Famous and well sought after in the Arandolian open market as a cheap weapon used for self-defence, the Eldarian Wooden Crossbow is quite rustic in build with its crude oaken frame and simple mechanisms. Nonetheless, it's still a rather cost-effective and accurate weapon for its price range.

Its current design was created long ago by commissioned local carpenters employed by the Eldarian Council of Elders in order to counter the heavy steel arbalests that the neighboring Salacian competition began to employ in their fleets and armies. Although the final product wasn't nearly as powerful as their rivals' fancy  metal contraptions, the Eldarian Wooden Crossbow  was actually designed by the very best carpenters of the nation, being not only sufficiently powerful to pierce chain mail, but also easy to craft and very affordable for the humble peasantry.

In the end, it gets the job done, and that's what really matters! After all, most of the time the simplest solutions are also the best ones, and as the weapon is cheap and easy to maintain, the soldiers who wield them end up buying and owning the crossbow itself, enabling them to use it for hunting and recreation, which only further enhances their accuracy and skill.

As such, the Council of Elders ended up loving the design, commissioning the weapon to be mass produced and making it readily available for their local countryside citizenry through tax incentives. The Eldarian Crossbow became so popular that soon entire militian regiments arose in the small towns and villages of Eldara, especially near the Salacian border. Those regiments began to gain notoriety and respect as they proved themselves very effective in battle time and again, and soon many of them stopped being a militia at all. A good part of the Eldarian Crossbowmaidens were elevated to fully operational military units, while another good part of the ones in the coastal fishing villages joined the merchant fleets of Eldara as battle-ready armed sailors, acting both as deckhands and as combatants to protect the ship if the need arises.

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In the end, this rather cheap, deadly and easy-to-train unit, more then compensates Eldara's lack of archers, completely neutralizing whichever advantage the enemy may have with low tier armour on their units. They are largely employed throughout the region, strengthening their local army and navy a hell lot with their service.