Tuesday, April 8, 2014

G Is For Gorget...

Today's letter is G. I have a couple of armor components for you and a weapon. 

Gorget
Gorget ~ Steel collar to protect the neck and cover the neck opening in a complete cuirass. Quite unlike a modern shirt collar in that as well as covering the front and back of the neck it also covers part of the clavicles and sternum and a like area on the back.

Gardbrace
Gardbrace ~  they are the extra plate that covers the front of the shoulder, worn over top of a pauldron.

Gauntlet
Gauntlet ~ Gloves that cover from the fingers to the forearms, made from many materials.

Glaive
Glaive is a European polearm weapon, consisting of a single-edged blade on the end of a pole. It is similar to the Japanese naginata (naginata!!! I love these) and the Chinese guandao.
Typically, the blade was around 45 cm (18 inches) long, on the end of a pole 2 m (6 or 7 feet) long, and the blade was affixed in a socket-shaft configuration similar to an axe head, rather than having a tang like a sword or naginata. Occasionally glaive blades were created with a small hook on the reverse side to better catch riders. Such blades are called glaive-guisarmes.
According to the 1599 treatise Paradoxes of Defence by the English gentleman George Silver, the glaive is used in the same general manner as the quarterstaff, half pike, bill, halberd, voulge, or partisan. Silver rates this class of polearms above all other individual hand-to-hand combat weapons.

Happy blogging and see you tomorrow!

2 comments:

David P. King said...

No way! I just wrote about a gauntlet yesterday. And considering a Gardbrace as well. :)

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Good to know for the next D&D adventure.