COMBAT METHODS AND WEAPONRY OF THE NINJA
The range of ninja equipment is too wide to go into in great detail here, but it ranges from equipment that can aid agility and entry into restricted areas, to body armor, to weapons that kill or disable an opponent.
Ninja equipment to aid entry into restricted areas includes grapple-hooks for climbing, extremely powerful smoke bombs for camouflage or distraction, thermite charges that can take a ninja through locked doors, and much more.
The ninja will also usually carry a ranged weapon such as a short or long bow, that is capable of delivering mind-altering plant extracts and poisons in silence and at extreme range. Often, by calculating the right dosage of an extract, a ninja can temporarily fog the mind of a sentry while he moves past, after which the sentry will not be aware that anything untoward has occurred.
Body armor similarly falls into several categories, from simple light steel plate that is worn under the clothes and which can aid survival in knife combat, to ceramic scales that are capable of absorbing the energy from bullets and thus nullifying them.
Besides this, the ninja is always armed, even when in street clothing. It is just that, often enough, ninja weapons cannot be recognized as weapons. As an example, a poisoned needle is easy to secrete and devastating in combat. Similarly, a weighted object in a bag can become a bone-crushing flail in battle. The ninja also carry a variety of extremely small and sharp blades that are used to cut nerves, tendons and muscle fibres. The ninja specializes both in lethal weapons of war and in concealed weaponry.
Another point of interest is that it is common for a ninja to make his weapons himself, often using modern industrial materials rather than traditional methods of construction. Nevertheless, there are also those who still prefer the traditional methods of weapon forging.
And, of course, no study of ninja methodology would be complete without a closer look at the poisons used by the ninja...
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