A reference to the elemental dust, but they still haven’t realized how many villains are still at large in the castle. How long will it take them? How much damage will be done by then?
Okay, really gotta nitpick here. It largely depends on what you use as a defining characteristic.
A castle is a fortified place of residence (as one usual definition) and, often enough, court – in the fortified character it’s the “grown-up” version of a fortified house (which may also be a keep (mostly built in French tradition – France, post-invasion-Britain, some crusader castles) but many castles didn’t have keeps). Usually a castle was also a place of residence of a potentate of some sort (usually the right to castles, at least proper medieval ones, not the “romantic” type, was tied to an at least somewhat ruling position). As such it may be a fortified version of a palace (structures that could actually be considered palaces were rare in castles though) or, of course, manors (as in “lord of the …”).
Urban castles were often enough reduced to mansions or palaces – fortified structures (like citadels as protection or fortresses (fortified garrisons) to keep the populace in line) were quite often not castles (if you keep the definition as a noble place of residence) but…well, citadels or fortresses. Medieval fortresses (like the English ones in Wales) are often enough called castles but don’t really conform to the residence characteristic. Crusader castles/fortresses are a bit of a mess in that regard – even if they were the (nominal or actual) place of residence of some noble, they often were also a fortress to garrison a lot of non-ruling crusaders – pure residences were, often enough, not fortified, being a manor or a palace.
In the end, though, this castle is not demoated, it merely changed from a water-filled to a dry moat. It is (at least nominally at this point) a place of noble (royal, in fact, I think? But then the ruler seems to be a princess (as in female version of noble (not royal) prince (I guess?), not a queen or a princess-regent which is really a thing that did not happen in real life as far as I know) residence and, apparently, of court. It seems to mostly house the royal (princely?) household and court in a (usually) peaceful (but intrigue-filled) environment (so not mainly a place of military defense or pacification of the populace). And it is, even disregarding the moat, most certainly fortified and defended so it’s fair to say that it is still a castle.
TL/DR: Yay, I think I managed to conclusively kill the joke!
– A fortress is an installation with a purely military purpose. It generally isn’t inhabited by anyone except soldiers and their support personnel. A noble might be found there, if he’s a warrior-noble like a knight who fights with his troops, but he wouldn’t hold court there or use it as a seat of government for ruling anyone other than the soldiers under his command.
– A palace is a place of residence for a noble, often but not necessarily also used as the seat of government from which the noble controls his territory (some are just vacation homes), but which is not significantly more fortified than a typical building, though it probably still has some security guards. (Of course, even a collection of tents can stand up to some degree of attack if it has enough guards, but it won’t hold up to a heavy siege.)
– A castle is a hybrid of the above two, being a place that serves a non-military purpose (traditionally housing a noble and his government) but is also well-fortified against attack, largely because nobles tend to be rather unpopular people who keep getting attacked.
Complicating the issue is that some palaces were built to superficially resemble castles for stylistic reasons, despite not actually being built with defensibility in mind, which results in these buildings often incorrectly being called “castles” when they don’t formally qualify. Worse still is when fantasy authors not well-versed in military history depict buildings that look like non-fortified palaces but are nonetheless described as being effective fortifications in-story.
The structure appearing in this comic, though, is clearly well-defended enough to qualify as a castle. As you say, even with a dried-up moat, it still has a moat, as well as thick walls with crenellations for defenders to fight from and other features that mark it as closer to a castle than a palace. It’s unambiguously too fortified to be a mansion and too princessified to be a fort.
As for demotions / lesser versions:
– A mansion is essentially just a smaller version of a palace, being similarly fancy but non-fortified, though it might just be inhabited by a rich commoner like a merchant, rather than an actual noble.
– A keep, according to Wikipedia, generally refers to an inner fortification that many castles have as a “second line of defense”, rather than a free-standing structure. However, I’ve also seen “Buzzword Keep” getting used as a name for whole castles, generally smaller and less impressive ones.
– “Fort” is just an abbreviated version of “fortress” which probably means the same thing but makes it sound less impressive.
– There probably exist a whole bunch more almost-but-not-quite-synonyms for these things (“bastion” is probably a rank up), and in any case the strict division-by-purpose I outline between the three major categories isn’t always rigidly adhered to by the people who actually name the things. Sometimes “castle” (and by extension “keep”) does get used to refer to a particularly-impressive fortification that’s cooler than a fortress but still exclusively military… but that isn’t really relevant, because this castle is clearly not one of those.
Clarification regarding forts: The use of the word is slightly ambiguous – there are/were, for example, plenty American “forts” which were more of a fortified garrison protecting a road, railroad, waterway or settled area using mobile infantry or cavalry (this was, of course, due to small populations and huge distances) or as a refuge fort.
More generally, though, a fort is a fortified structure that is capable of fighting self-contained. This may be an isolated structure protecting or threatening a specific (geographic) feature (e.g. a mountain pass, river mouth, harbor or colonial settlement) with artillery, walls to hide behind and perhaps a small mobile and/or defensive force – basically a small fortress. Or it may be part of a larger fortification especially once artillery became more useful in the 18th and 19th centuries. A fortress may have had a ring of forts to extend its initial engagement range, a city fortification may have primarily been a ring of forts (e.g. late fortress of Liège) with the city itself just housing personnel and logistics functions or a border fortification may have consisted of a line of forts, forts to fill the gaps between larger fortresses and forts/fortresses to anchor and supply a line of smaller fortifications (bunkers, pillboxes).
And then the word is used for (I think) pretty much any fortification not meant to be staffed/inhabited permanently.
Seems a lot easier to float an assault raft across a moat, preferably with a roof on top, or freeze it with magic then walk/run across than to clamber down a deep, steep and slippery walled ditch and the ntry to struggle up the other side in heavy armour while being continually peppered with arrows, rocks and assorted magic, not to mention a cranky gelatinous cube making the rounds filling that ditch from side to side…but that’s what minions are for.
I suspect that whatever the reason for draining the moat is is more complicated than “we want to get across”.
Or maybe there’s a vampire that can’t cross… wait, I don’t think moats count as running water? And the only vampire we know of doesn’t have that weakness anymore anyway, though maybe she swapped it for a different weakness…
Indeed, one function of a moat was to make the defended structure resistant to mining (that is, digging a mine and blowing stuff up from below/collapsing foundations).
In OOTS, Xykon once made the goblin army charge at heavily fortified wall again and again and again and again and again – until enough bodies piled up to jump over. I wonder if we’ll see something like this here too.
Canonical Decanter of Endless Water produces up to 30 gallons per round ~= 5 gallons/18 liters per second, with enough pressure to hit a guy 30 feet away for 1d4. I’d say it’s much more than just decent.
So probably around the power of a police water cannon (with a bit reduced amount of water) – at least if we commoners have about as few hit points as I seem to remember. A rough calculation gets me a potential around 30 to 40 kW (about 40 to 55 hp). That’s just the lower limit. The upper limit depends on what kind of pressure the Decanter is able to generate if you seal its mouth (or how firmly you can connect it to the rest of the engine, whichever is lower). Quite potent indeed, for a small bike.
The question I want to ask is how the recanter managed to suck up the moat; wouldn’t it need to be a completely closed system for the bike to work? We would have at least seen leakage in the system when she was driving around.
What if the seal is engaged mechanically when the throttle is on and when it’s off there is a gap between the decanter and the recanter?
Of course, that would present an environmental hazard – if the bike accidentally falls into a body of water, it could drain it pretty fast…
No need to seal it at all, though, it’s just the high pressure side that needs to be sealed. As long as bodies of water aren’t encountered, the worst that could happen is a bit of water leaking or a bit of rain being recanted.
Not sure how much a subterranean (I think?) culture would have to worry about bodies of water anyway. Not sure how much they need motorcycles either, though.
Wouldn’t the lack of a seal cause a pressure issue, making the system extremely inefficient, if it worked at all? Even if this was after whatever mechanism was making the bike drive, pressure leaks really hurt systems.
Think of it as a tailpipe – it’s open so you can expel the exhaust. You could then apply a magical bottomless pit (if pits worked for fumes, but hey, magic – or, you know, a vacuum) to get rid of the exhaust altogether but it doesn’t matter much (except for the percentage of exhaust gotten rid of/to the operation of the engine) whether it is sealed or not, the engine would still work.
The pressure used to operate the engine is (almost) entirely provided by the decanter (at least around 15 atmospheres, apparently) while the recanter could at best provide another atmosphere of pressure differential.
Subterranean cultures are extremely likely to be build in places that have them, because life as we know it requires water. Admittedly, life as we know it requires sunlight too, but two wrongs don’t make a right.
Technically, the bike isn’t absorbing the water, the recanter of endless water strapped to the back is. The recanter is currently laying parallel on the ground, and the puddle is probably so shallow that the opening of the recanter is now above it.
Granted, this assumes that the recanter only absorbs water through its opening, as opposed to absorbing it all like a sponge or something. But, since that’s how the decanter works, and they seem to be related artifacts, that’s what I’ve always assumed.
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Recanter. Somebody called it.
Wasn’t me, but somebody did.
It’s me, I called it.
The question now is, why drain the moat?
See what asking for joke magic item does, Mr. A? Just because it was way back when doesn’t mean it wasn’t creating trouble for our intrepid crew.
As for why use it here, because it wasn’t draining quickly enough by the other means, obviously.
If the moat counts as running water, vampires?
See? See? Motorized individual transport is the main reason for ecological disaster!
A reference to the elemental dust, but they still haven’t realized how many villains are still at large in the castle. How long will it take them? How much damage will be done by then?
Agh! The castle has been *de-moated*. Which means it’s now only a fort?
Naw, a demoted fortress is a fort. If you demo(a)te a castle, I guess that would just make it a manor or a mansion.
Nah, those are demoted palaces. A demoted castle is a keep.
Okay, really gotta nitpick here. It largely depends on what you use as a defining characteristic.
A castle is a fortified place of residence (as one usual definition) and, often enough, court – in the fortified character it’s the “grown-up” version of a fortified house (which may also be a keep (mostly built in French tradition – France, post-invasion-Britain, some crusader castles) but many castles didn’t have keeps). Usually a castle was also a place of residence of a potentate of some sort (usually the right to castles, at least proper medieval ones, not the “romantic” type, was tied to an at least somewhat ruling position). As such it may be a fortified version of a palace (structures that could actually be considered palaces were rare in castles though) or, of course, manors (as in “lord of the …”).
Urban castles were often enough reduced to mansions or palaces – fortified structures (like citadels as protection or fortresses (fortified garrisons) to keep the populace in line) were quite often not castles (if you keep the definition as a noble place of residence) but…well, citadels or fortresses. Medieval fortresses (like the English ones in Wales) are often enough called castles but don’t really conform to the residence characteristic. Crusader castles/fortresses are a bit of a mess in that regard – even if they were the (nominal or actual) place of residence of some noble, they often were also a fortress to garrison a lot of non-ruling crusaders – pure residences were, often enough, not fortified, being a manor or a palace.
In the end, though, this castle is not demoated, it merely changed from a water-filled to a dry moat. It is (at least nominally at this point) a place of noble (royal, in fact, I think? But then the ruler seems to be a princess (as in female version of noble (not royal) prince (I guess?), not a queen or a princess-regent which is really a thing that did not happen in real life as far as I know) residence and, apparently, of court. It seems to mostly house the royal (princely?) household and court in a (usually) peaceful (but intrigue-filled) environment (so not mainly a place of military defense or pacification of the populace). And it is, even disregarding the moat, most certainly fortified and defended so it’s fair to say that it is still a castle.
TL/DR: Yay, I think I managed to conclusively kill the joke!
The way I see it:
– A fortress is an installation with a purely military purpose. It generally isn’t inhabited by anyone except soldiers and their support personnel. A noble might be found there, if he’s a warrior-noble like a knight who fights with his troops, but he wouldn’t hold court there or use it as a seat of government for ruling anyone other than the soldiers under his command.
– A palace is a place of residence for a noble, often but not necessarily also used as the seat of government from which the noble controls his territory (some are just vacation homes), but which is not significantly more fortified than a typical building, though it probably still has some security guards. (Of course, even a collection of tents can stand up to some degree of attack if it has enough guards, but it won’t hold up to a heavy siege.)
– A castle is a hybrid of the above two, being a place that serves a non-military purpose (traditionally housing a noble and his government) but is also well-fortified against attack, largely because nobles tend to be rather unpopular people who keep getting attacked.
Complicating the issue is that some palaces were built to superficially resemble castles for stylistic reasons, despite not actually being built with defensibility in mind, which results in these buildings often incorrectly being called “castles” when they don’t formally qualify. Worse still is when fantasy authors not well-versed in military history depict buildings that look like non-fortified palaces but are nonetheless described as being effective fortifications in-story.
The structure appearing in this comic, though, is clearly well-defended enough to qualify as a castle. As you say, even with a dried-up moat, it still has a moat, as well as thick walls with crenellations for defenders to fight from and other features that mark it as closer to a castle than a palace. It’s unambiguously too fortified to be a mansion and too princessified to be a fort.
As for demotions / lesser versions:
– A mansion is essentially just a smaller version of a palace, being similarly fancy but non-fortified, though it might just be inhabited by a rich commoner like a merchant, rather than an actual noble.
– A keep, according to Wikipedia, generally refers to an inner fortification that many castles have as a “second line of defense”, rather than a free-standing structure. However, I’ve also seen “Buzzword Keep” getting used as a name for whole castles, generally smaller and less impressive ones.
– “Fort” is just an abbreviated version of “fortress” which probably means the same thing but makes it sound less impressive.
– There probably exist a whole bunch more almost-but-not-quite-synonyms for these things (“bastion” is probably a rank up), and in any case the strict division-by-purpose I outline between the three major categories isn’t always rigidly adhered to by the people who actually name the things. Sometimes “castle” (and by extension “keep”) does get used to refer to a particularly-impressive fortification that’s cooler than a fortress but still exclusively military… but that isn’t really relevant, because this castle is clearly not one of those.
Guys, get a room, please!
From a castle to a single room? It hasn’t been demoated that much!
Looking at the walls (of text), it would be a large room. Maybe not quite the size of a demoated castle; well, not yet…
Clarification regarding forts: The use of the word is slightly ambiguous – there are/were, for example, plenty American “forts” which were more of a fortified garrison protecting a road, railroad, waterway or settled area using mobile infantry or cavalry (this was, of course, due to small populations and huge distances) or as a refuge fort.
More generally, though, a fort is a fortified structure that is capable of fighting self-contained. This may be an isolated structure protecting or threatening a specific (geographic) feature (e.g. a mountain pass, river mouth, harbor or colonial settlement) with artillery, walls to hide behind and perhaps a small mobile and/or defensive force – basically a small fortress. Or it may be part of a larger fortification especially once artillery became more useful in the 18th and 19th centuries. A fortress may have had a ring of forts to extend its initial engagement range, a city fortification may have primarily been a ring of forts (e.g. late fortress of Liège) with the city itself just housing personnel and logistics functions or a border fortification may have consisted of a line of forts, forts to fill the gaps between larger fortresses and forts/fortresses to anchor and supply a line of smaller fortifications (bunkers, pillboxes).
And then the word is used for (I think) pretty much any fortification not meant to be staffed/inhabited permanently.
She’s failing her self-control test!
She’s a derro, she doesn’t even HAVE a self-control.
It is, of course, absolutely true that she really ought to shut up.
The other derro is in the zone.
I mean it’s not hard to fix, they have access to a decanter of endless water
Just one? I’d guess Presti uses a dozen before breakfast (then again, it probably still is before breakfast for her).
Decanter of endless coffee?
Roxy’s mastered the scowl? Huh? Did you mix up some names?
It’s the reason for the guards’ trepidation in the last panel.
Roxy (who is still disguised as the Princess at this point) has learned to terrify underlings just like the real thing.
Ooh, that makes sense. Thanks.
Seems a lot easier to float an assault raft across a moat, preferably with a roof on top, or freeze it with magic then walk/run across than to clamber down a deep, steep and slippery walled ditch and the ntry to struggle up the other side in heavy armour while being continually peppered with arrows, rocks and assorted magic, not to mention a cranky gelatinous cube making the rounds filling that ditch from side to side…but that’s what minions are for.
I suspect that whatever the reason for draining the moat is is more complicated than “we want to get across”.
Or maybe there’s a vampire that can’t cross… wait, I don’t think moats count as running water? And the only vampire we know of doesn’t have that weakness anymore anyway, though maybe she swapped it for a different weakness…
They came in from below, so maybe they’ve got more planned from that direction and don’t want a whole bunch of water messing up their tunnels.
Indeed, one function of a moat was to make the defended structure resistant to mining (that is, digging a mine and blowing stuff up from below/collapsing foundations).
In OOTS, Xykon once made the goblin army charge at heavily fortified wall again and again and again and again and again – until enough bodies piled up to jump over. I wonder if we’ll see something like this here too.
Could just send in GC to clear the “ramp”, I guess. Also, no clear reason to drain the moat. I’m guessing it’s something a bit more elaborate.
Depending on what kind of pressure (and amount of water) a decanter can generate, that setup could actually create/fuel a pretty decent engine.
Canonical Decanter of Endless Water produces up to 30 gallons per round ~= 5 gallons/18 liters per second, with enough pressure to hit a guy 30 feet away for 1d4. I’d say it’s much more than just decent.
So probably around the power of a police water cannon (with a bit reduced amount of water) – at least if we commoners have about as few hit points as I seem to remember. A rough calculation gets me a potential around 30 to 40 kW (about 40 to 55 hp). That’s just the lower limit. The upper limit depends on what kind of pressure the Decanter is able to generate if you seal its mouth (or how firmly you can connect it to the rest of the engine, whichever is lower). Quite potent indeed, for a small bike.
When the Princess returns, is there going to BE an anti-magic cell for Tarta?
The question I want to ask is how the recanter managed to suck up the moat; wouldn’t it need to be a completely closed system for the bike to work? We would have at least seen leakage in the system when she was driving around.
What if the seal is engaged mechanically when the throttle is on and when it’s off there is a gap between the decanter and the recanter?
Of course, that would present an environmental hazard – if the bike accidentally falls into a body of water, it could drain it pretty fast…
No need to seal it at all, though, it’s just the high pressure side that needs to be sealed. As long as bodies of water aren’t encountered, the worst that could happen is a bit of water leaking or a bit of rain being recanted.
Not sure how much a subterranean (I think?) culture would have to worry about bodies of water anyway. Not sure how much they need motorcycles either, though.
Wouldn’t the lack of a seal cause a pressure issue, making the system extremely inefficient, if it worked at all? Even if this was after whatever mechanism was making the bike drive, pressure leaks really hurt systems.
Think of it as a tailpipe – it’s open so you can expel the exhaust. You could then apply a magical bottomless pit (if pits worked for fumes, but hey, magic – or, you know, a vacuum) to get rid of the exhaust altogether but it doesn’t matter much (except for the percentage of exhaust gotten rid of/to the operation of the engine) whether it is sealed or not, the engine would still work.
The pressure used to operate the engine is (almost) entirely provided by the decanter (at least around 15 atmospheres, apparently) while the recanter could at best provide another atmosphere of pressure differential.
Underground rivers are a thing.
Subterranean cultures are extremely likely to be build in places that have them, because life as we know it requires water. Admittedly, life as we know it requires sunlight too, but two wrongs don’t make a right.
Little late, but it just occurred to me. If the bike is what’s absorbing the water, how is the bike sitting in the single remaining puddle of water?
Technically, the bike isn’t absorbing the water, the recanter of endless water strapped to the back is. The recanter is currently laying parallel on the ground, and the puddle is probably so shallow that the opening of the recanter is now above it.
Granted, this assumes that the recanter only absorbs water through its opening, as opposed to absorbing it all like a sponge or something. But, since that’s how the decanter works, and they seem to be related artifacts, that’s what I’ve always assumed.