Behind the Castle Walls

                The building of castle walls could be a book unto itself, but we’ll try to hit the highlights here.  First, they have to be flat enough to make climbing up very difficult.  There are tricks to this.  Sure, hiring a clan of dwarven masonry craftsmen to build your wall is an option, but so is plastering the wall.  Yes, plastering will likely need to be redone every few years, but it’s still cheaper than the craftsmen (probably) and it makes the castle look all white and new.

               Second, they have to be tall enough to make climbing difficult, with or without ladders.  Ten feet tall is considered tall enough to stop direct attacks, but not climbing.  After all, an athletic man, should be able to jump up and grab the top of a 10’ wall, or at least have a buddy who could give him a boost.  A 20’ tall wall could possibly be overcome with a ladder, but a 20’ wooden ladder is likely to weigh about 50lbs.  That gets difficult on top of armor, weapons and other gear, in addition to how slow climbing a ladder can be.  Ample opportunity to pick him off on his way up.  So 20’ is normally considered “high enough”.  Sure, you can go a lot higher, but you would need to have a specific reason to go above 20’.  Also, the higher you go, the more likely that you will need to add buttressing to hold the walls up.

               Castle walls need to have their own defenses.  The tops of the walls can have merlons.  These are the portions of the wall that stand above the wall itself, providing cover for archers atop the wall.  They might have their own arrow slits in them or have the archers simply hide behind them until ready.

               But in order to hide behind the merlons, there needs to be a way to walk around the top of the wall.  If the wall is quite thick, then walking on the wall itself probably works.  If not, then a catwalk might be needed to allow for movement.  Anything less than six feet (or whatever measure your rules determine allow two fully grown men in armor to safely pass each other) is too narrow.

               One of the greatest ways to stop an opposing force from attacking the wall itself was machicolations.  In order to have these, the uppermost portion of the wall (above the walkway) juts out from the wall.  This additional portion is supported by corbels, the braces built into the wall to hold the portion that is not in line with the wall itself.  Now that there is extra space, the flooring between the corbels can be removed allowing the people atop the wall to look directly down the surface of the wall.  In this way, the defenders can pour things down on top of anyone trying to assault the wall.  This could be boiling oil, rocks, or simply missile fire.

               Walls came in many different styles, but the typical fantasy era wall is about 10’ wide, but not really.  Two walls were built parallel to each other, then the space between them was filled in with rubble and mortar.  This gave the walls solid surfaces, cheaper thickness, and even a little bit of impact resistance from the filler.  What was the rubble?  Most commonly the leftovers and scrap that didn’t go into the wall itself.  If it were a brick wall, then the filler might be the clickers (burned bricks) or other visually unappealing pieces.  Stone walls would often have the gravel created as the stone pieces were cut and shaped, plus all sorts of gravel from the quarry.

               We’re assuming that the castle walls are made of stone, but they don’t have to be.  We’ll normally consider wooden walls to be “palisades”.  Why?  mainly because any wooden wall made from lumber (like from the saw mill) would be far more expensive and probably not as strong.  It was easier to cut down trees, strip the branches, and then just sharpen the ends of the log.  By pounding these logs into the ground and putting some support crossbeams inside, you can put up a fairly decent defensive wall quite quickly.

               Placing the towers was a very important part of planning the curtain wall.  The towers needed to be placed in such a manner as to allow the defenders to use the walls and the towers to target anyone attacking.  If an enemy were able to hide behind the tower itself and therefore be in a blind spot, the defenders were likely in trouble.

 

               Does this kind of content interest you?  If so, we hope you will consider joining us in our Small Bites project or the full title of How to Build Your Fantasy World in Small Bites!  We continue to build our community of game masters and world builders, and we would love to have you join us!

               This post was written as part of The Secrets of Siege Magic aka All About Battle Magic for Castles & Sieges, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one is showcasing magic used in attacking or defending castles, and then naturally by extension walled cities and other fortresses.

               We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 89 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.

Education as a Weapon

                In many of our campaigns and game worlds, not much has changed over the past 1,000 years.  Not that borders haven’t shifted, but the nature of war is likely similar in the current game year to how it was centuries ago.  Compare that to our world where in the past 300 years we’ve gone from muskets to stealth bombers.

               Does it matter?  Absolutely!  On Earth, our recent history is filled with innovative generals utilizing new technologies in ways that they haven’t been used before.  Napoleon, Patton and others have gained their fame primarily because they understood the new face of war.

               After the defeat of Napoleon, the Prussian education system was established.  (Please don’t get picky on this.  I know it started a while before, but it wasn’t fully rolled out until ~1830.)  Why?  Well, at least the story says that the Prussian military commanders felt the kids they were drafting were unsuited for war as they were then fighting it.  They needed recruits who could read and write, understand maps, and do some math (mainly to better aim the bigger guns).  Oh, yeah, and were indoctrinated into patriotism.  If any of that feels like the act of an evil empire, training their children to be better soldiers in case they needed to be drafted, be aware that the USA’s public education system is a complete copy of the Prussian system.  What, you never wondered why it was called “kindergarten”?

               But how does this translate into our FRPGs?  If warfare hasn’t changed in 1,000 years or more, what’s the point to thinking about these innovative generals?  Well, I’m actually trying to make the reverse argument.  Just as the Prussians developed a system of public schools that would educate their civilian children so that they could later be better draftees, I think we need to consider how schooling in our fantasy worlds would attempt to do the same.

               Are mages the only ones in your world who attend schools?  That may not work.  A military officer who cannot read orders delivered to him by messengers is useless.  (Few officers trust the messengers to know what the orders say, so they cannot simply tell them.)  Similarly, if he cannot read a map, he’s probably useless.  But there is so much more to it!

               It seems most appropriate for each culture to train their children differently, based on the needs of the “kingdom”.  For example:  In the city of Helatia, a major seaport, every college / university teaches navigation as part of the standard curriculum.  They cannot afford to have the top officers of the ship incapacitated and have the lower officers unable to get the ship back to port, so everybody learns.

               The exact opposite would be needed in deserts west of Dalavar.  There the young men are enrolled in riding academies.  They learn how to care for their horses, as well as ride and shoot from the saddle.  Meanwhile in the Green Lands, every able-bodied man (and boy) is expected to practice with his long bow for five hours a week.  This is not only a civic duty, but the priests emphasize it as well.

               There are other aspects here that can be used.  Maybe you don’t want your rank and file soldiers to have an education, and that seems fine.  But what do they do as youths that prepares them for war?  In Brinston, track and field events are the main sport.  This continues in that the various Civilian Authorities (policing units) compete against each other in track meets.  For the kids in Brinston with any aspirations of being a soldier, cop or any other heroic occupation, they would spend their afternoons racing each other through the streets, throwing javelins (or pretend javelins), and seeing who can jump the farthest.  Now take a pick pocket in Brinston and have him try to run away from the police - not likely!

               Granted, these ideas work best for point-based or skill-based character systems.  Ironically, class-based systems make schooling harder to work in.  With classes, abilities grow no matter what, but with a point-based system, you can still have a priest who ran track as a kid and can run faster and jump farther than some of the warrior types.

               This is most importantly seen if the culture uses a lot of magic in their warfare, or their enemies do.  It seems entirely likely that a military academy might want to teach their cadets how to block a spell while teaching them how to strike with a saber.  This is where your rules might get in the way of your world building.  Handle with care, but no matter what your rules say, long established cultures will find a way to prepare their children and citizens for the hardships ahead.

 

               Does this kind of content interest you?  If so, we hope you will consider joining us in our Small Bites project or the full title of How to Build Your Fantasy World in Small Bites!  We continue to build our community of game masters and world builders, and we would love to have you join us!

               This post was written as part of The Secrets of Siege Magic aka All About Battle Magic for Castles & Sieges, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one is showcasing magic used in attacking or defending castles, and then naturally by extension walled cities and other fortresses.

               We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 89 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.