Albion’s Knecht Kriegsmesser

When Elden Ring released and I heard there was a messer on it, I was hyped. As a HEMA student and Langesmesser enthusiast, I always wanted
one of my favourite swords avaliable in one of my favourite franchises.
And, belive me, I was really disappointed. As many other have pointed
out (like Marcus Vance, off the top of my head), this game's
“Grossmesser” is a weird, oversized, Turkish Pala-esque sabre. I mean, I
still used it to finish my first run, but it was a disappointment
nevertheless.

So recently I started playing around with texture and model importing, after finding a *very* nice model of the famous
British 1788 Heavy Cavalry Sword and so I decided to learn how to make
mods for once and for all. I found this nice model, by Julian Blane in
Sketchfab, of the Albion Knecht and ported it into Elden Ring.

For those who don't know, the Grossmesser or Kriegsmesser (translating into
english as Great Knife or War Knife) was a kind of sword developed
during the late medieval period as a two-handed version of the
langesmesser (Long Knife, yeah, they were very original). The
langsmesser itself was a type of single-edge (usually with a short false
edge) sword, following the same typology as a falchion, frequently used
in central Europe, particularly in the Holy Roman Empire but also
extending up to England (where it was called a hanger, curtleax or
cutlass). The messers are characterized by their knife-style hilt
constructions (essentialy having a knife handle instead of the more
typical sword handle) and a metallic piece called nagel (nail) that
protected the hand. In essence, Kriegsmessers were single-edge
longswords with very cool utilitarian handles.
As I pointed before, this model in particular was inspired on the Knecht, a *very* high end
sword model produced by Albion in the USA. It's a mainstay of
Skallagrim, a sword and HEMA based youtuber and it's a really beautiful
piece.

As for the mod itself, I have to correct the model a bit still, for the nagel is in the opposite place. I may have moved it
around unknowingly during the porting. Furthermore, there's no unique
inventory icon for the new model, as I don't have the skills to make
one. And I would also love to apply an extra texture that came with the
model, if able, but I'm no programmer so I don't hold a lot of
confidence.

Still, I hope someone finds this mod cool and decides to use it. And, if someone wants to fork it, just cite me and the model
maker as collaborators.

Credits
– Julian Blane, sketchfab (modeling, the hard part indeed), model published with CC Attribution license.
– Yanh Kreist