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High Middle Ages

2023-01-14T23:09:39Z

2001:14BA:A439:1500:E4D6:D198:BE1E:88CE: /* Fun Facts and Moronic Misconceptions about the High Middle Ages */

[[File:Salisbury cathedral.jpg|300px|thumb|left|Salisbury Cathedral, built in the 1200s with a 100 meter tall spire. Not the work of illiterate dung farmers]]
{{Topquote|War of the roses, Chaucer's tales. 
The brutal feudal system. 
Holy crusades, Bubonic plague. 
Can't say that we've really missed 'em. 
So dark and barbaric, so dull and mundane. 
That was so Middle Ages. 
That was so... Charlemagne.|[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggrk3Z7lqYY Something Rotten!]]}}

Around the year 1000, the people in Western Europe began to get their shit together and moved out of the [[Dark Age]]s. The year 1066 and the three-way war involving Norwegian and Norman invasions of Britain ending in Norman victory and the coronation of William the Conqueror is generally held as the point where the Dark Age/Early Medieval Period ended. The economies of the various kingdoms steadily improved and cities began to grow again. Though no single state had risen to unify Europe since the Carolingian Empire, individual [[Monarchy|kingdoms]] had risen to replace the old tribal confederations (though feudalism was still the rule of the day), allowing for a degree of political stability, and with it, the growth of trade networks and major cities such as London, Paris, Venice, and the resurrected Rome. Skills were honed and new technologies were acquired. Some of these were brought in from the East such as gunpowder, giant hamster wheel powered cranes, and paper, while others were developed locally, such as stained glass and an increasingly wide use of water power. Gothic architecture emerged, producing iconic, overly ornamented cathedrals that still stand in many parts of Europe. While slavery was gradually abandoned in much of Europe, the slave trade in the Mediterranean became more and more profitable, especially to the benefit of Arab traders in the region. The Byzantine–Seljuq wars also happened at this time, which influenced a much more famous later event, the Crusades.

Unfortunately the good times did not last, as the 14th century was a bit of a doozy. First there was famine, which is never a nice thing. Then in 1346 came the single biggest buttfuck to hit Europe since the fall of Rome: the Black Death. The Death swept across Europe and wiped out about a third of the continents population, with some areas getting hit worse than others. Ironically, the aforementioned improvements in trade and rise of major cities was what made such a colossal die-off possible. Small, isolated villages hit by the plague were typically wiped out before it could spread, leaving a ghost town and spooked but healthy neighbors. In contrast, cities might have tens of thousands of people living cheek-by-jowl. Sanitation wasn't a thing, so all kinds of rubbish and filth were generally left to accumulate in the streets, including such nice things as human and animal waste, food scraps, blood from slaughtered animals, dead stray dogs, dead rats which feed on this stuff, and other such grodiness. Add to this the fact that carts, barges, and ships were always coming and going and could propagate the plague far and wide like a [[Nurgle]] Machine. (This period gave us the word for and the modern concept of quarantine. The crews of ships visiting Venice were required to remain isolated on their vessels for 40 days to see whether they would develop symptoms. This period was known as "quarantena", which evolved into "quarantine".) Despite the mass deaths and the horrendous effect the plague had on Europe, there proved to be a silver lining. As peasants were now in short supply, they were therefore more valuable and could ask for and receive higher wages to lift themselves out of serfdom and earn some (very basic) rights. Medicine also advanced as healers were forced to change their means and methods and had plenty of sick people to practice and try new things on. Primitive superstition surrounding diseases slowly began to give way out of simple necessity.

In Japan the Heian era ended in 1185 with the rise of the Kamakura shogunate. Except for the short lived (3 years) [[Wikipedia:Kenmu Restoration|Kenmu Restoration]], the Emperor would be a powerless figurehead for almost 700 years until the Meiji revolution of 1868. This is also the era when the [[samurai]] class emerged. The [[katana]] would only appear at the very end of this period, with the true form only emerging around 1400. Samurai wore the longer ''tachi'' instead.

==High Middle Ages Around Europe==
The toll of the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the later fall of the Carolingian Empire, plus the ongoing raids from Vikings, Magyars, and Muslims, had left the European continent in a weakened state. However, by the time the 11th century started, the feudal economic system was in full effect, and the relative (keyword being "relative") moment of peace allowed its cities and kingdoms to begin recovering. Trade and commerce began picking up steam once again, making cities important financial and political points of interests. Likewise, the different monarchies and ruling nobles began the slow process of accumulating power. The idea of the ''primus inter pares'' (first among equals) was fine and good, but it meant that the kings had little more power (and on many occasions, less effective power) than the nobles they supposedly ruled over. This consolidation of power in the hands of national monarchies was a long, loooong process that only started coming into fruition at the very end of the period. In the meantime, though, there were many processes of cultural renovation with the birth of the Romanesque and Gothic styles, and even more deep changes with the Gregorian reformation, the start of the mendicant orders and the spread of the first universities.

Different areas of Europe evolved in different ways. In the Iberian Peninsula, this period included most of the second half of the wars of the ''Reconquista''. The fall of the Caliphate of Cordoba in favour of the Taifas system (basically a fragmentation of the caliphate into a bunch of little independent Muslim kingdoms) was the signal for the Christian kingdoms of the north to kick the reconquest of the south into overdrive. This doesn't mean this was an unified campaign, though. As was usual for medieval kingdoms, backstabbing and general infighting was abundant on both sides, but the weakened Muslim kingdoms slowly but surely lost ground, despite briefly unifying themselves under the Almoravids and Almohades. The last Muslim kingdom, the Kingdom of Granada, was conquered in 1492 by the Catholic kings. Meanwhile, the Christian kingdoms started their unification process, which would culminate in the marriage of Elisabeth of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, setting up the basis for the unification of Spain. Meanwhile, Portugal started a campaign of exploration through the Atlantic, which would later be followed by Castile, birthing a competition for the exploration and discovery for shorter trade routes to India (and later the Americas) between the two.

In the region that was once the Carolingian Empire, the Kingdom of France slowly but surely started gaining territory against the other two members of the Treaty of Verdun, and its ruling dynasties managed to slowly build up the power that had been lost centuries ago. Of particular importance was the conquest of England by the Duke of Normandy. William the Bastard (who became the Conqueror after his victory) managed to pull off a successful invasion of England by taking advantage of a dynastic dispute and a Viking invasion of the north. This generated quite a dilemma for the time: though William was still the Duke of Normandy and nominally a vassal of the French king, in practice he had as much (if not more) power and influence than his lord, which put both of them in a difficult position. The French kings tried to reduce the English monarchs' influence in France by limiting the boundaries of their continental possessions, which only increased the tensions between the two kingdoms. This situation finally came to a head with the death of the last Capetian king of France. With no obvious successor to the French throne and English King Edward III having a more or less legitimate dynastic claim, he eventually declared war on Philip of Valois, the other claimant. And thus began the Hundred Years War, which, as it name implies, was [[Long War|fucking long]]. This clusterfuck of a war (both a massive international conflict, a civil war and a bloody family feud) eventually involved pretty much all the active players in Western Europe at one point or another, and, alongside [[Nurgle|the Black Death and the massive famines]], caused a lot of death and destruction. The war kept going on and on until the eventual French victory, managing to drive the English back onto their side of the English Channel and starting a rivalry between the two nations that would last for centuries. After this defeat, England immediately became embroiled in another civil war, the War of the Roses.

Speaking of England, they went through a lot of upheaval while bickering with France. The new Norman rulers had to deal with the nearby kingdoms and a lot of political instability, and then the last heir of the House of Normandy died, which started a civil war which ended with the Plantagenets as the kings of England. During the rule of the famous Richard the Lionheart, the ongoing instability worsened, especially when Richard decided he'd rather go off crusading in the Holy Land instead of actually ruling his kingdom. His brother John took control of the country after Richard was kidnapped, a move which not only pissed many people off (John was seen as an usurper already, though many historians nowadays see this bad image as the result of his political enemies' propaganda), it gave the disgruntled nobles the perfect excuse to rebel against him. John was forced to sign the ''Magna Carta'', a legal document which guaranteed a lot of rights and freedoms to the English nobility at the expense of the crown. This document is often considered one of the most important political reforms in history, since it paved the way for modern parliamentary systems (even though the original document was never put into practice, only a heavily modified version was eventually applied after many political shenanigans).

On the Italian peninsula, the fragmentation caused by the fall of the Roman Empire and the infighting between different factions was the catalyst for the birth of most of the Italian city-states. With the Norman conquest of the Catepanate of Italy (basically a province of the Byzantine Empire in Southern Italy), the biggest political power on Italy became the Papacy by far, since the young city-states simply couldn't compete with the Catholic Church in political, spiritual and financial power. The Church's power was not uncontested, though. On the one hand, pushing for the Crusades had given the Pope quite a lot of authority and prestige over all Christendom, but on the other hand, the concentration of power in the hands of nobility and the national monarchies meant that their earthly powers were questioned by secular authorities. In particular, the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire clashed frequently, since both papal and imperial powers claimed to represent the will of God in some form, though the dispute centers around their influence on the "''dominium mundi''", and more specifically, the temporal powers. The Investiture Controversy was but the first of the many clashes between them which would continue all throughout the rest of the Middle Ages.

Speaking of the [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)|Holy Roman Empire]] ([[meme|which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor technically an empire]]), it was the technical successor of the imperial authority of Rome. Also, it was '''''big'''''. In fact, it was the biggest Christian kingdom by far during the High Middle Ages (the Byzantine Empire had lost quite a lot of ground by this point, and would continue to do so during the period). However, despite its size, population and political influence, it was mostly a loose confederation of Germanic kingdoms and principalities, all with their own rules and customs. The only truly cohesive element was the figure of the Emperor, and there were frequent internecine struggles to claim the seat. Thus, the HRE was unable to consolidate its power into a centralized monarchy like France, England or Spain, though it was still the great Christian power of this period, and would continue to be a powerhouse until Napoleon killed it in the 19th century.

In the northern parts of Europe, the Scandinavian kingdoms were undergoing Christianization. After raiding the southern lands for a couple of centuries, many Norsemen were starting to realize that feudalism was actually more beneficial than piracy in the long run (although the Viking raids took a long while to disappear altogether), so they adopted Christianity. This process was accompanied by the adoption of modern political systems and customs, which would pave the way for the Viking and German chieftains to actually create proper medieval kingdoms. In particular, these new kingdoms focused on sea trade, since they already had a lot of naval know-how and agriculture in Scandinavia was a difficult proposition anyway. In particular, they clashed with the Hanseatic League, a a mercantile confederation of cities, principalities, and other minor states which tried to monopolize the regional trade around the Baltic Sea and northern Europe. To counter this, the kingdoms of Sweden, Norway and Denmark created the Kalmar Union, with Queen Margaret I of Denmark ruling over all three kingdoms at once. However, this union didn't translate into the creation of an unified state and dissolved at the beginning of the Early Modern Ages.

On the other side of Christendom, the Eastern Roman Empire (or the Byzantine Empire) was not in the best shape. It had received a massive mauling during the previous centuries, due to the wars against the Persians and later the sudden appearance of Islam, which took away most of its territories in Northern Africa and the Middle East. It was the fast advance of the Seljuk Turks over Anatolia which forced the Roman Emperor to ask for help from anyone that he could find; considering they had broken with the Roman Church very recently, this was interpreted as a massive sign of weakness everywhere. This appeal for help led directly to the Crusades. While the Crusades helped the Byzantines stabilize their eastern borders by funding the Crusader states in the Holy Land, Byzantine territories like Bulgaria managed to gain independence. And then the Fourth Crusade happened, [[fail|which instead of going to the Holy Land to fight the infidels, ended up besieging and raiding Constantinople itself to pay off some Venetian loan sharks]]. By the time the Byzantine emperors could retake the capital, they'd lost most of their territories elsewhere, which left the Eastern Roman Empire as a vestigial state whose only ace in the hole was Constantinople's geographically advantageous position on the Black Sea. By 1453 the Ottomans finally managed to finally conquer the remains of the empire (which was basically just Constantinople by this point), signaling the end of whatever was left of the Roman Empire of old.

In Central and Eastern Europe, the last big processes of Christianization took place from Bohemia to Lithuania to the Rus Kingdoms, along with the resultant expansion of trade and political stability. And then the [[Mongols]] came knocking. The arrival of the Mongols in Eastern and Central Europe signaled a massive power shift in the area, as the Mongols managed to defeat and conquer many of the European kingdoms in these regions. The Europeans, with their emphasis on heavy armored cavalry, were tactically outmatched by the Mongols' light, fast horse archers, especially in the great open plains of central and eastern Europe. Bohemia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Lithuania were crippled by the Mongol onslaught, and the Rus Kingdoms were outright conquered and annexed into the Mongol sphere of influence. The death of the Mongol leaders stopped the invasions from going further, but their influence was only removed after a long war waged by the early Russian czars. After the Mongol khanates were defeated, the main concern of the kingdoms from Eastern Europe became the Ottoman Empire, since the Turks had consolidated their influence in the region that used to be the Byzantine Empire and were now eyeballing the rest of Europe. The Ottomans and the Christian kingdoms would go on to wage war on each other more or less continuously during the Early Modern Age. Also, during all of this, this area was squarely hit by the Black Plague, just as the rest of Europe was. Unlike the western kingdoms, where peasants manage to wrestle some limited concessions out of the nobles due to the fact there were becoming pretty scarce, the exact opposite happened here. Many Russian nobles managed to reinforce their authority over their peasant population. This would become known to some historians as the "second serfdom", which would strengthen the nobility's grasp over the peasants. This system was so ironclad that it would survive for over 500 years and would only finally be abolished for good in the Russian Revolution in 1917... only for the Soviet Union and Putin's Russia to continue it in far less obvious ways to the present day.

==Islamic Golden Age==
The Islamic Golden Age occurred during the Abbasid Caliphate, between 750 and 1258. As you might expect, the Muslim world was doing very well during this period. The Abbasid Caliphate during the reign of Harun-Al-Rashid was the largest and most powerful polity in the world. Meanwhile, in the realm of the sciences, the Muslims were making use of a lot of the classical knowledge they had found when they overran the Byzantines and expanded on it. During this time the Islamic World saw major advancing in terms of science (they first started developing chemistry based on alchemical traditions), medicine, mathematics <s>(there's a reason why they call them Arabic Numerals)</s> (the reason is that they were introduced to Europe through Arabs, though the numbers themselves originate from India), technology (optics, ceramics, architecture, windmills), art (a lot of Islamic art relies on geometric patterns given the religion's taboo about images due to fear of idolatry, so having trigonometry was a big boon here) and trade. Baghdad was a thriving urban center and a nexus of art and culture, with cities like Samarkand, Damascus, and Cordoba not far behind. Unfortunately, the Crusades and the [[Genghis motherfucking Khan|Mongols]] put a stop to it and trashed a lot of the Middle East. Baghdad in particular was sacked so brutally that it still hasn't recovered. However, the spirit of scientific advancement and glorious conquest would live on past the fall of Baghdad in places like Mughal India and the Emirate/Caliphate of Cordoba in Spain.

==Khmer Golden Age==
While Europe wallowed in the grimdark Middle Ages, the city of Angkor was busy becoming a (short lived) paradise on Earth in what is now Cambodia. The Khmer were Hindu at the time and Angkor was constructed as a massive temple/urban area encompassing over a thousand square kilometers, complete with canals and two hand-dug reservoirs that are [https://www.google.com/maps/@13.434607,103.8607491,31561m/data=!3m1!1e3 easily visible from space] and capable of holding a hundred million cubic meters of water. The entire complex is larger than New York City and at its height may have had over a million residents. The good times ended when they went full Buddhist.

== Notes ==

* This is the high point of chivalry as a thing, when the concept of "armored dudes on horseback" had been refined into a truly devastating force. Battles were generally won or lost by the strength of the heavy cavalry that one side could bring to bear. Infantry largely became a secondary concern, used mostly for garrisons and sieges. Major exceptions include Agincourt, Crecy, and Poitiers, where English longbowmen made a mockery of French knights.
* This is the golden age of castles. Any lord of any significance wanted a stone castle to consolidate his position and provide an invulnerable bastion for his household. Castle design advanced from motte-and-bailey to what most people nowadays think of when they hear the word "castle ". They were also very resilient, not only to bombardment by siege engines or attempts to storm them, but often had granaries and water supplies so that they could weather sieges that could last months or even years.
* Warfare in this age was mostly a matter of fairly small parties of knights (in the ballpark of 100) raiding villages and merchants in the other guy's territory, defensive actions against said raids and armies besieging castles. Battles involving mass armies of thousands of men clashing with each other out in the open did happen, but these were the exception rather than the rule. That said, warfare was fairly constant during this period. There were always some squabbling city states, obstinate lordlings making a fuss, armed trade disputes, succession disputes between rival claimants, religious conflicts, blood feuds or fights between a couple of the bigger kingdoms happening somewhere in Europe, as well as a lot of [[bandit|banditry]].
* [[Cannon]]s and [[firearm]]s begin to show up in Europe around the late 13th century, though both were crude affairs largely of marginal use compared with more traditional muscle-powered weaponry like longbows.
* While hardly a unique feature to this period, or even Europe, people at this point thought in terms of ''Knowing Their Place''. The role a person had in medieval society was largely determined by birth; if you were the son of a blacksmith or a baker or a fisherman, you were going to inherit that trade from your dad when you grew up. Some people did the telling and the rest did what they were told. Medieval peasants by and large didn't give much of a shit about what the kings and lords were up to unless it directly and overtly affected them in some way. Wars of succession, trade disputes, and religious arguments weren't their business; there were other people out there who knew better than they did about all of these things, and their judgment had God's backing. This was not an absolute mentality, of course; they did have an idea that there were obligations that nobles needed to fulfill to their subjects and if they were pushed or abused too much they would riot, but it is a major distinction that people should consider when trying to get into the mind of a medieval peasant or lord.
* The common portrayal of everyone and their mother wearing clothes with dour, muted colors is completely inaccurate. Dyeing was a thriving industry, and while natural dyes had a relatively limited color range (red, blue, yellow, brown, indigo, green, pink, and orange were all common) it was still abundant and middle class or higher non-clothing items were generally decorated (clothes were restricted to, at most, simple patterns as the methods of washing clothes weren't delicates friendly). A large portion of this perception comes from the fact that nearly all surviving art from the period has deteriorated over the centuries. The colors have faded due to age and sun exposure and most of these works have accumulated centuries of grime which can't be removed without harming the work in question. This misunderstanding actually applies to many periods of history, but the Middle Ages get hit with it especially hard.

== The appeal of the High Middle Ages ==
How do you like your medieval fantasy? Do you like it more refined and heroic? With beautiful Gothic cathedrals with stained glass windows and mighty castles of stone with fluttering banners full of fat friars and proud knights? Or are scholarly sultans and zealous hashashin more your type of deal? Well, this period is for you. Not that it was all lollipops and sunshine. The nobles were still playing the [[A Song of Ice and Fire|game of thrones]] via dynastic squabbles, wars of succession, and the occasional assassination. There were also the Crusades, Islamic and Mongol marauders, and endless wars over territory, resources, and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avignon_Papacy stupid bullshit like where the pope should live]. The fact that its the point where gunpowder was just barely coming into use also helps mark this as the standard point of development where a [[Medieval Stasis]] work will take place. Being a serf or a Jew in the path of these armies at this time sucked. The mix of [[Bretonnia|medieval splendor and brutality]] makes for a nice contrast. The classical civilizations have fallen, but the dark age of turmoil that resulted is over, and beauty and refinement are on the rise, but the sword is still the rule of the world, if not every day as it used to be.

This period also gave us folk heroes such as Robin Hood. And though King Arthur has his roots in the Dark Age when the native British were fighting against the invading Saxons, his popularity massively took off thanks to Norman literature and adapted by countless countries across Europe.

== Fun Facts and Moronic Misconceptions about the High Middle Ages ==

* Arguably, the first acts of "shitposting" or memes can be found in some illuminated manuscripts which have such things as knights jousting with snails, animals beating up humans with weapons and people showing off their genitals to one another.

* Most educated people believed/knew that the Earth was a sphere and could even broadly estimate it's circumference. The common people however were superstitious to the extreme and it was still widely believed that the Sun goes around the Earth, the center of the universe.

* Modern football partially originates from the medieval version known as "mob football" which themselves could take a variety of shapes and forms.

* "Cures" for diseases could get truly bizarre such as: wearing a bird's beak around the neck, drilling a hole in the head and ingesting ground-up emeralds.

* Filth in the cities really started becoming an issue later in the period when construction picked up as previously there were literal "greenfield" spaces within city walls that would absorb the bulk of organic waste, and the rest would have been eaten by pigs and dogs. This problem would actually continue well into the 19th century due to the abundance of horse poop filling the streets, with major cities like New York worrying that they’d soon be under mountains of literal shit if the population kept increasing. It actually ended up being the invention of the automobile before poop-filled streets would become a thing of the past.

== High Middle Ages-Inspired Games, Factions and Settings ==
*[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]
*[[Bretonnia]]
* [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)|The Empire]]
* [[Kings of War]]
* [[The Elder Scrolls]]
* [[Chainmail]]
* [[Dungeons and Dragons]]

{{Time Periods}}
[[Category: History]]

High Middle Ages

2023-01-14T23:09:14Z

2001:14BA:A439:1500:E4D6:D198:BE1E:88CE: /* Fun Facts and Moronic Misconceptions about the High Middle Ages */

[[File:Salisbury cathedral.jpg|300px|thumb|left|Salisbury Cathedral, built in the 1200s with a 100 meter tall spire. Not the work of illiterate dung farmers]]
{{Topquote|War of the roses, Chaucer's tales. 
The brutal feudal system. 
Holy crusades, Bubonic plague. 
Can't say that we've really missed 'em. 
So dark and barbaric, so dull and mundane. 
That was so Middle Ages. 
That was so... Charlemagne.|[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggrk3Z7lqYY Something Rotten!]]}}

Around the year 1000, the people in Western Europe began to get their shit together and moved out of the [[Dark Age]]s. The year 1066 and the three-way war involving Norwegian and Norman invasions of Britain ending in Norman victory and the coronation of William the Conqueror is generally held as the point where the Dark Age/Early Medieval Period ended. The economies of the various kingdoms steadily improved and cities began to grow again. Though no single state had risen to unify Europe since the Carolingian Empire, individual [[Monarchy|kingdoms]] had risen to replace the old tribal confederations (though feudalism was still the rule of the day), allowing for a degree of political stability, and with it, the growth of trade networks and major cities such as London, Paris, Venice, and the resurrected Rome. Skills were honed and new technologies were acquired. Some of these were brought in from the East such as gunpowder, giant hamster wheel powered cranes, and paper, while others were developed locally, such as stained glass and an increasingly wide use of water power. Gothic architecture emerged, producing iconic, overly ornamented cathedrals that still stand in many parts of Europe. While slavery was gradually abandoned in much of Europe, the slave trade in the Mediterranean became more and more profitable, especially to the benefit of Arab traders in the region. The Byzantine–Seljuq wars also happened at this time, which influenced a much more famous later event, the Crusades.

Unfortunately the good times did not last, as the 14th century was a bit of a doozy. First there was famine, which is never a nice thing. Then in 1346 came the single biggest buttfuck to hit Europe since the fall of Rome: the Black Death. The Death swept across Europe and wiped out about a third of the continents population, with some areas getting hit worse than others. Ironically, the aforementioned improvements in trade and rise of major cities was what made such a colossal die-off possible. Small, isolated villages hit by the plague were typically wiped out before it could spread, leaving a ghost town and spooked but healthy neighbors. In contrast, cities might have tens of thousands of people living cheek-by-jowl. Sanitation wasn't a thing, so all kinds of rubbish and filth were generally left to accumulate in the streets, including such nice things as human and animal waste, food scraps, blood from slaughtered animals, dead stray dogs, dead rats which feed on this stuff, and other such grodiness. Add to this the fact that carts, barges, and ships were always coming and going and could propagate the plague far and wide like a [[Nurgle]] Machine. (This period gave us the word for and the modern concept of quarantine. The crews of ships visiting Venice were required to remain isolated on their vessels for 40 days to see whether they would develop symptoms. This period was known as "quarantena", which evolved into "quarantine".) Despite the mass deaths and the horrendous effect the plague had on Europe, there proved to be a silver lining. As peasants were now in short supply, they were therefore more valuable and could ask for and receive higher wages to lift themselves out of serfdom and earn some (very basic) rights. Medicine also advanced as healers were forced to change their means and methods and had plenty of sick people to practice and try new things on. Primitive superstition surrounding diseases slowly began to give way out of simple necessity.

In Japan the Heian era ended in 1185 with the rise of the Kamakura shogunate. Except for the short lived (3 years) [[Wikipedia:Kenmu Restoration|Kenmu Restoration]], the Emperor would be a powerless figurehead for almost 700 years until the Meiji revolution of 1868. This is also the era when the [[samurai]] class emerged. The [[katana]] would only appear at the very end of this period, with the true form only emerging around 1400. Samurai wore the longer ''tachi'' instead.

==High Middle Ages Around Europe==
The toll of the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the later fall of the Carolingian Empire, plus the ongoing raids from Vikings, Magyars, and Muslims, had left the European continent in a weakened state. However, by the time the 11th century started, the feudal economic system was in full effect, and the relative (keyword being "relative") moment of peace allowed its cities and kingdoms to begin recovering. Trade and commerce began picking up steam once again, making cities important financial and political points of interests. Likewise, the different monarchies and ruling nobles began the slow process of accumulating power. The idea of the ''primus inter pares'' (first among equals) was fine and good, but it meant that the kings had little more power (and on many occasions, less effective power) than the nobles they supposedly ruled over. This consolidation of power in the hands of national monarchies was a long, loooong process that only started coming into fruition at the very end of the period. In the meantime, though, there were many processes of cultural renovation with the birth of the Romanesque and Gothic styles, and even more deep changes with the Gregorian reformation, the start of the mendicant orders and the spread of the first universities.

Different areas of Europe evolved in different ways. In the Iberian Peninsula, this period included most of the second half of the wars of the ''Reconquista''. The fall of the Caliphate of Cordoba in favour of the Taifas system (basically a fragmentation of the caliphate into a bunch of little independent Muslim kingdoms) was the signal for the Christian kingdoms of the north to kick the reconquest of the south into overdrive. This doesn't mean this was an unified campaign, though. As was usual for medieval kingdoms, backstabbing and general infighting was abundant on both sides, but the weakened Muslim kingdoms slowly but surely lost ground, despite briefly unifying themselves under the Almoravids and Almohades. The last Muslim kingdom, the Kingdom of Granada, was conquered in 1492 by the Catholic kings. Meanwhile, the Christian kingdoms started their unification process, which would culminate in the marriage of Elisabeth of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, setting up the basis for the unification of Spain. Meanwhile, Portugal started a campaign of exploration through the Atlantic, which would later be followed by Castile, birthing a competition for the exploration and discovery for shorter trade routes to India (and later the Americas) between the two.

In the region that was once the Carolingian Empire, the Kingdom of France slowly but surely started gaining territory against the other two members of the Treaty of Verdun, and its ruling dynasties managed to slowly build up the power that had been lost centuries ago. Of particular importance was the conquest of England by the Duke of Normandy. William the Bastard (who became the Conqueror after his victory) managed to pull off a successful invasion of England by taking advantage of a dynastic dispute and a Viking invasion of the north. This generated quite a dilemma for the time: though William was still the Duke of Normandy and nominally a vassal of the French king, in practice he had as much (if not more) power and influence than his lord, which put both of them in a difficult position. The French kings tried to reduce the English monarchs' influence in France by limiting the boundaries of their continental possessions, which only increased the tensions between the two kingdoms. This situation finally came to a head with the death of the last Capetian king of France. With no obvious successor to the French throne and English King Edward III having a more or less legitimate dynastic claim, he eventually declared war on Philip of Valois, the other claimant. And thus began the Hundred Years War, which, as it name implies, was [[Long War|fucking long]]. This clusterfuck of a war (both a massive international conflict, a civil war and a bloody family feud) eventually involved pretty much all the active players in Western Europe at one point or another, and, alongside [[Nurgle|the Black Death and the massive famines]], caused a lot of death and destruction. The war kept going on and on until the eventual French victory, managing to drive the English back onto their side of the English Channel and starting a rivalry between the two nations that would last for centuries. After this defeat, England immediately became embroiled in another civil war, the War of the Roses.

Speaking of England, they went through a lot of upheaval while bickering with France. The new Norman rulers had to deal with the nearby kingdoms and a lot of political instability, and then the last heir of the House of Normandy died, which started a civil war which ended with the Plantagenets as the kings of England. During the rule of the famous Richard the Lionheart, the ongoing instability worsened, especially when Richard decided he'd rather go off crusading in the Holy Land instead of actually ruling his kingdom. His brother John took control of the country after Richard was kidnapped, a move which not only pissed many people off (John was seen as an usurper already, though many historians nowadays see this bad image as the result of his political enemies' propaganda), it gave the disgruntled nobles the perfect excuse to rebel against him. John was forced to sign the ''Magna Carta'', a legal document which guaranteed a lot of rights and freedoms to the English nobility at the expense of the crown. This document is often considered one of the most important political reforms in history, since it paved the way for modern parliamentary systems (even though the original document was never put into practice, only a heavily modified version was eventually applied after many political shenanigans).

On the Italian peninsula, the fragmentation caused by the fall of the Roman Empire and the infighting between different factions was the catalyst for the birth of most of the Italian city-states. With the Norman conquest of the Catepanate of Italy (basically a province of the Byzantine Empire in Southern Italy), the biggest political power on Italy became the Papacy by far, since the young city-states simply couldn't compete with the Catholic Church in political, spiritual and financial power. The Church's power was not uncontested, though. On the one hand, pushing for the Crusades had given the Pope quite a lot of authority and prestige over all Christendom, but on the other hand, the concentration of power in the hands of nobility and the national monarchies meant that their earthly powers were questioned by secular authorities. In particular, the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire clashed frequently, since both papal and imperial powers claimed to represent the will of God in some form, though the dispute centers around their influence on the "''dominium mundi''", and more specifically, the temporal powers. The Investiture Controversy was but the first of the many clashes between them which would continue all throughout the rest of the Middle Ages.

Speaking of the [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)|Holy Roman Empire]] ([[meme|which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor technically an empire]]), it was the technical successor of the imperial authority of Rome. Also, it was '''''big'''''. In fact, it was the biggest Christian kingdom by far during the High Middle Ages (the Byzantine Empire had lost quite a lot of ground by this point, and would continue to do so during the period). However, despite its size, population and political influence, it was mostly a loose confederation of Germanic kingdoms and principalities, all with their own rules and customs. The only truly cohesive element was the figure of the Emperor, and there were frequent internecine struggles to claim the seat. Thus, the HRE was unable to consolidate its power into a centralized monarchy like France, England or Spain, though it was still the great Christian power of this period, and would continue to be a powerhouse until Napoleon killed it in the 19th century.

In the northern parts of Europe, the Scandinavian kingdoms were undergoing Christianization. After raiding the southern lands for a couple of centuries, many Norsemen were starting to realize that feudalism was actually more beneficial than piracy in the long run (although the Viking raids took a long while to disappear altogether), so they adopted Christianity. This process was accompanied by the adoption of modern political systems and customs, which would pave the way for the Viking and German chieftains to actually create proper medieval kingdoms. In particular, these new kingdoms focused on sea trade, since they already had a lot of naval know-how and agriculture in Scandinavia was a difficult proposition anyway. In particular, they clashed with the Hanseatic League, a a mercantile confederation of cities, principalities, and other minor states which tried to monopolize the regional trade around the Baltic Sea and northern Europe. To counter this, the kingdoms of Sweden, Norway and Denmark created the Kalmar Union, with Queen Margaret I of Denmark ruling over all three kingdoms at once. However, this union didn't translate into the creation of an unified state and dissolved at the beginning of the Early Modern Ages.

On the other side of Christendom, the Eastern Roman Empire (or the Byzantine Empire) was not in the best shape. It had received a massive mauling during the previous centuries, due to the wars against the Persians and later the sudden appearance of Islam, which took away most of its territories in Northern Africa and the Middle East. It was the fast advance of the Seljuk Turks over Anatolia which forced the Roman Emperor to ask for help from anyone that he could find; considering they had broken with the Roman Church very recently, this was interpreted as a massive sign of weakness everywhere. This appeal for help led directly to the Crusades. While the Crusades helped the Byzantines stabilize their eastern borders by funding the Crusader states in the Holy Land, Byzantine territories like Bulgaria managed to gain independence. And then the Fourth Crusade happened, [[fail|which instead of going to the Holy Land to fight the infidels, ended up besieging and raiding Constantinople itself to pay off some Venetian loan sharks]]. By the time the Byzantine emperors could retake the capital, they'd lost most of their territories elsewhere, which left the Eastern Roman Empire as a vestigial state whose only ace in the hole was Constantinople's geographically advantageous position on the Black Sea. By 1453 the Ottomans finally managed to finally conquer the remains of the empire (which was basically just Constantinople by this point), signaling the end of whatever was left of the Roman Empire of old.

In Central and Eastern Europe, the last big processes of Christianization took place from Bohemia to Lithuania to the Rus Kingdoms, along with the resultant expansion of trade and political stability. And then the [[Mongols]] came knocking. The arrival of the Mongols in Eastern and Central Europe signaled a massive power shift in the area, as the Mongols managed to defeat and conquer many of the European kingdoms in these regions. The Europeans, with their emphasis on heavy armored cavalry, were tactically outmatched by the Mongols' light, fast horse archers, especially in the great open plains of central and eastern Europe. Bohemia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Lithuania were crippled by the Mongol onslaught, and the Rus Kingdoms were outright conquered and annexed into the Mongol sphere of influence. The death of the Mongol leaders stopped the invasions from going further, but their influence was only removed after a long war waged by the early Russian czars. After the Mongol khanates were defeated, the main concern of the kingdoms from Eastern Europe became the Ottoman Empire, since the Turks had consolidated their influence in the region that used to be the Byzantine Empire and were now eyeballing the rest of Europe. The Ottomans and the Christian kingdoms would go on to wage war on each other more or less continuously during the Early Modern Age. Also, during all of this, this area was squarely hit by the Black Plague, just as the rest of Europe was. Unlike the western kingdoms, where peasants manage to wrestle some limited concessions out of the nobles due to the fact there were becoming pretty scarce, the exact opposite happened here. Many Russian nobles managed to reinforce their authority over their peasant population. This would become known to some historians as the "second serfdom", which would strengthen the nobility's grasp over the peasants. This system was so ironclad that it would survive for over 500 years and would only finally be abolished for good in the Russian Revolution in 1917... only for the Soviet Union and Putin's Russia to continue it in far less obvious ways to the present day.

==Islamic Golden Age==
The Islamic Golden Age occurred during the Abbasid Caliphate, between 750 and 1258. As you might expect, the Muslim world was doing very well during this period. The Abbasid Caliphate during the reign of Harun-Al-Rashid was the largest and most powerful polity in the world. Meanwhile, in the realm of the sciences, the Muslims were making use of a lot of the classical knowledge they had found when they overran the Byzantines and expanded on it. During this time the Islamic World saw major advancing in terms of science (they first started developing chemistry based on alchemical traditions), medicine, mathematics <s>(there's a reason why they call them Arabic Numerals)</s> (the reason is that they were introduced to Europe through Arabs, though the numbers themselves originate from India), technology (optics, ceramics, architecture, windmills), art (a lot of Islamic art relies on geometric patterns given the religion's taboo about images due to fear of idolatry, so having trigonometry was a big boon here) and trade. Baghdad was a thriving urban center and a nexus of art and culture, with cities like Samarkand, Damascus, and Cordoba not far behind. Unfortunately, the Crusades and the [[Genghis motherfucking Khan|Mongols]] put a stop to it and trashed a lot of the Middle East. Baghdad in particular was sacked so brutally that it still hasn't recovered. However, the spirit of scientific advancement and glorious conquest would live on past the fall of Baghdad in places like Mughal India and the Emirate/Caliphate of Cordoba in Spain.

==Khmer Golden Age==
While Europe wallowed in the grimdark Middle Ages, the city of Angkor was busy becoming a (short lived) paradise on Earth in what is now Cambodia. The Khmer were Hindu at the time and Angkor was constructed as a massive temple/urban area encompassing over a thousand square kilometers, complete with canals and two hand-dug reservoirs that are [https://www.google.com/maps/@13.434607,103.8607491,31561m/data=!3m1!1e3 easily visible from space] and capable of holding a hundred million cubic meters of water. The entire complex is larger than New York City and at its height may have had over a million residents. The good times ended when they went full Buddhist.

== Notes ==

* This is the high point of chivalry as a thing, when the concept of "armored dudes on horseback" had been refined into a truly devastating force. Battles were generally won or lost by the strength of the heavy cavalry that one side could bring to bear. Infantry largely became a secondary concern, used mostly for garrisons and sieges. Major exceptions include Agincourt, Crecy, and Poitiers, where English longbowmen made a mockery of French knights.
* This is the golden age of castles. Any lord of any significance wanted a stone castle to consolidate his position and provide an invulnerable bastion for his household. Castle design advanced from motte-and-bailey to what most people nowadays think of when they hear the word "castle ". They were also very resilient, not only to bombardment by siege engines or attempts to storm them, but often had granaries and water supplies so that they could weather sieges that could last months or even years.
* Warfare in this age was mostly a matter of fairly small parties of knights (in the ballpark of 100) raiding villages and merchants in the other guy's territory, defensive actions against said raids and armies besieging castles. Battles involving mass armies of thousands of men clashing with each other out in the open did happen, but these were the exception rather than the rule. That said, warfare was fairly constant during this period. There were always some squabbling city states, obstinate lordlings making a fuss, armed trade disputes, succession disputes between rival claimants, religious conflicts, blood feuds or fights between a couple of the bigger kingdoms happening somewhere in Europe, as well as a lot of [[bandit|banditry]].
* [[Cannon]]s and [[firearm]]s begin to show up in Europe around the late 13th century, though both were crude affairs largely of marginal use compared with more traditional muscle-powered weaponry like longbows.
* While hardly a unique feature to this period, or even Europe, people at this point thought in terms of ''Knowing Their Place''. The role a person had in medieval society was largely determined by birth; if you were the son of a blacksmith or a baker or a fisherman, you were going to inherit that trade from your dad when you grew up. Some people did the telling and the rest did what they were told. Medieval peasants by and large didn't give much of a shit about what the kings and lords were up to unless it directly and overtly affected them in some way. Wars of succession, trade disputes, and religious arguments weren't their business; there were other people out there who knew better than they did about all of these things, and their judgment had God's backing. This was not an absolute mentality, of course; they did have an idea that there were obligations that nobles needed to fulfill to their subjects and if they were pushed or abused too much they would riot, but it is a major distinction that people should consider when trying to get into the mind of a medieval peasant or lord.
* The common portrayal of everyone and their mother wearing clothes with dour, muted colors is completely inaccurate. Dyeing was a thriving industry, and while natural dyes had a relatively limited color range (red, blue, yellow, brown, indigo, green, pink, and orange were all common) it was still abundant and middle class or higher non-clothing items were generally decorated (clothes were restricted to, at most, simple patterns as the methods of washing clothes weren't delicates friendly). A large portion of this perception comes from the fact that nearly all surviving art from the period has deteriorated over the centuries. The colors have faded due to age and sun exposure and most of these works have accumulated centuries of grime which can't be removed without harming the work in question. This misunderstanding actually applies to many periods of history, but the Middle Ages get hit with it especially hard.

== The appeal of the High Middle Ages ==
How do you like your medieval fantasy? Do you like it more refined and heroic? With beautiful Gothic cathedrals with stained glass windows and mighty castles of stone with fluttering banners full of fat friars and proud knights? Or are scholarly sultans and zealous hashashin more your type of deal? Well, this period is for you. Not that it was all lollipops and sunshine. The nobles were still playing the [[A Song of Ice and Fire|game of thrones]] via dynastic squabbles, wars of succession, and the occasional assassination. There were also the Crusades, Islamic and Mongol marauders, and endless wars over territory, resources, and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avignon_Papacy stupid bullshit like where the pope should live]. The fact that its the point where gunpowder was just barely coming into use also helps mark this as the standard point of development where a [[Medieval Stasis]] work will take place. Being a serf or a Jew in the path of these armies at this time sucked. The mix of [[Bretonnia|medieval splendor and brutality]] makes for a nice contrast. The classical civilizations have fallen, but the dark age of turmoil that resulted is over, and beauty and refinement are on the rise, but the sword is still the rule of the world, if not every day as it used to be.

This period also gave us folk heroes such as Robin Hood. And though King Arthur has his roots in the Dark Age when the native British were fighting against the invading Saxons, his popularity massively took off thanks to Norman literature and adapted by countless countries across Europe.

== Fun Facts and Moronic Misconceptions about the High Middle Ages ==

* Arguably, the first acts of "shitposting" or memes can be found in some illuminated manuscripts which have such things as knights jousting with snails, animals beating up humans with weapons and people showing off their genitals to one another.

* Most educated people believed/knew that the Earth was a sphere and could even broadly estimate it's circumference. The common people however were superstitious to the extreme and it was still widely believed that the Sun goes around the Earth.

* Modern football partially originates from the medieval version known as "mob football" which themselves could take a variety of shapes and forms.

* "Cures" for diseases could get truly bizarre such as: wearing a bird's beak around the neck, drilling a hole in the head and ingesting ground-up emeralds.

* Filth in the cities really started becoming an issue later in the period when construction picked up as previously there were literal "greenfield" spaces within city walls that would absorb the bulk of organic waste, and the rest would have been eaten by pigs and dogs. This problem would actually continue well into the 19th century due to the abundance of horse poop filling the streets, with major cities like New York worrying that they’d soon be under mountains of literal shit if the population kept increasing. It actually ended up being the invention of the automobile before poop-filled streets would become a thing of the past.

== High Middle Ages-Inspired Games, Factions and Settings ==
*[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]
*[[Bretonnia]]
* [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)|The Empire]]
* [[Kings of War]]
* [[The Elder Scrolls]]
* [[Chainmail]]
* [[Dungeons and Dragons]]

{{Time Periods}}
[[Category: History]]

Shield

2023-01-14T21:38:38Z

2001:14BA:A439:1500:E4D6:D198:BE1E:88CE: /* Unusual/Exotic Shields */

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[[image:Roman_shield.jpg|thumb|300px|right|A Scutum (Roman Legionary's Shield)]]

Straddling the line between body armor and weapon is the '''shield'''. A shield is a hand held barrier used to deflect or otherwise stop incoming blows. Usually a shield would be carried in the user's secondary hand while the favored hand would carry a weapon (the right hand in most cases). Shields have been in use since at least the neolithic period, and have been used by people from Europe to Australia to the Americas. Shields have been constructed from a variety of materials, including woven reeds, animal hides, and textiles over frames made of wood, bone, or metal.

== Shields in Warfare ==

While swords and axes gets all the glory in fantasy literature, the humble shield is probably the most ubiquitous piece of equipment that could be found on the battlefield. If you look at any ancient depiction of a battle you will see plenty of different weapons around, but nearly everybody that was not using 2-handed weapons would carry a shield, from the knight in shining armour to the lowly peasant.

The first well-attested military formation to make good use of the shield was the Greek [[Phalanx]], a square formation of heavy infantry. The soldiers, standing shoulder to shoulder, locked their shields together forming a wall, then pointed their spears forward and started marching. With a judicious use of the Phalanx Alexander The Great steamrolled half of Asia, creating one of the greatest empires of the ancient world.

Similar to this formation - albeit armed with swords and javelins, not with 8-9 foot long pikes - was the famous and equally effective Roman ''testudo''. The testudo, along with a couple of innovations like 'squads' and more flexible battle-lines, were used to steamroll Europe and create another big-ass Empire. If you're starting to see a pattern here, congratulations: you've just passed Ancient History 101. Every culture in ancient to medieval warfare used a form or another of the shield wall for their infantry, the alternative being quickly and mercilessly butchered and forgotten. They stopped only with the introduction of artillery, that made tight formations nothing but a huge target and hence highly inadvisable.

Outside of strictly military use police forces everywhere still use riot shields when they need to quell any particularly violent revolt or need to get up close and personal with some protesters.

In addition to defense, shields can also be used offensively. A good solid shield is a broad heavy object, and it can be used to bash people. A blow to the head would cause great damage even to an armoured enemy, and could kill or at least disorient the opposition. The Romans were very fond of this. Some forms of shield had spikes added to them in order to make the most out of bashing attacks.

Another way to use a shield is not to use a shield, carry only a weapon leaving the shield work and defense to another guy you had trained with, namely the Shield Bearer. The shield bearer is often talked about in ancient texts and while he may have just been slave who carried the heaviest chunk of gear, he could also have been a highly trained solider who fought with and defended the swordsmen. Evidence for trained shield bearers comes from various Middle Eastern Bronze Age sources, such the Old testament where Jonathan and his shield bearer routed a philistine advance guard unit of maybe 20 guys, and from the Egyptian New Kingdom, in which chariots were often described as being crewed by a warrior/driver and shield-bearer. The (extremely biased and propagandist) poem describing the Battle of Qadesh on the walls at Karnak has Ramesses II giving a speech to inspire his wavering shield bearer. There's also the relevant argument that "Would a sane mind trust his life to a slave, given the history of [[slavery]]?"

== Types of Shields ==

*'''Buckler''': The smallest of the shields, no bigger than 6-18 inches in diameter and light enough to be held in one fist, often made of metal with a leather fronting. They were also one of the few shields light enough to be regularly carried on one's person (let's be honest, how many knights do you think carried a full-sized shield on their back at all times?), as it was meant for personal defense rather than warfare, although it was often carried as a backup defensive weapon by infantry during the 14th and 15th centuries, such as Archers or Billmen, and is sometimes listed as issued (livery) kit for levies in English muster rolls. It was too small to block arrows and projectiles, but its light weight made it excellent for protecting the sword hand and deflecting an enemy's weapons in melee combat. It could also double as a punching weapon. The term "swashbuckler" comes from the rather theatrical fighting style employed by the swordsmen who favored fighting with a sword and buckler. The English and the Spanish were both famous for their sword and buckler fencing.

*'''Heater Shield''': Named by Victorian antiquarians for their similar shape to a clothes iron, heater shields were relatively light while still providing a fair degree of protection, making them an ideal form of protection when paired with a [[sword]]. (This is the shield most people think of when they think of a sword-and-shield combination.) Heater shields became dominant both for their ease of use, and the fact that more advanced armors meant that shields didn't need to cover the whole body, they just needed to deflect blows. This was emphasised by the way they blocked; whereas older and larger shields block in a punching motion, heaters are used to push enemy weapons away from the body. Later versions had small notches just large enough for the user to place his [[lance]] on it as a guide while jousting. They were often carved from a single piece of wood, and could have laminations of bone or horn, with canvas or rawhide outer layers, and thick pads of wool or fabric on the back to protect the shield arm. Heater shields made entirely from metal are a completely modern invention.

*'''Hoplon''': A large round shield made of wood with outer layers of bronze. It was one of the most important pieces of equipment for classical Greek heavy infantry called [[Hoplite]]s. It was employed to devastating effect in the famous [[Phalanx]] formation, the most powerful military tactic for several hundred years, capable of crushing enemy armies many times their size through superb defense and nigh-unbreakable lines. The main advantage of the Hoplon was that the shields easily overlapped with one another to form an extremely sturdy shield wall. The Hoplon was eventually replaced with a much smaller shield only because the Greeks realised that they didn't even need shields if they could just use really long spears and overlap them five layers deep, preventing any enemy from even getting close. It should be noted that, while many round wooden shields existed, the term Hoplon is used almost exclusively to describe the Greek variety.
** Some other, less well-known Greek shields include the thyreos/thureos oval-shaped shield which became common around 3rd BC (reflecting developments in making infantry more versatile than the slowly-moving spiked walls that were Hoplites), and peltasts (essentially skirmishers) were, like, hoplites, originally named for their using a unique crescent-shaped shield called a pelte. The aforementioned smaller shields used by later phalanxes above was believed to have been called a Telemon or pelta shield.

*'''Round shield''': A common early historical shield made of wood, with a large and prominent metal boss in the center. This was the favored shield of [[Vikings]] and other early medieval forces. While the soldiers wielding them didn't perform Testudos or Phalanxes like their ancient counterparts could, the shield was large and serviceable enough for even hastily trained militia to form a basic shield wall by interlocking shields.

*'''Scutum''': A massive shield almost as large as a man's body that was the mainstay of the Roman legions, and possibly the most widely-produced shield of all time. These were often used alongside a javelin and gladius to either charge at an opponent or to provide cover when throwing javelins. A particularly favored formation that utilised the scutum was the testudo (literally "tortoise")- the soldiers on the front and sides of the formation would hold their shields outward, while the remainder would overlap their shields above the heads of the formation, creating a box over themselves which was invaluable in siege warfare for its ability to block attacks from all sides (mainly projectile attacks; because of how tight and difficult it is to see and move in this formation, it was not recommended for melee. One of the worst defeats even dealt to the Romans at the Battle of Carrhae happened because Parthian horse archers with a baggage train of ALL OF THE ARROWS forced the Romans in advance in testudo, allowing the Parthian heavy lancers to charge them to death as piecemeal). This is what most often comes to mind when you mention "tower shields" in RPGs.
** While the classic large rectangle is the Roman shield in popular consciousness, Rome's military eventually switched to smaller, oval shields called a Skutos. Smaller, round shields also saw use in Roman hands; from skirmishers to eventually frontline infantry, foreshadowing the shields that would be used for some centuries in the wake of the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

*'''Pavise''': Imagine something between smaller doors and Scutum. This shield was really big, able to cover a user's entire body up to the chin. It originated in Italy, but quickly became popular in late 14th and early 15th century all over Europe. It was usually used to cover crossbowman, who could reload his weapon behind the shield (yeah, some pavises got a "stick" on the backside, so they can stand without someone actually holding them). On the other hand, Czech Hussites took those shields, mixed them with battlewagons (actually used as mobile trench/firepoint), early gunpowder weapons and all sorts of choppy-and-pointy things on a sticks and managed to run a 15 years of religious rebellion (and yes, it's not lost on us that they basically invented the tank). They were popular with many lower ranking infantrymen during the 15th century since they mitigated the effect of wearing cheaper armour by defending more of the body. As a result, commoner infantry were often called "pavisiers".

*'''Targe''': A relative of the buckler developed in Scotland, targes are round shields about 18-21 inches in diameter with two loops on the back- one for the arm to pass through and another to be held in one's hands, essentially allowing the wielder to have some degree of protection even while wielding a two-handed weapon (e.g. a claymore) or allowing one to use a pistol or dirk in the shield hand. The center of the shield was frequently equipped with a large spike, making it fairly effective as a weapon on its own as well. (Fun fact- the term "target" is derived from the general size and shape of the targe.) This shield in particular saw use much later in history alongside guns for the Scottish "Highland charge", where the Scots took advantage of muskets' poor fire-rate by approaching close, shooting, crouching down low to avoid the return volley, dropping unnecessary equipment, then charging the enemy line; using their targe to deflect the swords or bayonets their English adversaries tried to defend themselves with before landing a killing blow against them while they were vulnerable with a one-handed blade. This tactic was eventually defeated by the English regulars being trained to alleviate the targe pushing off their bayonets away and not (understandably) completely-lose-their-shit by stabbing at the other Scot to their left regardless.

*'''Kite Shield''': A large shield with a distinctive upside-down teardrop shape which allowed users to guard both the forelegs and the upper body. As body armor became more prevalent (thus minimizing the need for leg cover), it was eventually superseded by the heater shield. This type of shield worked well for Norman cavalry, as the extra length afforded protection for both the rider and the horse. As with the heater, they were never made from metal.

*'''Riot and Ballistic shields''': Shields are still being made, albeit relegated to situational uses (mostly within riot control divisions of law enforcement agencies). Ballistic shields are used when storming a house by SWAT troops expecting to fight in close quarters and are made to stop rifle rounds or shotgun shells. Riot shields are on the other hand made more to stop people using improvised weapons like rocks and Molotov cocktails (but are still reasonably effective against small caliber gunfire) and are also used to form shield "Walls" to physically stop an unruly mob (on a bad enough occasion, they might be even seen forming a testudo!). Both kinds are either made of transparent plastics or have a small slit in the middle to allow the user to see while still keeping the shield up, allowing a sidearm or PDW to be fired with an acceptable degree of accuracy while advancing.

== Unusual/Exotic Shields ==

*'''Gun Shield:''' A metal shield with a breech-loading pistol barrel in the center, the Gun Shield was created by commission for King Henry the VIII, practically on a whim. Despite being too heavy to effectively aim, and impractical to attempt to reload, the king was enamoured by the idea of this weapon for his bodyguard and ordered a hundred, where they promptly proceeded to gather dust. It was tried again to double as a shovel in World War 1, being too heavy for use as a shovel and too light for armor. Did have some success guarding snipers, but before some major advances in cold plasma maintenance there is next to no use. On vehicle pintle mounts and for static weapons however, it's pretty damn convenient.

*'''Lantern Shield''': This is a very unusual piece of equipment from 16th and 17th Century Renaissance. It is a glove with a built in buckler that also has a compartment for a lantern (hence the name: Lantern Shield), build in blades and sword catchers. So, a lantern-knife-shield-glove. Despite seeming like something from bad fantasy fic, the Lantern Shield was used and useful in two ''very'' specific cases - by night watchmen on patrol, and by duellists duelling at dawn. The weapon has likely emerged back then when duellists used to wield lanterns in duels in order to blind their opponents. They even had fencing manuals where they had lanterns integrated into their training, thus allowing them to not only parry, but also, as mentioned previously, to blind their opponents. Thus the Lantern Shield appeared. From looking at it, there will be people who'd like to have something like that into their D&D games or any other fantasy pen and paper RPG. Sadly there are no rules for using it in games such as Dungeons and Dragons (alternative for it would be the Spiked Shield). Seriously, this should get more attention. The only place we can think of where 'dueling with a lantern' is called out as thing is the "[[Lamentations of the Flame Princess]]" supplment "[[A Red and Pleasant Land]]" which calls out that "''Either party may hold a lantern or torch in the off hand,''

*'''German Duelling Shield/Two-Handed Shield''': A unique piece of equipment intended more for formalized duels in controlled environments rather than the battlefield, the German dueling shield is a long, thin shield roughly the length of a Roman scutum. Usually constructed out of wood with a thicker metal rim than usual, it is most distinguished by the presence of one or multiple spikes at the top and bottom edges intended for impaling the opponent. Less lethal versions also existed with a blunt hook instead for pinning the opponent's neck. It is used in a flexible manner, serving as a somewhat awkward and heavy scutum alongside a one-handed weapon, which can be dropped mid-fight to wield the shield with both hands like a bat'leth from Star Trek.

*'''Rattan Shield''': Used by the medieval Chinese or Koreans; while the shape of the shield isn't terribly different from round shields, [https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1B69HgukJL1JjSZFmq6Aw0XXaf/5sizes-top-quality-wushu-kung-fu-shields-Pure-manual-weaving-rattan-shield-martial-arts-cane-shield.jpg it distinctly looks] a lot like someone's trying to protect themselves with a fucking basket. As the name indicates, they were created from woven [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rattan#Weaponry rattan], a sort of wood-like vine.

*'''Timbe:''' A buckler-type shield of Okinawan origin. The Timbe could be made from a variety of materials, but the most notable one was [[wat|made from polished turtle shell]].

*'''Ngoni Shield:''' A catchall term for an oval cowhide shield of the Ngoni people that could also be used for bashing enemies or hooking them off-balance before stabbing them with a killing blow. Made famous due to Zulu warfare.

*'''Ōsode:''' Worn from shoulders which would technically make them [[pauldrons]] but they were effectively used by [[samurai]] as wearable shields. Early samurai were primarily horse archers and the obvious problem with a shield is that one really cannot use a bow while using one, especially when also riding a horse at the same time. So what the samurai did instead is that they hung these large (around 51 cm in height and 36 in width) square-shape pieces of lamellar armor from their shoulders which could easily be pushed out of the way when shooting a bow and then moved back in place when one needs them for protection.

[[Category: History]]

[[Category: Weapons]]

[[Category: Medieval Weaponry]]

[[Category: Armour]]

{{MedievalWeaponry}}

Helmet

2023-01-14T18:19:24Z

2001:14BA:A439:1500:E4D6:D198:BE1E:88CE: /* Modern */

[[Image:Boshin_helmet.jpg|thumb|300px|right|A fairly simple helmet used during the Boshin Wars]]

A '''Helmet''' is a variety of [[hat]] which is designed to protect the wearer's head not just from cold and wetness and bad haircuts, but also from external damage from blows.

== Reasons for wearing a Helmet ==
*Sport Safety (Hockey, American Football, Lacrosse)
*Vehicular Safety (motorcycling, bicycling)
*Workplace Safety
*Extra Vehicular Activity (well, if you don't want to be spaced that is)
*Hazmat Work
*Sun Safety (pith helmet, salakot)
*Entering a Combat Situation

== Materials to make a helmet out of ==
*Wood, if you have trees but metal is scarce or you are really primitive
**Cork, a specific lightweight wood fiber that is largely waterproof and easy to wear for long stints.
*Wool, if you have sheep but metal is scarce or you are really primitive, this applies to other textiles as well, or if you need padding for another item on this list. leather (below) also works.
*Leather, if you have large animals but metal is scarce, you are really primitive or are at the bottom of the social ladder (though they do work moderately well)
*Bronze, if you are living in the bronze age
*Steel, if your society has mastered iron working and does not want to put up with importing tin and/or copper. Current modern steels can easily withstand ballistic threats, but due to weight issue would be impractical to wear unless you're that [[Ork|special kind of person.]]
*Plastics (besides being used in crash helmets, ABS holds up surprisingly well against blades.)
*(Ultra)High-Molecular-Weight-Polyethylene, essentially plastics but much more stronger and durable (thanks to its molecular weight) to the point where it can be used to withstand ballistic threats, all while still being practical to wear due to their light weight.
*Polycarbonate, supported by foam, if you're modern and using a helmet to stop front tackles, flying pucks, or falling debris.
*Ceramics and ballistic textiles, if you are in the modern age and want to keep shrapnel and pistol rounds out of your brain. Some have improved to the point of withstanding intermediate rifle rounds, but one shouldn't put their money on it.
*Tinfoil, to keep out the FBI/CIA/NSA/MI6/CSIS/Russian/European Union/Chinese/Indian/Other National Spy Agency/Knights Templar/Google/Scientologist/Vatican/World Bank/Alien/NWO/MIB/Moon Nazi/Mars Soviet/Mercury Empire of Japan/Asteroid Belt Napoleonic Empire/Tzeentch/Lizard Men/Pinniped mind control rays.

== Some types of helmets ==

===Ancient World===
*'''Boar Tusk Helmet''': From Mycenaean Greece (1600 BCE to 1200 BCE), it was made by making a leather hat and sewing onto it slices of boar tusks. Making such a helmet required hunting down and killing something like 40 boars for their tusks. This was pretty badass and served as a status symbol that entailed either you were able to personally slaughter scores of angry boars without being gored to death or had the right connections to those who could do so.
*'''Corinthian''': Most popular variety of ancient (800 BCE to 0) Greek Hoplite Helmet, made of bronze, a single piece affair with built in cheek guards and nose guard (known as a nasal). Often had a horse hair/plumed crest.
*'''Galea''': The Helmet worn by Roman legionaries, made out of several pieces of bronze or steel. Had cheek guards on hinges and a back guard to protect the neck. Came with a detachable horse hair/plumed chrest for special occasions. Unlike most helmets of it's time it does not cover ears, because being able to hear orders is actually more important, especially in Roman maniple formation, where coordination was EVERYTHING. Being practical SOB's, Romans even added special hook to fix the helmet on the soldiers belt when on the march, because marching all day long with ''heavy'' chunk of metal on your head is usually a bad idea, unless your neck is as thick as normal man's hip, and keeping your helmet on the supply cart is an even worse idea, unless you don't expect ambushes (and good soldiers on the march should ''always'' expect ambushes).
*'''Steel Masks''': a variety of these were used alongside conventional helmets to protect the face by a variety of cultures.
*'''Late Roman Ridge''': A transition to the medieval Spangenhelm and Nasal helm, this was adopted towards the end of the Roman Empire, and kept around by the Byzantines and Subroman Brits.
<gallery>
Image:Boar's Tusk Helmet.jpg|Boar's Tusk Helmet
IMAge:Corinthian Helmet.jpg| Corinthian Helmet
Image:CorinthianPlume.jpg| Corinthian Helmet with decorative plume
Image:Centurion Galea.jpg|Imperial Galea with Centurion's plume
Image:Late Roman Ridge.jpg| Late Roman Ridge helmet
</gallery>

===Middle Ages & Renaissance===
*'''Spangenhelm''': A dark age (5th to 9th century) helmet made of bits of iron forged riveted onto a frame. An easier form to forge than an iron bowl for unskilled smiths. Sometimes had a nasal or cheek guards attached. The Sassanian version draped chainmail from the helm down to the chest, leaving only slits for the eyes. Viking helmets were a type of spanghelm that featured an eye guard. They didn't have horns, though.
*'''Nasal helm''': Basically a Spangenhelm, but made from one solid piece of metal, and it always had a nasal guard. This was the iconic helmet of the Normans and early Crusaders.
*'''Cervelliere''': A dark age/medieval helmet composed of a single steel dome. Became more common as armorers got better at their trade. It might come with a nasal guard.
*'''Kettle Hat''': A steel dome with a wide brim around it, sometimes with a nasal. A common helmet for common soldiers in the late middle ages as it offered a good deal of protection against arrows and other projectiles while allowing good visibility. While not ideal for a ground battle since the entire head below the scalp was exposed, it was excellent in sieges when most attacks were coming from above.
*'''Maille Coif''': To better protect people's heads, they often wore hoods made of [[mail|chainmail]]. Often, though not always in conjunction with a more conventional helmet, or else the mail attached to the bottom of the helmet to act as a faceguard called an aventail. This practice was common across Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
*'''Enclosed Helm''': Predecessor to the great helm, the enclosed helm was basically a metal hat with a faceguard attached to the front. The great helm added neck protection and made the helmet into one solid piece.
*'''Great helm''': A steel bucket with eyeholes wore by [[knight]]s. They came in two varieties: Flat-topped, and conical. The flat-topped versions came first, but it was discovered that making the top conical helped to glance sword-strikes away from the head. Why it was not conical from the beginning is a mystery, as the nasal helm was conical so they should have been aware of its advantages. Still, despite being introduced after most of the crusades (and all of the successful ones) had been fought, it became one of the most recognizable symbols of the crusades.
*'''Barbute''' Corinthian 2, Electric Boogaloo! Basically a Corinthian Helmet made of steel minus the crest. Additionally, due to visors already being commonplace when it was used, it was likely to have a visor on it unlike the Corinthian.
*'''Sallet''': A type of steel helmet from the late middle ages. It's main component covered cheeks and had a lock neckguard in the back. To protect the face it would have a face guard bolted on, which could be raised or lowered. One good thing about the visor was that it only covered the upper half of the face, meaning that it could be removed and that the face would still be protected by the falling buffe that protected the lower half of the face. Can occasionally be seen on [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)| Empire Greatswords]] when they aren't sticking with the floppy [[hat]]s.
*'''Bascinet''': A conical helmet with the point facing towards the back of the head. Oftentimes combined with a detachable face guard that was likewise conical, commonly called the "pig's snout." However, the bascinet could be worn without the face guard.
*'''Armet''': Another type of full head helmet worn in the late middle ages. It came with three parts, a main component covering the back, a visor and a chinplate. Thus allowing full head protection while being much easier to move about than a clumsy great helm. You might recall the basic look of this helmet from the [[Grey Knights]].
*'''Cabasset''': A halfway point between the Kettle hat and the Morion, the Cabasset offered the protection of a rim with the glancing surface of a conical top.
*'''Morion''': A type of helmet similar to a Kettle hat, but with a top part which came to a ridge and dipped down on the sides to cover the ears. Often morions would have cheek guards. Most commonly associated with Conquistadors.
*'''Frog-Mouth''': As the name implies, these-oddly shaped helmets look like a frog's mouth. These helmets were basically made for one purpose, that being jousting. That's because they would be impractical for combat, as the helmet had very little visibility and a complete lack of neck articulation, its sole purpose was to protect the head from lances.
*'''Lobster Pot''': Also called the zischägge, it's a helmet from the Renaissance period and age of enlightenment composed of a steel dome with a visor, cheek guards and a back guard made of overlapping steel plates riveted together (looking like a lobster tail). They usually came with a nasal or a faceguard of some sort. These helmets were used by both cavalry and infantry, and are most commonly associated with the Winged Hussars and the New Model Army.
*'''Burgonet''': Another Renaissance cavalry helmet, the Burgonet features a comb and cheek guards like the Morion, with an optional faceguard as well. The Burgonet was basically the standard European cavalry helmet from the Thirty Years War up through the Napoleonic Wars. The French Cuirassier helmets used up until WW1 were essentially just cheekless Burgonets.
*'''Kabuto''': Japanese [[Samurai]] helmets, have a dome part as well as a back made of laminar protecting the neck and cheeks. For facial protection they had a mempo, a stylized mask.
*'''Jingasa''': Japanese Ashigaru Helmet, these were usually cone shaped (though latter ones bore a resemblance to Morions and kettle hats) and made of steel or lacquered wood.
<gallery>
Spangenhelm.JPG| Frankish Spangenhelm
Image:Viking Helmet.jpg|Viking Helmet, a type of spangenhelm. Note the lack of horns.
Image:Nasal Helm.png| Nasal helm
Image:Norman Italian.jpg|Norman-Italian, a variant of the Nasal helm
Image:Cervelliere.gif| A Cervelliere
Image:Kettle Hat.jpg| Kettle hat
Image:Mail Coif.jpg| A Mail Coif
Image:Enclosed Helm.jpg|Enclosed Helm
Image:Great Helm.png| Great helm, flat-top style
Image:Sugarloaf Great Helm.jpg| Great helm, Sugarloaf style
Image:Barbute T-shape.JPG| T-shaped Barbute
Image:Barbute Y-shape.jpg| Y-shaped Barbute
Image:Sallet.jpg|A sallet
Image:Bascinet Hounskull.jpg| Bascinet with "Hounskull" visor
Image:Armet.jpg| An Armet
Image:Cabasset.jpg| A Cabasset
Image:Morion.jpg| A Morion
Image:Frog-mouth.jpg| Frog-mouth helm
Image:Lobster pot.jpg|Lobster-pot helmet
Image:Burgonet.png|A Burgonet
Image:Kabuto.jpg|A Kabuto
Image:Jingasa.JPG| A Jingasa
</gallery>

===Modern===
*'''Pith Helmet''': These are the iconic helmets of British soldiers of the Victorian era, as well as stereotypical explorers (and USPS employees) up to the present. Pith helmets were pith/cork domes covered in cloth, meant more for protection from heat in tropical climates (in addition to the shade, they could be soaked in water to provide evaporative cooling) than enemy attack, though lighter hats like the panama hat are preferred for this purpose nowadays. Still, many would reinforce the helmet with a band of cloth to help absorb sword strikes to the head. It was often joked that an Englishman could not survive outside their native country without a pith helmet.
*'''Pickelhaube''': Also known as that one German helmet with the big, central ceremonial spike pointing straight up. Even in its day it was widely mocked, and it took a World War for the Germans to realize that it was in fact a terrible design for a helmet (the thing wasn't even metal, it was boiled leather), when it was replaced by the Stalhelm. When actually worn in the field the Pickelhaube did, at least, have a drab fabric covering put over the shiny spike to make it slightly less obtrusive. British snipers prided themselves in de-spiking them at 300 yards. In less-well researched media, the Pickelhaube and the Stahlhelm are sometimes conflated, resulting in the ahistorical absurdity of an otherwise strictly-utilitarian steel helmet with a completely useless ornament stuck incongruously on top.
*'''Adrian Helmet''': Helmets fell out of fashion starting around the 18th century as they were often not much use against firearms and were deemed to be dead weight while they were also believed to kill offensive fighting spirit (space marines approve of this message, though in truth armor tends to have the opposite effect by making the wearer overconfident). This changed during the Great War, artillery shells would splinter into fragments when they exploded. These fragments came to account for huge casualties in the trenches but could be stopped by a simple steel helmet. The French found this out first and in 1915 first made the Adrian Helmet. It was easily made out of stamped steel in very large numbers and reduced shrapnel casualties significantly. It had a brim which was more prominent in the front. Several other countries also copied them.
*'''Brodie Helmet''': The British thought the French were onto a good idea with their Adrian helmets and designed their own. The Brodie Helmets were based off Kettle Hats and is wide enough that it offers some protection to the shoulders as well.. Used by troops across the British Empire during both world wars and by US troops during the Great War.
**Both the Brodie and Adrian helmet look a little weird to modern eyes because there designed to protect from shrapnel from above, which considering the nature of trench warfare makes the designs make more sense. They're still considered poorly designed for wearing.
*'''Stahlhelm''':The Germans also thought the French were onto a good idea with their Adrian helmets and designed their own. The Stahlhelm was based off the Sallet. It is considered to be the best helmet of that time period as it protected the neck and ears. In fact, it was so good that even the Chinese were buying them like a drug-filled hooker and many German allies as well (leading to an ironic situation where it was a symbol of the Axis in Europe but a symbol of the Allies in Asia). It would later became commonly associated with the [[Nazi]]s. The basic cut however would become the basis for all modern helmets after WW2, especially since it was conductive to including ear protection/coms headset under it.
*'''M1 Helmet''': The US decided that the Brodie Helmet did not quite cut the mustard, so they designed their own helmet for use during WWII. It was thicker and bent down in the back and had less of a brim. Would be the basis for several early Cold War helmets on both sides of the Iron Curtain (leading to cases where people had problems telling apart a friend from foe from a distance), many even meant to survive bullets, but the stahlhelm style eventually won out.
*'''M-56''': though developed during the nazi period, it was eventually adopted in 1956 as the standard East German helmet and remained so for the entirety of its existence. As the East Germans did not want to use the Stahlhelm due to its association with nazism and the possibility that West Germany would use it (they ultimately did not, around the same time, they developed a copy of the M1 to replace the Stahlhelm, [[derp|which they still called a Stahlhelm]]), they instead adopted the M-56 as it is the German helmet with most resemblance to Soviet helmets (to the point west first assumed it was Soviet) and did not resemble the Stahlhelm. Though its distinct appearance is considered odd by many, many also consider it the best pre-composite helmet due to its deflective angles.
*'''Modern Combat Helmet''': Modern Combat Helmets like the British Mk-7 or the Advanced Combat Helmet (ACH) are made of layers of metal, fiberglass, ceramics and ballistic textiles, often with a cloth covering for camouflage purposes. Helmets can also be outfitted with loads of accessories, from helmet-mounted night-vision goggles, to cameras, and so forth. As of current, the ACH is being somewhat replaced by the Enhanced Combat Helmet, with has 35%+ superior protection over it. Ceradyne is the producer of the ECH, as well as several other defensive gear such as the E-SAPI protective plates the US military uses.
** Perhaps the most important upgrade these brought is the suspension system. Rather than be in direct contact with the head, the helmet was now suspended over the head. Equally important is the strips which go behind the head and also over the chin like a cup instead of under it. This makes it much more likely to stay on and stay attached. Supposedly old Japanese armor had this style of chin strap, but evidence is shaky.
*'''Safety Helmet''': basic helmets of plastic and steel made to protect the user from occupational hazards. Generally not for ballistic protection unless specified, but as many a rioter/protestor can tell you, better then nothing especially against non-ballistic trauma. Some plastic ones intended for use outdoors incorporate a UV-exposure indicator, as prolonged exposure to sunlight can eventually make them become brittle and ineffective.

<gallery>
Image:Pith Helmet.jpg|Pith Helmet
Image:Pickelhaube.jpg|A Pickelhaube worn on the head of [[Tzeentch|Otto von Bismarck]], though in this particular case the Pickelhaube in question is atypically made of metal.
Image:Adrian_Helmet.jpg|An Adrian Helmet, the Helmet that made helmets cool again
Image:Brodie Helmet.jpg|Brodie Helmet
image:Stalhelm.jpg| The Stahlhelm, technically a WWI helmet but made famous by Nazi Germany
Image:M1helmet.jpg|M1 helmet
Image:PASGT Helmet.jpg| PASGT helmet, a modern helmet with many derivatives
Image:US Marine ECH Helmet.jpg| Enhanced Combat Helmet (ECH), derivative of a line of combat helmets and ultimately related to the PASGT in design
</gallery>

== Helmets and Faces ==

[[Image:Imperial_Stormtroopers.jpg|thumb|300px|left|[[Star Wars|Imperial Stormtroopers]] have full body armor, including helmets which conceal their faces. This tells the audience that it is alright for our heroes to gun them down ''en masse''.]]

Helmets are the most common type of combat armor employed in History and it's easy to see why. Helmets protect your brain, your most important organ, from damage. Some also protect some combination of the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, all of which are nearly as vital. When compared to a breastplate or other such article of torso armor, helmets are fairly easy and inexpensive to make, while being easy and unobtrusive to wear. If you had to have just one bit of armor, you got a helmet. Helmets came in many shapes and sizes. Even a re-purposed cooking pot will do in a pinch.

Covering as much of the head as possible often improved a helmet's performance in a purely functional-as-armor sense. This did come with some downsides; if your entire head is sheathed in vision-obstructing, hearing-distorting, badly-ventilated metal with a few small holes to look and breathe out of, you clearly have some disadvantages over a fellow wearing one of its skimpier but less-obstructive counterparts (this is why visors were eventually used for medieval warriors, who would lift their visors while under ranged attack and lift them to be able to see better as needed), which is why most modern militaries eschew them. Never-the-less, full head helmets have been used by a wide variety of cultures all over the world, and they were much more valuable in the ages of medieval cavalry when the horse was doing the stamina-draining grunt work anyway.

However, for visual fiction, full-face helmets can be problematic as they hide the faces of the character and as such, limit what emotions and features can be shown to the audience, as well as concealing his/her identity and making them less relatable, ironically serving the opposite function of all other varieties of [[hats]]. For this reason, full-head helmets are usually reserved for faceless enemies employed by the bad guys to be killed with a minimum of audience empathy, while heroes wear helmets which leave their faces exposed, or simply go helmetless into combat situations. The most common exceptions to this rule are characters whose identities are meant to be concealed from the audience. Generally, this means that the wearer is either another important character pretending to be someone else, who won't speak so no one knows who they are until the plot says so, or female, so she can prove her martial skills to military leaders and higher ups who hold to [[-4 Str|pre-modern prejudices about gender]] and shock them with a surprise revelation when she removes it. You can also occasionally see a few characters whose face is effectively the helmet and never take it off (or at least are never seen doing so).

Note in particular that the less face-covering the helmet, the more likely a named or speaking character will be shown properly using one. Luckily for characters in more modern settings, full-face helmets are out of style around battlefields everywhere these days and characters' faces can be seen while also being as logically well-protected for combat by a helmet as one would expect of someone going into a battle.

[[Category: History]]

[[Category: Weapons]]

[[Category: Medieval Weaponry]]

[[Category: Armour]]

{{MedievalWeaponry}}

Helmet

2023-01-14T17:54:57Z

2001:14BA:A439:1500:E4D6:D198:BE1E:88CE: /* Middle Ages & Renaissance */

[[Image:Boshin_helmet.jpg|thumb|300px|right|A fairly simple helmet used during the Boshin Wars]]

A '''Helmet''' is a variety of [[hat]] which is designed to protect the wearer's head not just from cold and wetness and bad haircuts, but also from external damage from blows.

== Reasons for wearing a Helmet ==
*Sport Safety (Hockey, American Football, Lacrosse)
*Vehicular Safety (motorcycling, bicycling)
*Workplace Safety
*Extra Vehicular Activity (well, if you don't want to be spaced that is)
*Hazmat Work
*Sun Safety (pith helmet, salakot)
*Entering a Combat Situation

== Materials to make a helmet out of ==
*Wood, if you have trees but metal is scarce or you are really primitive
**Cork, a specific lightweight wood fiber that is largely waterproof and easy to wear for long stints.
*Wool, if you have sheep but metal is scarce or you are really primitive, this applies to other textiles as well, or if you need padding for another item on this list. leather (below) also works.
*Leather, if you have large animals but metal is scarce, you are really primitive or are at the bottom of the social ladder (though they do work moderately well)
*Bronze, if you are living in the bronze age
*Steel, if your society has mastered iron working and does not want to put up with importing tin and/or copper. Current modern steels can easily withstand ballistic threats, but due to weight issue would be impractical to wear unless you're that [[Ork|special kind of person.]]
*Plastics (besides being used in crash helmets, ABS holds up surprisingly well against blades.)
*(Ultra)High-Molecular-Weight-Polyethylene, essentially plastics but much more stronger and durable (thanks to its molecular weight) to the point where it can be used to withstand ballistic threats, all while still being practical to wear due to their light weight.
*Polycarbonate, supported by foam, if you're modern and using a helmet to stop front tackles, flying pucks, or falling debris.
*Ceramics and ballistic textiles, if you are in the modern age and want to keep shrapnel and pistol rounds out of your brain. Some have improved to the point of withstanding intermediate rifle rounds, but one shouldn't put their money on it.
*Tinfoil, to keep out the FBI/CIA/NSA/MI6/CSIS/Russian/European Union/Chinese/Indian/Other National Spy Agency/Knights Templar/Google/Scientologist/Vatican/World Bank/Alien/NWO/MIB/Moon Nazi/Mars Soviet/Mercury Empire of Japan/Asteroid Belt Napoleonic Empire/Tzeentch/Lizard Men/Pinniped mind control rays.

== Some types of helmets ==

===Ancient World===
*'''Boar Tusk Helmet''': From Mycenaean Greece (1600 BCE to 1200 BCE), it was made by making a leather hat and sewing onto it slices of boar tusks. Making such a helmet required hunting down and killing something like 40 boars for their tusks. This was pretty badass and served as a status symbol that entailed either you were able to personally slaughter scores of angry boars without being gored to death or had the right connections to those who could do so.
*'''Corinthian''': Most popular variety of ancient (800 BCE to 0) Greek Hoplite Helmet, made of bronze, a single piece affair with built in cheek guards and nose guard (known as a nasal). Often had a horse hair/plumed crest.
*'''Galea''': The Helmet worn by Roman legionaries, made out of several pieces of bronze or steel. Had cheek guards on hinges and a back guard to protect the neck. Came with a detachable horse hair/plumed chrest for special occasions. Unlike most helmets of it's time it does not cover ears, because being able to hear orders is actually more important, especially in Roman maniple formation, where coordination was EVERYTHING. Being practical SOB's, Romans even added special hook to fix the helmet on the soldiers belt when on the march, because marching all day long with ''heavy'' chunk of metal on your head is usually a bad idea, unless your neck is as thick as normal man's hip, and keeping your helmet on the supply cart is an even worse idea, unless you don't expect ambushes (and good soldiers on the march should ''always'' expect ambushes).
*'''Steel Masks''': a variety of these were used alongside conventional helmets to protect the face by a variety of cultures.
*'''Late Roman Ridge''': A transition to the medieval Spangenhelm and Nasal helm, this was adopted towards the end of the Roman Empire, and kept around by the Byzantines and Subroman Brits.
<gallery>
Image:Boar's Tusk Helmet.jpg|Boar's Tusk Helmet
IMAge:Corinthian Helmet.jpg| Corinthian Helmet
Image:CorinthianPlume.jpg| Corinthian Helmet with decorative plume
Image:Centurion Galea.jpg|Imperial Galea with Centurion's plume
Image:Late Roman Ridge.jpg| Late Roman Ridge helmet
</gallery>

===Middle Ages & Renaissance===
*'''Spangenhelm''': A dark age (5th to 9th century) helmet made of bits of iron forged riveted onto a frame. An easier form to forge than an iron bowl for unskilled smiths. Sometimes had a nasal or cheek guards attached. The Sassanian version draped chainmail from the helm down to the chest, leaving only slits for the eyes. Viking helmets were a type of spanghelm that featured an eye guard. They didn't have horns, though.
*'''Nasal helm''': Basically a Spangenhelm, but made from one solid piece of metal, and it always had a nasal guard. This was the iconic helmet of the Normans and early Crusaders.
*'''Cervelliere''': A dark age/medieval helmet composed of a single steel dome. Became more common as armorers got better at their trade. It might come with a nasal guard.
*'''Kettle Hat''': A steel dome with a wide brim around it, sometimes with a nasal. A common helmet for common soldiers in the late middle ages as it offered a good deal of protection against arrows and other projectiles while allowing good visibility. While not ideal for a ground battle since the entire head below the scalp was exposed, it was excellent in sieges when most attacks were coming from above.
*'''Maille Coif''': To better protect people's heads, they often wore hoods made of [[mail|chainmail]]. Often, though not always in conjunction with a more conventional helmet, or else the mail attached to the bottom of the helmet to act as a faceguard called an aventail. This practice was common across Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
*'''Enclosed Helm''': Predecessor to the great helm, the enclosed helm was basically a metal hat with a faceguard attached to the front. The great helm added neck protection and made the helmet into one solid piece.
*'''Great helm''': A steel bucket with eyeholes wore by [[knight]]s. They came in two varieties: Flat-topped, and conical. The flat-topped versions came first, but it was discovered that making the top conical helped to glance sword-strikes away from the head. Why it was not conical from the beginning is a mystery, as the nasal helm was conical so they should have been aware of its advantages. Still, despite being introduced after most of the crusades (and all of the successful ones) had been fought, it became one of the most recognizable symbols of the crusades.
*'''Barbute''' Corinthian 2, Electric Boogaloo! Basically a Corinthian Helmet made of steel minus the crest. Additionally, due to visors already being commonplace when it was used, it was likely to have a visor on it unlike the Corinthian.
*'''Sallet''': A type of steel helmet from the late middle ages. It's main component covered cheeks and had a lock neckguard in the back. To protect the face it would have a face guard bolted on, which could be raised or lowered. One good thing about the visor was that it only covered the upper half of the face, meaning that it could be removed and that the face would still be protected by the falling buffe that protected the lower half of the face. Can occasionally be seen on [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)| Empire Greatswords]] when they aren't sticking with the floppy [[hat]]s.
*'''Bascinet''': A conical helmet with the point facing towards the back of the head. Oftentimes combined with a detachable face guard that was likewise conical, commonly called the "pig's snout." However, the bascinet could be worn without the face guard.
*'''Armet''': Another type of full head helmet worn in the late middle ages. It came with three parts, a main component covering the back, a visor and a chinplate. Thus allowing full head protection while being much easier to move about than a clumsy great helm. You might recall the basic look of this helmet from the [[Grey Knights]].
*'''Cabasset''': A halfway point between the Kettle hat and the Morion, the Cabasset offered the protection of a rim with the glancing surface of a conical top.
*'''Morion''': A type of helmet similar to a Kettle hat, but with a top part which came to a ridge and dipped down on the sides to cover the ears. Often morions would have cheek guards. Most commonly associated with Conquistadors.
*'''Frog-Mouth''': As the name implies, these-oddly shaped helmets look like a frog's mouth. These helmets were basically made for one purpose, that being jousting. That's because they would be impractical for combat, as the helmet had very little visibility and a complete lack of neck articulation, its sole purpose was to protect the head from lances.
*'''Lobster Pot''': Also called the zischägge, it's a helmet from the Renaissance period and age of enlightenment composed of a steel dome with a visor, cheek guards and a back guard made of overlapping steel plates riveted together (looking like a lobster tail). They usually came with a nasal or a faceguard of some sort. These helmets were used by both cavalry and infantry, and are most commonly associated with the Winged Hussars and the New Model Army.
*'''Burgonet''': Another Renaissance cavalry helmet, the Burgonet features a comb and cheek guards like the Morion, with an optional faceguard as well. The Burgonet was basically the standard European cavalry helmet from the Thirty Years War up through the Napoleonic Wars. The French Cuirassier helmets used up until WW1 were essentially just cheekless Burgonets.
*'''Kabuto''': Japanese [[Samurai]] helmets, have a dome part as well as a back made of laminar protecting the neck and cheeks. For facial protection they had a mempo, a stylized mask.
*'''Jingasa''': Japanese Ashigaru Helmet, these were usually cone shaped (though latter ones bore a resemblance to Morions and kettle hats) and made of steel or lacquered wood.
<gallery>
Spangenhelm.JPG| Frankish Spangenhelm
Image:Viking Helmet.jpg|Viking Helmet, a type of spangenhelm. Note the lack of horns.
Image:Nasal Helm.png| Nasal helm
Image:Norman Italian.jpg|Norman-Italian, a variant of the Nasal helm
Image:Cervelliere.gif| A Cervelliere
Image:Kettle Hat.jpg| Kettle hat
Image:Mail Coif.jpg| A Mail Coif
Image:Enclosed Helm.jpg|Enclosed Helm
Image:Great Helm.png| Great helm, flat-top style
Image:Sugarloaf Great Helm.jpg| Great helm, Sugarloaf style
Image:Barbute T-shape.JPG| T-shaped Barbute
Image:Barbute Y-shape.jpg| Y-shaped Barbute
Image:Sallet.jpg|A sallet
Image:Bascinet Hounskull.jpg| Bascinet with "Hounskull" visor
Image:Armet.jpg| An Armet
Image:Cabasset.jpg| A Cabasset
Image:Morion.jpg| A Morion
Image:Frog-mouth.jpg| Frog-mouth helm
Image:Lobster pot.jpg|Lobster-pot helmet
Image:Burgonet.png|A Burgonet
Image:Kabuto.jpg|A Kabuto
Image:Jingasa.JPG| A Jingasa
</gallery>

===Modern===
*'''Pith Helmet''': These are the iconic helmets of British soldiers of the Victorian era, as well as stereotypical explorers (and USPS employees) up to the present. Pith helmets were pith/cork domes covered in cloth, meant more for protection from heat in tropical climates (in addition to the shade, they could be soaked in water to provide evaporative cooling) than enemy attack, though lighter hats like the panama hat are preferred for this purpose nowadays. Still, many would reinforce the helmet with a band of cloth to help absorb sword strikes to the head. It was often joked that an Englishman could not survive outside their native country without a pith helmet.
*'''Pickelhaube''': Also known as that one German helmet with the big, central ceremonial spike pointing straight up. Even in its day it was widely mocked, and it took a World War for the Germans to realize that it was in fact a terrible design for a helmet (the thing wasn't even metal, it was boiled leather), when it was replaced by the Stalhelm. When actually worn in the field the Pickelhaube did, at least, have a drab fabric covering put over the shiny spike to make it slightly less obtrusive. British snipers prided themselves in de-spiking them at 300 yards. In less-well researched media, the Pickelhaube and the Stahlhelm are sometimes conflated, resulting in the ahistorical absurdity of an otherwise strictly-utilitarian steel helmet with a completely useless ornament stuck incongruously on top.
*'''Adrian Helmet''': Helmets fell out of fashion starting around the 18th century as they were often not much use against firearms and were deemed to be dead weight while they were also believed to kill offensive fighting spirit (space marines approve of this message, though in truth armor tends to have the opposite effect by making the wearer overconfident). This changed during the Great War, artillery shells would splinter into fragments when they exploded. These fragments came to account for huge casualties in the trenches but could be stopped by a simple steel helmet. The French found this out first and in 1915 first made the Adrian Helmet. It was easily made out of stamped steel in very large numbers and reduced shrapnel casualties significantly. It had a brim which was more prominent in the front. Several other countries also copied them.
*'''Brodie Helmet''': The British thought the French were onto a good idea with their Adrian helmets and designed their own. The Brodie Helmets were based off Kettle Hats and is wide enough that it offers some protection to the shoulders as well.. Used by troops across the British Empire during both world wars and by US troops during the Great War.
**Both the Brodie and Adrian helmet look a little weird to modern eyes because there designed to protect from shrapnel from above, which considering the nature of trench warfare makes the designs make more sense. They're still considered poorly designed for wearing.
*'''Stahlhelm''':The Germans also thought the French were onto a good idea with their Adrian helmets and designed their own. The Stahlhelm was based off the Sallet. It is considered to be the best helmet of that time period as it protected the neck and ears. In fact, it was so good that even the Chinese were buying them like a drug-filled hooker (<strike>Which gave an unfortunate confusion on who is the Chinese and Germans during WW2</strike> They fought on two different continents, it would've been pretty easy to figure out). It would later became commonly associated with the [[Nazi]]s. The basic cut however would become the basis for all modern helmets after WW2, especially since it was conductive to including ear protection/coms headset under it.
*'''M1 Helmet''': The US decided that the Brodie Helmet did not quite cut the mustard, so they designed their own helmet for use during WWII. It was thicker and bent down in the back and had less of a brim. Would be the basis for several early Cold War helmets on both sides of the Iron Curtain, many even meant to survive bullets, but the stahlhelm style eventually won out.
*'''Modern Combat Helmet''': Modern Combat Helmets like the British Mk-7 or the Advanced Combat Helmet (ACH) are made of layers of metal, fiberglass, ceramics and ballistic textiles, often with a cloth covering for camouflage purposes. Helmets can also be outfitted with loads of accessories, from helmet-mounted night-vision goggles, to cameras, and so forth. As of current, the ACH is being somewhat replaced by the Enhanced Combat Helmet, with has 35%+ superior protection over it. Ceradyne is the producer of the ECH, as well as several other defensive gear such as the E-SAPI protective plates the US military uses.
** Perhaps the most important upgrade these brought is the suspension system. Rather than be in direct contact with the head, the helmet was now suspended over the head. Equally important is the strips which go behind the head and also over the chin like a cup instead of under it. This makes it much more likely to stay on and stay attached. Supposedly old Japanese armor had this style of chin strap, but evidence is shaky.
*'''Safety Helmet''': basic helmets of plastic and steel made to protect the user from occupational hazards. Generally not for ballistic protection unless specified, but as many a rioter/protestor can tell you, better then nothing especially against non-ballistic trauma. Some plastic ones intended for use outdoors incorporate a UV-exposure indicator, as prolonged exposure to sunlight can eventually make them become brittle and ineffective.

<gallery>
Image:Pith Helmet.jpg|Pith Helmet
Image:Pickelhaube.jpg|A Pickelhaube worn on the head of [[Tzeentch|Otto von Bismarck]], though in this particular case the Pickelhaube in question is atypically made of metal.
Image:Adrian_Helmet.jpg|An Adrian Helmet, the Helmet that made helmets cool again
Image:Brodie Helmet.jpg|Brodie Helmet
image:Stalhelm.jpg| The Stahlhelm, technically a WWI helmet but made famous by Nazi Germany
Image:M1helmet.jpg|M1 helmet
Image:PASGT Helmet.jpg| PASGT helmet, a modern helmet with many derivatives
Image:US Marine ECH Helmet.jpg| Enhanced Combat Helmet (ECH), derivative of a line of combat helmets and ultimately related to the PASGT in design
</gallery>

== Helmets and Faces ==

[[Image:Imperial_Stormtroopers.jpg|thumb|300px|left|[[Star Wars|Imperial Stormtroopers]] have full body armor, including helmets which conceal their faces. This tells the audience that it is alright for our heroes to gun them down ''en masse''.]]

Helmets are the most common type of combat armor employed in History and it's easy to see why. Helmets protect your brain, your most important organ, from damage. Some also protect some combination of the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, all of which are nearly as vital. When compared to a breastplate or other such article of torso armor, helmets are fairly easy and inexpensive to make, while being easy and unobtrusive to wear. If you had to have just one bit of armor, you got a helmet. Helmets came in many shapes and sizes. Even a re-purposed cooking pot will do in a pinch.

Covering as much of the head as possible often improved a helmet's performance in a purely functional-as-armor sense. This did come with some downsides; if your entire head is sheathed in vision-obstructing, hearing-distorting, badly-ventilated metal with a few small holes to look and breathe out of, you clearly have some disadvantages over a fellow wearing one of its skimpier but less-obstructive counterparts (this is why visors were eventually used for medieval warriors, who would lift their visors while under ranged attack and lift them to be able to see better as needed), which is why most modern militaries eschew them. Never-the-less, full head helmets have been used by a wide variety of cultures all over the world, and they were much more valuable in the ages of medieval cavalry when the horse was doing the stamina-draining grunt work anyway.

However, for visual fiction, full-face helmets can be problematic as they hide the faces of the character and as such, limit what emotions and features can be shown to the audience, as well as concealing his/her identity and making them less relatable, ironically serving the opposite function of all other varieties of [[hats]]. For this reason, full-head helmets are usually reserved for faceless enemies employed by the bad guys to be killed with a minimum of audience empathy, while heroes wear helmets which leave their faces exposed, or simply go helmetless into combat situations. The most common exceptions to this rule are characters whose identities are meant to be concealed from the audience. Generally, this means that the wearer is either another important character pretending to be someone else, who won't speak so no one knows who they are until the plot says so, or female, so she can prove her martial skills to military leaders and higher ups who hold to [[-4 Str|pre-modern prejudices about gender]] and shock them with a surprise revelation when she removes it. You can also occasionally see a few characters whose face is effectively the helmet and never take it off (or at least are never seen doing so).

Note in particular that the less face-covering the helmet, the more likely a named or speaking character will be shown properly using one. Luckily for characters in more modern settings, full-face helmets are out of style around battlefields everywhere these days and characters' faces can be seen while also being as logically well-protected for combat by a helmet as one would expect of someone going into a battle.

[[Category: History]]

[[Category: Weapons]]

[[Category: Medieval Weaponry]]

[[Category: Armour]]

{{MedievalWeaponry}}

Helmet

2023-01-14T17:49:59Z

2001:14BA:A439:1500:E4D6:D198:BE1E:88CE: /* Middle Ages & Renaissance */

[[Image:Boshin_helmet.jpg|thumb|300px|right|A fairly simple helmet used during the Boshin Wars]]

A '''Helmet''' is a variety of [[hat]] which is designed to protect the wearer's head not just from cold and wetness and bad haircuts, but also from external damage from blows.

== Reasons for wearing a Helmet ==
*Sport Safety (Hockey, American Football, Lacrosse)
*Vehicular Safety (motorcycling, bicycling)
*Workplace Safety
*Extra Vehicular Activity (well, if you don't want to be spaced that is)
*Hazmat Work
*Sun Safety (pith helmet, salakot)
*Entering a Combat Situation

== Materials to make a helmet out of ==
*Wood, if you have trees but metal is scarce or you are really primitive
**Cork, a specific lightweight wood fiber that is largely waterproof and easy to wear for long stints.
*Wool, if you have sheep but metal is scarce or you are really primitive, this applies to other textiles as well, or if you need padding for another item on this list. leather (below) also works.
*Leather, if you have large animals but metal is scarce, you are really primitive or are at the bottom of the social ladder (though they do work moderately well)
*Bronze, if you are living in the bronze age
*Steel, if your society has mastered iron working and does not want to put up with importing tin and/or copper. Current modern steels can easily withstand ballistic threats, but due to weight issue would be impractical to wear unless you're that [[Ork|special kind of person.]]
*Plastics (besides being used in crash helmets, ABS holds up surprisingly well against blades.)
*(Ultra)High-Molecular-Weight-Polyethylene, essentially plastics but much more stronger and durable (thanks to its molecular weight) to the point where it can be used to withstand ballistic threats, all while still being practical to wear due to their light weight.
*Polycarbonate, supported by foam, if you're modern and using a helmet to stop front tackles, flying pucks, or falling debris.
*Ceramics and ballistic textiles, if you are in the modern age and want to keep shrapnel and pistol rounds out of your brain. Some have improved to the point of withstanding intermediate rifle rounds, but one shouldn't put their money on it.
*Tinfoil, to keep out the FBI/CIA/NSA/MI6/CSIS/Russian/European Union/Chinese/Indian/Other National Spy Agency/Knights Templar/Google/Scientologist/Vatican/World Bank/Alien/NWO/MIB/Moon Nazi/Mars Soviet/Mercury Empire of Japan/Asteroid Belt Napoleonic Empire/Tzeentch/Lizard Men/Pinniped mind control rays.

== Some types of helmets ==

===Ancient World===
*'''Boar Tusk Helmet''': From Mycenaean Greece (1600 BCE to 1200 BCE), it was made by making a leather hat and sewing onto it slices of boar tusks. Making such a helmet required hunting down and killing something like 40 boars for their tusks. This was pretty badass and served as a status symbol that entailed either you were able to personally slaughter scores of angry boars without being gored to death or had the right connections to those who could do so.
*'''Corinthian''': Most popular variety of ancient (800 BCE to 0) Greek Hoplite Helmet, made of bronze, a single piece affair with built in cheek guards and nose guard (known as a nasal). Often had a horse hair/plumed crest.
*'''Galea''': The Helmet worn by Roman legionaries, made out of several pieces of bronze or steel. Had cheek guards on hinges and a back guard to protect the neck. Came with a detachable horse hair/plumed chrest for special occasions. Unlike most helmets of it's time it does not cover ears, because being able to hear orders is actually more important, especially in Roman maniple formation, where coordination was EVERYTHING. Being practical SOB's, Romans even added special hook to fix the helmet on the soldiers belt when on the march, because marching all day long with ''heavy'' chunk of metal on your head is usually a bad idea, unless your neck is as thick as normal man's hip, and keeping your helmet on the supply cart is an even worse idea, unless you don't expect ambushes (and good soldiers on the march should ''always'' expect ambushes).
*'''Steel Masks''': a variety of these were used alongside conventional helmets to protect the face by a variety of cultures.
*'''Late Roman Ridge''': A transition to the medieval Spangenhelm and Nasal helm, this was adopted towards the end of the Roman Empire, and kept around by the Byzantines and Subroman Brits.
<gallery>
Image:Boar's Tusk Helmet.jpg|Boar's Tusk Helmet
IMAge:Corinthian Helmet.jpg| Corinthian Helmet
Image:CorinthianPlume.jpg| Corinthian Helmet with decorative plume
Image:Centurion Galea.jpg|Imperial Galea with Centurion's plume
Image:Late Roman Ridge.jpg| Late Roman Ridge helmet
</gallery>

===Middle Ages & Renaissance===
*'''Spangenhelm''': A dark age (5th to 9th century) helmet made of bits of iron forged riveted onto a frame. An easier form to forge than an iron bowl for unskilled smiths. Sometimes had a nasal or cheek guards attached. The Sassanian version draped chainmail from the helm down to the chest, leaving only slits for the eyes. Viking helmets were a type of spanghelm that featured an eye guard. They didn't have horns, though.
*'''Nasal helm''': Basically a Spangenhelm, but made from one solid piece of metal, and it always had a nasal guard. This was the iconic helmet of the Normans and early Crusaders.
*'''Cervelliere''': A dark age/medieval helmet composed of a single steel dome. Became more common as armorers got better at their trade. It might come with a nasal guard.
*'''Kettle Hat''': A steel dome with a wide brim around it, sometimes with a nasal. A common helmet for common soldiers in the late middle ages as it offered a good deal of protection against arrows and other projectiles while allowing good visibility. While not ideal for a ground battle since the entire head below the scalp was exposed, it was excellent in sieges when most attacks were coming from above.
*'''Maille Coif''': To better protect people's heads, they often wore hoods made of [[mail|chainmail]]. Often, though not always in conjunction with a more conventional helmet, or else the mail attached to the bottom of the helmet to act as a faceguard called an aventail. This practice was common across Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
*'''Enclosed Helm''': Predecessor to the great helm, the enclosed helm was basically a metal hat with a faceguard attached to the front. The great helm added neck protection and made the helmet into one solid piece.
*'''Great helm''': A steel bucket with eyeholes wore by [[knight]]s. They came in two varieties: Flat-topped, and conical. The flat-topped versions came first, but it was discovered that making the top conical helped to glance sword-strikes away from the head. Why it was not conical from the beginning is a mystery, as the nasal helm was conical so they should have been aware of its advantages.
*'''Barbute''' Corinthian 2, Electric Boogaloo! Basically a Corinthian Helmet made of steel minus the crest. Additionally, due to visors already being commonplace when it was used, it was likely to have a visor on it unlike the Corinthian.
*'''Sallet''': A type of steel helmet from the late middle ages. It's main component covered cheeks and had a lock neckguard in the back. To protect the face it would have a face guard bolted on, which could be raised or lowered. One good thing about the visor was that it only covered the upper half of the face, meaning that it could be removed and that the face would still be protected by the falling buffe that protected the lower half of the face. Can occasionally be seen on [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)| Empire Greatswords]] when they aren't sticking with the floppy [[hat]]s.
*'''Bascinet''': A conical helmet with the point facing towards the back of the head. Oftentimes combined with a detachable face guard that was likewise conical, commonly called the "pig's snout." However, the bascinet could be worn without the face guard.
*'''Armet''': Another type of full head helmet worn in the late middle ages. It came with three parts, a main component covering the back, a visor and a chinplate. Thus allowing full head protection while being much easier to move about than a clumsy great helm. You might recall the basic look of this helmet from the [[Grey Knights]].
*'''Cabasset''': A halfway point between the Kettle hat and the Morion, the Cabasset offered the protection of a rim with the glancing surface of a conical top.
*'''Morion''': A type of helmet similar to a Kettle hat, but with a top part which came to a ridge and dipped down on the sides to cover the ears. Often morions would have cheek guards. Most commonly associated with Conquistadors.
*'''Frog-Mouth''': As the name implies, these-oddly shaped helmets look like a frog's mouth. These helmets were basically made for one purpose, that being jousting. That's because they would be impractical for combat, as the helmet had very little visibility and a complete lack of neck articulation, its sole purpose was to protect the head from lances.
*'''Lobster Pot''': Also called the zischägge, it's a helmet from the Renaissance period and age of enlightenment composed of a steel dome with a visor, cheek guards and a back guard made of overlapping steel plates riveted together (looking like a lobster tail). They usually came with a nasal or a faceguard of some sort. These helmets were used by both cavalry and infantry, and are most commonly associated with the Winged Hussars and the New Model Army.
*'''Burgonet''': Another Renaissance cavalry helmet, the Burgonet features a comb and cheek guards like the Morion, with an optional faceguard as well. The Burgonet was basically the standard European cavalry helmet from the Thirty Years War up through the Napoleonic Wars. The French Cuirassier helmets used up until WW1 were essentially just cheekless Burgonets.
*'''Kabuto''': Japanese [[Samurai]] helmets, have a dome part as well as a back made of laminar protecting the neck and cheeks. For facial protection they had a mempo, a stylized mask.
*'''Jingasa''': Japanese Ashigaru Helmet, these were usually cone shaped (though latter ones bore a resemblance to Morions and kettle hats) and made of steel or lacquered wood.
<gallery>
Spangenhelm.JPG| Frankish Spangenhelm
Image:Viking Helmet.jpg|Viking Helmet, a type of spangenhelm. Note the lack of horns.
Image:Nasal Helm.png| Nasal helm
Image:Norman Italian.jpg|Norman-Italian, a variant of the Nasal helm
Image:Cervelliere.gif| A Cervelliere
Image:Kettle Hat.jpg| Kettle hat
Image:Mail Coif.jpg| A Mail Coif
Image:Enclosed Helm.jpg|Enclosed Helm
Image:Great Helm.png| Great helm, flat-top style
Image:Sugarloaf Great Helm.jpg| Great helm, Sugarloaf style
Image:Barbute T-shape.JPG| T-shaped Barbute
Image:Barbute Y-shape.jpg| Y-shaped Barbute
Image:Sallet.jpg|A sallet
Image:Bascinet Hounskull.jpg| Bascinet with "Hounskull" visor
Image:Armet.jpg| An Armet
Image:Cabasset.jpg| A Cabasset
Image:Morion.jpg| A Morion
Image:Frog-mouth.jpg| Frog-mouth helm
Image:Lobster pot.jpg|Lobster-pot helmet
Image:Burgonet.png|A Burgonet
Image:Kabuto.jpg|A Kabuto
Image:Jingasa.JPG| A Jingasa
</gallery>

===Modern===
*'''Pith Helmet''': These are the iconic helmets of British soldiers of the Victorian era, as well as stereotypical explorers (and USPS employees) up to the present. Pith helmets were pith/cork domes covered in cloth, meant more for protection from heat in tropical climates (in addition to the shade, they could be soaked in water to provide evaporative cooling) than enemy attack, though lighter hats like the panama hat are preferred for this purpose nowadays. Still, many would reinforce the helmet with a band of cloth to help absorb sword strikes to the head. It was often joked that an Englishman could not survive outside their native country without a pith helmet.
*'''Pickelhaube''': Also known as that one German helmet with the big, central ceremonial spike pointing straight up. Even in its day it was widely mocked, and it took a World War for the Germans to realize that it was in fact a terrible design for a helmet (the thing wasn't even metal, it was boiled leather), when it was replaced by the Stalhelm. When actually worn in the field the Pickelhaube did, at least, have a drab fabric covering put over the shiny spike to make it slightly less obtrusive. British snipers prided themselves in de-spiking them at 300 yards. In less-well researched media, the Pickelhaube and the Stahlhelm are sometimes conflated, resulting in the ahistorical absurdity of an otherwise strictly-utilitarian steel helmet with a completely useless ornament stuck incongruously on top.
*'''Adrian Helmet''': Helmets fell out of fashion starting around the 18th century as they were often not much use against firearms and were deemed to be dead weight while they were also believed to kill offensive fighting spirit (space marines approve of this message, though in truth armor tends to have the opposite effect by making the wearer overconfident). This changed during the Great War, artillery shells would splinter into fragments when they exploded. These fragments came to account for huge casualties in the trenches but could be stopped by a simple steel helmet. The French found this out first and in 1915 first made the Adrian Helmet. It was easily made out of stamped steel in very large numbers and reduced shrapnel casualties significantly. It had a brim which was more prominent in the front. Several other countries also copied them.
*'''Brodie Helmet''': The British thought the French were onto a good idea with their Adrian helmets and designed their own. The Brodie Helmets were based off Kettle Hats and is wide enough that it offers some protection to the shoulders as well.. Used by troops across the British Empire during both world wars and by US troops during the Great War.
**Both the Brodie and Adrian helmet look a little weird to modern eyes because there designed to protect from shrapnel from above, which considering the nature of trench warfare makes the designs make more sense. They're still considered poorly designed for wearing.
*'''Stahlhelm''':The Germans also thought the French were onto a good idea with their Adrian helmets and designed their own. The Stahlhelm was based off the Sallet. It is considered to be the best helmet of that time period as it protected the neck and ears. In fact, it was so good that even the Chinese were buying them like a drug-filled hooker (<strike>Which gave an unfortunate confusion on who is the Chinese and Germans during WW2</strike> They fought on two different continents, it would've been pretty easy to figure out). It would later became commonly associated with the [[Nazi]]s. The basic cut however would become the basis for all modern helmets after WW2, especially since it was conductive to including ear protection/coms headset under it.
*'''M1 Helmet''': The US decided that the Brodie Helmet did not quite cut the mustard, so they designed their own helmet for use during WWII. It was thicker and bent down in the back and had less of a brim. Would be the basis for several early Cold War helmets on both sides of the Iron Curtain, many even meant to survive bullets, but the stahlhelm style eventually won out.
*'''Modern Combat Helmet''': Modern Combat Helmets like the British Mk-7 or the Advanced Combat Helmet (ACH) are made of layers of metal, fiberglass, ceramics and ballistic textiles, often with a cloth covering for camouflage purposes. Helmets can also be outfitted with loads of accessories, from helmet-mounted night-vision goggles, to cameras, and so forth. As of current, the ACH is being somewhat replaced by the Enhanced Combat Helmet, with has 35%+ superior protection over it. Ceradyne is the producer of the ECH, as well as several other defensive gear such as the E-SAPI protective plates the US military uses.
** Perhaps the most important upgrade these brought is the suspension system. Rather than be in direct contact with the head, the helmet was now suspended over the head. Equally important is the strips which go behind the head and also over the chin like a cup instead of under it. This makes it much more likely to stay on and stay attached. Supposedly old Japanese armor had this style of chin strap, but evidence is shaky.
*'''Safety Helmet''': basic helmets of plastic and steel made to protect the user from occupational hazards. Generally not for ballistic protection unless specified, but as many a rioter/protestor can tell you, better then nothing especially against non-ballistic trauma. Some plastic ones intended for use outdoors incorporate a UV-exposure indicator, as prolonged exposure to sunlight can eventually make them become brittle and ineffective.

<gallery>
Image:Pith Helmet.jpg|Pith Helmet
Image:Pickelhaube.jpg|A Pickelhaube worn on the head of [[Tzeentch|Otto von Bismarck]], though in this particular case the Pickelhaube in question is atypically made of metal.
Image:Adrian_Helmet.jpg|An Adrian Helmet, the Helmet that made helmets cool again
Image:Brodie Helmet.jpg|Brodie Helmet
image:Stalhelm.jpg| The Stahlhelm, technically a WWI helmet but made famous by Nazi Germany
Image:M1helmet.jpg|M1 helmet
Image:PASGT Helmet.jpg| PASGT helmet, a modern helmet with many derivatives
Image:US Marine ECH Helmet.jpg| Enhanced Combat Helmet (ECH), derivative of a line of combat helmets and ultimately related to the PASGT in design
</gallery>

== Helmets and Faces ==

[[Image:Imperial_Stormtroopers.jpg|thumb|300px|left|[[Star Wars|Imperial Stormtroopers]] have full body armor, including helmets which conceal their faces. This tells the audience that it is alright for our heroes to gun them down ''en masse''.]]

Helmets are the most common type of combat armor employed in History and it's easy to see why. Helmets protect your brain, your most important organ, from damage. Some also protect some combination of the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, all of which are nearly as vital. When compared to a breastplate or other such article of torso armor, helmets are fairly easy and inexpensive to make, while being easy and unobtrusive to wear. If you had to have just one bit of armor, you got a helmet. Helmets came in many shapes and sizes. Even a re-purposed cooking pot will do in a pinch.

Covering as much of the head as possible often improved a helmet's performance in a purely functional-as-armor sense. This did come with some downsides; if your entire head is sheathed in vision-obstructing, hearing-distorting, badly-ventilated metal with a few small holes to look and breathe out of, you clearly have some disadvantages over a fellow wearing one of its skimpier but less-obstructive counterparts (this is why visors were eventually used for medieval warriors, who would lift their visors while under ranged attack and lift them to be able to see better as needed), which is why most modern militaries eschew them. Never-the-less, full head helmets have been used by a wide variety of cultures all over the world, and they were much more valuable in the ages of medieval cavalry when the horse was doing the stamina-draining grunt work anyway.

However, for visual fiction, full-face helmets can be problematic as they hide the faces of the character and as such, limit what emotions and features can be shown to the audience, as well as concealing his/her identity and making them less relatable, ironically serving the opposite function of all other varieties of [[hats]]. For this reason, full-head helmets are usually reserved for faceless enemies employed by the bad guys to be killed with a minimum of audience empathy, while heroes wear helmets which leave their faces exposed, or simply go helmetless into combat situations. The most common exceptions to this rule are characters whose identities are meant to be concealed from the audience. Generally, this means that the wearer is either another important character pretending to be someone else, who won't speak so no one knows who they are until the plot says so, or female, so she can prove her martial skills to military leaders and higher ups who hold to [[-4 Str|pre-modern prejudices about gender]] and shock them with a surprise revelation when she removes it. You can also occasionally see a few characters whose face is effectively the helmet and never take it off (or at least are never seen doing so).

Note in particular that the less face-covering the helmet, the more likely a named or speaking character will be shown properly using one. Luckily for characters in more modern settings, full-face helmets are out of style around battlefields everywhere these days and characters' faces can be seen while also being as logically well-protected for combat by a helmet as one would expect of someone going into a battle.

[[Category: History]]

[[Category: Weapons]]

[[Category: Medieval Weaponry]]

[[Category: Armour]]

{{MedievalWeaponry}}