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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Galloglaich" data-source="post: 5057223" data-attributes="member: 77019">Well, not in my game <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  That is a good question, the truth is I don't think they know but I can shed a little light on the subject maybe.  I don't think it ever really went away*, iron armor just re-asserted metal as the top of the armor food chain. The truth is textile armor (padded / cloth armor in DnD) remained in use through the Medieval period. For the Hellenistic Greeks, I think their Linothorax was almost as good as their Bronze cuirass and greaves, while being much less hot, heavy, and expensive to make. But by the late Iron Age other armor had appeared which was qualitatively better. Later types of iron armor not available to Alexander, especially mail (chainmail in DnD) were markedly superior to Linothorax, though Mail was also worn with quilted padded (usually linen or silk) armor aketon, gambeson jupon etc. Plate armor during the Renaissance could actually be made strong enough to be literally bullet-proof. But the Gambeson et-al remained in use all along as 'light' armor (not that 20 layers of linen is light), especialy for infantry. Another valueable feature of iron armor was that it was less succeptible to wear and tear. A textile armor worn on campaign for long periods is going to gradually deteriorate. But the textile stuck around, one of the most popular forms of iron armor was the brigandine, which was essentially like a linothorax with small iron plates embedded inside it to harden it further. Eventually iron armor went away for a while, with only the helmet remaining. Then in the 80's with new synthetic fibers (kevlar) textile armor came back, and now it's being used with steel or ceramic plates. Maybe the whole thing will go full circle again when the mech-suits begn to appear....  G.  *Textile armor was around but the specific Linothorax type of hardened / laminated textile armor mentioned in those articles did seem to dissappear, replaced by quilted textile armor of roughly the same material. Why I don't really know....</blockquote>

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