EVE Fiction

Achura http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Chinese_melee_weapons

The Khumaak isn't a melee weapon, it's a replica of a ceremonial scepter that a slave once used to bludgeon their Holder to death by way of an improvised blunt instrument. Calling it a traditional weapon is much like applying the same description to a bishop's Crosier.

I think it can safely be assumed that all cultures of New Eden came up with some variant of the sword, spear, axe and shield, those being the staples of warfare throughout human history for the reason that they're A: practical, B: relatively easy to make.and C: relatively easy to learn how to use effectively. If you were to drill down into it you might find that, say, an ancient pre-Raata K'vire-tribe war axe is a very different beast to the raiding hatchets of the Mikramurka Sebiestor, or that an Achuran Katana bears very few similarities to a Jin-Mei Painblade

Bear in mind though, that each of these homeworlds is just as populous and culturally diverse as Earth, so there's probably no such thing as a "Gallentean warhammer" - there'll be Caillean Longhammers, and Garoun Bec-de-Corbin and Rouvenorean War-Mauls and stuff like that, with subtly different variants being made as the decades pass and new generations of armorers are apprenticed in the craft and build on the work of their masters. an ancient weapons enthusiast could spend their whole career drilling down into the minutiae of the martial history of individual continents or even nations.

ANYTHING is a weapon, to somebody who's psychotic/skilled enough. Pencils, drinking cups, ladders, candlesticks, a shaped rock... The same goes for a Khumaak. It's a ceremonial "weapon" that would actually be hideously impractical for use in battle against somebody armed with a weapon that was specifically designed for the job. There's actually a Victorian gentemanly martial art for self-defence with a walking stick, but that doesn't make a walking stick a practical weapon, just more practical than nothing.

There is a difference between a weapon and a weaponized bit of glitzy jewelery: the former having been designed from the ground up to do a particular job very well is going to outmatch the latter, which is a shoehorned retcon of an existing item.

Khumaaks aren't intended for use in actual combat between soldiers, they're purely ceremonial. yes, you can kill somebody with them, and I daresay it'd be easier than killing somebody with, say, a table leg, but they're still a long way from being a practical, working weapon of war.

If I recall correctly, the old Minmatar racial picture (the one that showed up during character creation) featured a female Matari wielding some form of blade.

I'm sorry I can't find the picture.