Armaments in the Dreamlands

Armaments are a type of tool, designed to inflict injury on living beings or damage to artificial structures (henceforth referred to as harm). Most armaments derive from other types of tools, which are not designed to inflict harm but can be adapted to do so; for example, daggers derive from knives, which serve as all-purpose cutting and slicing tools. However, four types of tools were designed from the start to inflict harm and so were intended to be armaments; these are the spear, the bow, the sword, and the firearm. Of these, two were designed as hunting tools before they were adapted for use in war—the spear and the bow—whereas two were designed for war from the moment of their conception—the sword and the firearm. There are many different kinds of armaments in the Dreamlands. In fact, with the exception of firearms and modern military equipment, any armament that was invented in the Waking World exists in the Dreamlands, along with a few that never existed in the Waking World.

The following essay is a survey of the types of armament found in the Dreamworld. They are divided into categories, with examples described for most. This is not meant to be a complete list of all armaments that exist; it merely describes the kinds of armament anyone can expect to encounter. It should also be noted that many varieties of each type exist, most of which vary only by name rather than physical characteristics. In other words, many armaments are virtually identical despite the fact that they are all called something different.

Finally, the term ‘armament’ herein refers to the whole tool, whereas the term ‘weapon’ herein refers only to the that part of the tool that inflicts harm. For example, when referring to a battle axe, the armament is the whole object, including the handle and any decorative features, whereas the weapon is the axe head by itself. ‘Melee’ refers to close-quarters combat using arms, often where participants fight as individuals instead of an organized unit, and a ‘melee weapon’ is an armament used in a melee. ‘Hand-to-hand combat’ (in this context) refers to close-quarters combat using no arms, just the participants’ body parts (though one category of arms can be used to enhance harm caused as part of hand-to-hand combat). ‘Small unit tactics’ and ‘massed attack’ refer to combat involving a group of persons working as an organized coherent unit. To avoid confusion, ‘object’ refers to non-tools and pseudotools as well as true tools, whereas ‘implement’ refers to true tools and pseudotools both. (A ‘pseudotool’ is an object used to do work or make work easier, but in and of itself does not perform a specific task. For example, a hammer is a tool, because it performs the specific task of driving fasteners into wood, but a nail is a pseudotool because its purpose of acting as a fastening is not its only task, nor is it the only kind of fastener available. Wooden dowels used to be used before nails were developed, and in many places are still used instead of nails. Work gloves are another example of a pseudotool.)

Read the rest of the article.