Tornado Hat

In the Old Times, shortly after the First Queen Inanna died, according to atheists, and was taken up to Heaven, according to followers of Inannaism, what was to become Vallermoore was a patchwork quilt of warring mini-states, none of them stable,all of them trying to swallow the others. One thing that did develop in those turbulent times were several new weapons of war, most of them either long out of use or banned nowdays by international treaties. One of the former was the fearsome but very impractical Tornado Hat. This strange piece of headgear is a helmet with a strong chinstrap, a wind sigal on the top and four long blades that look like a propeller. The reaction of many people who sees someone wearing one of these is to laugh. The helmet is heavy and too cumbersome to get through ordinary doors wearing it, but the first time it was used it was a very potent weapon of war, and tales about it have come down through the centuries.

Back then two small city states, Agenia and Numbria, were at loggerheads with each other, and Agenia had by far the larger army. Back then armies mainly fought in the now obselete phalanx formation, and Numbria's phalanx deployed on the other side of a river, with three soldiers wearing this hat, their swords at their sides. When the Agenian general saw this he ordered his phalanx to charge across the bridge. As the phalanx charged the three men began to spin, and around each man formed a deadly tornado, which the phalanx ran straight into before it could stop itself. Rank on rank of heavily armed and armoured men, unable to stop because of the charging men behind, were caught up in the tornados, spun around into the sky and then spat out high above, to break their bodies when they hit the ground below, or drown when they hit the river and their heavy bronze armour carried them to the bottom. Even those not sucked up by the tornados fled for their lives, their morale in ruins from what they had just seen.

When the Numbrian phalanx then charged, it won a total victory. Yet the Battle of the River Numbria was the only victory caused by the tornado hat. Trying to charge it's wearers was extremely stupid. Firing arrows and other missiles, even flames, didn't work as they were sucked in and often spat back out at the thrower with great force. The thing was, the spinning needed to make the magic work could not be done for more then a few minites, or the wearer got very dizzy, fell over and was sucked tens of meters into the sky by the very tornado he had created, to perish when he hit the ground. The way to deal with these spinning menaces was to keep well back and wait. An attempt was made to use these offensively, but it was a disaster, as the wearers were unable to go forward very far whilst spinning like a top without faling into their own tornados. The Tornado hat was abandoned as too expensive and too impractical, now that it's weakness was known.

A few survive to this day, buried in noble tombs, in old castle armouries or in museams in the big cities.