My ninth-grade science project was on primitive weapons. My Dad actually made a short-sword kind of like a gladius with my grandfather's old forge (he used it for welding back in the 60s, lol). My other grandfather made a working model of a ballista. I got third place, lol.
Anyways, here's the writeup I came up with:
Amu-Hah Shekala
Thoughts?
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If you mess with R'Jak you don't come back, as they say in the South Side of Troll Town.
Third place? For a working balista??? That's lame. Write-up is good tho
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good write up.
as for the ballista, i bet that if you put some weight on a stick and suspended it above the ground (poorly made trebuchet) you would have gotten an A. teachers seem to think a ballista is less advanced than a trebuchet due to the evidence of when they were around. trebuchets were one of the earliest siege weapons, except that they didn't want to carry around a bunch of weight, so they had people pull for the counter weight. of course they were also smaller due to long pieces of wood were more valuable as the spine of a ship, as one could always surround the castle/city and prevent them from getting food/water. also the assembly of large devices in the field were harder before certain inventions that would allow them to assemble the trebuchet where they needed it. then there's the issue of aiming them, in which a trebuchet can't be used to attack enemy formations, while a ballista could, making the ballista more useful for wars in which things are decided prior to the siege (like for a society that wanted to keep it's land and people safe, instead of a select few people and acres).
I have an fitting addition to Shekala's description:
"Likes kittens."
Not only is it in character but all this doom and gloom and death needs a counter.
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