Wormwood: can Seige Warfare work?

[Braden Campbell]

On Earth, when one force wanted to lay seige to another force's castle (or town) they would surround said castle with a mass of men and seige weapons. Then they would literally cut them off from the outside world, and starve the defenders into submission.

HOWEVER< a Wormwood fortress or town under siege will continue to provide food and water for the defenders for as long as there are defenders. Starving them out is simply not an option. So in such a magic rich environment, how does one conduct a siege?

Several interesting ideas have come to me so far: tunneling under with priests or parasites, dropping bombs from dragons or skywriters, park a Host in a crawling tower right next to the town and let the monsters very presence warp the town, even keeping a perpetual anti-magic cloud over the town to prevent magic healing and food supply.

Anyone else have any ideas?

[Jefffar]

Well a siege is just more than surrounding them and starving them out.

A siege also includes the use of any of a variety of means to force a surrender. These include but are not limited too:

Direct assault (CHARGE!)

Sapping (Either to tunnel through into the structure or to undermine the wall so it can be brought down easily)

Bombardment (Why else would you drag those catapults all that way?)

Negotiation (You will be granted fair and merciful treatment if you open your gates and surrender)

Bribery (Hey, you, yah you next to the gate, want to earn 20 bucks?)

Starvation (A classic)

Biological Warfare (lob a couple of plague infected bodies into the castle)

Trickery (Convince them you are somebody else or convince them it safe to open the gate)

Infiltration (Sneak a few men in to open the gate)

Intimidation (I am Tamerlane, I have raised the cities of X, Y and Z. If you do not open the gates I will take your city, kill your men, sell your women and children into slavery, take all your treasure and burn your city to its foundations.)


As the saying goes, there is more than one way to take a castle.

[Steve Conan Trustrum]

It would absolutely work. Necessity breeds invention, as they say. The way I'd suggest examining the situation is consider all the traditional factors in a siege and how magic does away with them and then think of how magic can make them factors again.

As a very simple example: how much use is hiding behind a wall in the first place when magic allows the enemy to fly over it?

[Jefffar]

Which then leads to fortifications with vertical potection and ranged weapons to engage flying adversaries.

So the besiegers use magic to travel throught he wall, or tear it down.

The besieged used ranged weapons or aggressive sallies to disrupt attempts to go through the wall. They erect a second wall behind the origional wall so that they can defend against anyone coming throught he first breach.

It goes back and forth with the limit being the resources and creativity of the two commanders.

[Steve Conan Trustrum]

Exactly.

An important part of fortifying that I used in my Wormwood games (and the unpublished portions of the netbook) was stone imported from other dimensions. Lining the inner walls and ground with it prevented enemies using communion powers from easily tunneling into the compound.

[Jefffar]

Nice.

I might have tried to go with Rifts ceramic armour plating, just to flumox any earth warlocks that might get imported. Also easier to transport than stone.

[Steve Conan Trustrum]

Nice.

I might have tried to go with Rifts ceramic armour plating, just to flumox any earth warlocks that might get imported. Also easier to transport than stone.

More expensive, though. One need only build a quarry rather than find a market.


Plus I was trying to distance Wormwood from the whole "Wormwood is to Earth what Canada is to the US" take on the Dimension book.

[Braden Campbell]

Plus I was trying to distance Wormwood from the whole "Wormwood is to Earth what Canada is to the US" take on the Dimension book.

Oh man, that's so appropriate. Do you think that Earth wants Wormwood to get involved in interdimensional missile defence, or refuses to accept their beef products...



"Hey Ms. Tarn, welcome to Wormwood, eh?"