@eldriwolf sent me this, and I immediately thought of the Indian bagh nakh “tiger-claw” weapon, which isn’t usually articulated or as realistic - for a given value of realism - but was a very nasty piece of kit.
The basic version was a steel bar with two rings for index and pinkie fingers, and four steel claws for ripping into an enemy’s soft parts - probably neck and stomach, where there were no awkward bones and the result would be more effective.
These simple versions had an extra advantage of being easy to conceal…
…and sometimes the finger-rings would be gilded and decorated with gems as if they were just jewellery.
Okay, maybe quite a lot of jewellery.
I bet that if timing and location were organised properly, political assassination could be passed off - in honest belief or for convenience - as the victim having encountered a real tiger.
“But where are the marks of the tiger’s teeth?” That too could be arranged:
These double daggers have proper flattened-diamond blade profiles, and their points are too close for a full-grown tiger or leopard - but (fiction-writer imagination at work) there’s no reason why a special-purpose one couldn’t have been made with realistic separation and correct tooth-spike shape.
The modern era has seen plenty of convenient “accidents” and “suicides”(what writer Len Deighton calls XPD or Expedient Demise) so how good was Mughal-era CSI?
Or more correctly, when required by Certain Circumstances, how bad did it need to be?
If an Important Person announced: “Clearly a tiger did it. How sad. Too bad. Long live the new maharajah, my Dear Little Nephew”, the best way for doubters to maintain good health would be agreement…
There was another version which - if the “attacked by a wild beast” excuse was still used - came with a suggestion that tigers in that particular region were getting disturbingly smart. (Though pointing this out may not have been wise, see above…) :->
These are bichuwa bagh nakh, “scorpion-sting tiger claws”, the dagger name deriving from its recurved blade shape resembling the business end of a scorpion’s tail.
They were sometimes carried in combat, bichuwa bagh nakh in the left hand and a talwar (curved) or khanda (straight) sword in the right.
During close-quarter grappling the claws could rake and the dagger stab, while the finger-rings meant less risk of dropping it.
In the same way that many Indian weapons had “tacticool” add-ons - miniature pistols, axe-gun combinations, concealed daggers and so on - there were bagh nakh with more than just one extra blade…
…bagh nakh with extra folding blades and a knuckle-guard…
…and this articulated contraption which (IMO anyway) was for defence as well as attack.
It was, like the much simpler two-ring-no-blades version, a lot less obvious than the first photo suggests…
…and since many Indian helmets were open-faced while others had face-protection only of mail…
…a surprise slap across the face might spoil any warrior’s day.
The reason I think it also had a defensive purpose is the fairly thick metal palm and that little spur low down on it, almost certainly meant to stop a palm-blocked blade from sliding any further.
I’m not sure there’s enough articulation for such a blade to be actually gripped tightly, but once trapped between spur and claws it could be twisted aside for long enough that a weapon in the other hand could attend to its wielder.
Yet again: when creating a fantasy weapon for writing or RPG, do a search for whatever you have in mind, because it may well have been made for real a couple of centuries ago by an Indian weaponsmith demonstrating what he could do to advertise his skill, or just making some oddity in steel to see if it was possible… :->
