What would cause a culture to keep a distinct weapon for centuries?

Question

Imagine you have the stereotypical mysterious nation across the ocean. Their mercenaries are sometimes contracted into your army. They dress weird, talk with an accent, and have really odd weapons. While you, a simple soldier, prefer a sword and shield combo, the foreigners use a weapon unlike anything you have ever seen.

Naturally, the blacksmiths in your region attempt to recreate the weapon, and succeed. But the carbon copies cannot be used to the same effect as the foreigners. Every time you go to war with the foreigners, they always end up dominating the battlefield.

In an ancient time period (sometime around 500 AD technologically), would it be possible for a culture to have unique and unstoppable weapons? Or would the locals eventually learn how to wield both the weapon and the fighting style, and how long would that take?

Clarifications:

• The actual design of the weapon does not matter, and it can be used anywhere on the battlefield
• Unique and unstoppable means that an enemy soldier would have difficulty countering the foreign moves
• If necessary, the weapon can be used off of a traditional open-area battlefield and somewhere else, maybe as an assassin's tool, as long as the answer has some way of keeping secrecy

Answer 1

Historical example: horse and bow

The steppe nomads from Asia have been quite proficient horse archers. It's their signature fighting style to move quickly and shoot.

Individually, neither of these is hard to duplicate. And mostly anybody can learn to shoot from atop a horse. What makes the steppe people fearsome is how well they do both at the same time. It's part of their culture and upbringing to be riding an horse since they are children. They'd have games and competitions where horse riders would perform feats not unlike what you'd see at Cirque du Soleil, only such performances weren't considered abnormal or special.

Combining the athleticism and acrobatics with horse riding allowed nomads to be extremely flexible - hanging down the side of the saddle for a better angle and shooting or shooting and ducking on the other side of the horse for protection.

Constant training and practice is what made the steppe nomads extremely proficient at horse archery. When they clashed with other nations, the nomads were quite successful due to the mobility and hard to counter fighting style. Especially if the enemy is not used to fighting the nomads. The nomads dominated the steppes for literal centuries using broadly the same fighting style, from antiquity through the 13th century when Gengis Khan and the Mongols swept through Europe and Asia creating the largest land empire to ever exist.

The East Roman Empire (known in modern times as Byzantine Empire) had clashes with mounted archers and even trained some themselves. However, the Roman horse archers weren't nearly as effective for multiple reasons:

• The Roman army was composed of many troops, not just horse archers. Among others, they had normal mounted troops who would train to charge into enemy formations and these were more valuable in other confrontations.
• Mounted troops in general were more expensive to acquire and maintain.
• The Roman horse archers only learned mounted archery as part of army training and quite late in life. Some were normal mounted troops who knew how to use a lance and were tasked with learning to shoot. By contrast, nomadic people would start learning from a young age and they'd train horse riding, acrobatics, archery while riding, as well as group tactics. The Roman horse archers were effective but limited - this wasn't their way of life or primary occupation.

In summary: You can have the same tools or weapons as another nation but application can vary greatly. If one culture devotes a considerable part of its energy into mastering and using the tools, they'd be better than just someone who picked it up.

Answer 2

You got the English Longbow.

Archery is hard.

Like, really hard.

Fantasy almost never makes justice on how skilled and how strong an archer has to be to be effective in combat. While we often see archers as those lithe, quick, nimble elf-like beings with noodly arms that use bows because they lack upper body strength, that is the absolutely worst physical build possible if you want a good archer. You need those arms strong if you want to use a bow of old to any good skill level. It is you that is powering that arrow, not some magical fairy energy or something of the sort.

This happens because an ancient bow is, in essence, a very fancy spring. It takes the power from your upper body and shoves it into the arrow, sending it flying towards a target of your choice. Modern builds and techniques can help a quite a bit in decreasing the muscle mass you need to use those fancy springs effectively and for a long periods of time, but those aren't things you have in the Ye Old Times. Different bows have different needs, and old ones need muscles.

When you have a longbow, you have a very large, very fancy spring. A very large and very fancy spring that also needs very large muscles. Not hulk-large, mind you, but well-trained and well developed muscles. When you add the skill needed to fire a bow properly, you end up with a very exigent weapon that demands a lot of training, a lot of physical exercise, and a lot of patience to master. It is not a pick-up-and-use weapon like the sword or the spear. It isn't a weapon that you can hand out to your farmers and hope they will be useful in battle. Even if you give those bows to your best warriors, the chance of them having the skill and the correct muscle groups developed properly to use the weapon properly right away is slim to none. I'll elaborate on a few of the reasons of why that happens.

First, Longbows must fit their user. A large difference in height between two soldiers also means a difference in bow size. Give the bow of a very tall person to a very short person, and the very short person will struggle to make the weapon work properly.

Then, they need years of training. A sword or a spear is easy - you just wave the thing and it hurts people. You can train a lot to make yourself more effective at hurting people, but they are still simple weapons. A bow, on the other hand, needs specialized training. A longbow even more so. Those weapons are almost useless in the hands of newbies - they might even be able to fire a couple arrows, but those arrows will be inaccurate and weak. Heck, the newbie archer might even end up hurting themselves badly if they don't take proper care before letting the arrow go.

Finally, you need to know how to take proper care of the thing. Bows are finicky. Don't care of it properly, and you might end up with a broken bowstaff or a snapped bowstring on your hands. A dull sword is still a long, heavy stick that can be used to bonk people in the head. A snapped bow is no better than a walking cane.

Add all of that up, and you have a very hard-to-use and hard-to-master weapon that can be surprisingly effective in battle, but almost impossible to copy if you don't have years to spend training your people on how to use it.

So, make your Mystery Nation be a land full of mercenaries equipped with longbows and they will be a difficult force to deal with equipped with a weapon that, while isn't that hard to build, it is very frustrating to use.

Answer 3

It's not the form, it's the material

Actually this "super weapon" is simply a sword/spear. Maybe it does look fancy, but that's because the godess of those island-weirdos demands it. But compared to mainlander-swords the material is more durable, probably a bit lighter and needs a lot of disuse to lose it's edge. And you know how those island-weirdos guard and care for their weapons. I heard they even take them to bed every night.

---

Really, think about the difference between iron and bronze. Or bronze and stone. Or vibranium and steel. It's not the form, but the material (and the fighting skills), which make the difference.

Answer 4

If a weapon is actually a significant upgrade it will be copied by everyone within a short period of time unless the people that know how it functions are rare.

Where you would end up with a weapon that was unique to a group for an extended period of time would be when a weapon isn't actually better under normal circumstances but that when combined with a culture that focuses on things that favor it the weapon becomes better/competitive.

Economics are a significant factor in war. If weapon A requires 1,000 hours of practice to be proficient and weapon B requires 50 hours to be proficient most nations are going to choose weapon B because training is expensive. If a nation happens to treat weapon A as it's national hobby and people naturally have 2,000 hours of practice with it then, the cost difference is effectively wiped out and the nation with weapon A may end up being superior because of all of their practice even if the weapon they are using might actually be inferior.

Answer 5

A sword made from something like Damascus steel

Damascus steel is perhaps a few centuries away from your targeted tech level, but some similar early steel making tech (e.g., iron + fire + pumped air containing co2, e.g., coal fire smoke = steel) would make steel blades far superior to iron ones.

Existing blacksmiths can melt anything metal down and recast it freely. Copper, bronze, iron, tin, lead. All of these can be melted and cast in moulds in simple furnaces with no thought to the carbon content. The concept of some air trapped within the sword to make it stronger will be beyond any blacksmith.

When the blacksmiths experiment with captured swords, they are unable to duplicate the forging technique, when melted and recast you end up with a much weaker iron sword. A perfect mould of a captured sword with melted captured parts will not recreate a sword as good as the original.

Answer 6

Gunpowder

... Mercenaries from behind the ocean are mysterious indeed, but not because of their dress or talk. No my lord, their weapons are the most mysterious. They spit fire, smoke and death, no man is safe from them. Wearing armour or carrying shield is no use against these. And the noise they make, like heavens should fall on us! Alas! How can one hope to defeat them? ...

Well, gunpowder is easy to make. One just needs charcoal, sulfur and salnytr (birds excrement). The only hard thing is to know correct mixture ratio, which is secret known by very few.

Weapons themselves are hand cannons, somehow crude (basically barrel on a stick), yet still quite effective guns. They are are relatively easy to make (especially bronze ones - which are cast). Amunition is also quite easy to make - cast lead, wrought iron balls or just fitting stone. The can pierce trought any shield or armour (from a reasonable distance, of course). And as an additional benefit they scare horses and men alike. Loud noise and acrid smoke is nothing pleasant, especially if you never saw, smelled or heard anything like that.

The poor blacksmiths can easily copy these weapons, but without knowlege of gunpowder, they make just useless fancy sticks.

So, to summarize...

Unique? - Yes.

Unstoppable? - Yes (well, you can try to dodge the bullet but don´t try it at home)

Battlefield weapon? - Yes.

Assasin tool? - Yes, but not very stealthy, quite opposite.

In 500 AD, it is possible to make hand cannons and amunition. It is also possible to make gunpowder - all the components were easily accessible, the only trick is the knowledge of making of it.

Answer 7

What would cause a culture to keep a distinct weapon for centuries?

Success.

If your enemies have found no way to duplicate/master a similar weapon and no way to counter it, then there is no motivation to replace it. Necessity is the mother of invention, not success.

Answer 8

The unstoppable weapon of 500 A.D was called "The Horse."

It had dominated battlefields for thousands of years already, and would continue to dominate for 1400 more.

500 A.D was the middle of an arms race to breed bigger, stronger horses for greater tactical advantage.

Expensive, but used properly they were very much worth the price.

Answer 9

To be kept, a weapon has to be useful. If it's easy to use and significantly better than common weapons, it will become ubiquitous. Therefore, for the weapon to remain in use in one location and relatively unknown elsewhere, it has to be useful but either difficult to learn to use effectively, difficult to produce, or less useful in other environments.

Powerful ranged weapons typically take a long time to learn to master. The Bow, the Sling, and the Atlatl are all exceptionally powerful weapons in skilled hands, but very difficult to learn to use well. In addition, an opponent who has never fought against those weapons would have no idea what they are capable of or how to counter them.

Maybe it was designed to serve a single purpose best. Jitte and Sai are Japanese weapons designed to aid in disarming an opponent. Bolas or nets are used to trip and ensnare opponents, effectively capturing them and making them defenseless against follow up attacks.

Alternatively, it may be most useful in the environment it hails from. Many weapons are adapted from other tools. Perhaps it can serve a dual purpose as a climbing tool, farming implement, or construction or mining tool. Cavalry are great on steppes and plains but unusable in swamps.

Finally, it might rely on a material or knowledge for construction that is not available elsewhere. Perhaps their nation is renowned for its master weaponsmiths and their jealously guarded secret techniques. Perhaps they coat their weapons with a toxin from a creature or vegetation that is native to only their homeland. Perhaps they have discovered a new form of alchemy or optics that has advanced their weaponry far beyond the capabilities of their neighbors and the rest of the world has yet to catch up.

Answer 10

In an ancient time period (sometime around 500 AD technologically), would it be possible for a culture to have unique and unstoppable weapons?

NO, because your question is fundamentally misunderstands conflict.

The purpose is to win the war, not to win the battle, and, since weapons are designed and wielded by humans, and humans are imperfect, every weapon has some domain where it's not optimum, or even particular effective.

Even nuclear weapons are stoppable by MAD.

Or would the locals eventually learn how to wield both the weapon and the fighting style, and how long would that take?

As mentioned earlier, every weapon and fighting style has a weakness. Your job is to find that weakness and exploit it. (But since they're your friends, your job should be to guard that weakness.)

Since you mention blacksmiths successfully cloning the weapon, but the wielders still dominate, it's obviously a melee weapon. And how do you defeat a melee weapon? With a range weapon.

But, you say, it's actually a range weapon! Then the enemy develops more effective shields or armor. Or longer range weapons. Or they send a flanking force far around to raid the camp and destroy the supplies. Better yet, send an army into their lands while this unstoppable army is on campaign. A sufficiently large number of neighboring kingdoms would like to get rid of them that they can band together and invade. Bonus points if some invade by sea.

Answer 11

Can it be something basic like the mercenaries' weapons are blessed? It doesn't even have to be a 'real' blessing. Just the fact the wielder believes in the blessing makes it work that much better. This could answer both your title and body of your question which are not exactly the same.