Dwarven Grand Catapults

Seeing that Joan of Arc movie with Mila Jovovich gave me this idea, they
used something similar minus the catapult itself to defend some city or
other.


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Dwarven Grand Catapults



            Masters of enginuity, the Gortha dwarves of Agraspace have
devised larger versions of the standard heavy catapult, for use on their
humungous citadels.  Based upon the principle of gravity in addition to
applied force, these weapons fire from a special chamber right at the top of
the citadel.  The catapults swing straight into specially carved chutes,
flinging the ball down through the citadel until they exit the other side of
the chutes almost at the gravity plane of the citadel, and shoot out at
enemy ships.  There are flanges at the exit points to allow some basic
aiming, and a speech tube to the firing room (known as the ball chamber).
It takes four dwarves to operate the flanges, and six to operate the large
mechanisms for each weapon in the ball chamber.

            Developed primarily to mirror the Great Bombard of the giff,
these weapons do slightly less damage, but do not have the drawback of
requiring smokepowder.  Each has a range of 4 hexes (per round, these
missiles should be tracked), and fires a stone some 3 feet in diameter.
Attempts to use metallic shot have been attempted but so far failed
dismally, requiring a citadel so tall that it simply looks ridiculous.  They
have a thac0 of 15, a rate of fire of four rounds, and require a total of 10
crew.  Critical hits are scored on a 17 or up, and the stones are flung at a
speed sufficient enough to do 2d10 hull points, but the opposing ship is
allowed a save vs crushing blow to take only half damage.  Against personal
opponents, these weapons do a whopping 6d6 damage, and cause the person hit
to make a save vs death or be knocked unconscious for 3d12 rounds, unless
tended to earlier (1 rounds worth of attention).

Each costs some 10,000gp, can only be fitted into a dwarven citadel or other
large ship/asteroid of 200+ tons, and must be included in the design,
otherwise a whole refit must ensue, and there is a 25% chance the particular
design is incompatible.  These weapons take up 15 tons of space.  They
consits mostly of the chutes and flanges, but also the large catapult like
mechanism, heavily powered with metal springs and gears.


Tilaurin
tilaurin@?????????????????.com
http://www.planetbaldursgate.com/atreus/index.html
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