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Hide armor

I am not going to talk here about leather armors, as those posts tend to focus on unusual equipment.

I want here to talk about both the "thick hide" armors and the Tlahuiztli Aztec armor suits.

"thick hide" armors

those are the armors made with the tough hides of animals like rhinoceros or elephant or in our case crocodiles.

Roman crocodile armor

Crocodile armor from Cameroon

those examples are quite old and have seen better days, but crocodile hide can be tanned and worked with to give both resilient and strong armor and awesome look. The thick leather will usually be used without laminating or scaling.

Tlahuiztli Aztec armor suits

Those were the elite Aztec warrior full armor suits. Their base was the Ichcahuipilli, a cotton gambeson really effective at stopping arrows. on top of it they would wear a full suit made of a single piece of clothing that covered the entire torso and the limbs made with animal hide, feathers and cotton (from the Ceiba pentandra tree, white silk-cotton tree or kapok)

Elyrian transposition

The crocodile armor would be for the Dras's Mergoin, with the addition of a bone mask and serrated blades you'd get a really fearsome sight (check the serrated indian blades post)

The Tlahuiztli would fit like a glove to the Janoa, be it a jaguar or panther, or snake or the fabled phoenix bird, all those make wonderful and impressive Tlahuiztli, add animal bones and skulls, feathers and colorful cloths and you have the Jungle terror!


8/12/2017 4:34:06 PM #1

I would not recommend this. Even if you treated the hide, you still cut it up with a small knife, so I'll assume a halberd or even a sword would cut through it like butter. Maybe not, but then you have to remember that it's probably not going to hold up against the force and might collapse in on you.

Then again it can look badass as an ornament, taking drake's hide and making a dope cape out of it - maybe even a coat of arms (Like the actual coat of arms... Like an actual coat - not the heraldry.). Then have rows of demon teeth as a necklace or smth. Maybe carve a giant's head into a crown and use the rest to make a throne?


8/12/2017 10:29:05 PM #2

Personally, I believe that as long as you can show that the proposed armor existed in the past then it should be a possible armor type in the game.


8/18/2017 11:48:40 PM #3

Remember that the Aztecs were limited in their access to metal, so they needed protection from blunt instruments and arrow heads. The Macahuitl, which had short segments of obsidian blades along the edge, were used for shallow cutting, rather than rending, and the more you used it as a club the more prone to breaking the obsidian was.

Against these kinds of attacks, hides were effective. As well, hides are much quicker to prepare and use than cured or boiled leather, which takes a much larger amount of work and access to curative liquids as well as a drying rack.

Addendum: As well, the Aztecs used an underweave of thick cotton to bond their ornate hide armor, so it was thicker than just an animal skin and capable of catching and impeding arrows. Many of the Spaniards who came to Central America exchanged their heavy, overly hot breastplates (which protected quite well from the swords they carried) for the cotton under-armor the Aztecs made, as it was far cooler to wear in the hot, humid climate. Many men actually collapsed or died from heat exhaustion because of their insistence on keeping the metal breastplates on.


8/19/2017 8:01:33 PM #4

Posted By CruxLore at 10:34 AM - Sat Aug 12 2017

I would not recommend this. Even if you treated the hide, you still cut it up with a small knife, so I'll assume a halberd or even a sword would cut through it like butter. Maybe not, but then you have to remember that it's probably not going to hold up against the force and might collapse in on you.

Then again it can look badass as an ornament, taking drake's hide and making a dope cape out of it - maybe even a coat of arms (Like the actual coat of arms... Like an actual coat - not the heraldry.). Then have rows of demon teeth as a necklace or smth. Maybe carve a giant's head into a crown and use the rest to make a throne?

If someone is wearing it that's a lot different from cutting it with a knife while it's just lying around. I could probably take a knife to and cut through lots of historical armors like gambeson for example because it's just thick cloth as long as the subject in question is just lying on a table where I can hold it and then slice at it. However, when a person is wearing it and moving around cutting through it is a lot more problematic, and it certainly wouldn't be as easy as cutting through butter.

Besides which, depends on the hide as well.


8/19/2017 9:48:58 PM #5

There were once giant sloths that had bits of bone that covered the hide that native indian legends spoke up coming across these creatures and arrows would just plink right off or deflect off the bony surface of the hide. The hide itself is like 2-4 centimeters thick in places.


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