House of Haleth - Tools and Props

1,70-1,90 as a spear, shorter as a sceptre/mace. 1,50 is about the lower end in length for fighting spears.
 
1,70-1,90 as a spear, shorter as a sceptre/mace. 1,50 is about the lower end in length for fighting spears.
For dwarves? Both the hauwerk and the spear are dwarvish here. Bur fine. you will have all three sizes in 5 minutes.

Edit: here you are:
dwarven spear 3.png
 
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Sure.Hauberks can get knee-long and even longer.The spearhead is yet too broad.25-30 cms are still realistic i believe.. it should not be broader. It would look best about 10-15 cm broad i think, which is about half as broad as the one spear in Smaug's hoard.
 
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Dwarves are about 30-40 cms shorter than a medieval soldier of small statue. Many dwarves may have been smaller, but i believe their elite-soldiers who wore Long hauberks were most likely 1,20-1,40 tall, quite a bit taller than the average dwarf.

A Battle Axe does not replace a spear.The Vikings wore broad bladed spears and big shields and a sword or axe as sidearm.Axes are very good against shields and very effective against mail.The problem with the double-headed Axes in the picture i do have is that they look like cavalry weapons... but a weapon such as the labrys did exist - i just doubt they were used in actual battle.The only real example for a double-headed battle axe i could find is the indo-persian cavalry axe.
 
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Dwarves are about 30-40 cms shorter than a medieval soldier of small statue. Many dwarves may have been smaller, but i believe their elite-soldiers who wore Long hauberks were most likely 1,20-1,40 tall, quite a bit taller than the average dwarf.

1,30m here. Still the spearheads to big for a 1,50m woman in any conbination:
dwarven spear 3b.png

A Battle Axe does not replace a spear. The Vikings wore broad bladed spears and big shields and a sword or axe as sidearm. Axes are very good against shields and very effective against mail. The problem with the double-headed Axes in the picture i do have is that they look like cavalry weapons... but a weapon such as the labrys did exist - i just doubt they were used in actual battle. The only real example for a double-headed battle axe i could find is the indo-persian cavalry axe.

I have been thinking e.g. about the battle axe culture. Can you find any spear find for that one at all? I couldn't.

Also a Labys can be longshafted enough to easily replace a spear.
 
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I feel like we're getting pretty far off into the weeds here so let me try to rein this in.

There are things about the Haladin which have already been established in conversations on the podcast.

When we first meet them, they are Neolithic, homestead farmers who have access to a smattering of metal tools an weapons through trade at great cost from the Dwarves. We have established that many of these items are bronze. This benefits the Haladin in that these items can be more easily repaired by cold-forging. It benefits the dwarves by making certain that these unpredictable neighbors are kept at a lower technology level and are therefore less threatening.

Haldad possesses one such item, a spear. He uses it in S05E04, but it is passed down to Haleth by the time of Haldad's death sometime later. She uses it to knock Boldog off the stockade wall in that episode. In S05E06, she uses it against giant spiders in Nan Dungortheb. In S05E07, the haft is broken right before she uses it to kill Tevildo. After that, she still holds onto the weapon, albeit in a shortened, more ceremonial form.

These are established elements which will not be changing. There are certainly details which can be discussed further, but within the framework listed above.
 
I feel like we're getting pretty far off into the weeds here so let me try to rein this in.

There are things about the Haladin which have already been established in conversations on the podcast.

When we first meet them, they are Neolithic, homestead farmers who have access to a smattering of metal tools an weapons through trade at great cost from the Dwarves. We have established that many of these items are bronze. This benefits the Haladin in that these items can be more easily repaired by cold-forging. It benefits the dwarves by making certain that these unpredictable neighbors are kept at a lower technology level and are therefore less threatening.

Haldad possesses one such item, a spear. He uses it in S05E04, but it is passed down to Haleth by the time of Haldad's death sometime later. She uses it to knock Boldog off the stockade wall in that episode. In S05E06, she uses it against giant spiders in Nan Dungortheb. In S05E07, the haft is broken right before she uses it to kill Tevildo. After that, she still holds onto the weapon, albeit in a shortened, more ceremonial form.

These are established elements which will not be changing. There are certainly details which can be discussed further, but within the framework listed above.

The question is now - shall the design be recognisable dwarvish?
Because the bronze age spear I've given as the first example in this thread above (the one from the MET museum) is a real human Bronze Age design and as stated in the video I've linked above it has has already been used in a simplified form in the LOTR movies for the iron spears of the Rohirrim.

"Pure" dwarvish spears (according to Tolkien;s own drawing) have wrong proportion for humans - as shown in the my pictures above.

If this something the dwarves made especially for humans to keep them down, how recognisable dwarvish is it?
What dwarvish designs have we already here for this series? Or do we follow Peter Jackson's aesthetics?
 
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The question is now - shall the design be recogisable dwarvish?
Because the bronze age spear I've given as the first example in this thread above (the one from the MET museum) is a real human Bronze Age design and as stated in the video I've linked above it has has already been used in a simplified form in the LOTR movies for the iron spears of the Rohirrim.

"Pure" dwarvish spears (according to Tolkien;s own drawing) have wrong proportion for humans - as shown in the my pictures above.

If this something the dwarves made especially for humans to keep them down, how recognisable dwarvish is it?
What dwarvish designs have we already here for this series? Or do we follow Peter Jackson's aesthetics?
We haven’t really nailed down what Dwarvish designs entail outside of some of us being vehemently against using Peter Jackson’s aesthetics. Also, we haven’t decided how being of Dwarvish design will influence Narsil.
 
The question is now - shall the design be recogisable dwarvish?
Because the bronze age spear I've given as the first example in this thread above (the one from the MET museum) is a real human Bronze Age design and as stated in the video I've linked above it has has already been used in a simplified form in the LOTR movies for the iron spears of the Rohirrim.

"Pure" dwarvish spears (according to Tolkien;s own drawing) have wrong proportion for humans - as shown in the my pictures above.

If this something the dwarves made especially for humans to keep them down, how recognisable dwarvish is it?
What dwarvish designs have we already here for this series? Or do we follow Peter Jackson's aesthetics?

I really HATED the jackson designs, i find them very impractical.But we've talked about dwarven designs before in another treat.

I proposed to use elements from viking and anglo-saxon times along with earlier celtic and central european bronze-iron age aesthetics.More round, globed and bulbous forms rather than that silly squareness-cliché,

About smaug's spears... think of a Partizan, Glaive or Guan Dao instead of a spear and you get towards a more realistic inerpretation.
 
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We haven’t really nailed down what Dwarvish designs entail outside of some of us being vehemently against using Peter Jackson’s aesthetics. Also, we haven’t decided how being of Dwarvish design will influence Narsil.

If this is not clear yet - how is one supposed to come up with a design for a dwarven intentionally subpar spearhead?

I really HATED the jackson designs, i find them very impractical.But we've talked about dwarven designs before in another treat.

I proposed to 6se elements from viking and anglo-saxon times along with earlier celtic and central european bronze-iron age aesthetics.More round, globed and bulbous forms rather than that silly squareness-cliché,

La Tène ? Knotwork? Any photos of what you would like? I know nothing about smithing, but can make a simple 3D model. If it is to be cast, one is not bound to think about if it is forgeable.
 
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I was thinking more of Hallstatt, Urnfield and Tumulus culture. I also think knotworks have become a cliché in itself. I like Tolkien's illustrations and definitely would want to use elements of them, though of course adapted to reasonable proportions. As for patterns i am unsure, i believe we had talked about diamond-shape patterns for the noldor, i like to think of Dwarves as a culture that likes round, gem or amulet shaped forms, posdibly also stars - we know they do seem to have a liking for celestial objects.
 
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I was thinking mor ofHallstatt, urnfield and tumulus culture. I also think knotworks have become a cliché in itself. I like Tolkien's illustrations and definitely would want to use elements of them, though of course adapted to reasonable proportions. As for patterns i am unsure, i believe we had talked about diamond-shape patterns for the noldor, i like to think of Dwarves as a culture that likes round, gem or amulet shaped forms, posdibly also stars - we know they do seem to have a liking for celestial objects.

As live-long Hallstatt fan I am delighted. It is not possible to have too much Hallstat design anywhere - as far I am concerned.
Stars are a bit too elvish - do not you think?
How about the moon? Moon-letters and so on...
 
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"Never let go of your spear in the array, unless you have have two, because for combat on the field in array, one spear is better than two swords." Konungs skuggsjá, about 1250. I definitely think the dwarves should use spears. Designs can be varied both in shape and decoration. The following examples are from Kim Hjardar & Vegard Vike "Vikinger i krig", Oslo 2011. The drawings is Vegard Vike's typology of Viking spear-heads, based on Jan Petersen's typology in his 1919 "De norske vikingsverd". So one group of people varied their design over a relatively short period. But not suggesting we necessarily use any of the following designs.

I also disliked PJ's dwarfish designs. And I dislike double-bladed axes more than Shad Brooks does. (
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O.k. That it what I asked in the beginning. Even if the backstory is not shown it has to be plausible. Have you told you search for a bronze spearhead from the beginning, no problem, plenty of those out there:

To be clear, this was stated from the beginning. When Ange1e3e5 first raised the question of what Haleth's spearhead would be made from, the very first reply was Nick's, in which he stated:

We've talked about it being an item acquired by trade with the dwarves. We've been thinking that bronze might be a metal the Haladin might prefer, being one they can repair even with their limited metallurgical knowledge.

So, yes, we have been asking for a bronze, dwarf-made spear for Haleth for some time now. I linked the discussion from January here on the boards where that question came up. Here it is again:


And this spear has been discussed multiple times on the podcast with Corey Olsen, most recently is Session 5-29 on April 22nd. Here is a link to the discussion on YouTube (at the timestamp when we discuss the House of Haleth):

I certainly understand the challenges of keeping track of the discussions in such a long-running project. I am happy to point people to the places where things have been discussed already, to help keep us all on the same page as we continue to discuss.


As for what styles do we have for the dwarves, that question is not completely a blank slate. Bre Melvin has done some artwork for us, featuring concepts and designs for the various houses of the dwarves.

bre-melvin-dwarveslineup02-small.jpg


Now, this is concept art, to give a feel for designs and color schemes and the like, and to begin to establish proportions for the dwarven characters. I would not consider these definitive choices for tools/weapons for the dwarves. But I did want to show this image as a starting point of 'what is dwarven style?'

As for Peter Jackson's movies, there is a desire to have continuity with Howard Shore's score. But for the most part, we are doing our own designs and casting, and largely ignoring the choices that were made in that production. Not because we dislike them, but simply to have the freedom to do our own thing rather than copy/recreate.

In general, the design aesthetic for weapons and armor in this project has skewed very much to practical/historical, and away from 'modern fantasy' designs. We don't want weapons that are comically large for the characters to be lifting, nor weapons that have blades that don't make sense. Despite depicting a world of magic and wonders, we are also trying to ground the physical artefacts in a sense of realism. Definitely not whimsy.
 
To be clear, this was stated from the beginning. When Ange1e3e5 first raised the question of what Haleth's spearhead would be made from, the very first reply was Nick's, in which he stated:

So, yes, we have been asking for a bronze, dwarf-made spear for Haleth for some time now. I linked the discussion from January here on the boards where that question came up. Here it is again:
Bur there were plenty of other voices stating also other humans, Feanorians, Avari...

Searching fo interesting (pre-)historic bronze spearheads at the moment...
 
To be clear, this was stated from the beginning. When Ange1e3e5 first raised the question of what Haleth's spearhead would be made from, the very first reply was Nick's, in which he stated:



So, yes, we have been asking for a bronze, dwarf-made spear for Haleth for some time now. I linked the discussion from January here on the boards where that question came up. Here it is again:


And this spear has been discussed multiple times on the podcast with Corey Olsen, most recently is Session 5-29 on April 22nd. Here is a link to the discussion on YouTube (at the timestamp when we discuss the House of Haleth):

I certainly understand the challenges of keeping track of the discussions in such a long-running project. I am happy to point people to the places where things have been discussed already, to help keep us all on the same page as we continue to discuss.


As for what styles do we have for the dwarves, that question is not completely a blank slate. Bre Melvin has done some artwork for us, featuring concepts and designs for the various houses of the dwarves.

bre-melvin-dwarveslineup02-small.jpg


Now, this is concept art, to give a feel for designs and color schemes and the like, and to begin to establish proportions for the dwarven characters. I would not consider these definitive choices for tools/weapons for the dwarves. But I did want to show this image as a starting point of 'what is dwarven style?'

As for Peter Jackson's movies, there is a desire to have continuity with Howard Shore's score. But for the most part, we are doing our own designs and casting, and largely ignoring the choices that were made in that production. Not because we dislike them, but simply to have the freedom to do our own thing rather than copy/recreate.

In general, the design aesthetic for weapons and armor in this project has skewed very much to practical/historical, and away from 'modern fantasy' designs. We don't want weapons that are comically large for the characters to be lifting, nor weapons that have blades that don't make sense. Despite depicting a world of magic and wonders, we are also trying to ground the physical artefacts in a sense of realism. Definitely not whimsy.
Well, most of the designs for Jackson's Lord of the Rings are regarded as practical; it's The Hobbit ones that aren't discussed.
 
Most? I'd certainly say SOME are, but not most.

Rohirrim, Gondorians and Uruk-hai are ok.

Mordor Orcs, Dwarves, Elves, Haradrim and Easterlings are not.
 
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