The Chinese repeating crossbow from the Ming era – Chu Ko Nu (Zhuge Nu) will soon be part of the armament of a new model for the Anno Domini 1666 game.

These crossbows had very short range and low draw strength, which is why the bolts were poisoned. As we read in a period manual showing a drawing of such a crossbow: “The Zhuge Nu is a handy little weapon that even the Confucian scholar (i.e. a weakling) or palace women can use in self-defence. It fires weakly so you have to tip the darts with poison. Once the darts are tipped with ‘tiger-killing poison’, you can fire it at a horse or a man and as long as you draw blood, your adversary will die immediately. The draw-back to the weapon is its very limited range.”

The weapon will be in the hands of a seventeenth-century inventor and connoisseur of China.