Catapult Blueprint

The Catapult Blueprint is a rolled parchment, its surface a pale, sun-warmed skin of vellum speckled with oil stains and faint fingerprints, edges frayed to a delicate lace of paper that trembles when you unfurl it. The ink blooms into a precise diagram: a wheeled frame, a long throwing arm, counterweights tucked beneath a lattice of pulleys, and careful notes etched in a soldier’s handwriting that speak of load, range, and the cadence of a shell’s arc. A thin binder’s lacquer seals the parchment with a stubborn gloss, and a small guild sigil in the corner—the faded mark of engineers who trained under a banner that faded long before the last siege—gives the piece a weight beyond its age. When you tilt it toward the light, you can almost hear the click of gears and the low hum of springs; the parchment seems to vibrate with the memory of a thousand reloads, the smokes of powder, and the groan of wood under tension. It feels not merely like a manual but like a relic that traveled through crowded wartime streets, passed between gloved fingers, absorbing the dust of war rooms and field tents alike. In the hands of a guild, the blueprint becomes more than paper and ink. It unlocks the recipe to craft a Catapult at a fortified outpost, a machine that stands as a stubborn hinge between assault and retreat. Once set up, the siege engine channels patience into power: the arm rises with a measured patience, the counterweights thud into place, and a boulder—or a bundled payload—flies on a trajectory that turns walls and gates into mere targets. Its usefulness grows out of tension—how to space it so it does not reveal its position too soon, how to regulate ammo to keep a wall from buckling under a single, perfect shot, how to synchronize it with nearby towers and archers as if the whole fort were a single, breathing creature. It is not a spark, but a long fuse: slow to prepare, devastating in its moment, and then quiet again as the crew reloads and waits for the next command from the commander at the muster. Prices drift through the stalls of Tyria’s markets as breath does in a crowded room, and the Saddlebag Exchange becomes the drumbeat of its worth. A near-pristine copy will fetch a premium among veteran siege crews, while a more weathered sheet—still legible, still dangerous in the right hands—finds a measured life among younger guilds learning the rhythm of long sieges. Traders trade caution for certainty, buyers weigh necessity against nostalgia, and the blueprints pass from hand to hand like talismans that might tilt a campaign’s tide. The Catapult Blueprint, in its quiet, inked way, ties the memory of past engineers to the present’s stubborn, hopeful push toward a future where stone and timber can still learn to sing, if only for a moment, under the careful hands of those who know how to read its lines.