You know, where is the documentation on contributed models? Looking around brought to me compiling help (which I'm told I should avoid as I'm only a novice or no-adjective programmer), leadership and membership forms, and forum threads also on compiling. I eventually found a thread that lead to another thread, that lead to a broken link and a small wiki. Supposedly the only program that can export Blender models to the CrystalSpace engine is on the broken link, and even if I find it there seems to be no contribution guide for design and opening specifications.
It was much easier with Infinity, even if I didn't know what I was getting wrong.
The period cutoff for planeshift is around 1300ec, right? So this will still be in the time when if you didn't have the large amount of money for a sword, you could do just as well with a long, gnarled stick. A quarterstaff can break bones more easily than your bare hands, and a good bash in the neck or the face means murder, although presumably the one with the staff was defending. I'm still ignorant about many Plane Shift details, but I don't know why the guards would object to someone carrying a staff. Do they just look for anything in the "weapon" category while you're within city limits? You'd expect they would have an official list of specific items and item groups, like they do in real life.