章節 46: Palisades etc.
"So, what exactly did Caesar describe when he talked about the fortifications of his camp?"
"Are you interested in Caesar's writings? I have entire essays and translations you can read! Let me go get them."
Quinn seems weirdly excited by my question. She also seems to have come to the conclusion that I am interested in Caesar. As much as I hate to ruin that bright smile of hers I can't let any misunderstandings poison our father-daughter relationship.
"Quinn, I am not that interested in Caesar in particular. I told you about the camp I'm building for my work at VR-dungeons, right? I thought that maybe I could use some fortifications the Romans used."
Quinn stops and turns around.
"But why the Romans?"
"Umm, well I thought since they are an ancient culture and all they would have more basic fortifications..."
"You mean to say that since they were what we call underdeveloped, their fortifications are crude and easy to rebuild, right?"
"I didn't say that..."
"But you meant it. Sigh, whatever. I'll get one of my translations for the part where he describes the fortifications. We can go through them together."
The way this conversation is going one could think that I am the son and she's the mother. Embarrassing to say the least. But I have to soldier on, for those texts. If I can bring the goblin camp's fortifications up enough they should be able to hold against adventurers of higher levels.
Quinn returns with a pile of paper that contains at least a hundred pages. Didn't she say that she would only bring the text concerning the fortifications? She must have seen the doubts in my eyes because she addresses them directly.
"All of this is about the fortifications. Here's the original in Latin, here's my translation, here's the official translation, here's a short essay where I compared the fortifications made by the Romans with those made by the military today, and here's a more extensive essay on the effectiveness of the fortifications seen as both singular entities and a whole."
"Do you still need to breathe?"
"Sadly, yes. I wish I didn't, it would make talking so much easier."
"Please tell me you don't want to go through all this with me. I'm only human."
A lie since I'm a goblin now but my point stands.
"Most of it contains repetitions since I had to state certain things during every essay but we will only go over what you need. I assume you just want a basic understanding of all the inventions Romans used to fortify their camps, right?"
"How about we go with just a selection. It's already late and I have work tomorrow."
"Fine, fine. My personal favorites are the cippi and cervi. The former is comparable to a pitfall but instead of making just one hole, it's a shallow moat that spans around the camp. In the moat, there are the usual spikes but additionally, there are trees with their branches still attached, lain between the spikes. The branches are sometimes sharpened but mostly they are there to make moving through harder. All you need to make that one is trees and something to cut them.
"The second one is also made using a tree with the branches still attached. It's another moat but the side towards the encampment is built up into a soil wall of maybe one meter. Into that wall, the trees are inserted making their branches stick out. Then, if someone wants to climb up and out of the moat they will get tangled in the branches. These two are easy to make but very effective when it comes to stopping an enemy charge. If you had a squad of soldiers with slingshots you could let hell rain down on them while they struggle to advance."
"The Romans had slingshots? They shouldn't have had rubber back then."
"Dad, you are so clueless. As the name implies the slingshot is a sling that shoots something, commonly rocks. That sling doesn't need to be made from rubber, a leather sling works just fine."
"I didn't know that. Maybe I should try that too? Thank you for providing me with those two suggestions. I'll try to implement them tomorrow."
"Always here to help! Come talk to me again if you need anything else that concerns roman culture. But please ask a little earlier next time so I don't have to shorten everything down."
Quinn grabs her paper pile and retires to her room. Unbeknownst to me, it has become quite late and I head to bed.
The next morning I head to work and directly enter the dungeon to start building my planned fortifications. But first, I'll have to finish the palisade I started yesterday.
I spawn into the forest and find a slightly different scene than what I expected. I had half feared to see that more adventurers had attacked and the goblins were once again decimated but instead I'm greeted by a wall of logs.
The palisade is done and spans around the shelter I had created. Some of the logs seem a little slanted and they aren't close enough together to form a seamless wall but still. This wasn't here when I left yesterday!
<The goblins got bored and tried to imitate how you were building the wall. They failed quite a lot but somehow managed.>
The goblins did this themselves? Do they normally do that?
<No, they most certainly don't. The only viable hypothesis we have for all this is your special evolution. Something about you seems to make the goblins more receptive to imitating your actions. For now, we are gathering data so just continue as you would without this happening. Try to act natural.>
Really funny.
I order a shovel and start to dig two shallow moats around the camp trying to evade the pitfalls. With the size of this and the number of trees I'll have to cut to fortify it I hope I won't destroy the forest.
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