Fortress construction

[cool hand luke]

While we are on the subject of supplies, what about water.

follow me here for a minute, I work as a civil engineer for a small town (15k) but with a much larger (75k) daytime population. we max out our water usage at around 11 MILLION gallons a day. Now granted, a good chunk of that is to lawn, etc, but, for 200,000 people, and going to war, you need to be able to bring in at least 15 MILLION gallons of water a day, more if you want to grow anything inside the city, fight fires, have a running water/sewer system of any kind, or use any water for water wheels, or mechanics, or defense. that's a lot of water, think 3 6' diameter pipes under high pressure flowing 24 hours a day.

 

[Piratecat]

In other words, make sure that there's a defendable underground river flowing through the fortress. Wow - I had no idea people used that much water.

 

[cool hand luke]

underground river is nice, BUT

(always buts)

1. a defendable source, can you defend the entire length of said river? what if the enemy can damn, or worse yet, poison it?

2. brings major issues into the how sanitation thing. Again, if you want to magically poof away the poop, your ok, but otherwise, all that biosludge (the technical term for sewage) winds up going down (gravity and all) and contaminating the water.

3. Also brings into question some serious structural issues. most underground rivers flow through limestone embeddment, which is not the greatest material to either build on top of, or quarry out to make a large fortress.

enough over engineering your fantasy world, good night!

 

[Piratecat]

Sorry, did I say "underground river"? I meant "gate to the elemental plane of water." I'm sure I did.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

2. brings major issues into the how sanitation thing. Again, if you want to magically poof away the poop, your ok, but otherwise, all that biosludge (the technical term for sewage) winds up going down (gravity and all) and contaminating the water.

I'd steal the solution from Joel Rosenberg in his book Sleeping Dragon. You capture a red dragon wyrmling and fasten it to a spike with an adamantium, magically strengthened cable in the middle of a pit. Have all of the city's sewage empty into that pit. If the wyrmling doesn't want to drown in a pile of poop it will use it's breath weapon to incinerate the waste.

I'd see your Lich creating an all undead force. They require no food or water, are totally loyal, and the enemy's dead soon join their ranks after any battle. Also, being a powerful wizard don't forget that he'd be likely to create golems for the same reason. If he has a way to cast a "Stone to Flesh" spell that would affect large numbers of people (perhaps through a Wish) he might have a Medusa on retainer who turns his troops to flesh until they are needed. In stone form they don't age and don't require resources. They also don't get any ideas of treason and can't give plans away with careless talk. I originally came up with this idea for a clan of dwarves turning themselves into stone to wait out a cataclysm.

 

[Taren Nighteyes]

Quick comment

Calico_Jack73 - Guardians of the Flame - Good/fun series to read. (At least the first 4-5 books..)

 

[Taren Nighteyes]

Quick comment

Calico_Jack73 - Guardians of the Flame - Good/fun series to read. (At least the first 4-5 books..)


Taren Nighteyes

 

[Agback]

- able to house several hundred thousands of soldiers (with families) and undead.
- practically self-sufficient.

Umm. One hundred thousand was very large for a mediaeval city. You are talking about several times that for soldiers alone, and several times that total for their families. Say one million mouths to feed. And therefore a fortress with a population to rival Imperial Rome, or mediaeval Cairo or Byzantium. People eat at least about two pounds of food a day each. That's a thousand tons of food per day total. If any of those troops are cavalry, figure that horses eat five times as much as their riders.

Ancient and mediaeval metropolises were able to house this many people because they had major ports, and fleets of ships whereby to import food from around their dependant empires. But you want your fortress to be 'practically self-sufficient'. Therefore you are going to need to produce a third of a milliion tons of food per year inside the walls. I suggest that you enclose an area the size of mediaeval England.

Regards,


Agback

 

[Wolffenjugend]

I think part of the problem is that people are trying to find logistical ways to solve this problem. "Realistically", I think you're wasting your time. Just say the lich uses magic to feed everyone b/c otherwise you're spending a heck of a lot of time figuring out the minutia (sp?) of how the system would work.

Personally, I think you've made it too big but hey, it's your game. Have a heck of a lot of clerics casting create food or whatever. Is it really that important HOW it would work? I mean, when I saw LotR I wasn't wondering where the orcs got all their food from (or water, or latrines, or whatever)...

 

[JimAde]

I think part of the problem is that people are trying to find logistical ways to solve this problem. "Realistically", I think you're wasting your time. Just say the lich uses magic to feed everyone b/c otherwise you're spending a heck of a lot of time figuring out the minutia (sp?) of how the system would work.

Personally, I think you've made it too big but hey, it's your game. Have a heck of a lot of clerics casting create food or whatever. Is it really that important HOW it would work? I mean, when I saw LotR I wasn't wondering where the orcs got all their food from (or water, or latrines, or whatever)...

Neither was I, but Tolkien did It's just a passing reference in the appendix, but he mentions vast farmlands to the East and South of Mordor.

But you're right. I think Noir is looking for suggestions on cool features and buildings that he doesn't want to forget.

If this place will include green space (as he says it will) there must be quite a lot of living troops in this number. So anything a city would have will be there, made by the troops themselves if not provided. There would be training facilities for both troops and magical support types (wizards and clerics of whatever dark gods these folks worship).

One thing Noir lists that I don't think they would need is a graveyard. He said the orcs, etc. are eating the dead, and some would be converted to more troops. Any remaining would probably just be dumped, or used to fertilize the fungus farms.