The Crossbow
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A crossbow is a weapon bow mounted on a stick (called a tiller or stock) with a mechanism in it which holds the drawn bow string. The earliest designs featured a slot in the stock, down into which the string was placed. To shoot this design, a vertical rod is thrust up through a hole in the bottom of the notch, forcing the string out. The miniature arrows it fires are usually called quarrels or bolts. What made this weapon so revolutionary was how it was fire. Where previously the most effective long-range weapon was a bow, which took great measures to master, the crossbow uses simple technology to simply point and shoot.