Slowly, singing in a guttural chant, a Tuchuk warrior song, he began to swing the bola. It consists of three long straps of leather, each about five feet long, each terminating in a leather sack, which contains, sewn inside, a heavy, round metal weight. It was probably developed for hunting the tumit, a huge, flightless carnivorous bird of the plains, but the Wagon Peoples use it also, and well, as a weapon of war. Thrown to low the long straps, with their approximate ten-foot sweep, almost impossible to evade, strike the victim and the weighted balls, as soon as resistance is met, whip about the victim, tangling and tightening the straps. Sometimes legs are broken. It is often difficult to release the straps, so snarled do they become. Thrown high the Gorean bola can lock a man's arms to his sides; thrown to the throat it can strangle him; thrown to the head, a difficult cast, the whipping weights can crush a skull. One entangles the victim with the bola, leaps from one's mount and with the quiva cuts his throat.
Nomads of Gor, page 24
BOWS AND ARROWS :
Great Bow And there was, too, the great bow, of yellow, supple Ka-la-na, tipped with notched bosk horn, with its cord of hemp, whipped with silk, and the roll of sheaf and flight arrows. I counted the arrows. There were seventy arrows, fifty of which were sheaf arrows, twenty flight arrows.
Raiders of Gor, page 68;
The bow is not commonly favored by Gorean warriors, but all must respect it. It is the height of a tall man; its back, away from the bowman, is flat; its belly, facing the bowman, is half-rounded; it is something like an inch and a half wide and an inch and a quarter thick at the center; it has considerable force and requires considerable strength to draw; many men, incidentally, even some warriors, cannot draw the bow; nine of its arrows can be fired aloft before the first falls again to the earth; at point-blank range it can be fired completely through a four-inch beam; at two hundred yards it can pin a man to a wall; at four hundred yards it can kill the huge, shambling bosk; its rate of fire is nineteen arrows in a Gorean Ehn, about eighty Earth seconds; and a skilled bowman, but not an extraordinary one, is expected to be able to place these nineteen arrows in one Ehn into a target, the size of a man, each a hit, at a range of some two hundred and fifty yards. Yet, as a weapon, it has serious disadvantages, and on Gor the crossbow, inferior in accuracy, range and rate of fire, with its heavy cable and its leaves of steel, tends to be generally favored. The long bow cannot well be used except in a standing, or at least kneeling, position, thus making more of a target of the archer; the long bow is difficult to use from the saddle; it is impractical in close quarters, as in defensive warfare or in fighting from room to room; and it cannot be kept set, loaded like a firearm, as can the crossbow.
Raiders of Gor, page 2
BOW, CROSS:
The crossbow is the assassin's weapon, par excellence; further, it might be mentioned that, although it takes longer to set the crossbow, a weaker man, with, say, his belt claw or his winding gear, can certainly manage to do so; accordingly, for every man capable of drawing a warrior's long bow there will be an indefinite number who can use the crossbow; lastly, at shorter distances, the crossbow requires much less skill for accuracy than the long bow."
Raiders of Gor, page 2
BOW, HORN:
I learned as well the rope and bow. The bow, of course, small, for use from the saddle, lacks the range and power of the Gorean longbow or crossbow; still, at close range, with considerable force, firing rapidly, arrow after arrow, it is a fearsome weapon.
Nomads of Gor , page 66
His lance remained on his back, but he carried in his right hand the small, powerful horn bow of the Wagon Peoples an attached to his saddle was a lacquered, narrow, rectangular quiver containing as many as forty arrows.
Nomads of Gor, page 11
ARROWS, SHEAF, AND FLIGHT:
The Gorean sheaf arrow is slightly over a yard long, the flight arrow is about forty inches in length. Both are metal piled and fletched with three half-feathers, from the wings of the Vosk gulls. Mixed in with the arrows were the leather tab, with its two openings for the right forefinger and the middle finger, and the leather bracer, to shield the left forearm from the flashing string."
Raiders of Gor, page 68
HELMET, COMMON:
Common Helmets Above the shield was a suspended helmet, again reminiscent of a Greek helmet, perhaps of the Homeric period. It had a somewhat 'Y'-shaped slot for the eyes, nose, and mouth in the nearly solid metal.
Tarnsman of Gor, page 22
HELMET, SIMPLE:
innocent of insignia, with empty crest plate, of curved iron with its "Y"-like opening, and cushioned with rolls of leather.
Raiders of Gor, page 68
HELMET, NORTHERN:
The helmets of the north are commonly conical, with a nose-guard, that can slip up and down. At the neck and sides, attached by rings, usually hangs a mantle of linked chain. The helmet of Thorgard him-self, however, covered his neck and the sides of his face. It was horned.
Marauders of Gor, page 73
HELMET, WAGON PEOPLE:
He wore a conical, fur-rimmed iron helmet, a net of colored chains depending from the helmet protecting his face, leaving only holes for the eyes.
Nomads of Gor, page 10
HELMET, CAPTAINS :
To be sure, Carved in wood, high on the chair, was the helmet with crest of sleen-fur, the mark of the captain.
Marauders of Gor, page 6
HELMET, ASSASSINS :
All were silent. I wore the garb of the Caste of Assassins, and on the left temple of the black helmet was the golden slash of the messenger.
Tarnsman of Gor, page 192
LANCE, KAILLA:
"Ah, yes, weapons," Kamchak was saying, "what shall it be the kaiila lance, a whip and bladed bole perhaps the quiva?"
Nomads of Gor, page 123
His lance had a rider hood under the point, with which he might dismount opponents.
Nomads of Gor, page 14
LANCE, WAGON PEOPLE :
The lances of the Wagon Peoples are not couched. They are carried in the right fist, easily, and are flexible and light, used for thrusting, not the battering-ram effect of the heavy lances of Europe's High Middle Ages. Needless to say, they an be almost as swift and delicate in their address as a saber. The lances are black, cut from the poles of young tem trees. They may be bent almost double, like finely tempered steel, before they break. A loose loop of boskhide, wound twice about the right fist, helps to retain the weapon in hand-to-hand combat. It is seldom thrown.
Nomads of Gor, page 15
LANCE, THARLARION:
In a minute the rider appeared in view - a fine, bearded warrior with a golden helmet and a tharlarion lance.
Tarnsmans of Gor, page 115
QUIVA:
I was most fond perhaps, of the balanced saddle knife, the quiva; it is about a foot in length, double edged; it tapers to a daggerlike point ... --Nomads of Gor, page 67; The quiva itself is regarded, on the whole, as more of a missile weapon than a hand knife.
Nomads of Gor, page 124
Most quivas, incidentally, are wrought in the smithies of Ar.
Nomads of Gor, page 124
In the saddle itself, on the right side, indicating the rider must be right-handed, were the seven sheaths for the almost legendary quivas, the balanced saddleknives of the prairie.
Nomads of Gor, page 11
ROPE:
On the saddle there also hung, on one side, a coiled rope of braided boskhide.
Nomads of Gor, page 11
SHIELD, ROUNDED :
And the rounded shield of layered boskhide, with its double sling, riveted with pegs of iron and bound with hoops of brass.
Raiders of Gor, page 68
The round shield, concentric overlapping layers of hardened leather riveted together and bound with hoops of brass, fitted with the double sling for carrying on the left arm, was similarly unmarked. Normally the Gorean shield is painted boldly and has infixed in it some device for identifying the bearer's city.
Outlaw of Gor, page 21
SHIELD, TURIAN :
The morning sun flashed from their helmets, their long tharlarion lances, the metal embossments on their oval shields, unlike the rounded shields of most Gorean cities.
Nomads of Gor, page 113
SPEAR:
The spear was a typical Gorean spear, about seven feet in height, heavy, stout, with a tapering bronze head some eighteen inches in length. It is a terrible weapon and, abetted by the somewhat lighter gravity of Gor, when cast with considerable force, can pierce a shield at close quarters or bury its head a foot deep in solid wood. With this weapon groups of men hunt even the larl in its native haunts in the Voltai Range, that incredible pantherlike carnivore which may stand six to eight feet high at the shoulder.
Outlaw of Gor, page 21
SWORD, SHORT:
I had again my sword, that wine-tempered blade of fine, double-edged Gorean steel, carried even at the siege of Ar, so long ago, with its scabbard.
Raiders of Gor, page 68
SWORD, LONG:
He wore beneath his cloak yellow wool, and a great belt of glistening black, with a gold buckle, to which was attached a scabbard of oiled, black leather; in this scabbard was a sword, a sword of Torvaldsland, a long sword, with a jeweled pommel, with double guard.
Marauders of Gor, page 172
TRIDENT:
"I could use some paga," said he. He had purchased the net in the morning with a trident, the traditional weapons of the fisherman of the western shore and the western islands.
Raiders of Gor, pg 112
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