 Fantasy: August 30, 2006 Issue [#1236] |
  Fantasy
This week: Edited by: John~Ashen  
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3. Letter from the Editor
4. Editor's Picks
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Fantasy! It comes in all flavors and subgenres. In the realm of the imagination, boundaries become meaningless. I'll be pointing out different styles and offering advice on key elements of fantasy writing. Enjoy  --John~Ashen |
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Siege Defense
Walls
When defending against a siege, you can count on one thing: being outnumbered. Your primary advantage is your walls and fortifications. By forcing the enemy to go around fortifications and over your wall, you force them to waste extra time while you neutralize their man advantage.
Walls need to be tall to discourage climbing, strong to withstand bombardment, and made of something better than wood to withstand fire. Well-shaped walls can funnel the enemy to a predetermined approach route. Hopefully your position is backed by a river or a mountain, so that you don't get attacked on all sides at once.
Your main body of troops defends the walls that have gates. The reserves man the flank walls (plus maybe some "prop" soldiers to make them appear more well defended than it actually is). Some walls have sally ports, concealed doors for counter-attacking, built in.
Countering Attrition
The main way to lose a siege is to run out of supplies. When you know you're going to be attacked, all the farmers in the area bring in as much food as possible. Sometimes they fire their own fields to deny crops to the approaching enemy. The produce, grain sacks, and other supplies are usually stored in underground tunnels. If the food runs out, desperate defenders might be forced to add horses, pets, or vermin to their diet. Most important is to have a fresh water supply (a deep well) inside the castle.
A large area should be cleared all the way around the outer walls, so your defense officers can see what all the attackers are doing. Inside the walls, women and children are usually called up as auxiliaries. This lets all able-bodied men fight instead of doing auxiliary tasks like fire brigade (smothering fires with water/dirt), shoring up (carrying lumber to reinforce walls/gates), and communication (signal flags, message runners).
Defending the Attack
As walls and fortifications slow down the enemy, arrows become the defenders' most important weapon. The longer you can keep the enemy outside the walls, the more will die to your arrows.
Thus besides the walls, many castles have trenches to prevent any machines from rolling right up to the walls. Add water and you have a moat. Add crocodiles and you could have a menacing moat indeed. The enemy must go over or through it, while your drawbridge is raised for only your side to use.
Against opponents who reach your gates, a portcullis can be lowered to reinforce the gate. Murder holes are vertical holes in the walls which allow defenders to drop rocks, boiling water, or heated sand down on attackers directly below.
Sometimes you have counter-batteries (your catapults aiming for their catapults) on your rooftops.
Miscellaneous
Animals are good detectors of sappers. Dogs and livestock will sense digging underground, while a sudden plague of rats is also a good indicator that something is coming at you from below.
If you're lucky, your castle has messenger pigeons which can be sent to neighboring cities. If they send an army, the siege can be lifted soon. If no pigeons are available, you have to try to send commandos or scouts to get through the enemy lines and go for help.
Magic
Magic plays its part in fantasy sieges. Anything that takes a long time or is hard to do, magic can make easy. If you're missing a water supply, magic can come to the rescue. Magic can also act like a modern device. It could make walls invulnerable to normal projectiles, or light up the sky at night, or provide instant communications.
Don't let magic do too much, though. That would spoil your perfectly nerve-wracking siege. Either keep the effect very small, or cancel out grand wizardry with opposing magicians on the other side.
Surrender
No one likes to surrender, but it must be considered sometimes. There are three types of negotiations, generally. The most desired is white flag surrender; the expected outcome is that the attackers win the castle, while all the defenders get safe passage out of the area. If the fight has gone too long or become personal, the best one can hope for is to be granted quarter. At this point, the officers and some warriors are likely to be killed, in exchange for safe passage of the women and children and remaining unarmed males.
The worst case for defenders is to see a black flag which indicates that no quarter will be given. They might as well fight to the death, because the city inside the castle is going to get sacked - ransacked and then burned to the ground, with everyone killed, no survivors.  |
Below each pick is a 1-line teaser excerpt:
Sal Keret pushed his horse toward Komis’Na’s ramshackle gate.
Most Knights of Alrune are young Alrunic elves who have a wanderlust to adventure,
I caught you the midnight the meteors danced
“Ancient arts? Like water coloring?”
She loved her people but she didn’t want to lead them, didn’t want to choose a husband.
Oh! give me a home where the dragons will roam
Write a fantasy story in which the main character is a faery
Second-In-Command of Heaven's Army
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Breezy-E ~ In College  wonders: What do the attackers do when they're high up in the mountains, with no tree to make into siege weapons?
Response: If there are no trees, then the attackers are in big trouble if they didn't bring their own siege weapons. That's one of the many reasons why mountain forts are so hard to conquer.
A thinker never sleeps comments: I'm currently starting to write something set in a war situation so this will help a great deal. I've found a great tool to help in fantasy writing is also to buy a wilderness survival guide such as Ray Mears because it helps you think about basic survival in different climates and things you might otherwise have not considered when writing description.
Response: Good idea! I sometimes peruse my old soldier's manual from the Army. Among other things, it details how to dig defensive positions and foxholes as well as how to perform basic first aid in the field.
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