Besieging blokes and lasses who can fly...

From: Stewart Stansfield <stu_stansfield_at_...>
Date: Sun, 07 Mar 2004 08:57:07 -0000


John:
> I must admit I still don't have a clear idea of the city. Jane has
> suggested Micene meets Masada.
> DP:LOT - "An ancient fortress that never became a proper city."
> Whitewall sits on a high plateau of white stone, from which its
walls
> were carved...

This immediately had me running for that great book that is Peter Connolly's "The Roman Army" (MacDonald, London, 1975)--also part of his "Greece and Rome at War".

Elements of these descriptions immediately reminded me of Connolly's depictions of Alesia and Jerusalem, which I think people have mentioned. Alesia in particular, geographically, allied with the evocative elements of other sieges, seems quite useful an analogue. For those interested, Connolly describes elements of Caesar and Titus in a simple and heavily pictorial manner. Super stuff. And this got me thinking a little further on siege techniques.

How Roman is the Lunar army these days? Daily marching camps of the Polybian pattern, like in Tarsh War? The reason I ask is that they were the pastmasters at field engineering (someting John well-alluded to in the bridge example), particularly the arts of countervallation (walling the enemy in with their own lines) and circumvallation.

Are these wider Imperial arts (of a given cultural provenance, perhaps, developed by those engaged frequently in sieges) or Lunar? And depending on the answer to that question, were they used extensively at Whitewall? Did a cautious general create lines of circumvallation from the off--there were still Heortlander field and irregular forces out there in 1619--or did he learn from a mistake? By the end of the siege they might not have been necessary, but still remain.

Even the most rudimentary of siege works would require some timber, which would put the besiegers at odds with the local wilderness powers. The building of massive ramps of earth and stone, magically aided, might pit the besiegers against landscape powers as harmful as the inhabitants and dysentry itself.

[Hmmm, methinks we need an anti-soldiers disease subcult of Deezola etc. Including such feats as Purify Bowels, Cast-Iron Stomach and... just so they think twice in future... Burn Away Pox...)

And this brings me to the titular point... Lines of circum- and countervallation are built to stop people wandering back and forth, on horse or afoot. If the Lunars *did* seek to try and create an effective blockade of Whitewall, and not just send an observation force to ring the city, covered by a larger army away from the siege itself, even the most dimwitted of generals would have known the threat of magic.

How do you besiege a city that contains known outlaws strong in the magic of their barbarous gods? Sure, they might be ill-favoured savages, but as magic is central to Glorantha, even the most stodgy of siege-lines wouldn't work on a physical, positional cordon alone. Did the Lunars use a small, manoeuvrable (perhaps airborne)element of magicians and other forces--no matter how inadequate--to help seal the city? A magical flying-force, no doubt sorely tired by its constant activity and paucity of numbers (pre-College of Magic).

Walls are all well and good, but when the foe can fly, run up cliffs and leap in league sized bounds (not to mention bringing back Heroes of Legend(TM)--though that requires other methods to stop), one has to question their use alone.

Stu.

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