Sieges

Nobody lays a siege yet: armies do not build engines or storm walls. The rules below already run on every town, castle and manor, and their buildings burn and break in game time.

Walls

Walls, towers, gates and keeps are made of parts, each as strong as its volume and material:

Material	Strength a cubic metre
Stone	100
Plaster	40
Wood	30
Earth	20
Thatch	5

Castle curtains are built in sections about 4 m long and a storey high, so a stone brings down a stretch, not a whole wall. In a 3 m thick curtain an upper section is about 3,600 strong and the ground course about 6,000. Towers and keeps are built of half-metre rows.

A blow takes strength off every part in its reach, less the farther off. A part that runs out falls, its roof with it, and leaves a rubble heap at its foot. Whatever rested only on it falls too. Floors are laid in bays, each borne on the walls at both ends: knock out the wall under one end and the bay falls with all on it.

A gap of 2 m or more is a breach that attackers can climb through over the rubble. A battered wall still standing keeps them out, and so do a shut gate, water and cliffs.

Fire

Burns	Burnt through in
Thatch	A minute
Timber	Four minutes
Wattle and daub	Seven minutes

After 20 s alight a part sets alight whatever touches it and whatever hangs over it up to 3.5 m, so fire climbs the stairs and floors. At the eaves it takes the roof, which burns a minute and a half and falls in. What falls burning sets alight what it lands on and leaves ash. Stone never burns: a stone keep ends as bare walls, a timber house burns to its footing. Fire stays within one building, and rain and wind do not touch it yet.

Timber hoardings on walls and towers burn like any timber, and the stone stairs up to a wall walk fall with the wall they rest on.

Burnt timber blackens and ends as charred beams, the stone by it is sooted, and a gutted building loses its sign.

Engines

Engine	Strength	What it does
Trebuchet	3,000	Throws a 100 kg stone at a mark 60 to 300 m off every 20 s, 1,200 where it lands; an upper wall section takes about three hits, a ground course five. Lands within about 2 m at 150 m by day, twice that by night. Fits only on a square keep 12 m or more across
Ram	2,500	Within 4 m of a gate, a swing every 3 s: 150 off the gate’s leaves (3,000, half for a palisade gate), then the portcullis (4,000)

Engines stop when wrecked. Defenders can patch a damaged part, never past its built strength, and build a fallen one again from the bottom up, its rubble going back into it.

Gates

A gate shuts while its place is alarmed, from the curfew bell till dawn unless the gatekeeper is paid, and as you come near a place whose house wants you. A drawbridge rises while its gate is shut; whoever stands on it as it rises falls into the ditch.

Fighting itself is on Battles.