The Fantasy Armory · Chapter 7

Axes and Cleavers

Every entry in this family is Cutting, with no exceptions, and every one of them concentrates its weight behind a short edge. The result is high damage for the price and a weapon that also ruins shields and hafts.

Two entries are not axes. The macuahuitl and the falx are here because the edge is the mechanism, which is the family's definition, not the shape of the handle.

Vicious and Brutal are the family signature. Both do nothing on an average roll and a great deal on a good one, which makes axes the swingiest weapons in the book: they trade consistency for ceiling. Sunder appears on most entries and damages the target's equipment.

Against an unarmoured or leather-clad opponent an axe is the most efficient weapon in the book for its price. Against armour the family has exactly one answer, and it is the Falx.

Skill: Light Melee for the one-handed entries, Heavy Melee from the Macuahuitl onward. At tables using a single undifferentiated Melee skill, use Melee throughout.

Meat Cleaver

Butcher's Cleaver, Chopper, Deba, Kitchen Axe

A butcher's tool with a kitchen's balance. It hits appallingly hard for what it costs and it was never meant to meet anything that hits back.

Hatchet

Tomahawk, Camp Axe, Belt Axe, Ono

A one-handed working axe. Every farmstead, ship, and baggage train has several, which is most of why it turns up in fights.

Hand Axe

War Axe, Broadaxe, Tabar, Battle Hatchet

The baseline war axe: a forged head on a shaped haft, made for people rather than timber. It costs what an arming sword costs and buys a higher ceiling instead of a wider range of answers.

Bearded Axe

Skeggøx, Viking Axe, Hooked Axe

The lower edge sweeps down into a hook. It is used to drag a shield rim aside, catch a haft, or pull a weapon out of a grip, and only afterwards to do any chopping. The best answer to a shield wall that one hand can hold.

Macuahuitl

Maquahuitl, Macana, Obsidian Sword, Sword-Club

A flat hardwood paddle the length of a man's arm, with blades of volcanic glass set into grooves down both edges. There is no metal in it anywhere, which is why it is priced as Simple construction and costs less than a third of what a battleaxe costs.

Obsidian takes an edge no steel will hold, and it holds it for roughly one fight. Vicious 2 and Bleed 1 are what that edge does to an unarmoured body. Fragile 2 is what a shield rim does to the edge.

Fragile 2: this weapon breaks outright on a Calamity.

Battleaxe

Twibill, Double Axe, Masakari, Sagaris

Two hands, a broad head, a haft long enough to generate real speed. Vicious and Brutal together make it the most dangerous weapon in the book on a lucky roll and an ordinary one otherwise.

Falx

Rhomphaia, Dacian Falx, War Sickle, Hooked Greatblade

A two-handed blade that curves forward and carries its edge on the inside of the curve, so the weight of the swing arrives at a point rather than along a line.

Pierce 2 is where that geometry goes on the stat line, and it makes the falx the only Cutting weapon in this book with a real answer to armour. It does not open a helmet. It caves the helmet in and opens what is underneath. Awkward 2 is why it never spread: the arc that gives the falx its bite needs open ground behind the wielder as well as in front.

Great Axe

Dane Axe, Sparth Axe, Long Axe, Ōno

A Dane axe: a wide crescent head on a haft as long as a man. Sweep 2 lets a swing carry into a second enemy engaged with the wielder, and Cumbersome 4 and Awkward 1 are the cost of a weapon that needs open ground to use.