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Dungeon Meshi

2016-11-17T21:38:13Z

2604:6000:1407:8035:523:25BE:26DA:D35F: /* Laius Party */

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[[File:Dungeonmeshi_01.jpg|400px|thumb|right|Soup's on.]]
''Dungeon Meshi'' (subtitled "Delicious in Dungeon" in Engrish) is a [[Manga|Japanese mango]] about a group of [[murderhobo]]s in a typical fantasy setting with an atypical but innovative premise: if your party is stuck underground and low on food, why not eat all those monsters you've been fighting? The story explores one such party learning dungeon crawler cuisine and bumbling their way through their quests.

==Characters==
===Laius Party===
*Laius - The human [[Fighter]] of the group. He's always had a secret obsession with monstrous biology, and is the first to suggest that they try cooking monsters when they run out of money to buy food.
*Marcille - The elven [[Wizard]] specializing in black magic. She's the most reluctant to try eating monsters, even after several of the dishes they try turn out quite well. Laius and Senshi's obsessions disturb her.
*Senshi - A mysterious [[dwarf]] who joins the group after discovering their interest in monster cuisine. He's been cooking monsters for 10 years and knows all the best preparations and nutritional value of each monster they come across. He turned his mithril family heirloom weapons into a pair of woks and carries most of the cooking equipment.
*Chilchack - The group's halfling [[Thief]]. He's mostly there to pick locks and make money. Something of an only sane man. He hates mimics; as the one to open treasure chests, he's the one who usually gets killed by them.
*Farlyn - Laius' younger sister. As a child she showed a natural affinity for communicating with and banishing restless spirits. Eventually, she went to magic school, specializing in healing and purification magic and meeting Marcille. The first arc of the series chronicles their quest to rescue her from the belly of a red dragon. While she's now back, it seems resurrecting yourself using dragon meat has had some unintended consequences...

===Gnome Party===
===Scrub Party===

==Plot==
After getting his sister devoured by a dragon and losing all their supplies in a failed dungeon raid, Laius and his party are determined to save his sister before she gets digested. Completely broke and having to resort to eating monsters as food, they meet a dwarf who will introduce them to the world of dungeon meshi - delicious cuisines made from ingredients such as the flesh of giant bats, walking mushroom, or even screaming mandrakes.

BEWARE!: This Manga could make you hungry.

==See Also==
* [http://bato.to/comic/_/comics/dungeon-meshi-r13871 The Batoto link to read the comic.]
[[Category:Weeaboo]]

Firearm

2016-11-17T16:58:36Z

2604:6000:1407:8035:523:25BE:26DA:D35F: /* Types of firearms */

[[image:Teppo.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Some Tanegashima matchlocks]]
About twelve hundred years ago in [[China]], some people figured out that certain chemicals mixed together (such as potassium nitrate, carbon, and sulphur) exploded when brought to spark, which became known as "black powder." After some experimentation, they discovered that a tube sealed off at one end could be used to focus said explosion to propel an object at high speeds. After a few centuries of refinement, they managed to take that mechanical principle and apply it as a weapon of warfare which changed the game: the arquebus. Comparatively cheap, easy to make, easy to learn to use, and capable of penetrating all but the heaviest armor, this marked a transition away from close quarters to ranged warfare.

In modern times, firearms are the staple weapons of any nation. Speculative fiction showcases weapons that doesn't even fire solid projectiles, like [[lasgun|lasers]].

From an engineering standpoint, firearms had a big difference from previous weapons in that they don't require the user's muscle power to work. Swords, maces, and axes are swung, spears are thrust, and bowstrings need to be drawn. Even a crossbow works by storing muscle power in the bow's tension until it's released. The energy required to accelerate a firearm's projectile comes from explosive propellants; all the user needs to do is to hold the weapon, aim and set off said explosive charge. The significance of this is illustrated in the American Proverb "God made man, Sam Colt (the inventor of the first practical revolver) made them equal": that having a reliable repeating gun means that your simple brute physical strength does not mean as much in a fight as it would in a bare knuckle brawl or a swordfight (either defensively or offensively).

The firearm's bigger bro is the [[Cannon]] and its cousin is the [[Rocket]].

==A Brief History of Firearms==
[[image:Firelance.jpg‎|thumb|150px|left|The Firelance, the Chinese invention that started this all]]
'''1000s to 1200s:''' The Chinese realize they can make barbarians shit their pants by shooting hollowed arrows packed with powder and bamboo tubes filled with powder and pebbles at them. Bamboo gradually gives way to cast iron and bronze.

'''1300s:''' Various gunpowder weapons begin to proliferate westward along the Silk Road, aided by the [[Mongols]]. Crude versions of hand cannons, grenades, rockets, and flamethrowers all see use. Despite considerable psychological effect and good armor penetration, most of these weapons are only marginally more likely to kill the target than the user and had a range of only twenty or so meters. As such, their use is not widespread. For the most part, these weapons were used by skirmishers. The fact that they were mostly used by low class soldiers meant that the smiths making them were generally not the most skilled artisans which did little to improve quality even given the limitations of the day. Even so, the designs and methods of manufacture were gradually refined and improved by various early gunsmiths through trial and error.

'''1400s''': Hand cannons see continued and expanded use. Bit by bit from the crude handgonnes of previous centuries, the first "true" firearms evolve with the gradual development of the matchlock, taking on the basic shape of lock, stock, trigger, and barrel (which is where we get the saying from). By clamping a lighted wick into a flashpan via a trigger, the shooter is able to aim ''and'' fire at the same time, making him markedly less likely to blow his own jimmies off. Despite advances, the matchlock was unwieldy, unreliable, and generally inferior to a good bowman. The issue of course is that only England (in Europe) HAD good bowmen; bowmen were the scum of the army everywhere else. This didn't stop some inventive commanders from seeing their potential, particularly with poorly trained conscript soldiers. [[Weeaboo|Some forces]] made a go of it by carrying two or three guns at a time and just throwing the spent ones away like a really shitty Matrix movie. Note: while we use a "weeaboo" hyperlink up there, it's worth remembering that troops like cuirassiers and even pirates did the same thing, they just did not exist by the 1400's, having more then one gun was the only way to have any real rate of fire before breechloaders existed.

'''1500s:''' Guns continue to evolve with the invention of spring-loaded firing mechanisms. The wheel-lock spins a steel plate against sulfide rocks to produce sparks (think cigarette lighters), which ignites powder a flash pan. This was revolutionary, allowing soldiers to prime their weapon in a matter of seconds instead of fucking around with a lit wick, and allowed calvary to use guns for the first time while on horseback, giving rise to the cuirassiers. It also means that for the first time, guns weren't completely fucked in the rain, just mostly fucked. They also cost a lot to make and were still not completely reliable, so most people stuck with matchlocks. Powder formulas had improved considerably, including the development of the more powerful, stable, and moisture-resistant corned powder made by wetting raw gunpowder, forming it into cakes, crushing them, and sieving them for size. Japan was particularly notable in the history of firearms for their heavy transition from blades to guns after discovering the novelty of matchlock guns, more so that any country during that time. In fact, by the end of the 1500s, they had more trained arquebusiers in their armies and produced more matchlocks than any other country to date during that period.

A general note of terminology: 'arquebus' and 'musket' are both used to describe firearms from this time and they are often used interchangeably. But if you want to be really technical in this period an Arquebus is a regular two handed matchlock firearm while a musket is a larger heavier gun firing a large projectiles, sometimes up to an inch in diameter. Latter (about 1700 onward) musket would refer to any muzzleloading long barreled handheld firearm used for mainly shooting solid shots. This is not too much of a big deal and is nothing to get mad about, but it is worth noting.

[[image:FlintlockMechanism.jpg‎|thumb|200px|right|The flintlock mechanism. Now you did not need to light some string and put it into a serpentine before firing]]
'''1600s''' The wheellock is refined into the simpler and more reliable flintlock, though it would take some time to supersede the matchlock. Muzzle loading is simplified with the creation of paper cartridges, essentially the pre-measured cake mix of murder. Some German dudes came up with the idea of cutting spirals into the barrel, which they called "rifling," to spin-stabilize the bullet so that they wouldn't have to walk up right next to their targets to hit them, but this required a barrel tighter than a nun's cunt, a hammer to ram the ball in, and grooved bullets made for the gun so it could fit the rifling of the gun like the cap to a soda bottle. To put all that into perspective: well trained musketeers could fire three to four shots a minute, while a rifleman could only manage one shot every minute.

'''1700s''': The French invent the bayonet, allowing their troops to be [[choppa|choppy]] while they were [[dakka|shooty]]. This is the point where gun infantry tactics become the dominant (though still not only) form of fighting, when guns go from one a few common infantry weapons to the primary weapon used by most infantry. Formations of musketeers go from big square blocks to lines two or three ranks thick to put enough bullets in the enemy's ranks as quickly as possible.
[[image:Chassepot.jpg‎|thumb|200px|left|The mechanism of a French chassepot, an early bolt action rifle, as well as its paper cartridge]]

'''1800s''': Pretty much everything that makes up a modern firearm is invented here. Some fool came up with an explosive that would go off if you slam a hammer into it, which led to the first explosive primers. This basically involves putting explosives in ur explosives to explode your explosives. Cartridges that contain a primer, propellant, and slug, similar to modern-day bullets, are developed. By this time, wars were largely fought using firearms rather than melee weapons, though also by this time firearms were also melee weapons. in the early 1800 the bayonet charge was still an both accepted and useful tactic.

By the late 1800 inventors had finally gotten the technology to contain the force of the gun powder explosion with a tight seal and do so cheaply. Experiments that had been done earlier like the Puckle gun (1718), Ferguson rifle (1776), and even the bizarre 1780 Girandoni Air Rifle, [http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Steampunk which was an air gun with a 20 round magazine], all failed to create breech loading rifles cheaply. See, despite that it was well known that that slotting in bullets from the rear and using a mechanism to load it into the chamber is much simpler than spending about half a minute to ram it down a long barrel, the technology was just not there as without cheap steel (cheap is important for hand guns you are going to mass-produce), getting iron to contain the explosion with out deforming and leaking gas, thus weakening the shot, was a nightmare. The Industrial Revolution, among other things, gave birth to the concept of "breach-loading" and later "magazines" and simpler mechanized feeding systems like tubes, slides, cylinders, and bolt-actions. The likes of pump-action shotguns, bolt-action rifles, and lever-action rifles, and revolver and semi-automatic pistols, are developed and/or developed upon, giving a glimpse on how weapons in the future would function. Near the end of the decade, some French guys worked out that they could both improve firepower and keep their guns considerably cleaner by replacing black powder with nitrocellulose, the first of many "smokeless powders."

Just as important as the new designs that came about during this period were the new methods of production. People like Eli Whitney worked out devices such as milling machines, which allowed for the quick production of finely tuned parts which were so close in size that you could take one bit off one gun, stick it on another from the same line, and it would work just as fine. Breech loading and repeating firearms had existed for centuries beforehand, but were not cost effective to mass produce until the Industrial Revolution.
[[image:Lee-Enfield Rifle.jpg|thumb|200px|right|A British Lee-Enfield Bolt Action Repeating rifle]]
This is also the time where the first "automatic" guns are being invented and put into production. The word "automatic" is in quotes because these early machine guns were not self reciprocating; they did not load and fire themselves and were instead manually powered. The most famous (and successful) of these weapons is the Gatling gun, which saw limited action in the American Civil War, but became much more widely used the world over in subsequent wars. But while it was the most famous, the Gatling was not the only manual machine gun developed; dozens of different types were produced during the US Civil War alone on both sides, but because these guns tended to be mounted on cannon carriages, they were treated like cannons, not the close support weapon machines guns are, so it took some time for them to hit their stride.

'''1900-early 1930s''': The heyday of guns because of the advent of WW1. The idea of bolt-action rifles are popularized, along with semi-automatic and fully-automatic weapons. Bolt-action rifles meant that riflemen no longer had to be confined to shooting one round at a time before needing to reload as they could now load individual clips that contained 5-10 rounds a piece. Machine guns are now becoming more and more popular in the battlefields, drastically changing the way infantry would maneuver the battlefield as a single MG emplacement can effectively cripple platoons with the right positioning. Submachine guns, the first automatic infantry weapon, are developed by the German Empire and issued to their stormtroopers, giving the rest of the world an idea of the wonders of a lightweight fully-automatic weapon that could easily be used by infantrymen, which was previously restricted to crew-served heavy machine guns.

On the subject of the nachine guns, if there was ever a weapon that represented this part of history it would be the heavy machine gun. to go back to an early quote "God made man, Sam Colt made them equal and John browning (designer of a large number of machine guns including the m2 .50 cal or 12.7mm) made them civilized. We talked about the hand powered machine guns above, and while good when used correctly, this weapons have their issues. In order to use most of them, you had to be standing up to turn the crank and sustained fire was tiring, but the hand cranked guns had one major advantage: the most successful of the hand-cranked guns, like the Gatling or Gardner, had multiple barrels meaning you can fire them with little or no need to stop to let the barrels cool down. At the dawn of the 20th century, this is what the early machine guns had to be compared to when European generals went window shopping. The solution was water-cooling, which allowed machine guns to fire for countless hours with little or no failures, but at the cost of weight rendering them truly static, though highly effective, weapons. If you could point to two developments that caused the First World War's trench warfare, you can point to water-cooled machine guns, and barbed wire.

'''late 1930s-1940s''': At the start of World War II, all of the powers involved, France, England, Germany, and Russia, were armed with bolt action weapons. Over the course of the war, automatic and semi-automatic rifles started to become more common; however only the Americans completely phased out bolt-action rifles for standard infantry by the time of the war. Submachine guns are now becoming more popular with various armies around the world, making it the staple lightweight automatic weapon for infantry troops, totally re-defining urban combat due to the weapon's great effectiveness in close combat. Nazi Germany invents the ''Sturmgewehr 44'', the first widely produced assault rifle (the Fedorov Avtomat was the first to be put into service, introduced in 1915, but production was limited due to costs). This weapon would later become the template for modern assault rifles used by the world over.
[[image:QBZ-95.jpg|thumb|200px|left|A QBZ-95 Assault Rifle, the current service rifle of the People's Republic of China, note bullpup configuration (the magazine feeds behind the trigger), thus saving space]]
'''1950s-1990s''': After World War II, the US Army performed a study and determined that it took 20,000 bullets to confirm one enemy casualty; most of those rounds would miss or be spent suppressing an enemy. With numbers like that, people now realized the power of a fully-automatic rifle since they allow you to fire more and more rounds and increase your chance of hitting as compared to a bolt action rifle. As such, assault rifles become more and more common with armed forces of the world and are extensively developed upon, largely, if not completely, phasing out the old bolt-action and semi-automatic rifles used back in WW2. Iconic assault rifles such as the AK-47, M14, and M16A1 are created and show the world the power of an automatic rifle through the the numerous wars going on during the 1960s-70s, such as the Communist wars in Korea and Vietnam, along with the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, to name a few.

'''2000s''': With the invention of more advanced materials such as plastics and carbon-fibre, along with numerous technological advancements of the modern world, firearms become more deadly than they were ever before. Fine-tuning how every aspect of how a firearm would work has allowed numerous countries to develop better and efficient ways on how to kill on a scale unseen since the Europeans developed the musket.

Many countries around the world are now looking for new ways to phase-out combustion-based firearms as a whole, and are looking for ways to make what were once sci-fi-only weapons, such as [[lasgun|laser]], [[plasma]], and [[gauss]] guns, a reality. While met with some degree of success, nobody (as far as we know, anyway) has found a way yet for these weapons to be man-portable that a single soldier could carry these into combat or be affordable to an extent that it would be more feasible to make these instead of the traditional slugthrowers. There is also the problem that if you get a projectile going fast enough, it will just over-penetrate and go though a target, doing little actual damage as compared to our modern bullets that hit, create a temporary cavity the size of a dinner plate, then tumble going though the target sideways. So even if such projects were successful, there is a strong point to be made that, as least as far as infantry weapons are concerned, chemical slug throwers will remain both cost effective and lethal enough that such projects are dead ends.

==Types of firearms==
Having been around for well over 1500 years there have been many types of firearms over the course of time. Humans are, if anything, very inventive when it comes to coming up with new and interesting ways to kill each other. A rough list are:

*Handgun - Also called "pistols", handguns are small-sized firearms that can be comfortably fired in one hand. Akin to the dagger; handguns are mainly used for close defense and as a sidearm. Modern pistol calibers are commonly between 9 and 11mm.
**Machine pistol - A machine pistol is a pistol that can fire on full auto. While they're commonly thrown into that category; MPs are not submachine guns due to their size and use.

*Shotgun - Shotguns are smoothbore weapons, designed to fire either shot (multiple steel pellets) or slugs (a single, heavy projectile), although modern times have included other types of ammunition. The ability to fire multiple types of ammunition without modification is one of the main advantages to using a shotgun, converting an anti-infantry weapon into a door-breaching tool, a mini-flamethrower, or a non-lethal weapon. The vast majority of shotguns are pump-action or breech-loading, though military shotguns can come in semi-automatic, or very rarely, fully-automatic configurations.

*Rifle - Rifles were originally shoulder-fired weapons that had their barrels "rifled" to increase precision, which was an act by putting spiral grooves into the barrel to give the round more momentum. However, because most modern firearms now use rifling to improve ballistics; a shoulder-fired long weapon is usually classed as a rifle.
**Assault Rifle - Assault rifles are a term given to any rifle that can be fired on full-auto and shoot intermediate-caliber rounds, typically in the 5mm range (or a shortened 7mm round if you're from the Eastern bloc).
**Battle Rifle - Basically a bigger assault rifle; battle Rifles are bigger automatic rifles designed to fire high-caliber rounds, typically in the 7mm range.
**Carbine - Carbines are rifles with their barrels made shorter and the overall design is usually made more compact in comparison. These are typically given to units who need to, or only engage the enemy at close combat, like commandos, assault teams, or other specialist units, or given to units who are not expected to fight on the front but need a compact but decent weapon to defend themselves if the need arises, like pilots or vehicle crews.
**Micro Assault Rifle - Even smaller than carbines; these are ultracompact rifles designed when someone needs a highly portable but powerful weapon. A MAR is basically a PDW that shoots rifle rounds.
**Sniper Rifle - A sniper rifle is a special precision rifle, specifically designed to engage targets at extreme range with lethal efficiency. Many sniper rifles use standard 7mm rounds, but high-performance rifles will use magnum (extra-power) rounds or 12mm rounds for extra range and stopping power.
**Designated Marksman Rifle - A sort of compromise between battle rifles and sniper rifles, DMRs are precision weapons meant to be used by frontline infantry to accurately engage distant targets. This is in contrast to snipers, who are usually well away from the front and pick off targets from a relatively safer and concealed position.
**Recoiless Rifle - Not a conventional rifle in the sense; a recoiless rifle is an anti-tank weapon. This weapon uses a rifled bore to aid in the momentum of its projectile, allowing it to snipe armored vehicles (and unlucky infantry) with lethal precision.

*Submachine nun - An SMG is a fully automatic weapon that fires pistol cartridges, instead of the larger rifle cartridges. One of the first true fully automatic infantry weapons outside of the machine gun; the weapon fulfills a similar role of the carbine in that its a weapon made for infiltrators and assault units, as its compact size and power makes it a close-rang powerhouse.
**Personal Defense Weapon - A PDW is a bit of a mix of a carbine and an SMG, firing specialized cartridges with rifle-like characteristics (usually in the 4-5mm range, shorter than a rifle cartridge but longer than a pistol cartridge) at the cost of additional weight. Its original role is as its name implies; a personal defense weapon for non frontline infantry, like artillery spotters, scouts, vehicle crews...etc. Back then, PDWs weren't necessarily automatic; a pistol with a longer barrel and stock could be classified as a PDW (This was done with the German C96 and Luger P07). These days, PDWs are commonly lumped into the same category as SMGs, as they now fulfill similar roles.

*Machine Gun - A machine gun is an large automatic weapon, typically fed from a magazine or a belt and meant to either be portable or fired from an emplacement (like a bipod or tripod). The main difference between MGs and the rest of the automatic weapon family is that an MG is a gun meant to be fired continuously as a support weapon; meaning that the machine gunner stays back to continually shoot at the enemy to keep them down (and occasionally kill those stupid enough to not get the message), while the rest of the squad advances. Machine guns are typically heavy, not only because of the volume of ammo they carry; but their parts are made of heavier materials so that the gun can withstand the punishing amounts of bullets it puts downrange (firing hundreds of rounds without pause can cause guns to overheat and malfunction, even catch fire or explode in the worst of scenarios.)
**Light Machine Gun - an LMG is a man-portable MG that fires the same intermediate rounds as assault rifles. They are intended to be almost as portable as a rifle and allow machine gunners to provide suppressing fire at the squad level. Some LMGs are usually magazine-fed rifles with heavier barrels and modified bolts, or else scaled-down MMGs.
**Medium Machine Gun - an MMG is a man-portable MG that fires the same full-power rounds as battle rifles. These tend to push the limit of what's practical for a man-portable weapon, and when deployed are usually fired from a stationary position either on a bipod or tripod due to the recoil they generate.
**Heavy Machine Gun - HMGs fire large caliber rounds (like the famous .50 cal). Unlike the other two; HMGs are exclusively meant to be fired from emplacements like a tripod due to their large size and weight, which makes them impossible to fire on the move, unlike the light and medium machine guns. HMGs are powerful enough to penetrate light armor, making them a formidable weapon.
**Rotary Machine Gun - Originally known as the "Gatling gun", man's first known attempt to have enough dakka; a rotary machine gun is an automatic weapon that uses revolving barrels that interchange every time the gun fires off a round. The kicker to this is that it allows the gun to shoot with little threat of the barrels wearing out as they interchange between shots; giving them a small window to cool off before firing again. The end result is a gun capable of firing over 3,000 rounds per minute without fail, or in a smaller scope; 50 rounds per second. Modern rotary guns are electrically powered to allow them to reach such insane speeds, and are given ammo drums that contain thousands of rounds to be able to sustain that amount of bullets being fired; so they're confined to static emplacements and vehicles (unlike what the media constantly portrays; these things are not even close to being man-portable without assistance from powered armor.)
**Chain gun - A chain gun is a machine gun that is fed using an electric motor. Instead of relying on the gasses from the bullet to work the action to cycle a new round; a machine automatically ejects and loads a new round in after firing a shot. Chain guns have the benefit of never jamming due to feeding failures, as even if the round is not discharged; the machine pops it out and loads a new one regardless. However, it is also not man-portable as it requires an electric motor to function, so it is only found on fixed emplacements or vehicles.

*Revolver: A revolving gun is any weapon that uses a revolving cylinder to chamber new rounds after every shot. While its commonly now relegated to pistols (a revolver typically meant a revolver pistol these days), the style is still used for shotguns (like the Armsel Striker) and grenade launchers (like the MM1-Hawk). Revolvers are still in use for two reasons: they jam less than semi-auto pistols, and they tend to be the only weapon that can handle magnum rounds.

*Multi-barreled: In the olden days, people wanted shootier guns, but things like magazines and self-loading weapons were still an alien idea during its time. So as an alternative; people took a breach/muzzle-loaded firearm, slapped one or more barrels onto it, and reworked the trigger so they can fire more shots before needing to reload. This resulted is some particularly wacky times for guns. To this day, the only multi-barrel weapon still commonly used is the double-barreled hunting shotgun.
===Actions===
"Action" refers to how ammunition is loaded into the weapon.

*Single-shot: The first and oldest of all; a single-shot weapon is when users manually load rounds into the chamber. This can be anything from loading a new round, cocking the weapon every shot, or pumping the action.
**Muzzle-loaded: The earliest form of how weapons were loaded; these meant you had to load a new round directly into the muzzle, which is where the bullets come out. In its earliest form; muzzle-loaded guns were complicated to arm; you had to fuck around with a wad, powder, and slug. In the heat of battle, you had to ram these down the barrel of your gun in correct order, light the wick, then aim before the gun goes off.
**Breach-loaded; An upgrade over muzzle-loading and developed shortly after cartridges were invented; breach loaders are where the bottom of the barrel can be unhinged so that you can load a new round into it. It is still a popular setup for multi-barreled shotguns.
**Bolt-action: This type of action is where you pull the charging handle of a weapon, every time you shoot so that the mechanism would chamber a new round. These were pretty popular in WW1 and continues to be used today for precision rifles.
**Lever-action: The cool kid of the single-action club; lever-action weapons are those where you have to use a lever to chamber a new round, which was usually mounted near the trigger. This type was made popular by Winchester during the frontier age of the Wild West and even more by Arnold Schwarzenegger when he used a lever-action rifle during Terminator 2.
**Pump-action: A pump action is where you had to pull the "pump" of the weapon to cycle a new round. This is the most common action used by shotguns.

*Semi-automatic: A semi-automatic weapon is any weapon that can fire after every trigger pull, with the user only needing to work the action after reloading a completely empty gun. Unlike single-shot weapons, it uses gasses expelled by the cartridge or recoil to power a mechanism that automatically chambers a new round after each shot. Most handguns and many rifles are semi-automatic.

*Fully-automatic: A fully-automatic weapon is any weapon that can fire automatically, so long as the trigger is depressed, rather than pulled each time like how semi-autos work. Automatic weapons tend to be banned for civilian use and are only available to military.

==Relations here==
Most fantasy writers tend to exclude firearms. There are a variety of reasons for this, such as:
*Most fantasy comes from [[Tolkien]], who, being a naturalist who largely despised industrialization, did not put guns in Middle-earth, although gunpowder does exist, used by the wizards (Gandalf's Fireworks and Saruman's Fires of Orthanc) and by the orcs.
*Most fantasy (whether copy-catting Tolkien or not) is based on medieval Europe. Depending on your definition of "medieval," Europe did ''technically'' have firearms towards the very end (crude and unreliable ones, but firearms nonetheless), but most authors base their fantasy on earlier medieval Europe.
*As in real life, firearms mean that vulgar, dirty, peasant conscripts can take down the author's Mary Sue noblemen [[knight]]s that trained ''so'' hard in the arts of swordsmanship and melee combat, though if the writer had any historical knowledge they would know that armor can be made "Proof" against bullets, which is partly what spurred the development of full-body plate mail to begin with.
All that being said, most fantasy authors are much more open to cannons, which became viable on the battlefield long before smaller firearms anyway.

Generally speaking, if a world has both the "stock" fantasy races and guns, there will a strict hierarchy of who uses them, from most to least likely:
*[[Dwarves]]: They almost always have the best, most plentiful guns. If only one race gets firearms, it's likely going to be them.
*[[Gnomes]]: As tinkerers, they're frequently on a different tech level from everyone else, including firearms.
*[[Human]]s: Unlike the other races, which are usually an all-or-nothing deal, different human nations have different likelihoods of having guns. Italian and east Asian analogues, as well as the "industrious" or "scientific" nations, are much more likely to have them. Your barbarians, guys keen on knights and chivalry, and the more conservative less so.
*[[Orc]]s: Orcs would probably love guns if they could actually build some. However, they're usually either incapable of building things or have a hard time organizing themselves to the point that large-scale firearm and powder production is possible. Even so, they could still obtain them them by other means such as fighting as mercenaries for guns and stealing them off the corpses of the fallen and similar. They are higher on the list if they are more like Tolkienian orcs, which can be fairly well organized and "delight in explosions" enough to manufacture their own gunpowder, if only for simple bombs.
*[[Elves]]: Being arrogant pricks, they see guns as crude, inaccurate, foul-smelling contraptions that are no substitute for a bow. However, they'll still use them when necessary, even if they don't like it. That said, elves also had a good reason to not use them, namely most firearms in a fantasy settling are arquebus-type single-shot smoothbore weapons, which are outranged by longbows. Longbows are even decent against most kinds of armor ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt ask the French]). The main advantage of firearms, even early ones, is ease of use and armor penetration though armor could be made that could stop a early handgun. The main problem with longbows is that it takes years to learn, which is not a problem for long-lived elves. Between a smoothbore handgun and a longbow, the bow is simply a better choice to an elf.
*Wood Elves and other Fey/Nature types: They'd rather die than use a firearm, even if the rest of the world has moved onto biplanes, bolt-action rifles, shell-firing cannons, and tanks. If this happens, this means they either have powerful magic (so the actual weapons used are unimportant), they are ''really really'' good shots with a bow, or they're about to die out.

Of course, sci-fi writers almost exclusively use firearms, seeing as how it's THE FUUUUUUTTTTTUUUUURRRREEEE. The exceptions are [[Warhammer 40,000]] and ''[[Dune]]'': although guns are the main combat implement in 40K, close combat is still alive and well, and most armies have at least one elite, close-combat unit wielding weapons that are distinctly not firearms; in ''Dune'', guns are pretty much dead as a weapon of war, as personal-scale force fields stop fast-moving matter (like bullets) from crossing them, but slower matter (like swung knives) can pass through, and if a lasgun blast touches the field, at least one end of the equation comes out "BOOM!!!". Most sci-fi universes do have close combat weapons on the scale we see in modern warfare, though, like in Mass Effect, where, as the Reaper forces (who are basically [[Necron]]s and [[Tyranids]] combined) invade the galaxy, people begin developing their Omnitools to snap-produce a white-hot blade of hard metal above the wearer's hand... And then there's the Krogan, who are too bloodthirsty and too large to properly take cover, so they headbutt things instead of using guns.

== Rules ==

Most fantasy RPGs deal with firearms the way they deal with lots of things that threaten their [[Medieval Stasis]]: terror, suspicion, and shitty rules. If you have the option of using a firearm in most games, it probably has one shot that's weaker than a bow, then takes an entire encounter to reload, and is illegal everywhere in-setting in case you didn't get the hint.

[[D&D#Basic_Dungeons_&_Dragons|BECMI]] Dungeons & Dragons doesn't have rules for firearms, but there were one or two adventure modules that incorporated a crash-landed spaceship, with weapons the players could loot. They were treated as magic wands and staves. A few issues of Dragon magazine offered rules for early cannons and hand cannons.

[[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] mentions guns in a tucked-away subsection on importing TSR's cowboys & indians game Boot Hill to AD&D (DMG, pg113). Revolver pistols and gatling guns would do as much damage as a longsword; shotguns as much damage as a two-handed claymore, a (thrown) stick of dynamite does 4x the damage of a short sword. The rules insist "...when gunpowder is brought into the fantasy world it becomes inert junk, ergo, no clever alchemist can duplicate it." To reinforce this concept, the ''Manual of the Planes'' included rules for factors of prime material planes, one of which determined if complex (read: setting destroying) chemical compositions like black powder would even work in said plane. If you have any knowledge of chemistry, you may cry now. Notably, [[Greyhawk]] had a [[Murlynd|god of firearms]], and his paladins were basically Wild West sheriffs.

[[Advanced_Dungeons_%26_Dragons#AD.26D_2nd_Edition|Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition]] included the arquebus in the Players Handbook, where they were depicted as slow, powerful and expensive (500 Gp!). They were also potentially dangerous to the user as the result of a bad roll. It was painfully stressed that the inclusion of firearms in the campaign was the call of the DM. Firearms were a bit more common in the [[Spelljammer]] setting. Moving away from the classic fantasy background, there was the historical campaign sourcebook ''A Mighty Fortress'' that introduced rules for firearms of the 16th and 17th centuries and the ''Masque of the Red Death'' setting for [[Ravenloft]] pushed everything into a gothic horror version of the 1890's.

[[Dungeons_&_Dragons_3rd_Edition|D&D third edition]] has a section on advanced technology (DMG, pp162-164) for Renaissance-era, 20th century, and futuristic weapons. The weapons are more powerful than what can be found among ranged weapons in the Player's Handbook, but also heavier and more expensive. You're better off with magic crossbows.

[[Pathfinder]] seems to do early firearms right: they have shorter range than bows without magical items, take longer to reload, have a chance to break or explode on a misfire, and use up more expensive ammunition, but they hit harder, have a ''terrifying'' 4x crit modifier, and ''use touch AC'' in the first range increment, effectively ignoring armor when fired close up. Probably the only things restricting their use so heavily are the stiff feat tax needed to make use of them and the fact that there's really only one major gun factory in the land, the Gunworks of the small nation of Alkenstar, and they keep most of their guns to themselves. A specialized class, the [[gunslinger]], is centered around the use of firearms.

[[Dragonmech]] has guns, sort of kinda, as well. Only instead of using gunpowder they use steam to propel the bullet like an air gun. they can only be fired once every other round as the pressure needs to build up. There Treated a bit like cross bows that do more damage and can shoot a little further.

[[Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition]] includes a section on firearms in the ''Dungeon Master's Guide''. They hark back to 2nd edition in terms of stats, fitting the general tone of the game, but aren't quite as punishing for a player to learn to use and make. And with the increased emphasis on houseruling and homebrewing, modding the crossbow expert feat to work for them seems a simple leap of logic. The "race builder" guide in the back even suggests changing around the dwarf weapon proficiencies to include them! Furthermore, if you want to get your [[Expedition to the Barrier Peaks]] on, it includes some futuristic guns as well, like lasers and disintegrators.

{{MedievalWeaponry}}

Officio Assassinorum

2016-11-17T16:30:38Z

2604:6000:1407:8035:523:25BE:26DA:D35F: /* Assassinorum: Execution Force */

[[File:Armyof4byIronShrineMaiden.jpg |200px|thumb|right|Dawwww.]]
''"Ask not for whom they seek, lest it be thyself."'' - Tactica Imperium on The Officio Assassinorum

When the shit hits the fan, these are the guys that get their hands dirty. It's all about the wetwork. This branch of the Imperium recruits, trains and commands [[Assassin|Assassins]], for more information on the individual Assassin types, please visit [[Assassin|this page]].

You can tell you don't mess with the Officio Assassinorium. Anyone, from the lowliest of workers to the [[High Lords of Terra]], at ANY moment, is open to either having their brains spilled on pavement by a sniper round, their spleen torn out by screaming Wry-man, or shanked by dear old mum for no apparent reason.

==History==
[[File:Nemesis_02.jpg|400px|thumb|left|If the [[Imperial Guard]] is the hammer and the [[Space Marines]] are the scalpel, the operatives of the Officio Assassinorum are the poisoned needle. The scary thing is that that daemon in the back probably isn't the deadliest thing in the picture.]]
The '''Officio Assassinorum''' was founded at the beginning of the [[Great Crusade]] as a department for holding any up-and-coming warlords or heretical leaders accountable for their actions. And by "accountable" we mean "disposed of." And by "disposed of" we mean "killed so hard that they will die to death." Originally such work was performed by the [[Alpha Legion]], although like much of those bastards' history it's hard to be sure. Formed by [[Malcador the Sigillite]] and the six masters of the Clades (the future temples), it was founded in extreme secrecy in an attempt to keep it out of the [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Emperor]]'s knowledge and maintain his purity (a concept the Big E always found funny). It's even more amusing that they thought they could hide something from someone capable of basically hearing the thoughts of every human at once. And they all seem to know of one another. Technically, a terminatus order can only be issued by the Senatorum Imperialus (AKA the [[High Lords of Terra]]), and the members of the Officio Assassinorum are kept on a very short leash. Unlike the [[Inquisition]], they have no discretionary powers of their own, [[The Beheading|because they tend to horribly abuse them if they do]].

The head of the Officio is known as the '''Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum,''' or '''The Master of Assassins,''' who sits alongside the Fabricator-General of Mars and the Ecclesiarch of the Adeptus Ministorum as one of the [[High Lords of Terra]].

Which, if you think about it, must be somewhat distracting during their meetings. The Lords are sitting around and discussing the fates of trillions of men, and as the debate goes back and forth, one of them says nothing, ever. He just sits there, smoking a lho-stick with his trench coat wrapped around him, almost completely overlooked. And then they remember that a bad decision could get them killed, and this is the guy who does that. And only that. His only job is to dispatch death on swift wings to any high official. It'd be like having the Sword of Damocles hanging over your head everywhere you went.

Members are recruited at a very young age; most of them are children from Feral Worlds or are taken from the Schola Progenium. Recruits are biologically augmented and trained at the School of Assassins on Holy Terra for ten years before being assigned to one of the Assassin Temples to continue their training and eventually serve the Imperium.

The Assassin specialists approach Sly Marbo levels of awesome, as the Temples have permission make use of "any means or tools to get the job done," even if it means banned tech from the Dark Age of Technology (like the Terminus gland) or xeno artifacts (like the C'tan phase blade). These Assassins are also given crushingly restrictive psych treatments to ensure they never use these tools except when ordered, which can make them seem kinda spastic during downtimes when said tools are augmentations to their own body.

There are only 2 recorded examples of anyone in the Officio turning against the Imperium. Unfortunately, both times it was the Grand Master, Drakan Vangorich (goes to show, never trust a <strike>Vallhallan</strike> Russian). The Imperium learned of the first one's butthole treachery when he had the [[High Lords of Terra]] [[The Beheading|wiped out to the last man]]. Very [[grimdark]], though the uncaring [[Eldrad|dicks]] had it coming to them.

After that betrayal, an Astartes retribution force was dispatched to "resolve" the situation. It is not known how many marines were sent; since the force was made up of elements of three chapters ([[Halo Brethren]], [[Sable Swords]] and [[Imperial Fists]]), it was probably at least 1000 marines. As soon as they landed on Terra, the commander of the force was assassinated. The remaining marines broke into the grand chamber of the Assassinorum Temple and found 100 (!) [[Eversor]] Assassins between them and their target. A single marine survived to plug the Grand Master in the brain with a boltgun. This super-hardcore-awesome-ass-kicking marine was definitely as badass as [[Darnath Lysander]]. And he probably became Chapter Master for this - after all, by then he was the Chapter!

The other one was [[Love Can Bloom|Vindicare Assassin LIIVI]].

Ha, just kidding. The second time was during the Age of Apostasy in M36, when the Grand Master was himself assassinated by a [[Callidus]] Assassin under the orders of [[Goge Vandire]], the insane ruler of the Imperium. Of course, you don't become Grand Master without being an Assassin yourself, and it turned out that he had switched places with a body double. What followed was a civil war within the Assasinorum to mirror the one wracking the Imperium, and ended up filling the Imperial Palace with nerve gas and destroying entire wings of Mankind's greatest fortress with ancient Dark Age and xenos weaponry. Eventually, the Grand Master triumphed, but went into self-imposed exile at the end of it, and might still be alive today. After the war, the [[Inquisition]] set up the Ordo Sicarius to monitor the Assassins and make sure they stay in line.

Alas, they will always be second best, for they can never become [[Sly Marbo]] . They only exist in fluff for the purposes of showing just how bad-ass a specific enemy is. For example, during the [[Horus Heresy]], eight(!) Assassins, at least one from each temple, was sent to form an Assassin's Justice League of Doom and kill [[Horus|that asshole who started it]]. For [[Plot armor|SOME REASON]], like everyone else in the Imperium who tried to stop it, they [[FAIL|failed.]] Also, the same thing was tried during the Medusa V campaign, to assassinate the leader of the Chaos faction; seven of them failed, getting a front row seat to some [[Eldar]] stealing their kill. Imperial Armour books goes even further and currently have a Vindicare torn apart by an angry mob of Vraksian heretics after ''failing'' to shoot down his target, and Eversor being ripped to shreds by point-blank pulse carbine fire and only taking down ''one'' of his targets due to a tactical nuke strapped to his chest, with both cases causing the completely opposite effect imperials hoped for. This is known as the "[[Derp|Worf]] Effect" by [[Star Trek]] fans, or "The Avatar of Khaine effect" by Eldar players.

==Divisions==
The Officio Assassinorum has six "temples," or specialist branches, each focused on one particular method of assassination:
* [[Callidus]] - shapeshifters, masters of infiltration. All women ([[Trap|or men pretending to be women]], or [[Squad Broken|women pretending to be Orks]], or...just...try not to think about it).
* [[Culexus]] - soulless gothtards that are invisible & immune to psykers, daemons & the Warp.
* [[Eversor]] - cyborg, drugged-up killing machines that have two settings: coma and '''RIP'N'TEAR!!'''1!!1!one!
* [[Vanus]] - leet hacker NERD CHESS PLAYERS. All are genii in the fields of intelligence gathering, strategy and [[JUST AS PLANNED]]. "The cleanest kill is one that another performs in your stead with no knowledge of your incitement." They are what every neckbeard wants to be.
* [[Venenum]] - master poisoners who can take the things found in a vegan's kitchen and kill a [[Space Marine]] with the resulting mixture.
* [[Vindicare]] - snipers that can "BOOM! HEADSHOT!" from the horizon.
* [[Maerorus]] - a failed attempt at creating a living weapon able to operate without support or equipment for a prolonged period of time. The only one created proved to be impossible to control and went rogue; all attempts at making more were immediately discontinued. Think Alex Mercer from Prototype, only even more sociopathic.

[[Death Cult Assassin|Death Cult Assassins]] aren't part of this framework; there are thousands of death cults throughout the Imperium and they each train in their own way to kill enemies of the Emperor, but are not officially-sanctioned and are more autonomous than the Assassins.

==Assassinorum: Execution Force==
[[Assassinorum_Execution_Force|GeeDubs recently released a (rather awesome) Space Hulk-style board game]] for 1-4 players that revolves around an Execution Force - an Officio Assassinorum team comprised of a Callidus, Culexus, Vindicare, and Eversor assassin. Gameplay is a combination of Splinter Cell and X-COM, wherein the four player-controlled Assassins run through the map attempting to find a teleportarium room, which in turn will allow them to move to the second (and final) map. Once there, players must kill a boss of sorts - a Chaos Sorceror who is trying to blah blah kill the Imperium with blibbity bloobity Chaos shenanigans. You've heard the story before. Along the way, Assassins fight Renegades (Chaos [[Cultist-chan|Cultists]] and [[Dranon|Spess Muhreens]]) which are spawned either by revealing rooms (the only way to find the teleportato and its control room) or through random events. Renegades can be alerted to the Assassins' presence by catching them in line of sight or by hearing the sounds of glorious gunplay down the hall. The Assassins, of course, are all badasses with unique attributes and abilities, including Primaris and Omegon Tactics (super special powers that can be used thrice or once per game, respectively). All in all the game is an overcosted and short-lived boardgame compared to Space Hulk, which for the same price gave you almost triple the amount of good guys and also more uniquely posed bad guys as well as over a dozen different missions with differing map layouts. Not to mention the map tiles were embossed as well. This means you would need a week or so of daily playing to finish all Space Hulk missions, while Officio Assassinorum will get boring after 3 or 4 plays. A shame, GeeDubs. A shame.

On the upside, you can take those four assassins and bring them over to a standard 40k game as henchmen for an Inquisitor.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:AnotherGameNightRuined.jpg
File:Back in the Day by DeadXCross.jpg
File:AssassinsHangout.jpg|Eversors are the [[That Guy]] of Assassins.

</gallery>

{{Template:Imperium}}

Pole-arm

2016-11-17T03:17:30Z

2604:6000:1407:8035:523:25BE:26DA:D35F: /* Types of Pole-arm */

{{cleanup}}
[[image:naginata.jpg|thumb|300px|right|A Japanese Naginata]]
A '''Pole-Arm''' technically refers to any type of weapon consisting of a metal head with a long wooden pole. [[Spear]]s technically fall under this classification, but more often than not it is used to refer to weapons with something more than just a point intended for poking at the end and can also be used to chop and hack. These include [[Battleaxe|axe]] heads, spikes and [[sword]] blades. Pole arms have been used by numerous civilizations, including Europeans, Turks, Russians, Chinese, and Japanese.
== Pole-arms in warfare ==
When compared to spears, pole-arms retain some of the advantage of reach while gaining more flexibility in how they attack. While a spearman is limited to simply poking his enemies to death, the Pole-armed soldiers can also hack or slash. This generally comes at the price of a somewhat shortened reach.

==Types of Pole-arm==
Spears are far from being the only form of polearm; there are numerous others, most of which tend to be difficult to distinguish from one another. A short list of some of the more notable types is as follows:

*'''Ahlspiess/Awl Pike:''' Imagine a spear with the last third of it being made out of metal and you have the ahlspiess. the metal third made it impossible to cut though with a sword unlike a normal spear and it's range allowed you to fight from a safer distance. The problem was that it was heavy, so you could not use a shield with it, and against armored knights you only choice was to try and aim for joints.

*'''Bardiche:''' A Russian pole arm, a long handled axe with a broad curved axehead on a 1.5 meter long handle. It was notable in that it was often used as a monopod by Streltsi (an elite force of musketeers that existed from the reign of Ivan the Terrible to Peter the Great).

*'''Bayonet:''' honorable mention goes to the blade at the end of a gun.

*'''Bill:''' Derived from a cutting tool called the billhook, the bill has a curved chopping blade with a spike on the top and a hook on the back of the blade, combining the stopping power of a spear, the power of an axe, and the ability to unseat horsemen. It was also capable of piercing gaps in the armor of in heavily armored enemies as well. For this reason, it was the national weapon of England well into the 16th century. Interestingly, at a time when all the continental armies were using pikemen to form the bulk of their foot soldiers, an English army of hastily-raised levies (most of the English army being abroad in France, dying of dysentery and being of minor annoyance to the French) devastated a Scottish army, whose principle weapon was the pike, at Flodden Fields to such an extent they took a generation to recover.

*'''Bohemian Earspoon:''' This oddly-named pole-arm really existed; it was used in central Europe around the 14th and 15th centuries. It consisted of a tapered blade with a medial ridge and pair of lugs beneath the blade, similar to a boar spear, to prevent an impaled target working its way down the pole to reach you.

*'''Brandistock''': An unusual 16th century Italian thrusting polearm in that, not only did it possess three spikes at the end, but they were also retractable.

*'''Falx''': The Falx is an oddity that doesn't easily fit any category; most historians list it as a polearm as, despite being somewhat shorter than an ordinary polearm, it's shaft is too long to be considered a sword. This weapon was used by the ancient Dacians and Thracians against the Romans, and featured a 3 foot sickle-shaped blade with an equally long shaft, meant to be used two-handed and could deliver devastating downward blows, splitting shields and helmets alike. It's for that reason that the Roman Gallic helmet has a special ridge specifically for blocking falx blows. In fantasy, the Falx has been re-purposed as an Elven Greatsword of sorts, owing to its more unusual shape.

*'''Fauchard''': In many respects a fauchard is very similar to a glaive, except that it has a hook somewhere on the cutting edge, and above the hook the blade tapers into a sharp point.

*'''Glaive:''' The glaive was equipped with a single-edged tapering blade (like a kitchen knife) affixed similarly to an axe head. Some variations (called glaive-guisarmes) had a small hook on the end meant for catching horsemen, like a bill, or for locking enemies' blades in combat. Glaives often came in a very wide variety of bizarre shapes, so oftentimes it is used to describe a polearm with a blade shape that doesn't fit any of the other categories.

*'''Goedendag:''' the goedendag was a Flemish combination of a spear and club. It's believed to have been first used like a spear to blunt a charge, but then as a club once the melee is joined. Making it good against armored knights, and it was used to defeat French knights. The word "Goedendag" means "good day" in Dutch, so if nothing else this proves that the Flemish have a sense of humor.

*'''Halberd:''' One of the most iconic pole-arms, differing from the poleaxe in both form and function. Intended as more of a formation weapon than an individual weapon, both the shaft and spike were longer, as it was primarily a thrusting weapon. While possessing an ax's blade (which typically featured a slant pointing downward as opposed to a straight parallel or circular edge), it was less used for chopping (due to its unwieldy nature) and more as an extra attack; the ax was used in a draw cut in case the thrust missed its target and attempted to close in. The blade could also pull a mounted [[knight]] off his horse, though the bill was better known for this tactic. In the early Renaissance, the Halberd was a favorite weapon of the Dobbeltsöldner, being a good weapon to bumb away enemy pikes and then blend the innards of the peasants holding the pikes.

*'''[[Lance]]:''' A bigger, heavier spear intended for [[knight]]s and other mounted warriors. They were too bulky to be wielded on foot and too heavy to throw, relegating them to use on horseback; however, they could be absolutely devastating during a cavalry charge. Variations of the lance continued to be used until World War I. They were also the go-to weapon for jousting tournaments.

*'''Lucerne Hammer:''' Not much more than a warhammer on the end of a pole, with a spike or spear head as well as either another spike or a pick opposite the hammer's striking end.

**'''Bec-de-Corbin:''' Ask some people what the difference between this and a lucerne hammer is and most people will have no idea what either is. The few who do and can describe both will probably spend a few hours arguing over what the difference truly is. Maybe the pick end is bent on one and not the other (which one is unclear). Maybe the hammer end is different between the two. It's best to just consider them to be the same weapon with some slight differences.

*'''Military Fork:''' It's basically a big pitchfork. The prongs made it effective at piercing plate armor and some had hooks much like other polearms to counter cavalry.

*'''Naginata:''' Similar to the glaive, the naginata is a wooden shaft with a large curved blade at the end which was covered with a sheath when not in use. Like the katana, it became a favored weapon of the [[samurai]], particularly the women (who were especially appreciative of its ability to keep opponents at a distance, thus compensating for [[-4 Str|the difference in raw strength between the sexes]]) in fact learning how to use a Naginata was mandatory for school girls in the Empire of Japan and it's still popular there. While they can be used to stab and hook opponents, the curved blade makes naginatas most effective as a cutting weapon; although it lacks the speed, control, and longer cutting edge of a katana, it makes up for it with superior reach and better leverage.

*'''Partisan:''' A weapon that consisted of a spearhead mounted on a long shaft with protrusions on the sides of the spear head, which aided in the user in parrying sword thrusts. It remains in use as a ceremonial weapon in some countries. Party-focused politicians are known for fighting with these in political debates.

[[File:Pikemen.jpg|250px|thumb|right|Charge at them and you'll be skewered in no time.]]
*'''Pike:''' Perhaps the most effective of the pole weapons, the pike was a very long (about 10-25 feet long) spear that was ideal for defensive maneuvers, especially when wielded ''en masse''; each rank of pikemen was trained to hold their pikes so any charging enemy infantry had to deal with more sharp spiky objects than a hedgehog convention pointed at them. However, the tight formations needed to pull this off made pikemen vulnerable to archers and the unwieldy size of the pikes made it too difficult for them to effectively defend themselves if outflanked. Nevertheless, their lethality and defensive skill made them popular into the late 1600s, at which time standing around in dense formations made pikemen an easy target for [[Firearm|arquebusiers]] and artillery. Both the [[Landsknecht]]s and the Swiss became famous for their proficiency with pikes. Some Japanese yari would be long enough to qualify as pikes and were used in a similar manner as the Europeans did.

*'''Poleaxe:''' It's an axe head on a pole, just as the name suggests. Compared to a halberd, it has a smaller head, which focuses kinetic energy onto a smaller area and lets it cut through armor more effectively. In other words, while the halberd prioritizes thrusting, the poleaxe prioritizes chopping. The spike on the end of the pole's butt also made it useful for thrusting attacks, and it could be used to block in the same way as a quarterstaff.

*'''Quarterstaff:''' The simplest type of polearm there is, inasmuch as it is an actual pole. A favored weapon of [[monk]]s and other unarmed classes in DnD, these could be used both as a blunt implement and as a thrusting weapon, while a carefully aimed sweeping blow aimed at the legs could easily knock a foe off his feet and send him sprawling onto the ground. It's not too likely that these were used in actual warfare, as they were mainly meant for self-defense and martial arts. They were also useful as walking sticks, of course.

*'''Spetum:''' A spear-like weapon with two smaller, single-edged blades extending at acute angles from the base of the spear's head. Not only could it be used to impale and stab with the main spearhead, the smaller blades made it effective at knocking aside shields and severing limbs as well.

*'''Trident:''' The go-to weapon for a water-themed character. Mostly this was used by fishermen to skewer fish. The retiarius, a type of gladiator, used a trident alongside a dagger and net.

*'''Voulge:''' While superficially similar to the glaive, the voulge had a broader blade meant for hacking rather than cutting. Think of it as a meat cleaver on a pole and you have the general idea of how it worked. Also like the glaive, some forms (called voulge-guisarmes) had hooks added to the back of the blade, along with a pointed tip for stabbing.

*'''War Scythe:''' Contrary to popular belief, a scythe on its own is too unwieldy to make a good weapon. But if the scythe's blade is re-mounted to extend upward instead of out to the side, it can be fairly effective as far as improvised weapons go. Because of the ease with which they could be repurposed from common tools, they were one of the most likely weapons to be used in peasant uprisings. War scythes were the preferred pole arm of the Poles.

{{MedievalWeaponry}}