flat by its push.

A blow that hurts enough staggers him whatever it moved. If the shock of that one blow alone comes to 50% of what would drop him senseless, he folds round it and reels.

A staggered man is reeling: the map marks him with a star, he guards worse until his next turn, and he starts that turn with 3 fewer action points. A man knocked down is on the ground (see On the ground).

A blow on a shield moves him too. A bare arm swings out of a blow's way; a shield is held across the body, and what the arm and shield take is driven into the chest behind them.

The part a blow finds is also driven against the joint it hangs from. A free arm swings whole about the shoulder, whose muscles brake it, and a hard enough blow wrenches the shoulder or puts it out; a leg is held only as hard as its foot grips the ground, so a blow sweeps a leg sooner than it tears a knee, though a knee or an ankle can be torn.

The daze

A blow that reaches the head as a blow, not as a cut, throws the brain about inside the skull. What decides it is how hard the head is stopped: the blow's joules, over the distance it is stopped in, against the head's mass. That distance is whatever gave between the weapon and the skull: the give of the helm, the lining under it, the scalp.

At 60 g a man's bell is rung and he is dazed for a turn. At 98 g he is concussed, and it takes two. A dazed man is reeling: he strikes and guards worse, and loses 3 action points from his next turn. A blow that breaks through to the brain itself can do much worse (see Wounds).

This is where a helm earns its keep. A flanged mace on a bare head breaks the skull and concusses him nearly every time. On an iron helm with its lining the same blow dents the helm, rarely reaches the skull, and most often only rings his bell. A leather cap, with no lining, helps hardly at all. A sword on a bare head cuts and does not daze; on a helm that holds, it arrives as a blow and can ring his bell.

A smaller brain bears a harder jolt. A wolf stands 2.2 times what dazes a man and a bear 1.4 times. A troll's head is dazed as a man's is, but it is far heavier and takes far more to throw.

A blow on a shield

A blow that lands on the shield is resolved against the shield first, then whatever armour is on the left forearm behind it, then the arm. The shield is cut or holds like any other layer, but each blow wears it, and an axe, which is made for splitting boards, wears it faster. A worn-out shield splits apart and is gone. An edge that bursts through the shield finds the arm behind it only half the time. See Striking for the chance of a blow landing on a shield.

The three numbers of a material

The muster's material table has three columns in megapascals, and each decides something here:

Density decides weight, for good and ill: a denser weapon hits harder and tires him sooner, and denser armour weighs more for the same protection.

Beasts

Every creature is the same body plan redrawn at its own size: its lengths and breadths by the cube root of its mass, the cross-sections of its bones by the square of that, and its blood by its mass. Most beasts are also heavier in the bone than a man of their size would be, so a bear's thigh bone is 5.2 times a man's in cross-section. Its organs are as much bigger as its body. A bear carries about 23 litres of blood, and a wound that would empty a man takes far longer to empty it. Its hide is thicker than skin, and the same gash means less to it. Everything else in this chapter applies to it exactly as to a man.