Siangham real!

[pawsplay]

The siangkam appears in the The Palladium Book of Exotic Weapons (1984), which predates Oriental Adventures. It is therein described as an arrow-like weapon of Kuntao.

 

[Dausuul]

Aside from an unsourced Wikipedia page...

It's not unsourced. It's sourced to the Palladium Book of Exotic Weapons.

...oh, wait a second...

...hmm...

 

[pawsplay]

It was unsourced. I linked the Palladium thing as the only source I cound find. It remains to be seen whether anything else backs it up.

 

[Celebrim]

A fairly significant percentage of the 1e Oriental Adventures weapons seem to be either just made up or were inspired by some dubious source (like another gaming supplement).

The Siangkam isn't even close to the most dubious of the lot. Where the heck did the authors get the idea for the Lajatang or the Sang Kauw? Does anyone have a reference to these that isn't from gaming?

 

[FireLance]

The Siangkam isn't even close to the most dubious of the lot. Where the heck did the authors get the idea for the Lajatang or the Sang Kauw? Does anyone have a reference to these that isn't from gaming?

I don't know about the Sang Kauw, but the Lajatang is similar to the traditional weapon of the Journey to the West character Sha Wu Jing, described in the wikipedia entry as a "yueyachan, a double-headed staff with a crescent-moon (yueya) blade at one end and a spade (chan) at the other".

Assuming that there isn't any other historical source for the weapon, it is possible that whoever came up with it saw just the crescent-moon end of a yueyachan and assumed that the other end was the same.

 

[ppaladin123]

Personally, I think the japanese Kunai ( Kunai - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ) is a better analogue to the siangham. It's a gardening tool-turned-martial arts weapon.

I the Pozas Art Pack on Ninja, one of the female ninja is wielding a kunai.

Incidentally, the characters for "kunai" together literally mean, "no suffering." It's possible that the characters were chosen entirely for their pronunciation but it is also possible that the weapon was named with those characters/that meaning in mind. If so, that is pretty awesome.

 

[Lord Sessadore]

So, we've got Siangham, Siangkam and now Siangkiam

I'll point out that differences in transliteration could easily produce these three spellings. It could be a result of amateurs who didn't know what they were doing, or spellings based on transliterations that were older than modern established standards for transliterating the original language to English. What I'm getting at is that those are probably all referring to the same thing, and the same word in the original language, they could just be transliterations done by different people.

Of course, I have nothing approaching an actual source for the siangham or lajatang.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't know about the Sang Kauw, but the Lajatang is similar to the traditional weapon of the Journey to the West character Sha Wu Jing, described in the wikipedia entry as a "yueyachan, a double-headed staff with a crescent-moon (yueya) blade at one end and a spade (chan) at the other".

Assuming that there isn't any other historical source for the weapon, it is possible that whoever came up with it saw just the crescent-moon end of a yueyachan and assumed that the other end was the same.

I'm familiar with the Monk's Spade, but it differs from the Lajatang in several ways. From my perspective, the biggest and most important difference is that the Monk's Spade is a long pole weapon (6-7') based off the longstaff, where as the Lajatang is fundamentally a short pole weapon (3-5') based of the short staff. This description however renders the weapon all but unusable. I suppose some allowance might be made for historically shorter humans, but still, it doesn't look very wieldable to me.

And none of this explains where the world 'Lajatang' comes from.

 

[pawsplay]

I'm imagining the siangkam either

- Is now known generally by a different term and is therefore impossible to Google, and is not a commonly used weapon, or
- It was familiar to the author of the Palladium book, but is an obscure weapon or even one idiosyncratic to a style of Kuntao he had been exposed to, or
- Was a weapon seen once in a magazine or book about a slightly sketchy Kuntao school, who may have made up everything about the weapon, or
- Has not historical basis and slipped in accidentally or on purpose by the Palladium author

In any case, there is little clear basis to make it one of the signature monk weapons. Why not the sai or butterfly sword?

The Lajatang is plenty real. Obscure, but real.

Weapons and fighting arts of Indonesia - Google Book Search

 

[Tetsubo]

I'm imagining the siangkam either

- Is now known generally by a different term and is therefore impossible to Google, and is not a commonly used weapon, or
- It was familiar to the author of the Palladium book, but is an obscure weapon or even one idiosyncratic to a style of Kuntao he had been exposed to, or
- Was a weapon seen once in a magazine or book about a slightly sketchy Kuntao school, who may have made up everything about the weapon, or
- Has not historical basis and slipped in accidentally or on purpose by the Palladium author

In any case, there is little clear basis to make it one of the signature monk weapons. Why not the sai or butterfly sword?

The Lajatang is plenty real. Obscure, but real.

Weapons and fighting arts of Indonesia - Google Book Search

I think a better approach is to mechanically keep the monk weapon stats but completely change the fluff. One Bludgeoning, one Piercing and one Slashing weapon that does 1d6 x20 and can be used with the Flurry of Blows. But the actual weapon design would vary from martial arts school to martial arts school. Also races would have different ethnic weapons. Elves might use arrows, Dwarves might use escrima like drum sticks, Gnomes might use light picks, etc. A nautical themed style might use a gaff hook.