The last of the Qurti mages built a wall around the desert, caging the mankiller beast who made it a lair. When the Cult of Valor came, they shattered the dome, thinking it a fort and an abomination. Surzi feasted on their bones, but by then, the war was already lost. --- Check out "[Petrichor](https://eleanorkonik.com/petrichor/) %% ( [[2021-09-08 Petrichor (MF) (DRAFT)]] ) %%: the danger-sweet scent of fresh rain" for another story about Surzi, & keep an eye out for more to come! He's been really fun to write about! The stories are meant to be stand-alone but also build on one another. --- ## ANALYSIS The origin story of fortifications is a tale of man vs. nature, not man vs. man. Yet, I think when most people think about castles and dikes and walls, we think of the Carolingian Europe and the resultant bevy of castles dotting the landscape. Castles are inherently linked to our cultural understanding of feudalism. The internet is papered with statements like: > The first castles, built in the Early Middle Ages (early Medieval period), were ‘earthworks’ – mounds of earth primarily built for defence, as enemies struggled to climb them. — [Dr. Edd Morris](https://www.exploring-castles.com/castle_designs/) so it's no wonder so many people think fortifications are a product of European feudalism. But I genuinely believe that it's a habit people get into because of the irresponsible way history is presented as being "civilization started in Greece, then the Romans adapted it and made it an Empire, then the Dark Ages happen, and all inventions were either recovered from the Classic era or made anew during the march of progress to the Enlightenment and Beyond!" Completely ignoring Persia and China and Mesoamerica and... and... and... 🤷‍♀️ If we're going to call an 'earthwork' mound an 'early castle' then 'castles' have existed since the dawn of civilization. Yet castles, defined as "the private fortified residence of a lord or noble," are widely considered [an European innovation](https://www.castlesworld.com/tools/how-did-castles-originate.php). Now, to be fair, "motte-and-bailey" style castles _are_ a European invention. They have a wooden or stone keep situated on a raised area of ground called a motte, accompanied by a walled courtyard, or bailey, surrounded by a protective ditch and palisade. But they grew out of [Roman and French fortifications](https://www.worldhistory.org/Motte_and_Bailey_Castle/) and evolved into other kinds of fortifications. Fortified residences belonging to lords aren't to Europe, either. [Kiriyama Castle](http://www.japancastle.jp/2017/06/Kitabatake-clan-castles.html) in Japan was constructed by Kitabatake Akiyoshi in 1342. The Japanese castle-building tradition also grew out of earthworks technology. The [fortress at Dazaifu](https://heritageofjapan.wordpress.com/inception-of-the-imperial-system-asuka-era/the-ruins-of-asuka-yamato/the-architecture-of-asuka/engineering-marvels-dazaifus-water-fortress/) was built during the Nara period (c. 710–794) and maintained as a center of government for centuries. Even a cursory glance at the "[fortification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortification)" page of Wikipedia will show you that, just as a quick survey, we have evidence that the Greeks had walled military garrisons that functioned like a Roman _castellum_. The Ancient Egyptians also built fortresses on the frontiers of the Nile Valley to protect against invaders from neighboring territories. There were even walled cities in the Bronze Age period of the Indus Valley civilization. As best we can tell, though, the Indus Valley walls were less about defending from invasion and more about defending against floods. I've written about [city walls](https://eleanorkonik.com/city-walls/) %% ( [[2021-07-19 City Walls (DRAFT)]] ) %% before, and _Shattered_ was directly inspired by the research contained in that edition of this newsletter, although this isn't the story I did the research for. But those notes about how people in Cahokia and the Indus Valley originally built embankments (which is to say, earthworks) to protect against flooding and erosion — not raids from their neighbors — was how I got the idea for _Shattered._ Qurti mages built their greatest fortification not to protect against enemy invasion but to fence in a dangerous animal. Besides, city walls are less useful for defending against conquest than one might think. I used to think that siege weapons were invented because of Medieval castles. It turns out the oldest records we have about siege engines come from the Assyrians. Evidently, Carthage learned about siege weapons from their eastern territories, which used to belong to Assyria. So siege warfare has existed for a pretty long time. Longer than castles, which post-date walls by a fair bit. Incidentally, polities were usually conquered because of an internal betrayal (in Greece this was often due to class warfare), not because of somebody breaking down the city walls or whatever. To put pressure on people holed up in the cities, armies would ravage the countryside, which was effective at starving a city and forcing them to fight. It wasn't always necessary to go the hard-nosed route, though. Phillip II of Macedon and a few others famously took more cities with "gold and sweet words" than the sword. Unfortunately, magic beasts like Surzi can't be bribed or sweet-talked. I'm not familiar with any major infrastructure projects used to keep animals restricted to a region away from humans. We usually manage to drive anything that poses a threat to the brink of extinction. I imagine that the Cult of Valor wasn't familiar with any such thing either, and so when they came across a giant impenetrable dome, they interpreted it through the paradigm of their own experience. And suffered accordingly. ## Further Reading - Definitely check out [Sparta Was Much More Than an Army of Super Warriors](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/sparta-much-more-army-warriors-180978583/) by Myke Cole, author of _The Bronze Lie: Shattering the Myth of Spartan Warrior Supremacy_ (which I haven't read but is well-regarded by people I trust). In the article, he talks about Brasidas is a much cooler (and cleverer) Spartan leader than Leonidas because he actually learned from his mistakes instead of getting a reputation for bravery thanks to a hopeless last stand. - You might also enjoy my article [Beyond Rome: Infrastructure in Ancient Civilizations](http://dankoboldt.com/infrastructure-ancient-civilizations/) in which I discuss more examples of how ancient civilizations built incredible infrastructure. There's a whole section on the enormous walls hunter gatherers built to help them trap animals more effectively. - _Military History Quarterly_ published this article about [Changing Conceptions of English Castles](https://www.historynet.com/changing-conceptions-english-castles.htm) that I found interesting mostly because it details how Norman castles were built mostly for offensive purposes, rather than defensive ones.