Editing Mace (section)

== Flails ==
[[image:EpicflailSCALE.jpg|thumb|250px|right|Rule №1: Never take a Flail unless you're absolutely fucking sure you know how to use it]]
Eventually, [[Flail Snail|a large snail evolved a pair of hard nodules on its antennae and ruled their patch of land]]. Some starry-eyed young blacksmith took from that the idea of separating the handle of the mace and one-or-more heads before stringing them together with a length of hardened chain, based on farming equipment meant to separate grain from its husks. And thus was born the '''flail''', the mace's younger, sexier brother with the same name as the aforementioned farm tool.

Flails pose many advantages over maces. The length of chain serves to add what amounts to a few extra feet of windup to the force of every blow, helping to counter some of the mace's space problems, and also gives the normally-short ranged weapon a little extra reach. Furthermore, due to the flexibility of the chain, a flail could circumvent certain forms of protection, striking blows around shields and parries to crash into secondary targets, or wrap around other weapons to disarm an opponent and open them up for a lethal follow-through. They weren't even that much harder to make than regular maces, though the addition of chain links ''did'' add significantly to the construction time.

However, all of these fun tricks were offset by a single, gigantic, unbelievable disadvantage that helped ensure that the mace remained common while the flail was stuck as a specialized elite weapon: training time. You think a ''sword'' takes a lot of work to use without being a danger to yourself and others? Flails were extremely unwieldy to handle and easy to lose in a fight, and that's before factoring in the problems of dealing concussive force rather than cutting or piercing an opponent that they share with maces. They had their place, but that place was primarily in the hands of a highly-trained knight slugging it out with another knight in full plate armor, not with a dude fumbling for a backup weapon because he couldn't use a ''[[spear]]'' properly. On a similar note, one-handed flails have had a rather small amount of historical data to them, with many supposed examples turning out to be forgeries and there are almost no textual references of them - certainly, they were highly rare at best.

And then there are heavy flails - ones with a long handle, short chain and long wooden (often steel-reinforced) heads - basically the same flails peasants used to thrash plants, only modified to better thrash people to a bloody pulp. Contrary to its knightly one-handed cousin, it had zero skill requirement and was commonly used by criminals and rebellious peasants, most famously Czech Hussites.

Lastly, there is a light flail - a single flat ball on a short rope. It was mostly used as a non-lethal weapon by bandits, kidnappers and other criminals, for it is very easy to hide and can concuss or even knock out even armed and trained victims without killing them (thus avoiding the issue of "where do I hide the corpse of the guy I just mugged?"). If you end up on the receiving end of a bandit ambush, don't forget that your purse, loaded with (very dense) golden coins can be used as a makeshift light flail. This could work the other way, as an exceptionally concealed weapon, if you load your purse with lead. Another popular improvised modern flail is a sock loaded with something dense, like a bar of soap or a rock. Since these are easy to construct, and the component items are near universal and impossible to restrict, it makes for a popular weapon in high-security places like prisons.