Fantastic Fortress: Dangers of the World

Before considering how a fortress may optimize its defense in a fantasy kingdom, it's necessary to first look at all the possible threats present in the fantasy setting. I'm dividing threats based on Air, Overland, and Underground origins. I posted a thread on Dragonsfoot and ENworld for ideas on what other possible threats might be present in a fantasy setting.

We already looked at airborne threats in the last post. It occurred to me that the auditory detection system might not be effective against most fantasy flyers. I doubt even dragons make the kind of noise small prop aircraft do, so maybe a detection system based on sight alone might be better. I'll have to think on that one. One thing I didn't consider was breath weapon or area effect attacks, particularly form dragons. These could include fire, gas, poison, etc. So the aerial defense would have to also take into account a way to mitigate damage from breath attacks and not just the flyers themselves.

There are only a few possible underground threats and they all have a similar effect. These threats would include Humanoid diggers, whether they are other human armies,goblins, orcs, etc; they could all be countered according to traditional methods from historical warfare. Other Underground threats would involve unintelligent burrowers such as purple worms, and creatures or magic that cause earthquakes or otherwise threaten the integrity of the foundation of a fortress such as stone to mud spells. All these underground threats have a similar effect, the undermining of the foundation of castle walls or the bypass of them by digging under. The best defense would not be a strategy made for each individual threat, but some way of shoring up the foundation so such threats will rarely be effective.

There are number of land based threats. These include Giants and other Huge monsters which could destroy walls due their sheer size. Also creatures which can climb sheer walls such as aranea, footpad lizards and such make traditional castle walls obsolete. And finally there are the tiny creatures, such as brownies, that could slip past normal castle defenses with impunity.

There are a few other threats which I won't be taking an in depth look at because I think the best defense against them would be magical and not structural in nature. There are creatures a spells which may ignore the physical entirely by becoming ethereal or teleporting. There are creatures with gaze attacks, which might be feasibly defended against without magic, but I don't see such creatures as being so common as to threaten an entire fortress; they tend to be rare solitary creatures. Then there are creatures that have charm effects which negate whatever defenses you might have, the only reliable defense against a charm is another spell.

D&D Story 2: B1 In Search of the Unknown, Part 2

continuation of the interview on B1

UPDATE: I have uploaded all of our interviews as a podcast on Anchor called Dungeons and Dragons and Duncanites. This episode can be found at https://anchor.fm/lance-duncan/episodes/DD-Story-2-B1-In-Search-of-the-Unknown-e3psfk

Lance: Ok, so let's talk about when you ran it for us. How many times have you run this module that you remember?

Bruce: Five

Five, so you ran it the first time and then?

And then I didn’t run it again till i had some friends that decided they wanted to do it with us and that was after we moved to Clairmont. And they actually did quite well;  they were cautious where they should be, they were bold where they should’ve been, they actually played it the way it was supposed to have been played, and I really appreciated that, so I didn't mess anything up. I kept it as true to the module as possible. And then the next time I played it was with you kids. Just you kids and I leaned it down quite a bit, so that you kids could play and have fun doing it. You were technically old enough to hear and understand what was going on on that trip. The next time I played Jared was at that stage and then we played one more time and that was at the new house in citrus heights.

And that was the time with the white dragon and Galron?

Right.

Ok so when we played it with Galron and the white dragon, where was the dungeon? Because in the blue Expert book there’s a map and it places it northeast of Luln.

Yes, that’s where i put it.

So let’s talk about the time with galron because that defines my Known World going forward. Before we met the white dragon I remember the talking mouths but that's about it.

You guys turned right after you killed the guards and separated one going into the dining hall [room 3] and one going down the passageway. You guys turned to the right someone went here someone went down here and the ones that went down here [east of room 4] had to come back and assist the ones that were in here [room 34]. And one of you almost died, you had to use all the healing potions you guys had at the time. And all the spells that the cleric had memorized for that purpose, and you guys had to hold up there [room 33].

Ok, so what are all these numbers and letters here? Are those saying the treasure and monsters?

Right.

Did you use that code only once?

I used that code quite a bit. There are a couple of things I would change; leave the number on there, but change it for that adventure. With Galron a lot of this was changed.

Let's see, I remember the pools, but I can't remember what we did there the first time we went in there. I remember we got the drinking water one.

Yes you did, you also got the healing one . You guys were very suspicious of all the pools; someone dipped their sword in the acid, and then the next place they stuck their sword in was the green slime which worked real good on the green slime. Then someone figured it out and started throwing acid at the green slime. You guys actually defeated the green slime with acid, rather than any other means. Your magic wasn't working too good because you guys were such low level.

That's pretty cool. Was there anything else on the first level that we did?

Oh, the chambers the bedchambers; you guys got carried away with the bedchambers. Some of you slept. This wasn’t the first adventure that the new crew with Galron had been on. The one with the carrion crawler was first. Between the carrion crawler dungeon and this one, and you guys spending so much time in the bedrooms, that’s when I decided there were dust bunnies [room 24].

But you only made the stats for dust bunnies a few years later, there wasn't any stats at that time?

Right it was afterwards.

I don't know how i lost that piece of paper

It’s a bedroom, what are you gonna do? Look for dust bunnies?

Did we get lost in the mazes and stuff?

Twice once in this one [around room 37] and once in that one [room 20] but only  once. Because you guys were mapping and mapping quite well, you were able to figure out where you were.

Did we have trouble with the teleporting rooms [room 15 and 16]?

Yes you did, but only once. Cause you had someone stand outside the door.

That was the first level, before we go to the second level, do you remember who was on that adventure?

Oh the name of the characters, no.

But wasn't cassie's character with the black dragon armor [Jelarin]  there?

Yes and one of cassie's friends, Guinevere

Ok, Guinevere, she had her heartbow already, that’s  bridget's character. Heidi was with us, she had her mage character; she played that one most often.

This is about when she was losing interest

I think she was named Seanna or something.

It might have been Gabriel for Jared

Maybe it was his halfling?

What was the halflings name?

I can’t remember, see he made a halfling when I ran games too, so I always mix them up. His first halfling was Dmitri?

It might have been Dmitri, I’m not really sure.

Cause for the longest time Jared only had those two characters. Was Gabriel Jareds first character?

Yes

Because he's a fighter. So then it was probably Gabriel cause this was one of the earlier adventures, and Jared was younger then, and if Heidi was still in middle school that means Jared was 4 or 5.

Right

Ok, so it was probably Gabriel [ I called Jared and he confirmed it was Gabriel].

Yeah

And one of cassies frineds

Yeah

Do you remember which character?

No, cause they never came back again, I think they decided to be a bard.

We dont have bards.

Yeah, they wanted to be a bard

Maybe it was Mir, she does things like that.

Yeah, I  told her, “ok, you can be a fighter who does a lot of singing” I think that's what I did.

That's pretty much what I tell everyone who’s said they wanted to be a bard. There’s so many different versions of the bard. The bard is like the kobold basically. The kobold has changed more than once every edition, and the bards did the same thing. So I tell people if you wanna be the fighting version of the bard just be a fighter and have a musical instrument, if you wanna be the thief version of the bard be a thief and have a musical instrument . . .

Right, and that’s basically what I did with her. She wanted to be a fighter.

Ok, so how did we get to the lower level?

It was one of the pit traps.

Ok was it the one you made up down in room 20 or was it the pit trap that’s already up there by room 36 or something else?

Well what happened was this; there were two different entrances, two different times you went down to the lower level one time was into the pool of water and you guys almost died [by room 36], the other time was you found this hole in the floor. You had absolutely no idea what it was for and you decided to roll someone down on a length of rope because there was a spit with a crank over the hole.

Lol, we actually did that?

Yes, it took two of you to be able to lower one person down.

I thought Cassie was the smart one, and she stopped us from doing things like that?

Not on that one, and you had not found the stairs because that time you went to the left instead of the right

So which way which one was first?

I think it was the pool of water first.

What did we do there?

You went out into the cave of bats and stuff, and were able to make it outta there

But the white dragon?

No white dragon at that time

Ok but we came here a second time?

That’s when the white dragon was there

And we fell down this other hole in room 20?

Right and you explored all of here [level 2] and finally made it into where the white dragon was

I remember you described it as being really cold, and there was something blocking the passageway. It looked like a giant hill in the middle of the passageway, like right at the entrance that  we were going in.

That was the dragon

Were we coming in from the south or the west?

From the south

Ok describe that, you probably remember it better than me.

That’s a hard one to remember. When I was rolling the dice for reaction rolls, you guys were getting spectacular rolls, and it was frustrating because I was’t getting a realistic roll from you guys.

You’re talking about before we met the dragon?

Yeah, and everything you did when I’d roll you got it; whatever you wanted. When it came time for that [the dragon] I just rolled the dice and didn’t worry about it. I developed a story with the white dragon to keep you guys interested.

Well, the dragon killed all of us; it froze everyone except Galron. But yeah, we woke up the dragon, and he breathed on us, and Galron had like one hitpoint or something. But you had already planned for that dragon to be there before we even went into the dungeon?

Yes, now the other thing was I can’t remember if it was the blue dragon or the white dragon, but one of the dragons you met was so amused by you guys that he liked you.

That was the white dragon, because it was me trying to be social when I was like, I don’t know ten, or however old i was. It was probably the first time I had to actually roleplay instead of just roll dice.

Yeah, and he couldn’t get out of the room because he had been kept in there for so long. Now I don't remember what you guys did, but there was something you did where it caused it so he could leave the room and he was eternally grateful.

What I remember was, he breathed on us and I was the only one that was still conscious. I think you were nice and had them all frozen instead of  dead. That's probably what you did and then I couldn't say anything because I didn't know what to say, and the dragon started laughing. After it decided it liked me because I was so speech impedimented, through the coaching of Cassie mostly, and some of the other kids too I was able to get it to take everyone else to the room of pools. To the healing pool, and then after that I'm not sure . . .

But the thing is he had to do something though to be able to become small enough to make it through the passageways; now that’s the part I don’t remember.

Was he a normal sized white dragon

Yeah, he was a normal sized white dragon. Yeah, anyway I think it was a teleport spell cause the dragon did have some spell capabilities, so that might have been it. I don't remember.

Ok and so so after everyone was healed, did we just leave?

Yeah, you talked to the dragon and told him that the dungeon was totally empty. That you guys cleared it out and there's no reason for him to be here anymore because he doesn't have any treasure to guard.

Ok wait, he didn't have treasure in the bat room?

Nope, he had food. Adventurers would keep coming in and that was his food. And the treasure you get from adventurers was the only treasure that was there, and it really wasn’t worth his while.

No, ok so where did he go?

I think you guys were the one to influence him. One of you did the teleport spell, and you stayed an extra day and teleported him out of the dungeon and freed him. You guys met him later several times.

If he were in this other room [room 55] he would have been able to get out.

Yeah no problem, but that's where they originally put him to guard the back door, and then he kept wandering around down there and one time he wandered and couldn't get back in because it had caved in. That was his excuse.

Ok, so I remember we came back later and he wasn't there specifically, but there was white dragon eggs and they were his eggs with another female white dragon. And it was in the same room we first found him. That’s pretty much all I remember about that.

Yep

That's where we got the other six dragons, I know that much.

And when you left the room you went out this exit here and he was there to meet you. You were tasked with protecting the eggs and letting the dragons be raised, and the white dragon was there on behalf of the dragon council.

Right that was way later.

Yeah and one of them got drunk and turned green