no offence mate, but i agree with yurpsie, because i doubt they look this far in. if i remember correctly, in age of empires 2, when you build a castle as the chinese you can make soldiers called chu-ko-nu's, and they wield crossbows. what probably happened was a jagex staff member goes, whilst playing aoe2, "hey doesnt karil have an x-bow?" "yeh he does" "wow these chinese guys have an x-bow, lets make a chinese guy who sells bolt racks!" and thus, it was all born :D . gotta say though, nice research, pretty impressive p.s. scimitars are widely known, i doubt jagex researched them. also to hypnotic monkey, you say its educational, but only when someone comes along and explains this all. I doubt many people here wouldve thought twice about any of this, so please explain how runescape taught us about chu-ko-nu's?