The Smith's Shop

[Sir Langon]

Actually, Nazgul is another name for Ulari which is the true name of the Ringwraiths, The beasts that they fly on are called Fell Beasts.

[Sir Langon]

Ok, now we are going to move on from swords.

This week's Weapon is the mace.

The mace is a particularly nasty weapon that has many forms. On from is with the mace-head being affixed to the top of a shaft, another style is with the mace-head being attached to the shaft by a chain. During the middle ages the mace was a fairly common weapon used by knights because it created massive amounts of blunt damage that was usually fatal. The style of mace-heads have a wide variety from a ball-shape to shapes such as Sauron's in LotR.

In LotR maces were used only three times. Once by Morgoth, once by Sauron, and once by the Witch-King. Morgoth's mace was named Grond and was also called the Hammer of the Underworld. With Grond, Morgoth slew Fingolfin. Sauron wielded a mace at the Battle of Dagorlad in which he killed many Elves and Men, while the movies portray him as slaying Elendil with his mace, in the book it tells that he wrestled Elendil and Gil-Galad. The Witch-King only used his mace during the Battle of Pelenor. With it he broke Eowyn's arm before being slain himself. While both Morgoth's and Sauron's maces were of the attached style, the Witch-Kings was on a chain.

[Kitaria]

just to say not to be rude or anything, if you want you could delete this post after you read it. To my knowledge the one on a chain is a flail or mourning star, if I am saying that correctly of course, and it indeed is a mace.

[Sir Langon]

There is actually some dispute over the naming of such weapons and all three names have been used. Personally, when I think of a flail I think of the farm implement.

[Móreadhiel]

yes i realized that after watching the movie again everything seems to slip my mind lately but im getting it back now slowly sort of.....

[Sir Langon]

Ok, new weapon!

The new Weapon of the Week will be the War Hammer.

The war hammer was more common than one might think and was used much by knights, both mounted and on foot. The reason for this being that the war hammer provided enough blunt force with one swing to nearly kill a man fully in-cased in plate armour. While the head was usually used, most war hammers also had a comparably long spike on the opposite side of the head for punching through the heavy armour of a knight.

In LotR Tolkien himself never really says much about war hammers. In the movies, though, many time the fearsome olog-hai (or Mountain Trolls) wielded giant versions of these weapons and to a brutal effectiveness crushing many Gondorians with one swing. The olog-hai also used these giant hammers to beat down the lesser gates of Minas Tirith. in the movie, it was lucky for Aragorn that the troll he faced didn't have a hammer or it might have crushed through his parry and killed him with one stroke.