111 replies to this topic

[RJMooreII]

The most questionable thing Conan does is put swords through mail and plate. We're generally to believe that Hyborian metallurgy was in no ways inferior to that of the ancient and middle ages. German, English and Norman mail shirt designs from the middle ages have been tested and shown to be virtually impossible to cut through. The same goes for steel plate and helms.

Now with his weight and mass he might be able to drive a sword through a week point in the armor, but you can't just slice through a mail vest or a helmet. You seriously need an axe, and even then you're more likely to just cave it in. In fact, many swords might not be able to stand up under the terrific force it would take to actually cut through a mail vest.

If we take Conan's chopping into mailed men seriously we'd have to conclude that he is not only superhuman, he is several times as strong a real person. Especially since we're not talking just cuts or nicks, but flat out cleaving into breastplates and helms right through in a lightning fast motion. The strength required to do that is inhuman.

I'm not trying to say body armor makes you invincible, you can still beat a man to death with a sword even if you can't cut him. But it is steel rings we're talking about. Armorers of the middle ages did know what they were doing. The most realistic outcome (which occurs in a few RE Howard stories I've read) is for the person's bones and flesh to be broken and mangled. Actually chopping in to them, with a regular ease, is pretty out there.

Edited by RJMooreII, 21 April 2012 - 01:26 AM.

[wulfhere]

Why would you expect anything human? By your theory he is an elf. After all, the Cimmerians are pure descendants of those Atlanteans that you consider to be inhuman elves.

[Ironhand]

Conan an elf? Is he a wee little person?

[Skullface]

REh was very aware of armour, the point is Conan is almost superhero like in stength...he is like a force of nature.
Conan is savage, Conan is STRONG.
Bigger than life.If he was not who would read about him.
This is kind of a REH theme read a gent from bear creek.

[Buxom Sorceress]

The most questionable thing Conan does is put swords through mail and plate.
...
If we take Conan's chopping into mailed men seriously we'd have to conclude that he is not only superhuman, he is several times as strong a real person. Especially since we're not talking just cuts or nicks, but flat out cleaving into breastplates and helms right through in a lightning fast motion. The strength required to do that is inhuman....

Hi.

Hey, how do you pronounce

" Fantasy Conan just kicks ass ! "

in latin, please ?
--

[Lunatic]

http://www.youtube.c...feature=related

At, 3:00, except for the axechop there is no cutting in the film. But a longsword can also chop. The mail, prevents slicing I am sure, but for a clean cut, thrust or powerchop you need a shield or duck fast, according to this documentary at least.

Conan an elf? oh noooooo...

I think him more of a caveman, not exactly neanderthal but more of a core-human.

[Taranaich]

The most questionable thing Conan does is put swords through mail and plate.

To be fair, this is hardly restricted to Conan: Howard tended to go for broke in descriptions of gore and bloodshed, where his characters (heroic or villainous) could split skulls to the teeth and cleave through steel caps. Prospero cuts through Amalrus' mail from shoulder right into his ribs, right through the mail, in "The Scarlet Citadel": that would make him superhumanly strong, no? This is a trope common in pulp fiction of the time, and as such, I tend to view it as poetic license, much like how I view his depictions of horned-helmeted vikings: colourful embellishment.

Either that, or take a third option: advanced Hyborian metallurgy and forging techniques made their swords far, far sharper than their modern counterparts, enabling a skilled swordsman to overcome armour with the right technique and enough clout.

[mario]

The most questionable thing Conan does is put swords through mail and plate.

To be fair, this is hardly restricted to Conan: Howard tended to go for broke in descriptions of gore and bloodshed, where his characters (heroic or villainous) could split skulls to the teeth and cleave through steel caps. Prospero cuts through Amalrus' mail from shoulder right into his ribs, right through the mail, in "The Scarlet Citadel": that would make him superhumanly strong, no? This is a trope common in pulp fiction of the time, and as such, I tend to view it as poetic license, much like how I view his depictions of horned-helmeted vikings: colourful embellishment.

Yeah i agree with that as well. Its fantasy and poetic license concerning violence is fine. How exaggeration is expressed in pulp ( or comic or any genre) often makes or breaks it. Look at the violence in the sparatcus series, I'm sure there's no humanly way conan stevens face couldve been cleaved like that but it definitely gets a reaction!

[duaneshadow]

or, it's just a good lurid colourful read, and shouldn't be taken excessively seriously eh?

[RJMooreII]

At, 3:00, except for the axechop there is no cutting in the film. But a longsword can also chop. The mail, prevents slicing I am sure, but for a clean cut, thrust or powerchop you need a shield or duck fast, according to this documentary at least.

I don't have a problem with him stabbing or avoiding armor, it's just that he uses swords to hack through mail and plate. You can crack plate with a heavy axe, a pick or a hammer/morningstar, and you can stab through the rings of or beat someone in mail; but even then it's pretty damn hard. People usually died because something got around their armor more than through it. If it weren't for gunpowder we'd probably still be wearing plastic plate armor on the battle field.

Edit: This would be especially true of advanced armors as the Valusians and Aquilonians would possess, given their apparent ability to produce specialized full plate. Rivited-style mail, with padded plates affixed to certain links, provides a backing and deflection point (like studded armor generally) that makes chopping or slicing through it very difficult, even with a heavy leveraged weapon like an axe.

I am not saying armor is without disadvantages. It works best for very strong people who are already faster than most warriors, such as Conan, and his armor does both protect him and get damaged in a very realistic manner. Most of the time RE Howard is good about armor, with the characters going for openings or using a weapon effective against certain weak points. It's just the occasional 'cleft his helm with a sword-stroke' that makes Conan or Kull seem a bit superhero.

Conan an elf? oh noooooo...

I think him more of a caveman, not exactly neanderthal but more of a core-human.

I mean 'elf' in the traditional Scandinavian sense, the wild tribe of massive demigods. The weirder stuff is an overlay of Celtic faeries and Germanic dwarves into elves. A 'core elf' would be Frigga. Of course, Conan isn't a deity in the formal sense but he's something of a demigod, like Beowulf.

Something I was discussing with my friend was whether the hand-to-hand is realistic, and it is if you take Conan's freakish vitality for granted. Very dramatic but pretty much aggressive assault on openings; like a tiger as Howard often says. Given his strength, reach and mass he could really maul people with his bare hands.

Edited by RJMooreII, 23 April 2012 - 05:16 AM.

[Kortoso]

Is there a specific canonic passage where Conan's sword goes through plate? I am not aware of any.
Beware of mixing in the pastiches in this regard.

[Lunatic]

At, 3:00, except for the axechop there is no cutting in the film. But a longsword can also chop. The mail, prevents slicing I am sure, but for a clean cut, thrust or powerchop you need a shield or duck fast, according to this documentary at least.

I don't have a problem with him stabbing or avoiding armor, it's just that he uses swords to hack through mail and plate. You can crack plate with a heavy axe, a pick or a hammer/morningstar, and you can stab through the rings of or beat someone in mail; but even then it's pretty damn hard. People usually died because something got around their armor more than through it. If it weren't for gunpowder we'd probably still be wearing plastic plate armor on the battle field.

Edit: This would be especially true of advanced armors as the Valusians and Aquilonians would possess, given their apparent ability to produce specialized full plate. Rivited-style mail, with padded plates affixed to certain links, provides a backing and deflection point (like studded armor generally) that makes chopping or slicing through it very difficult, even with a heavy leveraged weapon like an axe.

I am not saying armor is without disadvantages. It works best for very strong people who are already faster than most warriors, such as Conan, and his armor does both protect him and get damaged in a very realistic manner. Most of the time RE Howard is good about armor, with the characters going for openings or using a weapon effective against certain weak points. It's just the occasional 'cleft his helm with a sword-stroke' that makes Conan or Kull seem a bit superhero.

Conan an elf? oh noooooo...

I think him more of a caveman, not exactly neanderthal but more of a core-human.

I mean 'elf' in the traditional Scandinavian sense, the wild tribe of massive demigods. The weirder stuff is an overlay of Celtic faeries and Germanic dwarves into elves. A 'core elf' would be Frigga. Of course, Conan isn't a deity in the formal sense but he's something of a demigod, like Beowulf.

Something I was discussing with my friend was whether the hand-to-hand is realistic, and it is if you take Conan's freakish vitality for granted. Very dramatic but pretty much aggressive assault on openings; like a tiger as Howard often says. Given his strength, reach and mass he could really maul people with his bare hands.

We should direct this question to the learned scholars, but whatever power it takes to cleave a knight in plate armour with a broadsword, then that is the amount of Conans´strength...if it even happened in the original stories.

But I object to a demigod Conan, and protest. With a "core-human" I mean that he is actually the nondegenerated missing link. Millennia (!) of evolution has spawned this little monster of the human race, who is in fact the exact opposite of a god! He is just a darned tough human being.

And a darned tough human being can beat anything...giant squidpeople, dragons, elephantspiders, you name it. Because he is of this world, while they are kind of out of date or visitors, or degenerate cityfolk addicted to sugar like me.

Not saying that he is primitive. Cavemen were as smart or stupid as we are.

[Kortoso]

it's just that he uses swords to hack through mail and plate.

Where? Give us a quote to start with.

[RJMooreII]

it's just that he uses swords to hack through mail and plate.

Where? Give us a quote to start with.

Sorry this took so long, but I didn't feel like re-reading my stories, lol. but in 'The Hour of the Dragon' he sheers through the Nemedian king's guard's mail 'like cloth', and I know there is at least one other story where he rends steel armor with a sword. This isn't the quote you asked for but anyone familiar with the early chapters of HotD can confirm this.

Now, I'm not saying this is wrong by physics. If Conan was as strong as a panther, with a fine Turanian sword, sure - he could break mail links with a powerful blow. But no human being, as we understand them, could do such a thing. Conan is superhumanly strong, if only mildly so. This is not unrealistic, given Howard's Lamarkian evolutionary background, as I said - a Panther with a sword could do it, possibly - but no one, not even a power-lifter, can split initegrated mail with a sword, much less hew through it like cloth. I've seen guys benchpress so much the bar bowed under the weight, and I can tell you as sure as sunrise they could not split a fine coat of steel mail if their life depended on it (though they might instantly slay the man wearing it through sheer impact).

Edited by RJMooreII, 23 June 2012 - 01:08 PM.

[Alhazred]

There is something to be said for technique.

[RJMooreII]

There is something to be said for technique.

Eh, not really. You can break mail by attacking the weak points like leather straps and you might split a link or two if you land with a terrific axe blow; but medieval steel mail is almost certainly inferior to Hyborian steel and Conan does not just damage a couple of the chain links, he 'hews through it like cloth'. There is just no getting around the physical speed and weight that would have to be behind that, and a 330lb human being couldn't do it with a greataxe. Steel is really, really strong; and a mesh of rings that can flex and at the same time reinforce one another is beyond human ability to destroy. The medieval armorers were not fools; they purposely made the mail just heavy enough so that no one, not even one of my 300lb yellow-bearded ancestors, could cut you.

Plate is rigid, and is thus open to damage from specialty weapons like military picks, but mail is not. Howard is quite right in QotBC to portray Conan as 'invincible in his mail', given his natural toughness and mass that's just about what he would be unless you knocked him down or stabbed him in the eye.

This isn't really a problem in the context; Conan is not outside the realm of realistic flesh-based muscle power. But he's more in the domain of a great cat than a great man.

On could possibly interpret these instances as cases of a very light maille or, even less plausibly, iron maille but Howard gives no indication of this and it contradicts the context and technology of the Nemedians; this wasn't an Adventurer in an iron jacket, this was a royal guard. I just think it shows that we can not take for granted that Howard treated his Cimmerian as a modern human being in many senses. Cimmerians, being so close to apes, probably have a physqiue and biochemistry closer to the great hunting beasts of the forests than to the real-world skinny little anthropoid that historical early humans were. Howard, of course, neither was nor did he pretend to be doing real anthropology, despite his respect for and borrowing of it. His early humans are freakish beasts, and there is every reason to believe that a modern athlete is far larger and stronger than any barbarian of 2 million years past, though not nearly as inured to hardship.

Edited by RJMooreII, 24 June 2012 - 07:29 AM.

[1980conanfan]

i'm new around here.....but considering that magic exists in Conan's world.....is it really to hard to fathom that Cimmerians are at least twice as strong as a normal human? And with an alpha male like Conan, he could easily be THREE times as strong as the average man. so I don't think that the superhuman feats he does is too far out of line.

[deuce]

Why would you expect anything human? By your theory he is an elf. After all, the Cimmerians are pure descendants of those Atlanteans that you consider to be inhuman elves.

Where did that come from? All he said was that those type of feats require a level of strength that would appear to beyond human. Let's not derail the discussion with this "elf" crap that you brought to the conversation. Please.

[deuce]

i'm new around here.....but considering that magic exists in Conan's world.....is it really to hard to fathom that Cimmerians are at least twice as strong as a normal human? And with an alpha male like Conan, he could easily be THREE times as strong as the average man. so I don't think that the superhuman feats he does is too far out of line.

Welcome to the forum, 1980. From several references by Robert E. Howard, it would appear he thought the barbarians of the Hyborian Age (as well as others like Cormac Fitzgeoffrey ca. 1200AD) were FAR stronger than modern-day men.

However, "magic" had nothing to do with it (if anything, the opposite). REH believed that such strength was due to being closer to "primal" beginnings. Thus, he had both his Cimmerians and Nordheimr be fairly recently evolved from lower hominids.

Also, since Aquilonian sword steel seems capable of chopping through an iron bar, maybe that had something to do with a few of those instances. Hope that helps.

[1980conanfan]

I didnt mean that the Cimmerians are embued with enchanted blood or anything......only that HYBORIA is a fantasy realm, and therefore has slightly different rules, allowing power and strength far beyond what we encounter in our modern world. That said, i go to a gym where dudes bench 500-600 pounds and can squat small automobiles! So I'm not confused by Conan's strength levels at all. Sorry if it came off that way. I have been defending ReH for years from naysayers so it just comes naturally!