Chương 281: 277. Designing

Kivamus got up from his chair and started pacing around the room while thinking about possible solutions to improve their defences further. The crossbow which the female guards used here was designed as a smaller version of those used on medieval earth to make it more handy and easier to reload for them. However it also meant having reduced range and power.

It was still an excellent personal weapon and had been used effectively both in defence against an ambush on the road as well as from the top of a watchtower, but he also wanted something more powerful. Something which could even kill an enemy wearing full plate armour - and from a good distance - just in case one of their neighbours decided that they needed to use a more hands on approach to get rid of him.

Zoricus might already have knights working for him, and even if he might not have enough of them to attack Tiranat, he certainly had the ear of the Count of Cinran, which meant the greedy bastard could still send a few knights to kill him, probably while disguising it as a training accident or something. So he wanted to use this opportunity to make the defence of their village strong enough that even knights wearing plate armour and charging on a warhorse wouldn't be able to do anything to them.

Of course, eventually he planned to make gunpowder weapons here, but the village was not yet close to the technology level required for that, so he needed to think of a usable idea from before the gunpowder age on earth.

Feeling glad that he used to read so much about technology in his free time on the internet, he was quite sure that coupled with his background in mechanical engineering, he could come up with something which suited their needs, while still being practical to build using the village craftsmen's skills. He began to think about what possible defensive weapons he could design which could do the needed task without requiring gunpowder and the precision engineering needed to make barrels and such parts for a gun.

That meant the weapon had to be powered by either a tension prod like the crossbow, or a torsion spring like a ballista - which had the capability to provide hell of a lot more power, but the complicated mechanism of a torsion spring would make the weapon too big and unwieldy to hold in hand. Hmm... What if they just fixed the weapon permanently somewhere? Maybe on the parapets of the watchtowers? Yup, that could help a lot in making the weapon easier to handle even if it was too heavy to lift for one person.

In that case, maybe they could just make some bigger sized crossbows and fix them on top of the watchtowers? The current crossbows had already been used effectively from up there, but they were still personal weapons, and didn't have that good a range or power, so a bigger version of it might be good enough for their needs. He thought about it for a moment. Hmm...

It could certainly work, but it probably wouldn't provide enough of an increase in power and range to make the design worth it for Darora to learn crafting a new weapon from scratch, compared to the carpenter just making more of the standard crossbows from their limited budget for buying iron - especially with only a single skilled craftsman available to work on it. That just meant he needed to think on a bigger scale, which immediately reminded him of siege weapons.

Duvas had already mentioned that siege engines were used in the last war over Tolasi Hills between the three major countries of Cilaria, which meant Fort Aragosa must already have powerful medieval field artillery like a ballista, an onager or a trebuchet.

That meant the craftsmen of this age already had the knowhow for it, and even if Darora might not have worked on one of them personally since he was too young to have participated in the previous war, he should still have gotten some basic training in the concept from whomever he had learnt carpentry. Even though Kivamus knew that he would be able to make the complete blueprint of any design he finalised, that previous experience of the carpenter would help a lot.

Of course, they didn't really need a siege weapon here. Okay, so it had to be something powered by a torsion spring, and sized somewhere between a handheld weapon like a crossbow and a full sized siege engine like an onager or a trebuchet. He tried to remember the already proven designs on earth he had to work with. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

The first thing he thought of was the Greek-designed siege weapon called a ballista, which also shot a bolt just like a crossbow, but it was simply way too big to put on top of a wooden watchtower. Not to mention that it was a full sized siege engine focused more on offence against a fortified enemy than defence.

Usually operated by at least two men, a ballista was certainly a very powerful weapon, and would likely have the range to cover the whole 500 meters of cleared area from the watchtower till the treeline of the forest. However, unless they had a whole army attacking the village in huge numbers, it wouldn't be very useful to them because it simply didn't have the accuracy at that range to target individual attackers, and that is what they needed the most here.

The primary danger to their village right now stemmed from bandits and maybe mercenaries - like the ones who had killed the previous baron. While their numbers could easily be in dozens, they couldn't attack in a number of hundreds or even thousands which could make it worth designing and building siege weapons. So he needed something smaller - something which had more accuracy.

In that case, on the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of power and range, he could simply design an arbalest, which was basically the same thing as a much bigger crossbow like he had considered earlier. It would have the necessary accuracy which was required here, but it might be difficult for the women to reload. Also, it wouldn't provide enough of an increase in power to increase the effectiveness and range of the watchtowers by a noticeable amount. Hmm... Those two designs were out then.

What else was there? Thinking more deeply about it, he suddenly remembered an advanced Roman design developed by modifying the design of a Ballista - namely a scorpion. It was quite similar in concept to a ballista, and was similarly powered by a torsion spring, but it was much smaller than the siege engine, and could easily be put on top of a watchtower. Its major benefit was that a single person could operate it, and it was quite accurate up to a good distance.

It also packed a good punch in it, and could even take out a man wearing plate armour from a lot more distance than a crossbow bolt could. He nodded to himself. This design seemed promising. The original design of a scorpion was only meant to shoot in a straight direction like a ballista, so he would have to change the design a little bit so it could be set to pivot over a fixed base, allowing the guards to target an approaching bandit more freely.

Of course, this also meant they could also shoot the bolt upwards in a parabola, which would increase its range multiple times, but in that case it would simply be too inaccurate to be of use against anything but a full sized army. No matter. As long as it worked to kill individual bandits from a good range, or even small groups of attackers, it would be worth it.

He would still have to keep the overall design small enough so it could easily fit on the side of a watchtower - perhaps on the top of a parapet - while retaining the advantages of a torsion spring and the improved range and power it provided. He would also have to create some way to make it easier for women to reload it, perhaps by using a simple pair of differently sized gears which would use mechanical advantage to help women to load it easily.

Using gears to make it easier to reload was simply not practical in a handheld weapon like a crossbow, but it could be implemented in the design of a bigger and fixed weapon like a scorpion. This way, even a physically weaker person could rotate the smaller gear more times but with a lesser amount of force, in order to rotate a larger gear - which would move slowly but with a much higher torque - which would then be used to reload the scorpion very easily.

That should take care of the problem of reloading it comfortably, even by the women guards. Yup, a scorpion seemed like the best idea for now. He grinned thinking about it. If they could successfully make some scorpions and mount them on each watch tower, it would allow Hyola and other female guards to target a hell of a lot more distance than what they could do now.

Of course, they would still keep the crossbow with them, and those would be helpful if an enemy reached too close to target them with the scorpion - since they wouldn't be able to bend down the scorpions to a steep angle from the watchtower parapets - or to pick out individual bandits easily if they weren't too far from the watchtower.

But in case the women spotted an approaching group of enemies from a long enough distance - which is why they had cleared such a big area around the village wall in the first place - they could use the scorpion to take them out long before the bandits got close to the wall, even if they were riding horses or using shields. Of course, he had a hidden motive here.

He wanted a way to allow the guards to even be able to kill enemy knights with this tower mounted scorpion - whether they belonged to an invading army from Girnalica or an over ambitious noble of Reslinor who wanted to capture his village, like the greedy bastard Zoricus - although he didn't plan to mention it to anyone else for now. He nodded to himself. This design was final then.