"...the Heavens split asunder and the Gods sent down to the Keeper a great tome which in time became known as the Holy Book of Armaments."

Well, that's what we used to call one of my primary reference works back when I did that fantasy role-playing game known as Dungeons and Dragons. I thought that some of our oft-ignored Fantasy gamers might enjoy a non-historical article for a change of pace and so I'm "having at it". The tome I'm referring to is A Glossary of the Construction and Use of Arms and Armor by George Cameron Stone; one of the best buys I ever made from the Military History Book Club.

I had grown tired of the role players with a golf bag full of long swords "...I believe this calls for the number 9 iron sword of gollum displacement..." and had forced them to develop other weapons skills by placing unique weapons in my treasure troves. The traditional roles for the quantity of magic would be made and then with great ceremony and pompousness I would call for a reroll ... no, actually, I would cry out "Bring Out the Holy Book of Armaments!" at which time the game generally deteriorated into a series of Monty Python bits while I randomly rolled for page numbers (the book has 685 pages of pictures and text, arranged alphabetically) and not-so randomly selected an appropriately obscure weapon for the party to fight over (read: who should get stuck with it).

Imagine your parties delight at coming across a +3 Hoeroa of (roll a 6-sided die for the appropriate monster manual, let's say a "5"; that would be the Fiend Folio (am I dating myself?) and randomly roll a page number (keep rolling until you find something you like) and there it is ... a +3 Hoeroa of Kua-Toa slaying that enables the wielder to see heat. What more could any adventurer hope to find?

What's a Hoeroa? I thought you'd never ask ... figure 370 on page 294 shows the Hoeroa, a Maori club made from the jawbone of a sperm whale; at 4'6" no piker of a weapon! Or hows about a suit of western Siberian +2 Koryak armor with a skirt of steel strips from below the chest to mid-calf with a screen of wood and leather covering the back and neck and wrapping around the shoulders (Figure 70, page 52) or a Kumade, or Hora, or Fronde.

From Abbasi to Zumbai this book covers and illustrates a plethora (a whole lot) of neat stuff (weapons of singular destruction). If you can find it, it's well worth whatever the current price is. I think I paid twenty bucks (is the term buck politically incorrect? ... good) but is probably a reference work those guys putting micro weapons books are using for their information source.