Liner Notes for The Siege of Observation Bay
The liner notes for my age of sail zombie fighting story The Siege of Observation Bay.
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Here we have a simple tale, the settlement under siege by zombies. As noted a regiment of foot would easily storm the settlement; a regiment of foot would probably equally well disperse the zombies in open combat. Musket balls are big and heavy and cause horrendous wounds. One or two hits will cripple or human, twice as many will probably damage something vital on a zombie and firing in two or three ranks would knock them down in short order. Grapeshot from cannon would be even more effective. And if the zombies did manage to close, a strongly held line (or square) of bayonet armed soldiers would be able to fight off a horde of undead.
It’s unfortunate that they don’t have a regiment of foot, a mere company of the dregs of the army out east, and that when they were attacked they weren’t in the open. Practically cheating that is. Fortunately they are good enough to hold a palisade.
The enemy are smart though. A wooden wall would stop the undead so instead they only attack outside. Keep them trapped inside, burn the boats. Eventually they’ll starve and a soldier too weak from hunger to raise his musket can’t keep them out. Of course they were impatient and if anything, too clever; trying to take the fortress first with a night attack, then with a Trojan ship. (If they have Troy in this world it would have an alternate name for the city making it an Iliumian Horse. That’s one of the ways that I name things here, not just translating them or using a list of villages in Derbyshire).
The end is resolved with the arrival of the party from On The Sea of Glass, the previous story in the sequence. It’s that time; the various threads are going to come together. All four characters are going to be following the same plot and each story builds on the last to take us up to the end. It’s making the transition to being a serial. Sorry about that.
The colony that ran out of gin as an idea is one that predates any of this, before I had even thought of who would be in an age of sail story, and what they might find themselves doing. I didn’t really get much out of it, but as it’s hardly an iconic piece of the story then I should be able to recycle it.
There’s a tendency for heroes of stories to be unambiguously heroic, and to cast those who oppose them as unredeemable villains. There’s definitely heroes and villains in this story. But Will Fanshawe is not really cut out to be a man of action, and he fails to rallying fleeing troops. Crane, his subordinate, succeeds, yet do so he has to shoot a man, not a mutineer or even a coward especially (all of them are running), just the closest one who won’t stop. Similarly the riot in the flashback. The soldiers are afraid and drunk and they do evil deeds. But they’re not the villains, there’s no ringleader who put them up to it (which doesn’t stop the officers hanging some the next day). The real 18th Century was messy like that.
Failing to load firearms seems to have been on my mind when I wrote this. I’m not sure why that happened. Probably because otherwise Will Fanshawe would get off too easy. Blast a musket or pistol ball at a zombie, reload, repeat. No, he should get his sword out, what’s the point otherwise?
****
Here we have a simple tale, the settlement under siege by zombies. As noted a regiment of foot would easily storm the settlement; a regiment of foot would probably equally well disperse the zombies in open combat. Musket balls are big and heavy and cause horrendous wounds. One or two hits will cripple or human, twice as many will probably damage something vital on a zombie and firing in two or three ranks would knock them down in short order. Grapeshot from cannon would be even more effective. And if the zombies did manage to close, a strongly held line (or square) of bayonet armed soldiers would be able to fight off a horde of undead.
It’s unfortunate that they don’t have a regiment of foot, a mere company of the dregs of the army out east, and that when they were attacked they weren’t in the open. Practically cheating that is. Fortunately they are good enough to hold a palisade.
The enemy are smart though. A wooden wall would stop the undead so instead they only attack outside. Keep them trapped inside, burn the boats. Eventually they’ll starve and a soldier too weak from hunger to raise his musket can’t keep them out. Of course they were impatient and if anything, too clever; trying to take the fortress first with a night attack, then with a Trojan ship. (If they have Troy in this world it would have an alternate name for the city making it an Iliumian Horse. That’s one of the ways that I name things here, not just translating them or using a list of villages in Derbyshire).
The end is resolved with the arrival of the party from On The Sea of Glass, the previous story in the sequence. It’s that time; the various threads are going to come together. All four characters are going to be following the same plot and each story builds on the last to take us up to the end. It’s making the transition to being a serial. Sorry about that.
The colony that ran out of gin as an idea is one that predates any of this, before I had even thought of who would be in an age of sail story, and what they might find themselves doing. I didn’t really get much out of it, but as it’s hardly an iconic piece of the story then I should be able to recycle it.
There’s a tendency for heroes of stories to be unambiguously heroic, and to cast those who oppose them as unredeemable villains. There’s definitely heroes and villains in this story. But Will Fanshawe is not really cut out to be a man of action, and he fails to rallying fleeing troops. Crane, his subordinate, succeeds, yet do so he has to shoot a man, not a mutineer or even a coward especially (all of them are running), just the closest one who won’t stop. Similarly the riot in the flashback. The soldiers are afraid and drunk and they do evil deeds. But they’re not the villains, there’s no ringleader who put them up to it (which doesn’t stop the officers hanging some the next day). The real 18th Century was messy like that.
Failing to load firearms seems to have been on my mind when I wrote this. I’m not sure why that happened. Probably because otherwise Will Fanshawe would get off too easy. Blast a musket or pistol ball at a zombie, reload, repeat. No, he should get his sword out, what’s the point otherwise?
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