Bah! The Vikings shall make short work out of these walking tin cans.
I'm blood bound to vote for the vikings. After all, I'm related to this man:
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Forum Fighters! By Mettaur, Hakoshen, and TheFlyingGreenMonkey!
Knight, plate mail > chainmail.We've been through this. Heavier armor does not necessarily = instant win. It slows you down and tires you out sooner. Besides, there's no such thing as a perfect armor. They all have weak spots and Vikings were opportunist fighters. They studied their enemies prior to the fight.
Not siding with anyone, but to gather information. I assume you are the expert on vikings, so I ask you this. What if he could not study prior to the fight? Could he find their weakness in the flury of battle? The answer is obvious, so I do not know why I bother asking it.
It's not an instant win by any means, but it is an advantage. Plus plate mail revolutionized warfare, I mean the halbred was designed specificly to fight it. I can't think of any weapons designed just to deal with chain mail.
The viking stands a chance but in my mind about 7 out of ten times the knight would win.
Well, when sailing in unfamiliar waters, Vikings would send in a scouts, in guise as traders to asses the surrounding towns. If the defenses were too tough, they would simply trade with them. If they believed they could take them, the scouts would report back and they'd plan a fast strike attack. If war was in the area, they would hire themselves as mercenaries to the side that was fairing better.
It's kinda like having an aggressive business plan, really.
And to properly answer your question Mettaur, if they wouldn't be able to perform a reckon of the area, then they probably wouldn't have been able to mount an army to attack with, to begin with.
Vikings had one crucial weakness. Saturdays. It was their bath day (the Nordic word for Saturday is laugardagur which, directly translated, means bath day (funny, right?)). Enemies who knew this fact would often attack them during that time. That's how the English managed to reclaim England, once the vikings had conquered about half of it.
Typically, I try to argue for whichever side is losing the argument. Since there was no doubt at all PP would vote for the Viking, even if he'd been written in as a low caste soldier with nothing to his name but a slingshot and a spoon, it's pretty much a given I have to vote for the knight.
I'd probably support the Viking under other circumstances, you know, considering a two handed axe can rend steel, and anyone high enough in rank to carry one would certainly be strong enough to use it… but it's not going to get past that longsword's kill radius.
Also, for clarification purposes, there IS a difference between plate mail and plate armor. The proper term for what I pictured him in would actually be splint mail (which is what plate mail technically is), which looks more like the one in the middle here.
Assuming however though that it IS plate armor, if made before the advent of the firearm, which it would have been, it would have been much thinner and weighed about 30 lbs. If you've ever been on a ruck march, 30 lbs really isn't that much; soldiers in recent eras have carried upwards of 100 lbs at times across their entire bodies, and are still expected to move and fight with everything on them.
So yeah, I'm still going with the knight, whichever armor interpretation you'd prefer to use. It's either splintmail or thin plate, but he's still quick and he's still got the benefit of range and material quality. And shorter beards. That has to count for something :P
Yes, allow me to extrapolate a bit further;
The Vikings are winning the fight overall. That's a given. Morgan and his militia are only fighting about half of the Viking's forces (about fifty of them) and they're getting massacred because they are, after all, peasants with short swords and spears. Their real purpose is to establish Morgan as a learned nobleman and a commander of his own small unit, as knights typically were, and to give someone for our Viking commander to mow down to prove how badass he is. It was also the only way I could think of to get a man in full armor on the same field as a Viking because Vikings on raids didn't just show up, mass ranks and wait for parlay, they attack with the element of surprise and high mobility! (sorry, got excited) So while the first half of the militia was defeated, someone went to get Morgan, who got suited up and ready for battle while the raid went on in the town below. Considering how little time there was to get ready, he would have opted to go with the splint mail over plate armor, assuming he had both anyways.
The contest is really only between Toki (I didn't manage to work his name into the narration) and Morgan, because out of everyone they're the only ones highly ranked, trained, and paragons of what we'd expect their type to be.
What do you mean? Knights are the ones who slay dragons!Vikings are the original dragon slayers.
Remember Beowulf? A viking. It's an old Nordic tale, that became well known in English literature and set the precedence for future dragon slaying tales.
*Does a bit of research*
The manuscript that made the tale famous is dated between the 8th and the 11th century. It's written in old English but the author is unknown. Allot of debate exists about it's true origin but the general assumption is that illiterate vikings spread the tale by word of mouth, for few generations before it was finally documented. That's not a preposterous theory since it's a well known fact that allot of the old sagas were passed down orally for generations before they were written down.
Dragons are also predominant in Nordic mythology. A faith that predates Christianity and your precious Saint George (and it most certainly predates Lego :þ ).
So in reality, vikings taught knights the ye old art of dragonslaying.
I hated Beowulf (okay, what I hated was reading it in Middle English) I also didn't know who Saint George was until about 10 minutes ago when I had to wiki him.
Dragonslaying myths are in pretty much every major cultural development from India north and westward. Technically, dragons themselves originated in the east, migrated west through India and Arabia to Rome, then migrated north, or something like that. So everyone was running around slaying dragons; it just depends on what strata of history you want to look at and which culture moved in to influence them beforehand.
Dragons are also predominant in Nordic mythology. A faith that predates Christianity
Christianity by means of Jesus and the New Testament yes, but you're skipping all that good Old Testament stuff which goes back to about 1800 BC.
Either way it doesn't matter who did it first, a knight would be much more suited to do so, what with higher mobility from a horse, a lance, and a fully metal shield.
I hated Beowulf (okay, what I hated was reading it in Middle English) I also didn't know who Saint George was until about 10 minutes ago when I had to wiki him.Viking catapult along with natural badassery beats the knight.
Dragonslaying myths are in pretty much every major cultural development from India north and westward. Technically, dragons themselves originated in the east, migrated west through India and Arabia to Rome, then migrated north, or something like that. So everyone was running around slaying dragons; it just depends on what strata of history you want to look at and which culture moved in to influence them beforehand.Dragons are also predominant in Nordic mythology. A faith that predates Christianity
Christianity by means of Jesus and the New Testament yes, but you're skipping all that good Old Testament stuff which goes back to about 1800 BC.
Either way it doesn't matter who did it first, a knight would be much more suited to do so, what with higher mobility from a horse, a lance, and a fully metal shield.
Technically, dragons themselves originated in the east, migrated west through India and Arabia to Rome, then migrated north, or something like that.Actually. It is believed that dragon mythology originated separately in the east and the west. The Western dragon are believed to have originated from the Greeks or Babylonians. In fact the word "Dragon" comes from Greek. Then again, you did mention Hebrew dragons and their origin seem similar, yet separate from the Greek dragons so it's not a stretch to assume that dragon tales originated from an even older society.
The common theory is that dinosaur bones triggered the first believes in dragons.
But regardless of where it first originated. Vikings were slaying those foul beasts long before the knights popped up. :Þ
P.S. I mentioned Christianity because the most famous dragon slaying knight was Saint George. I've never heard of a dragon slaying Rabbi but you're more then welcome to inform me of one if you can find him.
Well, I'll be… I found one.
His name was Rav Aha ben Jacob, a Jewish Scholar who was born in Babylon and settled in Israel. This passage is from the Talmud:
"…Jacob the son of R' Aha bar Jacob: his father sent him to Abaye [to attend Abaye's house of study]. When he [Jacob] returned, he [R. Aha] saw that his lessons weren't sharp. He said to him, "I take priority to you; you return [home] so I can go [study]". (faced with limited resources, the most capable student is should study - perhaps too Aha wanted to see what was wrong). Abaye heard that he was coming. There was a sheid in Abaye's Rabbinical academy, such that when they [students] entered in pairs, even during the day, they would be hurt. He [Abaye] said to them [his community], "Let no person offer him lodgings [forcing him to stay at the academy]. Perhaps a miracle will occur [because of Aha's merit]." He [R. Aha] entered and slept in the academy. It appeared to him as a seven-headed serpent. Every time he prostrated himself [prayed], another head fell off. In the morning he said to them, "Had a miracle not occured, you would have endangered me. (Kiddushin 29b)"
tl.dr. version: He slept in a place that was being terrorized by a seven headed hydra. Instead of attacking it, he prayed to god and after every prayer the hydra lost a head. A rather peaceful way of defeating it, I'll admit but defeat it he did.
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