Middle Eastern

The curved cavalry saber of Persia

The shamshir is a deeply curved single-edged cavalry sword developed in Persia, with a blade about 80 to 90 cm long. Its defining feature is the pronounced, continuous curve running from hilt to tip, which makes possible the drawing cut: slicing a foe in passing while riding at full gallop. The blade was often forged from wootz steel, the crucible steel the West called Damascus, giving it a beautiful watered surface pattern, and it is light and well balanced for fast, repeated cuts. The point is rounded or blunt and was rarely used for thrusting, while the hilt is typically a downturned pistol grip dressed with ivory, horn, or precious metal. From the Safavid era onward it was the emblematic weapon of Persia between the 16th and 19th centuries, spreading across the Ottoman Empire, Mughal India, and Central Asia.

暗殺者 · Assassin — A death specialist who finishes it all with a single strike

The assassin specializes in eliminating targets with a single decisive strike, a stealth combat class. Wielding shadow movement, poison, hidden weapons, and surprise attacks, assassins target enemy weaknesses through reconnaissance and infiltration rather than open combat. Historically the most famous group is the 11th-13th century Hashishin sect of Syria — origin of the English word 'assassin' — alongside Japanese ninja, Indian Thuggee cult, and Byzantine imperial spies. In fantasy, the most common depiction is a black-hooded masked dagger-wielder, a staple class in Assassin's Creed, D&D's Assassin class, and similar games.

占術師 · Oracle — The heavy eyes of one who sees the future

The oracle is a religious intermediary interpreting the will of gods, spirits, and fate through divination to convey to people. Originally 'oracle' meant a priest or priestess delivering divine messages (神託) at Greek temples — the most famous being the Pythia, priestess of Apollo at Delphi, who guided all major decisions of the Greek world for 1,000 years through Apollo's oracles. Eastern traditions feature Korean mudang, Japanese miko, and Chinese taoists in the same role, using diverse divination tools like oracle bones, I Ching, four pillars, and tarot. Not mere future prediction but interpreters between gods and humans, distinctively delivering oracles in ambiguous metaphors, poems, or dreams so listeners discover meaning themselves. Even Alexander the Great consulted oracles for conquest decisions.

Primordial Sea Dragon of Mesopotamian Myth

Tiamat (Akkadian Tiamat, from tiāmtum, the sea) is the oldest dragon-deity of one seat, set down in the seven tablets of the Babylonian creation epic Enūma Eliš that took its place around the 12th century BC, a mother of primal chaos that personifies the salt water. With her consort Apsû (the fresh water) of the same seat, she stood before every seat of the cosmos at the same seat, and from the pair of two seats every god of one seat was born. But when the gods of later seats made a noise that broke the peace of the same seat, and Apsû, in seeking to undo them, was himself slain by Ea, Tiamat at the same seat raised the great wrath of one stroke, set Kingu as the general of one seat, and led an army of eleven monsters, Mushhushshu (the snake-dragon), Ushumgallu (the great lion-dragon), Bashmu (the horned serpent), scorpion-men, fish-men, and bull-men, into a great struggle with the new gods of one seat. At the last of one seat the storm god Marduk split her body in two at the same seat, made heaven of one half and earth of the other, and from her two eyes flowed the two great rivers of one seat, the Tigris and the Euphrates.

Arabian Cosmic Fish + D&D Platinum Dragon of Justice

Bahamut joins two unrelated traditions under one name. The first is the colossal cosmological fish of medieval Arabic cosmography, attested in the thirteenth-century ʿAjāʾib al-makhlūqāt of Zakariyyā al-Qazwīnī (1203-1283) and in the 'Pearl of Wonders' of Ibn al-Wardī, swimming beneath the bull Kuyūthā and bearing the seven layers of the world; Jorge Luis Borges transmitted the tradition to a Western audience through 'El Libro de los seres imaginarios' (Manuel Peña, Buenos Aires, 1957). The second is the Platinum Dragon of Dungeons & Dragons, introduced by Gary Gygax in 'Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry' (TSR, 1976) and developed across the AD&D 'Monster Manual' (1977), 'Deities & Demigods' (1980), 'Draconomicon' (1990) and the fifth-edition 'Monster Manual' (2014) and 'Fizban's Treasury of Dragons' (2021). The D&D Bahamut is the platinum-scaled god of justice, honour and truth, king of the five metallic dragons (gold, silver, copper, bronze, brass), escorted by seven ancient gold dragons, given to walking the world as a humble human sage and locked in eternal opposition to the chromatic queen Tiamat.

Egyptian Cosmic Serpent of Darkness and Chaos

Apep, hellenised as Apophis, is the cosmic serpent of darkness, chaos and isfet (disorder) of ancient Egyptian religion, figured as a sand-coloured monstrous snake some thirty cubits (about sixteen metres) long. Every night, when the sun-god Ra sails the Mesektet boat through the Duat (the underworld), Apep attacks the vessel to prevent the dawn. Ra and his allies — the storm-god Set, the lioness goddess Bastet, the goddess of truth Maat, Mehit and Selket — overthrow him in a nightly battle, but he rises again the following night, an eternal cosmic war that the Egyptians said was the very reason to rejoice at each dawn. Solar and lunar eclipses, earthquakes, storms and floods were read as Apep's momentary victories. The fullest record survives in Chapters 17, 39 and 108 of the New Kingdom 'Book of the Dead' (papyri, c. 1550-1077 BCE) and on the ceiling reliefs of the tomb of Ramesses VI (KV9). Apep is the oldest attested instance of the cosmic-serpent type to which the Mesopotamian Tiamat, the Indo-Aryan Vritra, the Norse Jörmungandr and the Hebrew Leviathan all belong.

Ancient Egyptian ritual necklace with counterweight

The menat is an ancient Egyptian ritual necklace closely associated with the worship of the goddess Hathor, consisting of multiple strands of beads and a distinctive metal counterweight at the back of the neck. Priests and priestesses shook the menat during temple rituals, producing a rattling sound believed to please Hathor and bring fertility and renewal. Wall paintings frequently depict Hathor offering the menat to the pharaoh as a symbol of divine protection and life force. Crafted from faience, semi-precious stones, and glass beads, menats have been found in numerous tombs including Tutankhamun's burial chamber.

Polished plate-and-mail armor of the Islamic world

Mirror armor, grown from the Persian char-aina, which in Persian means 'four mirrors,' is a piece of composite armor in which four great plates of steel, covering chest, back, and both flanks, are hung over a mail coat by straps and small hinges. The face of those plates was polished as smooth as a mirror, gathering the high desert sun to a single point and dazzling the eye of the enemy, and this polish made the same seat a place where beauty and the work of battle stood together. Keeping the softness of mail alive while laying a hard plate of one face only over the weakest seat, the chest and the back, the weave runs along a different path from the Western road of wrapping the whole body in one suit of plate, and stands as a core of Islamic war-gear thinking, in which protection and freedom stand at one seat together. A single suit, including the mail, weighed only twelve to eighteen kilograms, far lighter at one seat than the Western full plate of the same age.

Protective equipment for war camels

Camel armor is the armor made to cover the beast of the camel cavalry that rode the deserts of the Middle East, North Africa, and India. Its mark is that it is smaller, lighter, and more open in grain than the horse armor of the same age. It was woven of leather, felt, small mail, and small plates joined in panels that covered the chest, the long neck, and the flanks, and the back, with its two great humps rising upward, was naturally left bare, so that on it a saddle or a small howdah could be set. Where the horse armor sought to wrap one face firmly, camel armor placed greater weight on keeping the beast's breath alive under the hot desert sun and the sand, and so an open grain through which the wind could pass between mail and small plate was common. Above all, the body of the camel itself served as a weapon, for the smell of the beast troubled the enemy's horses and broke their ranks, and so camel armor stood as a tool to keep this beast-weapon alive as long as possible.