Editing Bows and Arrows (section)

== Types of bows and arrows ==
*'''Hunting Bow''': Any one of a billion variations on the theme of a simple bow made from local wood with a low draw weight. Easy to make and easy to master. Such bows would be (and still are) used for hunting, training and sport, but due to their low power they had little to no ability to pierce armor and were of little military use, but you know, throw enough paint at a wall some of it's gonna stick so troops armed with bows were still used in the army because that one time in a hundred they're useful makes that pittance you pay them worth it.

*'''Composite / Self bow''': Not a type of bow, as much as a way of building them. the self bow is what we think of when we say "bow": a single piece of curved wood with a string. Composite bows on the other hand are made of layers of different wood, horn and sinew glued together. The tougher materials allow composite bow to store as much energy as a self bow that has a bigger draw, but it's more complex to build and the glue can break apart in wet weather, which is why they were used mostly in the mid east and never caught on in Europe. Recurve bows are often built using composite techniques.

*'''Longbow''': The prime missile weapon of England, (the rest of Europe tended to use crossbows during the Middle Ages due to how damn hard it is to get large army of longbowmen). Longbow is actually an anachronistic term; in their time they were known only as bows or, outside of England, English bows. The first usage of "longbow" comes from the late 15th century and is used to differentiate them from crossbows, because they are held LONGwise rather than CROSSwise (not because they are long). It was unquestionably the best range weapon of the time period, and thus [[Medieval Stasis|the most common type of bow seen in fantasy]]. This is not actually due to the design or functionality of the bow; the thick cross section and heavy limbs of a longbow make it quite inefficient as a bow design, with many other bow designs (such as the recurves used by asiatic horse archers) being more efficient designs. The main advantage of a longbow is how rapid they are to make, since they can be made from a single straight stave of wood; some bowyers give a figure of less than two hours from seasoned stave to bow. The longbow is defined as a bow that is big as the person using it, but the most powerful bows of the medieval period were often longer than the user was tall, to reduce the chance of breakage. Another advantage of the Longbow is that, unlike the smaller and more efficient composite recurve bow, thet were made of one bit of wood, meaning they won't break apart every time it rains. English and Welsh long bows are traditionally made of yew and are composed of one solid piece of wood, meaning you can make a powerful bow fairly quickly. In fact, the way they were cut from the yew made them natural composite bows, using the different parts of the trunk to give extra springy strength. Good yew was so valued by the English that Edward IV put a tax on Italian traders stipulating that they had to supply a certain number of bowstaves for every tun of cargo (Italian yew being the best). Making a longbow'''man''' on the other hand takes a lot longer, and the English were the only ones to pull it off on a large scale. To do that they had to structure their entire society around making longbowmen, training from the age of 7. The French and Scots also produced respectable numbers of longbowmen. Longbowmen were mostly drawn from the yeomen, the land-owning commoners with a status between the peasants and knights (incidentally making them part of the first examples of the emerging middle class). Many were basically professional soldiers in an age of levies and warrior aristocracies, and were well equipped and very well paid. They were in huge demand as mercenaries, especially in the Prussian crusades and Italian civil wars. The English longbowmen were so notoriously dangerous that, supposedly, during the Hundred Years War, the French would sever the fingers necessary to a draw a longbow back, the index and middle, of any longbowman they captured. In response, Brits would taunt the French before battles by presenting said fingers, something which later evolved into the modern "Up Yours!" gesture. The long bow has the last recorded wartime bow kill in history, when British Lt. Col. Jack Churchill used one in World War II. He was also carrying a Scottish claymore and a set of bagpipes, so we can safely say his nickname of "Mad Jack" was well deserved.

*'''Yumi''': The generic name for all asymmetrical Japanese bows, further divided into the daikyū longbow and the shorter hankyū. The yumi is a type of longbow that can be over 2 meters in length end to end, with the grip being displaced from the center of the bow towards one end or the other. Exactly ''why'' the yumi is asymmetrical is debated,: some think it is so the bow could be fired kneeling, others think it helped when firing on horseback. Fortunately, any accuracy problems caused by that weird shape are mostly ironed out by the Japanese style of archery.
**'''Kyūdō''': The way of the bow, the Japanese style of archery. Like a lot of Japanese fighting styles it bundles spiritual learning into its raw martial technique, which is why it's hung on a bit better then other archery styles. What makes Kyūdō different from western archery is that you draw the string farther back, behind the ear, and that you spin the bow as you fire it so that the string ends in front of your forearm eliminating the need for a bracer to stop the string raise welts on your arm. Additionally the other big difference is that Kyūdō techniques are incredibly detailed with 8 or more steps each with an exact way of doing each.

*'''Recurve Bow''': A bow where the tips of the arms bend away from the archer, and the bow as a whole actually curves ''forward'' when unstrung. This gives the bow much higher tension and power at a shorter size, making it ideal for cavalry. It was one of the oldest types of bow more complex than "bendy wood with a string," and revolutionized warfare when it was first invented.

*'''Compound Bow''': The powerful modern version, utilizing both high-tension materials and the use of multi-stringed pulleys to thoroughly outpace anything the ancient world had. The near-complete obsolescence of the bow in modern warfare has ensured that most compound bows are used today by sportsmen and hunters. Note: In the past people called composite bows "Compound bows."

*'''Cable backed bow''': a cable backed bow uses ropes or cables running bow tip to bow tip to reinforce the structure of the bow. The big advantage of a cable-backed bow is that the cable reinforcement lets you make a bow out of very weak wood; they were common among the Inuit, who could use drift wood to make fairly powerful bows.
**''' Penobscot or Wabenaki bow,''': Invented by the Penobscot nation (which was a part of the Wabenaki confederation hence the name [[skub]]), the Penobscot bow is a type of cable backed bow. The difference is a Penobscot bow uses a second smaller bow with the arms pointing forward to help to get further tension out of otherwise weak wood.

*'''"The Instant Legolas"''': As you can tell by the name this is modern engineering thing done for fun to crank up the power of an ancient weapon. Invented by the German Joerg Sprave (since everything bigger then a slingshot is banned) the "Instant Legolas" adds a magazine mechanism to a bow, thus allowing what is in effect semiautomatic fire or burst fire depending on how you look at it: from a bow. Hence the name. It is distinct from a crossbow since there is no device to hold the string back, as such it turns the bow it is attached to into a cross between a repeating crossbow and a normal bow. Tod Todeschini has demonstrated such a device could be made with only technology from the Middle Ages, though quite costly in production time. While the "Instant Legolas" may not be the most practical invention, (since you know guns are a thing in our timeline), it's a fun one hence why it's on the list here for all your clockpunk world build needs.

While bows are largely the same from one type to another, the type of arrows they fired could be very different, with each built for a different task.

*'''Barbed Arrow''': arrows with at least a pair of barbs pointing out the backside so that they would get stuck in whatever they impacted, meaning wounds were both nastier and more difficult to treat. Also pretty damn useful for fishing since they won't float away since they're stuck.

*'''Bodkin point''': a European four sided pointed arrow head, the Bodkin looks like a tiny tall pyramid with steep sides. The Bodkin point was, thanks to it narrow tip, better able to penetrate, or at least heavily dent, armor then other arrow heads, and was good at deal with most kinds of armor at close range. The french learned this to their dismay in the Battle of Agincourt where the french knights charged across a muddy field, were slowed and made easy picking for the mass of English longbowmen. Even if the arrows couldn't penetrate some of their armor, the slow down and denting of their gear made them easy targets for the English longbowmen who, coupled with their innate strength from heavy bow use, smash their way to victory with the mallets they wield.

*'''Broadhead''': what we think of when we say "arrowhead", a broad base coming to a narrow point. The broadhead was built to take on animals by wounding them, then causing them to bleed out through the large gash and internal bleeding it created. When humans started killing each other it was just as effective against unarmed humans, but once we started wearing armor the broadhead had things more difficult. Still in use today for most hunters, and soft armor (ranging from leather to kevlar) are still vulnerable to penetration.
**'''Mechanical Broadhead''': A modernized version of the broadhead, these arrows feature heads that are normally small and blunt like field point arrows, but deploy retractable blades when they hit something. This allows them to deploy arbitrarily wide "heads" without affecting the arrow's accuracy and are more effective at wounding big game, but they tend to be more difficult to maintain than their fixed-blade cousins, require more draw strength since kinetic energy is lost when triggering the blades, and it's possible for the blades to deploy too early. Which type of broadhead is better is still a subject of intense debate among bow hunters.

*'''Target Point Arrow''':This type of arrow has a bullet-shaped heads with a sharp point, meant for penetrating archery targets without causing permanent damage by doing so.
**'''Field Point Arrow''': A relative of the target point arrow with a distinct "shoulder" on the point, which keeps the arrow from sticking into objects like tree stumps if a shot is fired outdoors and misses. It is commonly used for shooting practice and small game hunting, since they can be made with similar weight and flight properties to broadheads without causing damage to the target upon removal.

*'''Fowling Arrow''': Also called a blunt or bludgeon arrow, these arrows have a flat, bulb-like tip. They were designed to have limited range and penetrative power, instead focusing on downing birds in flight or killing small game via blunt force trauma. The impact of the arrows was enough to break the bird's bones. The limited penetration kept the meat edible and largely unexploded compared to broadheads.

*'''Judo Arrows''': A recent design, these arrows are designed for field practice and small game hunting in outdoors areas. Small spring wire "arms" attached to the arrowhead allow it to catch on grass and debris if it misses its target, preventing it from being lost in vegetation.

*'''Elf-Arrows''': Yes, that's what they're called. These are flint arrow heads used by the indigenous peoples of Europe, and particularly England, before they got a hand on the whole civilization thing. When the medieval people found these things in the ground they assumed they were arrows made and used by fairy and elves to kill cattle and humans.

*'''Flaming arrows''': These were NOT just setting the shaft of your arrow on fire, a Flaming arrow replaces the arrow head with something to carry the fire to the target. In a hurry (or on the cheap) you could just wrap rags soaked in something flammable around the tip of your arrow, but if you were ready you would use specially made arrows heads which were built like a cage so you could shoot a burning coal. It should be added that, given the small amount of flame these things put out, they were primarily used to light flammable things on fire (sails, thatch roofs, dry grass, and so on). Against anything living, they put out so little flame that they would be useless as anything other than a ''very'' marginal terror weapon ("look how many arrows we can put out; surrender before we have the light to shoot accurately"). Though in theory they could spook cavalry mounts.

*'''Fire Arrow''': Not to be confused with a flaming arrow, a Fire arrow is just like a normal arrow, only with a rocket attached. Fire arrows were used by all of the major "eastern" nations, China, Mongolia, Korea and Japan. China invented them and their use spread to the others. The Korean version was called the '''Singijeon''' and could be loaded for long range or for shorter ranges but with an explosive warhead. After the mongols used them in their attempt to conquer japan, the Japanese picked up a version for themselves called the '''Bo-hiya''' which was fired from out of an Arquebus rather then the lunching platforms (most famous being the Korean Hwacha) that the Chinese and Koreans favored.

*'''Ya''': Japanese arrows, unlike European ones these could be over a meter long.
**'''Kaburi-Ya (Whistling Arrow)''': Used both to signal to commanders and to scare the crap out of enemy soldiers, the "whistling arrow" works as you think it would, either the tip of the arrow was replaced or they added something along the length of the arrow to cause the whistling.
**'''Karimata''': A wacky looking arrow head, the "ropecutter" is a Y shaped arrowhead, with the two upper arms of the arrow pointing out toward the target. The Karimata was used to hunt big game by causing bleeding, but logically it would also create horrible wounds on a human.

*'''Explosive Arrow''': Relatively modern, but nevertheless still entertaining. Take a bomb and tie it to front of arrow in place of arrowhead. Generally very forward heavy and not very aerodynamic so it might not fly the way one might want it to, but given the whole "exploding" thing it doesn't need to be that accurate as long as it hits the general vicinity of where you want it to hit.

*'''Safety Arrow''': Arrows with wide, padded heads that make them (relatively) safe to use for re-enactment combats, although their users still advise the use of armor to avoid any accidents. With a 35 pound draw bow, capping an arrow with a penny divides the shaft's force over enough area to avoid breaking skin, although without padding it can still bruise.