Saturday 28 November 2015

Indian armour for SCA persona

The defeat of Hemu by Kankar. From an Akbar-nama manuscript 1590's. National gallery of Victoria As24-1876

At the moment when heavy and light (archery) fighting in the SCA I wear a mishmash of Viking (helm and bazubands), crusades (tabard) and15th century (shield sometimes) and everything else is covered with cloth so is unremarkable. I've been meaning to create a cohesive set of armour for a number of years now but I've never had the funds or the skillset to do this. I think I've finally found the look I'm going to try and go with. I know I posted something similar back in Janurary but the female archers lack of body armour made it impossible to copy well. The image above depicts a battle between warriors wielding spears, maces, bows, swords and machete type swords. There is also a guy in there with a billhook looking thing. They typically have round conicle highly decorated shields as well. There are also a couple of flag bearers and some of the guys have tiny flags out the top of their helmets. The ones I spotted were yellow or red and may have been a signal of allegiance?

Maceman detail from image above.

The important details for my future armour are:
knee high leather boots (sensible when riding)
pointed helm
chainmail aventail (or just back drape)
bazubands  or forearm guards
decorateive knee cops with upper leg protection
articulated upper arm protection (could be quilted fabric instead)
decorative chest protection
pretty tunic over the top



There are few unbearded / non-mustache faces in the crowd of warriors. Most of the people depicted have delicate eyes and noses but I do wonder if women were getting in among it,