Basic Information
A type of armour composed of interlocking links of metal wire formed into a mesh… more properly known simply as mail in its period since chainmail is a retronym, linking it to other types of armour to which it is only slightly related. The links are typically made of iron or steel, although examples made from bronze have occasionally been found.
Almost any part of the body can be armoured with mail from the kusari tabi1 of the Samurai, through the more familiar hauberks and haubergeons of Europe to the face veils worn by the Ahlmoravids and WW1 tank crew alike.
Mail has been found dating back as early as the 3rd Century BC and contrary to popular belief mail was the standard armour of Roman legionaries for most of the Marian and Augustan period (known as the lorica hamata) and it lived on into the twentieth century in some more remote parts of the world (generally China and centeral Asia) - a well deserved lifespan for an effective form of armour and even today mail made from stainless steel link sees limited application in the meat industry and amongst divers in shark infested seas. In between times it served most of the worlds metal using cultures in one form or another, even at the height of plate armour chain pieces could be found covering joints in the suit and those were only weak points by comparison to the remainder.
Well made and backed with a solid layer of padding mail can be extremely hard to breach - a cutting weapon required a good hit to sever the links and as long as they remained uncut damage was limited to whatever blunt force was not adsorbed by the padding. When plate and mail is thrown into the mix - pieces of plate armour worn over a suit of mail - then getting a sword to penetrate becomes very difficult indeed.
The main drawbacks to mail were the poor weight distribution (the weight of a piece of mail will naturally hang from the highest point it can), the higher quality of metal needed to draw wire (as against forming cheap plate or scales) and the hundreds of man hours that go into forging and jointing all of the thousands of links required for a decent sized piece.
The actual construction of mail can vary quite a bit - the rings can be punched from a sheet of metal or turned from wire - or a mixture of the two - and loose ends can be butted, soldered or rivetted together. Different styles of chain vary in how many neighboring links any given ring is joined to.
Mail is normally worn over a padded gambeson for the torso or arming cap for the head, both to provide protection from the blunt force of blows stopped by the mail and to adsorb sweat and cushion the weight and chafing of the armour itself.
(Chain)mail is vaguely related to ring mail and laced mail and is the primary constituent of plated mail and splint mail.
Chainmail was also the name of a miniatures wargame developed by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren that was a precursor of Dungeons & Dragons.
Sources
Game and Story Use
- Mail armour should be a lot more expensive in most RPGs than it is usally cast as being. It should also be quite a bit more effective. The stuff was also more encumbering than full plate, not least due to its poor weight distribution.
- Different styles of mail making may provide important clues to an enemy's origin - it may be possible to determine the armourer who made a piece - or at least the city or nation in which he trained - by looking at how it is jointed.
- Some ways of making mail are better than others - your cheap, low durability, poor protection stuff is made up of butted rings, many of them punched and infrequently jointed, the best mail is heavily jointed and made of rivetted rings drawn from the best quality wire. If there's enough granularity in your RPG it would be good to see a difference.
- Mail can be replaced link by link if necessary - in the style of My Grandfather's Axe a given piece can be very old indeed and may have some trace of the ancient hero who once wore it.
- It is traditional, albeit not terribly realistic, for swordmaidens in a heroic fantasy campaign to wear chainmail bikinis.
