(TFT) Castles and sieges

[Mark Tapley <mtapley@swri.edu>]

All,
	OK, another topic. Castles, forts, fortifications, etc. in the age
of magic. I'm having a hard time seeing how a castle can withstand a siege
accompanied by a few good wizards. There are lots of icky things the
wizards can do to a standing, hard target, but here's one of my favorite
ideas so far:

- Before siege -

1) Wizard travels to a tall volcano with an accessible lava pool.
2) Wizard puts on Fireproof, Fresh Air, maybe Insubstantiality for good
measure.
3) Wizard swims down to the bottom of the lava pool
4) Wizard creates one end of a Gate - rule is Gate passes
	anything with a temperature greater than 110 degrees C.

- siege starts, surrender demanded and refused, etc. -

5) Wizard unrolls "stealth" flying carpet with Unnoticeability on it
6) Wizard flies over castle
7) Wizard creates other end of Gate.
8) Lava pool drains through gate onto castle, creating another Pompeii.

- Siege over. -

	There might be some problems with bouyancy in lava (so wizard
really *needs* the Insubstantiality, I guess), and making sure the wizard
is out of the way of the midair lava fountain he creates, but the general
plan ought to work pretty good. Could do similar with mountain lakes,
glaciers, piles of dead decaying mountain-goats to create plague panic,
etc, but lava (particularly at night) would have a nice flair to it. It
would render the castle a useless pile of hot rock, so if the intent is to
capture the castle, maybe not the best approach.

	There's just so many ways a sudden Gate appearing in the castle can
cause problems. I'm thinking any serious castle has to have boxes all along
the corridors saying "break glass in case of emergency" and containing Gate
Locks, at the very least. Can Gate Locks be tied to crossbow bolts, and
each sentry be equipped with one of those? How about Gate-Locks imbedded in
tiles throughout the courtyard? (Side issue - if the wizard does as above,
but ends up in the field of one of the Gate Locks, I'm assuming his gate
*is* created (and his strength used up), but vanishes instantly - maybe
leaving just a whiff of sulphur and a small "Pelee's Tear" of cooling lava
below where it was. All agreed?)

	Astral Projected or Insubstantial wizards pose serious threats in
many other ways too, from poisoning the castle keeper's dinner to looking
over his plans to opening the gates from within. Maybe the *whole castle*
has to be built on a really, really big Pentagram? (Hey, this could explain
why the Two Towers in Lord of the Rings are so d*mn tall! Cheaper to make
the pentagram that way. :-) )
	Does a whole ring of normal-sized pentagrams block an Astral or
Insubstantial figure? To protect a 3-d space, the Castle would have to have
a Pentagram-tiled basement and a Pentagram-tiled roof, as well as having
pentagrams cast on the wall stones every 3 vertical meters during
construction. The expense would be ... wow.

	Of course, there are *some* fun things the castle can do in its
favor. Double walls, with a layer of various types of gas bombs between
them. As soon as the attackers breach the outer wall, out rolls a flood of
gas bombs, breaking randomly as they tumble down the slope to the moat.
Sleep? Low-ST? Fear?
	Multiple redundant water supplies are all one gate away, and could
go to many different mountain lakes/streams. Same for food supplies, in
caverns. The lava-gate trick could be used to wash out gullies that at
first look like they provide good avenues of approach to the walls, as
could gates to lakes. (It would be ironic if the castle's defenders drained
the very same lava pool the beseigers were planning to dump on them....)
	The walls could have outriggers with rope swings attached to them,
or cables slanting down across the moat. Either of those could serve as
aiming devices for petards - light, swing out over the attacking troops,
let fall and explode. New attackers would of course immediately try to
climb up the dangling ropes afterward - which would turn out to be "Ropes",
if you know what I mean... hogtied in midair sounds uncomfortable to me.

	Is it plausible that a "Universal Solvent" bomb could be made
containing both elements of the solvent, and set up to mix them on impact?
Could be launched from a trebuchet or other siege engine (I'd be pretty
nervous about most of the others, but lauch acceleration on a trebuchet is
pretty low compared to impact acceleration.) That could go either way, but
would hurt the castle a lot worse than a well dispersed siege force.

-----

	Ideas welcome. The end product of this discussion, I hope, will be
a lot of castles (and ruins of old castles) spread across the land with
well-developed rationales for the traps, lost/buried magic items, etc.
scattered through and around them, and for the state of disrepair of the
ruined ones.

								- Mark
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