Catapult

Catapult leans on its wheeled cradle like a patient beast of burden, its timber grained with age and weather. The face of the throwing arm bears a kiss of iron, dulled by salt and rain, with rivets pockmarked from decades of service. The stock is wrapped in faded leather that has hardened to a supple patina, every crease echoing a dozen campaigns. A chalk-white glyph traces along the central beam, a mark whispered among smiths that it was forged in a coastal foundry where storms heard the orders of captains and engineers. The wheels, stout and stubborn, turn with a creak, as if the Catapult remembers every bunker it toppled and every wall it faced in another banner of another war. Its texture bears grit—sap-stained wood, oil-darkened joints, hemp threads squeal when cocked. It looks at home behind a siege camp’s tent, between crates of powder and the hiss of cords, yet carries a dignity, an artifact of calculated craft. In hands, the Catapult becomes a storyteller: a tool translating geography into action, shattering lines of defense or bending them into another map. A skilled engineer slides a leather strap over a shoulder and, with a practiced twist, sets the loading sling. Winch and wheel move in measured rhythm, as if the engine breathes through the charge. The projectile range is mercy and threat bound together: a boulder cracking a rampart, a fire-bomb gate-wind from a corridor, shrapnel scattering archers. Its influence ripples through a fight like a rumor—give frontline longer breath, buy a flank a moment longer, turn an ambush into a doorway. When traders pass, the Catapult’s presence signals the world still builds with heavy, necessary things. You hear it in the market chatter, in the way a buyer’s eye slides toward the iron rim and patchwork leather, and in the guard’s nod that this is equipment with pedigree, not just metal and rope. Whispers tell of a reclaimed Catapult that toppled a guard-tower while the town slept, a memory traded around a pot of tea. Prices drift with the wind and street mood; at Saddlebag Exchange, the same model shifts with coin and a bit of haggle as if time itself were for sale. A well-used Catapult might fetch a gold or two more or less, depending on its history and the seller’s memories. So it rests, stubborn and honest, bolstering walls and stories. It belongs to the world as surely as the river to the land—a instrument of time, a promise of tomorrow’s siege, a reminder that a siege engine is a chapter in a larger, patient book of war and settlement. Some nights, a blacksmith’s apprentice would trace the glyph with a coal-smeared fingertip, muttering the history aloud as if reciting a prayer. Others treat the Catapult as a partner in quiet defense, trusting its patient cadence to hold a line until dawn. In stories told by lantern light, it is less a weapon than a trusted elder, reminding everyone that endurance outlasts momentary fury.