Middle Earth - LotR

[Desdichado]

Can you cite where this is stated? I don't remember Tolkien definitively stating this. He refers to "mail" a lot, but I don't recall that plate mail could be ruled out, except when he specifucally states that Frodo's shirt of mail is chain. Maybe it's the connotation of the word "knight," but I always pictured the knights of Dol Amroth in plate - and remember, Imrahil held a vambrace up to Eowyn's mouth:

Knight is an older term than plate armor. As for stating where that is stated, you can't prove a negative. Can you find a place where plate armor is ever described? I guarantee that you cannot. With the exception of the Southron I mentioned and the vambrace (which does not imply plate armor) every time armor is mentioned, it is mail. And the fact that he used the word mail does, in fact, rule out plate armor; there is actually no such thing as "plate mail."

 

[Gentlegamer]

Can you cite where this is stated? I don't remember Tolkien definitively stating this. He refers to "mail" a lot, but I don't recall that plate mail could be ruled out, except when he specifucally states that Frodo's shirt of mail is chain. Maybe it's the connotation of the word "knight," but I always pictured the knights of Dol Amroth in plate - and remember, Imrahil held a vambrace up to Eowyn's mouth:

"And he held the bright-burnished vambrace that was upon his arm before her cold lips, and behold! a little mist was laid on it hardly to be seen." - The Return of the King, chapter VI, "The Battle of the Pelennor Fields"

A vambrace is a piece of armor on the forearm. Clearly in this case it is not meant by Tolkien to be chain. Now, Imrahil might have been wearing a suit of chain with solid metal bracers, but it strikes me as quite possible that if his vambraces were plate, the rest of what he wore was also.

This is what I was thinking of regarding the knights of Dol Amroth. I picture at least plate mail like the knights of Solamnia in Dragonlance.

 

[Desdichado]

It could be plate mail, which is distinct from plate armor . .

Except that "plate mail" doesn't exist anywhere except in D&D.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Knight is an older term than plate armor. As for stating where that is stated, you can't prove a negative. Can you find a place where plate armor is ever described? I guarantee that you cannot. With the exception of the Southron I mentioned and the vambrace (which does not imply plate armor) every time armor is mentioned, it is mail. And the fact that he used the word mail does, in fact, rule out plate armor; there is actually no such thing as "plate mail."

The vambrace does, indeed, strongly imply plate armor. Why would he be wearing plate arm bracers, and the rest be chain? It's certainly possible, I admit. I've admitted plenty of times that my interpretation of things may not be what Tolkien meant or what others envision. I don't try to make definitive statements about something that I didn't write; I only try to point out possibilities for others to use. If you don't want plate mail/armor in your vision of Middle Earth, cool; it's in mine, and it could be in that of others. There are instances where such a thing could be justified, and trying to definitively prove or disprove it just isn't possible. It's about gaming possibilities, not about who is right.

 

[Gentlegamer]

Except that "plate mail" doesn't exist anywhere except in D&D.

Right, there was never a suit of armor called "plate mail" but what that term in D&D represent is a half-plate hodge-podge, where chain is augmented by breastplate, bracers, and grieves.

 

[Gentlegamer]

At any rate, I don't think it would be unreasonable for the advanced cultures in the Third Age to use plate armor, as depicted in the films.

 

[Desdichado]

The vambrace does, indeed, strongly imply plate armor. Why would he be wearing plate arm bracers, and the rest be chain? It's certainly possible, I admit. I've admitted plenty of times that my interpretation of things may not be what Tolkien meant or what others envision. I don't try to make definitive statements about something that I didn't write; I only try to point out possibilities for others to use. If you don't want plate mail/armor in your vision of Middle Earth, cool; it's in mine, and it could be in that of others. There are instances where such a thing could be justified, and trying to definitively prove or disprove it just isn't possible. It's about gaming possibilities, not about who is right.

You're right, it isn't about who is right, but in this case you're not.

Tolkien was very clear about what "age" of history/mythology he was trying to emulate -- the heyday of the "Heroic" germanic tradition. And during that time period, full plate knights, or even plate armored knights as seen in the movies, are completely absent. That is actually not too difficult to prove at all; I don't know why you want to insist that it cannot be.

And vambraces, greaves, and all kinds of other "plate armor" items predate the full plate knight regalia by literally thousands of years, so I don't know why you insist that they must imply plate armor. Heck, the Bronze Age greeks who sacked Troy, assuming their was a historical sacking of Troy that served as the kernel of the legend, were wearing vambraces and greaves in 1250 B.C.

But clearly, it's not something that Tolkien was very clear about in the actual text of the books and contrary to all the fans that were in an uproar over the "knights of Gondor" that Peter Jackson put on the screen, I honestly don't think its that big of a deal. In fact, Tolkien might have been amused to see his creation take on a life of its own like this, not unlike the mythology on which he modelled it, which always seemed to reflect more the world of the scribe who wrote it down than the original sources which created it.

 

[Desdichado]

Right, there was never a suit of armor called "plate mail" but what that term in D&D represent is a half-plate hodge-podge, where chain is augmented by breastplate, bracers, and grieves.

Which is also a mode of armor which post-dated his "source material" by several hundred years. Tolkien was clearly interested in, and in fact stated so numerous times, the pre-Norman Anglo-Saxon culture, and indeed, even the pre-Christian traditions of them most especially. Pointing to a type of armor that saw it's heyday around 1400 A.D. and trying to project it into Lord of the Rings is actually nonsensical -- but only if you're a real Tolkien geek like me who reads a lot of the supplemental material; commentary by his collegues, his letters, his drafts, etc.

I don't have any problem with folks using the equivalent of Sir Thomas Mallory's Arthurian knights in Gondor in their own game, or in their heads as they read the books, but I also won't adopt those conventions myself, because I know that Tolkien intended no such thing.

 

[Ysgarran]

What happened to the Yahoo! Group. I know at one point it was flood with spam. Anyone have the conversions as .doc files or something? Maybe the web files could be moved to Geocities or something.
Mike

Gah, haven't look at the yahoo group in ages, it got flooded by spam. It looks like the last real post was in Sept of 2003. There are a large number of files in the 'file section' though.

Ysgarran.

 

[Gentlegamer]

Which is also a mode of armor which post-dated his "source material" by several hundred years. Tolkien was clearly interested in, and in fact stated so numerous times, the pre-Norman Anglo-Saxon culture, and indeed, even the pre-Christian traditions of them most especially. Pointing to a type of armor that saw it's heyday around 1400 A.D. and trying to project it into Lord of the Rings is actually nonsensical -- but only if you're a real Tolkien geek like me who reads a lot of the supplemental material; commentary by his collegues, his letters, his drafts, etc.

I don't have any problem with folks using the equivalent of Sir Thomas Mallory's Arthurian knights in Gondor in their own game, or in their heads as they read the books, but I also won't adopt those conventions myself, because I know that Tolkien intended no such thing.

Well, for a culture that has existed for 5,000 years in Andor and Endor, I don't think it is nonsensical for the Numenoreans to have developed arms and armor equivalent to our own High Middle Ages and beyond. Remember, Tolkien was writing a romance and not beholden to the exact technological development of the thematic era he invoked. After all, hobbits wore waistcoats, smoked tobacco, and used umbrellas; Sauraman developed "blasting fire" (form of gunpowder) . . . all "anachronisms" for the theme of a pre-Norman Anglo-Saxon world.