Arena Rex Forums

I'd like to see a future sulpt armed with the unusual 4 bladed/pronged dagger that was apparently used by some gladiators in the later Roman period.

Initially known from some indistinct images on gladiator monuments/gravestones may thought it was either artistic licence or misinterpretation of indistinct carvings

However the excavation of the gladiator cemetery at Ephasus turned up one body with the distinct impression of 4 'point' wounds in a square pattern on it's femur, the image below is a reconstruction of such a weapon (the image is from http://journals.worldnomads.com/bundynb ... -The-one-o)



It's not clear how this weapon came about, speculation includes that the 4 blades were intended to cause bloody, but not debilitating wounds (so giving a better show),

or that they were intended to be used like the banderillas (lit. little flags) in bullfighting remaining in the victim and used to demonstrate the skill of the attacker

(the link above suggests the Ephasus museum may refer to the weapon as a pig sticker)

A weapon like that could potentially be really interesting for parrying and disarming. It might be interesting to see a character that had a couple favour boxes on their damage tree (to represent the showmanship of the weapon), and have some sort of special ability to do with disarming. Maybe something along the lines of "Blade Catcher: when this model get more successes than a model it is defending against the attacking model gains one fatigue level" essentially representing the character twisting the sword out of the attacker's hand and the attacker subsequently having to retrieve their weapon.

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Elizabeth Malette from Kickstarter

It could possibly be a very early form of main gauche - used in the off hand as a defensive/offensive weapon.

Cool weapons!
Really like the disarming/extra favour suggestions.
Would like to see a character armed with this kind of weapon.

Depending on how historically pure you're wanting to be you might want to look at the Indian Bagh Nakg ("tiger's claw") weapon which probably wouldn't have found it's way into the Roman Empire very often but hey, at least one of RRG's gladiatrices is wielding something similar.