Words
The game uses a small vocabulary of its own, most of it taken from the fighting manuals and the surgeons of the age. Each word here is used in one sense everywhere in the game, and the chapter beside it explains it in full.
| Word | What it means | Chapter |
|---|---|---|
| Action points | What a man spends to act in his turn: a step, a stroke, a turn, a change of kit. What he does not spend or keep back by holding is lost when his turn ends | A turn |
| Aim | Where a blow is directed: high (head, neck and shoulders, harder to land for being a smaller mark and one he guards), body, or low (thighs, shins and belly, a smaller mark but not a guarded one, and a shield counts half against it); or one part, called, at a price that grows the rarer the part | Striking |
| Called blow | A blow sent to one part rather than a height. It costs more to hit, one more action point, and the help of the ward. A shot can be called too, close to or at a man lying senseless | Striking |
| Art | A way of fighting a man has learnt: the sword, the dagger, the axe, the mace, the hammer, the spear, the bow, throwing, wrestling. Every weapon is used through one of them, and a man is as good with a weapon as he is at its art | The muster |
| Band | What a company was drilled as: soldiers, raiders, militia, rabble. Beasts have none | Forming up, Who you will meet |
| Bind | To strap or press a wound that is bleeding on the outside, to slow it. A wound inside the body cannot be bound | Wounds |
| Closed | Two men so near that one is inside the other's weapon. Also the shortest of the three distances a weapon can want | Measure |
| Collapse | See senseless | Wounds |
| Cover | How often a blow that lands on a part meets the armour over it rather than the gap beside it | What a blow does |
| Daze | What a hard blow to the head leaves behind: a man reeling, fighting worse until it passes | What a blow does |
| Down | Out of the fight for good but not dead: fainted from blood loss, or put out by a wound to the brain, the neck or the lungs. A man dropped senseless by shock is not down, and comes round | Wounds |
| Edge hardness | How hard the metal of an edge is. An edge softer than the armour it meets rolls over instead of cutting | What a blow does |
| Fled | Gone off the edge of the field. A man who has fled is out of the battle | Nerve |
| Form | How much of a man is behind a blow in a given art: whether he swings from the legs and back or only the arm | The muster |
| Gap | The place beside a piece of armour where a blow can land without meeting it | What a blow does |
| Grip | The hold two closed men have on each other's measure. A step in any direction loses it | Measure |
| Guard | How hard a man is to hit, shown on his card and in the panel. Wounds and a failing nerve take from it. Not armour: guard decides whether a blow lands, armour decides what it does | Striking |
| Hold | To step out of the order of the round and act after everyone else, keeping some points back to answer a blow | A turn |
| Measure | The distance a weapon wants between the two men. A spear wants a hex between them, a sword the next hex, a dagger none at all | Measure |
| Nerve | A man's courage in the fight. It goes from confident to steady to wavering to breaking, and then he runs | Nerve |
| Point range, arm's length | The two longer distances a weapon can want: a spear's and a sword's | Measure |
| Prone | Lying on the ground. A man knocked or thrown down fights badly until he gets up | On the ground |
| Reeling | Staggered by a blow, or dazed. It passes | What a blow does |
| Reference man | The man every number in the game was set against: 172 cm, of average build and strength | Arms and armour |
| Routed | Broken and running, but not yet off the field | Nerve |
| Seasoned | A man who has fought before. Nothing in play reads it yet | Nerve |
| Senseless | Dropped by shock and pain rather than by blood loss. Helpless on the ground, but he comes round as the shock ebbs | Wounds |
| Shock | What each blow does to a man's nervous system at once. It halves every turn | Wounds |
| Skill | How likely a man is to land a blow where he means it, in the art he is using | Striking |
| Stroke | One way of using a weapon: a slash, a thrust, a bash. Each weapon has one or more, and each costs its own action points | Striking |
| Ward | The guard a man stands in: vom Tag, Ochs, Pflug or Alber. Each shuts some lines of attack and offers another | Striking |
| Wind | A man's breath. Striking and walking spend it, and a winded man cannot strike or move until he recovers some | A turn |
Words in the log
The log beneath the map tells every blow in order, from the armour inwards. A few of its words are worth knowing:
- goes for the neck, or any other part, before the blow: it was called at that part.
- finds a gap: the blow missed the armour over the part and landed beside it.
- shears through, punches through: the blow cut a layer of armour.
- holds: a layer of armour stopped the edge or the point, and the force carried on as a blunt blow. The joules it would have needed to cut it are shown beside it.
- buckles, soaks up part of the blow: what plate and padding did to the blunt force.
- cuts, pierces: the skin, fat and muscle the blow opened. The wound chart says how far each is opened: nicked, cut or torn open.
- cracked, fractured, shattered, cut through: what happened to a bone.
- opened: a vessel was cut, and the wound bleeds.
- numbed, severed: a nerve was bruised and will recover, or cut and will not.
- The numbers after the first sentence are the joules the blow carried, its speed, and the joules that landed after the target's recoil took its share.
- A line with a red rule down its left side is a grave blow, the kind that tests the nerve of the man it landed on.