Fortification (sage study)

Fortification is a sage study in the field of Architecture, providing knowledge essential for the design and planning of military defenses. This expertise enables the character to devise and oversee the construction of fortified structures, including walls, towers, harbours, mottes and baileys, gates, drawbridges and siege engines. Additionally, the study covers the placement and engineering of siege defenses, such as battlements, arrow slits, murder holes and fortified gates, as well as the design of offensive siege engines meant to breach enemy defenses. While fortifications are often vast undertakings requiring years or even decades to complete, much of the actual construction is performed by labourers under the direction of skilled masons, carpenters, and engineers — all working from the architect's designs.

The study includes a knowledge of how nature can be used to provide the most effective natural defenses, such as large hills, cliffs, rivers, lakes, marshes, or even caves. Understanding the integration of stonework, timber reinforcements and defensive earthworks ensures that structures endure against siegecraft, weather and the passage of time. Additional details, such as machicolations crenellations, parapets and sally ports, are part of the study, allowing architects to design fortifications that maximise both protection and offensive capability against besiegers. The actual construction of these elements is dependent upon others, but the architect understands their methods of construction and their ideal placement for best effect.

A skilled fortification architect is responsible not only for the strength of a castle or fortress, but also for anticipating enemy siege tactics. Knowledge of battering rams, catapults, trebuchets, and undermining techniques allows them to reinforce key weak points, ensuring that their designs can withstand prolonged assault. This study is critical for the defense of kingdoms, noble estates and strategic outposts, influencing the balance of power in times of both war and peace.

Sage Abilities

The sage abilities below are those acquired by a character through the study, according to status.

Amateur Status

• Defensive Obstacles: providing the character with training in the making of field fortifications such as abatis, caltrops, cheval de frise and trou de loup. Includes earth or sand-filled gabions and revetments, used collectively to make a military camp improvement also counts as part of the ability.

• Rudimentary Defenses: allowing the design of practical, essential foundations and structures without elaborative features, such as palisades, simple curtain walls, square gatehouses and the like. The ability includes ditches and hinged gates.

• Siege Weapon-making I: allowing the creation of devices intended to break or circumvent castle doors or walls, such as battering rams, catapults, ballista and mangonels are part of the ability.

Authority Status

• Bastion-making: in which the character's knowledge grants a full understanding of how basic structures can be enhanced with established defensive forms, such as those listed in the description above. With time and financing, most structures can be made impregnable to ordinary siege attacks.

• Sapping: provides skill in digging and shoring underground tunnels designed to collapse enemy fortifications. This ability includes an understanding of soil composition, structural weaknesses and the use of supporting beams to prevent premature cave-ins before the tunnel is strategically collapsed. Skilled sappers can weaken walls, undermine towers and even divert underground water sources to erode enemy defenses

• Siege Weapon-making II: enables the practical innovation of devices that may be larger than ordinary and unusual in design, such as the trebuchet or the incorporation of Greek Fire. or incorporate technologies such as rockets and other explosives and magical effects. Multi-story wooden siege towers are included with this ability.

Expert Status

• Floating Platform: among the most difficult siege engines to construct due to their sheer complexity and the challenges of operating them effectively. Floating siege towers remain bouyant while supporting the immense weight of soldiers, weapons, and defensive structures. Constructing these platforms required careful calculations to ensure they would not tip over or sink, especially under fire from defenders on the fortress walls.

• Refined Carbon: creates a dense, carbon-rich outer shell that strengthens the surface of siege defenses, both wooden and stone, increasing their defensive point values by 50%. Significantly decreases the decay of such buildings, while likewise making wood resistant to fire, water damage and fungal decay.

• Truss Refinement: allows the installation of yielding braces and trusses that permit faster movement of siege engines and towers on land, allowing greater stability over uneven terrain while lightening the actual weight of the engines being moved.

Sage Status

• Castle in the Air: enables the construction of a stable fortress constructed entirely above the ground, supported by an elaborate and permanent system of counterweights, levitated platforms and structural tethers. Once built, the castle is stationary and cannot be moved; but it can be built to sit above a city or an otherwise inaccessible location, with no direct connection to the land below. Conventional siege engines cannot reach it unless attackers construct their own elevated platforms, while direct assaults require flying mounts, complex grappling systems or long-range artillery. Design varies, dependent on how much time is taken to complete the structure.

• Levitated Platform: advanced siege structure that defies conventional architecture by suspending a fortified platform up to one hundred feet in the air through an intricate system of counterweights, air currents, tension cables, and buoyant lifting mechanisms. Unlike traditional siege towers or floating water-based platforms, this structure remains aloft once built, and must be hauled by cables over terrain to the siege site.

See Bard Sage Abilities