Miskatonic
Auror
Other dragons?
-
Welcome to the Fantasy Writing Forums. Register Now to join us!
Fortifications against dragons?
- Thread starter ascanius
- Start date
ScribeI find it fun to think of traditional enemies in non-traditional ways. This is what made The Walking Dead so appealing to me. Instead of the zombies being super strong and fast and agile and deadly they come across as sort of stupid and slow, making them deadly if they get too close, but generally easy to distract and kill… Then the story is not so much the same old zombie show, but more about what a post-apocyliptic world does to the psyche of the humans still alive…
So I guess what I'm trying to say is what if you think of your dragons in another way than the traditional 'we must shoot them with a thousand arrows and fortify our cities with towers'… sort of way.
My four year old son came up with a story a while ago where he was facing a dragon who burned his sword and shield with his fire, so he took out a remote control airplane and flew it out of the cave. Confused and intrigued by the plane the dragon flew after it. My son (in the story) decided that he was going to fly the plane around and around quickly in circles until the dragon got too dizzy, and crashed into a ravine, a thousand feet below… This was from a four year old and I found it incredibly insightful. He was able to defeat the dragon in a new way that was not the obvious way, showing his character as being one that uses his head instead of his arms…
Just another perspective.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is what if you think of your dragons in another way than the traditional 'we must shoot them with a thousand arrows and fortify our cities with towers'… sort of way.
My four year old son came up with a story a while ago where he was facing a dragon who burned his sword and shield with his fire, so he took out a remote control airplane and flew it out of the cave. Confused and intrigued by the plane the dragon flew after it. My son (in the story) decided that he was going to fly the plane around and around quickly in circles until the dragon got too dizzy, and crashed into a ravine, a thousand feet below… This was from a four year old and I found it incredibly insightful. He was able to defeat the dragon in a new way that was not the obvious way, showing his character as being one that uses his head instead of his arms…
Just another perspective.
Last edited by a moderator:
I've just thought of this some more, so what if:
There were tall light towers (like light houses) around the city, and when the dragons came they lit the towers and spun the light around and around so it confused and blinded the dragons?
If the land is inhabited by fire breathing dragons, why would they even build their cities above ground? Perhaps the cities are hidden underground, or are compiled of grass covered burrows like a hobbit hole?
Maybe every few hours they blast a sound that sounds like the call of a larger dragon in order to deter the smaller ones from getting to close.
Maybe they hang the bodies of the smaller dragons around the city to keep others from getting too close.
Maybe they build large 'fake' cities to keep the dragons distracted.
Maybe they have to sacrifice a virgin Dragon priestess every year in order to appease the dragon's thirst for blood, (but THIS year, only she and one other person know she is not a virgin… duh duh duh….)
Maybe they leave their criminals out in the wilds to appease the dragons (then you could write from the POV of one of the criminals trying to fight for his/her life in the wilderness against other murderers and rapists etc).
The list is really endless…
Why are the dragons even attacking in the first place? That may give you a hint as to what they could do to protect themselves.
There were tall light towers (like light houses) around the city, and when the dragons came they lit the towers and spun the light around and around so it confused and blinded the dragons?
If the land is inhabited by fire breathing dragons, why would they even build their cities above ground? Perhaps the cities are hidden underground, or are compiled of grass covered burrows like a hobbit hole?
Maybe every few hours they blast a sound that sounds like the call of a larger dragon in order to deter the smaller ones from getting to close.
Maybe they hang the bodies of the smaller dragons around the city to keep others from getting too close.
Maybe they build large 'fake' cities to keep the dragons distracted.
Maybe they have to sacrifice a virgin Dragon priestess every year in order to appease the dragon's thirst for blood, (but THIS year, only she and one other person know she is not a virgin… duh duh duh….)
Maybe they leave their criminals out in the wilds to appease the dragons (then you could write from the POV of one of the criminals trying to fight for his/her life in the wilderness against other murderers and rapists etc).
The list is really endless…
Why are the dragons even attacking in the first place? That may give you a hint as to what they could do to protect themselves.
Last edited:
evolution_rex
Inkling
Do other mythological creatures count? If so, Ichnuemon are always my go to guys. Chain them up and treat them like tigers or lions, take them out to battle and they'll go straight to their favorite meal, which are dragons.
chrispenycate
Sage
Why do dragons attack villages and castles? In my main fantasy WIP, dragons, solitary, individualistic predators, once had domains over the entirety of the continent, maintaining their population by fighting and killing each other. Intelligence evolved for outsmarting others of their own kind, and language for teaching the young, rendering them more competent to fight and scheme their way to their own domains, and relative security over a very long potential lifespan. Even the males and females only met up for one brief, pheromone-driven moment, after which it was return home for hunting, or gestation.
Humans, on their arrival, were considered some new kind of prey species, and mainly left alone except as food, or breeders of food. It took generations - dragon generations, not short human ones - for the more observant ones to notice that humans were spreading and increasing in number, while the opposite was true of dragons, and that whenever there was a dragon/human conflict there might be a hundred, two hundred humans dead, but there was always a domain that fell into human hands, with their grasping, opposing thumbs. Humans would invariable cooperate to bring down the foe, while no dragon would ever help another, even the youngsters watching their mother's slaughter.
So a clever dragon wouldn't attack a human settlement unless humans first attacked them - a very foolish act, but humans, especially noble ones, are not immune to foolishness - but every year young dragons, confident in their own invulnerability, think of them as teenagers, left home to set up their own territories. Human slaves, to do the scut work and agriculture, were highly desirable. Human soldiers weren't. So villages were left as unchanged as possible, except for offering tribute maidens and the like, while castles were destroyed - they were competitors. And most of the young dragons were killed off, a few escaped to lick wounds, and population was stabilised in the ancient way. But with steadily fewer dragons (quite a lot of whom lived in castles from which they had ejected the previous tenants - somewhat ruinous, some of them) in the mix, and ever more human held land.
Even when a few dragons had worked out what was going on it was very difficult to get the message across - there was no channel of information between individuals. But many of the remaining dragons had human staffs - nannies, managers, overseers. And young dragons learnt to speak human very early, and think in it for communicating with the servants. And not all servants were against their saurian masters - quite a few had experienced being in service to humans and didn't want to return there, or for their children to go there. Minstrels, tinkers, travelling folk - the messages went from dragon family, to hatchling - with the status quo, dragon kind was doomed to end up as a few mangy specimens in zoos.
That's when dragons started volunteering for military service. There was plenty of scope for career dragons - hardly an army wasn't ready to increase its logistics problems for arial overviews, for warriors who could get to the threatened point almost immediately, and freeze a whole wing of the battle.
But military contracts were for ten, twenty years - a tiny fragment of the life of a dragon. And they'd been learning to cooperate, with each other and with humans - of the soldiers that had served with them, a third joined up with their ex squadmates upon demobilisation. Lords who had a reputation for mistreating their serfs lost their castles, their domains and, not infrequently their lives - kings failed, after a few military losses, to send reinforcements to beleaguered subjects, other lords started improving the conditions for serfs to avoid them inviting in revolutionaries. And traditional dragons, with centuries of experience in traditional defence, fell to the teams of innovative youngsters, while mother dragons taught their fledglings the new lays of the lore.
This is the state of affairs when the majority of dragon-resistant castles are built. Those dragons have learnt defences, know about strategy and tactics. They are not the angry, unthinking beasts of a century before. Hitting them somewhere vulnerable with arrow or ballista in flight is possible but unlikely. Roofs are steep enough that they have to land on the ground, where they're easier to target. Nothing inflammable apparent - stables and barns are slate roofed, all walkways are covered, underground tunnels, slit windows with folding metallic shutters, metal-sheathed doors and drawbridges - protections, not attack ready.
Humans, on their arrival, were considered some new kind of prey species, and mainly left alone except as food, or breeders of food. It took generations - dragon generations, not short human ones - for the more observant ones to notice that humans were spreading and increasing in number, while the opposite was true of dragons, and that whenever there was a dragon/human conflict there might be a hundred, two hundred humans dead, but there was always a domain that fell into human hands, with their grasping, opposing thumbs. Humans would invariable cooperate to bring down the foe, while no dragon would ever help another, even the youngsters watching their mother's slaughter.
So a clever dragon wouldn't attack a human settlement unless humans first attacked them - a very foolish act, but humans, especially noble ones, are not immune to foolishness - but every year young dragons, confident in their own invulnerability, think of them as teenagers, left home to set up their own territories. Human slaves, to do the scut work and agriculture, were highly desirable. Human soldiers weren't. So villages were left as unchanged as possible, except for offering tribute maidens and the like, while castles were destroyed - they were competitors. And most of the young dragons were killed off, a few escaped to lick wounds, and population was stabilised in the ancient way. But with steadily fewer dragons (quite a lot of whom lived in castles from which they had ejected the previous tenants - somewhat ruinous, some of them) in the mix, and ever more human held land.
Even when a few dragons had worked out what was going on it was very difficult to get the message across - there was no channel of information between individuals. But many of the remaining dragons had human staffs - nannies, managers, overseers. And young dragons learnt to speak human very early, and think in it for communicating with the servants. And not all servants were against their saurian masters - quite a few had experienced being in service to humans and didn't want to return there, or for their children to go there. Minstrels, tinkers, travelling folk - the messages went from dragon family, to hatchling - with the status quo, dragon kind was doomed to end up as a few mangy specimens in zoos.
That's when dragons started volunteering for military service. There was plenty of scope for career dragons - hardly an army wasn't ready to increase its logistics problems for arial overviews, for warriors who could get to the threatened point almost immediately, and freeze a whole wing of the battle.
But military contracts were for ten, twenty years - a tiny fragment of the life of a dragon. And they'd been learning to cooperate, with each other and with humans - of the soldiers that had served with them, a third joined up with their ex squadmates upon demobilisation. Lords who had a reputation for mistreating their serfs lost their castles, their domains and, not infrequently their lives - kings failed, after a few military losses, to send reinforcements to beleaguered subjects, other lords started improving the conditions for serfs to avoid them inviting in revolutionaries. And traditional dragons, with centuries of experience in traditional defence, fell to the teams of innovative youngsters, while mother dragons taught their fledglings the new lays of the lore.
This is the state of affairs when the majority of dragon-resistant castles are built. Those dragons have learnt defences, know about strategy and tactics. They are not the angry, unthinking beasts of a century before. Hitting them somewhere vulnerable with arrow or ballista in flight is possible but unlikely. Roofs are steep enough that they have to land on the ground, where they're easier to target. Nothing inflammable apparent - stables and barns are slate roofed, all walkways are covered, underground tunnels, slit windows with folding metallic shutters, metal-sheathed doors and drawbridges - protections, not attack ready.
AkamaruGames
Sage
If the dragons fly, I am curious how sturdy their wings are compared to the rest of their body. I imagine their wings would be thinner and easier to damage than the rest of their body, so any sort of ranged fire might damage their ability to fly, forcing them to the ground. Other ways they could be brought down might include harpoons or perhaps some sort of net cannon or goo cannon that could make it hard for the dragon to move its wings and send it crashing to the ground. A high pressure water cannon might throw of the dragon off during flight and have the added bonus of taking care of fire, but a particularly effective one might stretch the limits of technology for the time. Still, if there is a need and enough research funds being thrown at a problem, anything is possible.
If they are incapable of flight, simple walls and moats would be more than sufficient to slow them down long enough for archers or ballistae to take care of them.
I also like the idea of hidden pressurized spears that punch through the roof when something heavy (say elephant sized) lands on them.
If they are incapable of flight, simple walls and moats would be more than sufficient to slow them down long enough for archers or ballistae to take care of them.
I also like the idea of hidden pressurized spears that punch through the roof when something heavy (say elephant sized) lands on them.
arbiter117
Minstrel
If I were to defend my city against dragons, I would invest in a lot of stone to build the buildings because it doesn't burn, and possibly even iron or tin roofing. This would be expensive. Also, I'd invest in a network of tunnels and caves that my people could use to get from one end of town to the other without exposing themselves to the flying fiery serpents! Also a wonderful supply of water at hand.
All the people would be required to know how to use a bow or crossbow. Then I'd have a lot of arrows handy for the bows and crossbows. Add a host of ballistae that fired bolts attached to nets to snare the beasts and that's about all I could do. Bonus points if I could dig up some of those ballistae that fired several bolts at the same time!
In pre-machinegun combat, holding the infantry line was extremely important. A hole in the line could spell doom for the phalanx, legion, or 19th century battalion of grenadiers. That's why cavalry were used to charge into enemy ranks and break the lines for the supporting infantry. In that regard, I'd use my dragons to break enemy ranks and (MORE IMPORTANTLY) scout out enemy positions to help me form my strategy and potentially raid their supply lines.
All the people would be required to know how to use a bow or crossbow. Then I'd have a lot of arrows handy for the bows and crossbows. Add a host of ballistae that fired bolts attached to nets to snare the beasts and that's about all I could do. Bonus points if I could dig up some of those ballistae that fired several bolts at the same time!
In pre-machinegun combat, holding the infantry line was extremely important. A hole in the line could spell doom for the phalanx, legion, or 19th century battalion of grenadiers. That's why cavalry were used to charge into enemy ranks and break the lines for the supporting infantry. In that regard, I'd use my dragons to break enemy ranks and (MORE IMPORTANTLY) scout out enemy positions to help me form my strategy and potentially raid their supply lines.
