Abusing the Cutlery: Edged Weapons from Victorian Times - Part 1

In some games the act of strapping on a sword, or wading into combat wielding a cutlass, is a given – no questions need to be asked about how you got hold of your blade, or if you’re allowed to be swinging it about like that. However, Call of Cthulhu (CoC) isn’t D&D, and the issue of whether, or when, you can wield a sword in battle is a very pertinent one indeed – otherwise your character will be spending quite a bit of time explaining things to those pesky police people.

The Victorian era was a time when the King Arthur cycle of legendry got an overhaul and re-boot by the popular masses: chivalry was all the rage due to the romance embodied by the Queen and her Consort, Prince Albert. Royalty was being packaged to the masses – who were less than certain about a German consort-Prince behind the throne of their English Queen – and the old Arthurian archetypes were rolled out as a template, just as they had been in the Tudor times previously under Henry VIII. The response of military types in society – the fighting men of Queen Victoria’s armies – was to maintain the presence of a sidearm, or ‘hanger’, as part of their dress uniform as a nod to their status as ‘knights of the realm’. Some leaders actually used these blades in combat; others were content only to trot them out at balls and other fancy occasions.

The weapons themselves, were leftovers from the Napoleonic era when, after you’d fired the one shot in your pistol or musket, you had to resort to an edged weapon to complete the job you’d signed up for. Ballistics technology had replaced bows and arrows on the battlefield, but that technology had a long way to go before it removed swords completely from the conflict!

In the three canon eras of CoC, the responses to someone hauling out a sharpened length of steel with hurtful intent, varies widely. In games like Cthulhu Invictus or Dark Ages Cthulhu, things are a bit more fluid – your various Keepers will have their own ideas about who can wield a gladius or swing a broadsword. I will focus on Cthulhu by Gaslight, Classic era Call of Cthulhu (1920s-30s) and Cthulhu Now.

From the above commentary one thing should be immediately obvious – carrying a sword automatically assumes upper class status. Dress uniforms generally included swords for officers, and those officers usually came from high class families and were able to buy their commissions and ranks. Anyone beneath the rank of captain was barred from wearing a sword when in their dress outfits (of course, there are variations to this, including parade uniforms and many other traditional loopholes assumed by various regiments; for the sake of simplicity I’m sticking with this generalisation). Members of the peerage – lords, dukes, barons, princes, etc. – also had swords as part of their regalia, ie. the ceremonial outfits which they wore at state and parliamentary functions. Of course, these people were not required to drag on a sword if they didn’t want to (for reasons of age, infirmity, or personal preference) but the option was there. It can be seen then, that the members of society who could wear a sword openly in public, were a relatively small number, and even then a police officer could still stop such an individual and ask why they were so armed (especially if the sword is worn without the rest of the dress uniform).

(Armies and their various units have dress codes which detail how and when certain uniforms are to be worn, along with a host of other regulations outlining appropriate behaviour in public, while on or off duty. Dress uniform is sometimes required to be worn if a soldier on active duty is out on the town while the nation is at war: this is an acceptable occasion to be carrying a sword in public.)

The thing to remember is that context is everything. In all modern societies, the perception that one is a threat to the peace and safety of the populace lies in one’s apparent readiness to cause an affray or to inflict harm upon others. Carrying a weapon openly almost always signals such intent and the agents of the Law then have every right to detain and to question the carrier.

So much for the state of play in England and the US; the rest of the world reveals a completely different card game, even a radically different deck of cards!

The Germanic states during the Victorian era, were celebrating ideals of a romantic past with its knightly families and heraldic heritages. Those connected to the German nobility were keen to uphold notions of leadership through blood inheritance, and many young men indulged themselves in activities that smacked of ‘knightliness’, such as horse-riding and fencing. In the academic towns – such as Leipzig and Heidelberg – fencing schools proliferated and many young men joined these societies to secure beneficial networks and to uphold notions of the purity of “blood and soil”. A feature of these organisations was the inflicting of facial ‘duelling scars’ – often placed by the wearing of strategically revealing fencing masks – which were considered brands of manliness, or bravery. Amongst these ‘weekend warriors’ the wearing of uniforms, along with swords, was their equivalent of ‘flipping the bird’ to the Powers That Be; and because they represented the highest echelons of society, messing with them could involve more headaches than might be reasonably anticipated.

In France, the level of machismo was ratcheted down a few notches, but, unlike in England and Germany, the sport of fencing was far more widely practised, probably as a leftover from Napoleon’s time and bolstered by the novels of Alexandre Dumas. This is not to suggest that people strode around with swords on their hips – in fact the French were much less likely to go in for such displays – but it did mean that if you met someone with a sword, they were probably likely to know how to do something purposeful with it.

The really interesting part of Europe, in terms of swords, were the Balkan states. In countries such as Greece and Turkey, young boys were considered grown by the age of twelve, and part of that coming of age was the presentation of a sword or, if funds were tight, a dagger or knife. As symbols of manhood, these weapons were jealously guarded and maintained. Often, the felling of an enemy included the taking of their sword as spoils of war. Better swords were decorated with silver and gems and, over time, these expensively encrusted weapons became outward emblems of battle prowess.

It is useful to remember that the Ottoman Empire held sway in this part of Europe right up until the end of World War One. The Islamic culture of the Ottomans proliferated with bladed weapons and the notions of manhood, warrior status and edged weaponry were intrinsically intertwined. Carrying a sword was considered pretty much de rigeur whereas being without one would tend be commented upon. This swaggering macho attitude is most likely the reason that Lord Byron ended up funding the Greeks in their war of Independence against the Turks.

Moving further East, we encounter Afghanistan and India, parts of the British Empire where combat was often only the implementation of a badly-thought-out military policy away. This was the case during the Indian Mutiny when cow and pig fat was used to grease the rifle cartridges which locally-engaged troops were supposed to use, troops who were predominantly Hindu and Muslim. The Indians and the Afghans traditionally used a multitude of edged weapons in combat and, increasingly, the British troops who were sent to oppress them souvenired these arms after defeating their previous owners. This was the case too, in the Balkans where British officers captured the jewelled swords of their Turkish opponents during the Crimean War. Such spoils of battle often became heirlooms in British families, usually replacing the original sabres that their new owners had previously worn as part of their dress uniform. Finding and owning edged weaponry in the canon CoC periods is not hard; legitimately using them in public is a different matter entirely.

It boils down to this: in the Gaslight era of the game, if you have a military background and are of a suitably high social status, you can have a sword with you as part of your luggage; if you want to wear it about however, you should be in your military dress uniform – or whatever standard outfit your dress code specifies. You may wear your sword to a formal function such as a gala, or ball, or to your club; but, when entering the event you are required to leave it at the door along with your coat and hat – hospitality would not have it otherwise. In the Classic era, the same generally applies; however, if you appear in public wearing a sword, there had better be a good reason – a state function, or a military funeral, would suffice. In the Modern era, restrictions are far harsher: no-one has a legitimate reason to wander about with a weapon strapped to their side. If you’re doing so, you’d better be on a military base or part of a marching band, or honour guard.

As to swords in other parts of the world from the Victorian through to the Edwardian eras, China and the Mongol wildernesses, along with the backblocks of Russia, were all lawless places, by and large, and the notion of “sword equals manhood” was generally prevalent. In Japan, the gun had taken hold briefly after the first Dutch and Portuguese traders arrived, but that society mostly abandoned the concept of firearms and returned to the sword as their preferred battle option. Japanese military personnel were rarely without their katanas as adjuncts to their public appearances, despite adopting new technological forms of warfare into the Twentieth Century. The South Americans, with attitudes inherited from the Spanish by and large used knives, but their military social elite enjoyed the dress-uniform-plus-sword ensemble to a wide extent. Africa was the home of the spear – symbolised by the Zulu assegai – but given the cultural melting-pot the continent represents, a wide variety of edged weapons ran a close second place.

Knives are a different proposition. The single-bladed knife is most always seen to be a utilitarian tool – much labour is made easier with the help of a knife, from fishing to cooking, and depriving someone of this instrument is often akin to taking away their livelihood. Much of southern Europe, from Spain through Italy to Greece, is symbolised by hot-tempers and knives; in fact Naples is synonymous with back-alley knife attacks. Draconian political structures and intermittent military rule meant that the only weapons available to fight such oppression were mundane tools, including the knife.

In England on the other hand, the rise of the Sheffield steel industry meant that hunting knives, pocket knives and butchers’ tools, reached a kind of apotheosis. Highborn peers, keen to exploit the wide open spaces of their newly-cleared Scottish holdings, paid huge sums for keen-edged sporting blades, some of which were mostly spectacular without being of much use.

*****

Now, having examined where and when one can show up with a sword on one’s hip in the modern eras, let’s look at what sort of cutlery there was out there to be had.

Weapon	Base Chance	Damage	Range	Attacks / Round	HPs	Malfunction
Fencing Foil, sharpened*	20%	1D6+1+db	touch	1	10	00%
Sword Cane*	20%	1D6+db	touch	1	10 (8)	00%
Rapier/Heavy Epee*	10%	1D6+1+db	touch	1	15	00%
Cavalry Sabre	15%	1D8+1+db	touch	1	20	00%
Hatchet/Sickle	20%	1D6+1+db	touch	1	12	00%
Fighting Knife*	25%	1D4+2+db	touch	1	15	00%
Butcher Knife*	25%	1D6+db	touch	1	12	00%
Small Knife*	25%	1D4+db	touch	1	9	00%

*This weapon can Impale

Fencing Foil, sharpened*

The average fencing foil used in the Olympic sport is a long, thin piece of flexible steel, square or triangular in cross-section. It is generally flattened at the tip, like a nail head, and often capped with a coloured rubber stop. This renders it mostly incapable of inflicting harm during play and is the reason for the qualifier “sharpened” in the description. Simply put, if one wants this weapon to inflict damage, one has to render it capable of so doing. This is important to keep in mind as, being caught with one of these, automatically implies an intent to cause harm...

Sword Cane*

There are a number of variants of these weapons but they boil down basically to two types: a rapier-like sword with a cylindrical wooden sheathe, or a wooden cane with a mechanism which extends a long spike from the lower end – or ferrule -  of the stick. Obviously, the latter variant is more of a gizmo than a sword, so we’ll ignore it for present purposes.

The value of the sword cane is that it can be carried into circumstances that an obvious sword cannot. The other advantage is that the wooden sheathe of the sword can serve as a parrying device, or shield, against a similarly-armed opponent. In combat against another swordsperson, if an attempt at striking fails but the roll is sufficient to achieve a LUCK Roll for the sword cane wielder, the wooden sheathe comes between their opponent’s weapon and the owner: the hit points of that strike deduct from the sheathe (8HPs) first before counting against the wielder.

Rapier / Heavy Epée*

These weapons have similar statistics but are in fact quite distinct from each other. The rapier is the classic ‘musketeer’ sword. It has two edges along its blade, a guard which incorporates quillons and a basket grip to protect the hand. Fundamentally, it is not a sporting implement.

The epée on the other hand (“epée” means “sword” in French) is a sporting piece used in Olympic fencing and has a triangular cross-section to its blade. It is notable for its bell-like hand guard which completely protects the hand. Like the fencing foil above, the epée has a flattened tip so as not to cause harm during a bout; removing this makes it a true weapon and, similarly, reveals the harmful intentions of the one so doing.

The Cavalry Sabre

Most dress uniforms which comprise a sword usually involve a cavalry sabre; unsurprisingly these uniforms are usually the outfits of cavalry divisions. The cavalry sabre is designed to be used on horseback. It has a single edge with a curve to it which means that, as it’s brought to bear upon the enemy while barrelling past on one’s horse, the downward blow also incorporates a slicing action, making the wound inflicted that much nastier. Most sabres have a simple hand guard made up of a curved piece of metal which runs from the quillons at the top of the handle, over the fingers to the pommel, or base, of the handle. Some Persian-influenced sabres dispensed with this feature (and were the purview of soldiers who had served in India or the Middle East) while others affected a full basket grip - a weave of metal strips which completely enclosed the user’s hand.

The ‘Hanger’*

Generally speaking, a ‘hanger’ is simply an edged weapon which hangs from one’s belt – the word can apply to any type of blade so worn. However, the wearing of swords in polite company forced the development of a short type of sword which wouldn’t become entangled with furniture, drapery, or other people. The hanger became a symbolic weapon, a ‘mini-sword’ that would complete a dress uniform without a sword’s usual awkward side-effects.

Not that a hanger couldn’t be used in battle. While smaller than the average sabre, it’s still a well-made and deadly weapon! Use the statistics for a Butcher’s Knife in the above table for a hanger, but with 15HPs.

Hatchet / Sickle

It might seem odd to include these weapons in this list, but there is a piece of military hardware which is covered by these stats. After the Crimean and Boer Wars, and into the First World War, soldiers became familiar with an item that was indispensible to the new style of fighting – the entrenching tool. This is essentially a small shovel, sometimes a folding one, which at a pinch was quite handy for use in close combat. It uses the same statistics as the hatchet.

Fighting Knife*

Knives have many uses: they can chop wood, slice canvas, cut cord and wire, and open tins. Fundamentally though, they are issued to soldiers as a last line of defense, once their ammo ran dry. Fighting knives tend to be big – oftentimes, the intimidation factor of a big knife can stop a confrontation before it begins.

The dirk is a fighting knife which tends to travel in tandem with that other Scottish blade, the Claymore. Many Highland Regiments have dirks as part of their dress uniforms, meaning that even low-ranking men in these units are often armed. The dirk is a no-nonsense knife meant to be carried whilst wearing a kilt. Therefore it has no extraneous spiky bits which could possibly catch on things in a fight.

Butcher Knife*

It’s a mainstay of every slasher flick – when the baddies invade your home, the first thing you do is pillage the kitchen for the biggest knife you can find. It’s usually this one, the butcher knife. In Victorian times there was a thriving business in crafting and buying the best cooking knives available and the burgeoning smithies of Sheffield were ready to meet that demand.

The biggest butcher knife in town is the cleaver, a mainstay of Chinese 'chop-socky’ cinema. Not only is it intimidating, it’s also very effective. It uses the same statistics as the hatchet above.

Small Knife*

The definition “small knife” covers all concealable blades including flick knives and pocket knives; the best known of these weapons is the switchblade knife. Unlike other blades in this list, it’s useful to remember that, by means of one’s Conceal skill, the blade can be hidden upon one’s person and smuggled into situations where it might be needed.

*****

So much for standard military issue. In Part Two we will look at the bizarre array of blades that returned to Europe and America from the far-flung reaches of the world.