Heroic Dreams - All Things Medieval

I am currently working on a new article about unusual medieval castles of the world and going through some of my stuff I found this picture in a folder. I have no supporting information to go with it and I can’t remember where I got it from. Anyhoo, I am wondering if this is a real castle or just something photoshopped.

If you recognize the castle in the picture drop me a comment or an email! I would appreciate it. This way I can figure out whether to include it in my article on unusual medieval castles. 

It really is quite a dramatic little castle and I just can’t figure out whether it is real or not.

If you are a medieval castle buff I do have a site devoted to them here: Medieval Castles - and when I finish the article I will, depending on length, either post it to this blog or the medieval castle site.

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I have a section of my website on how to make a trebuchet. It’s a pretty popular tutorial and it gets a lot of traffic. It is a complete tutorial with lots of pictures that shows how to make a small table top trebuchet called “The Little Dragon”.  If you ever wanted to make a small siege engine I have everything you could possible need including ideas, designs, plans, videos and more, and its all totally free.

Anyhoo - Yesterday, just by serendipity, I got emails from two different people who followed my design and made their own trebuchets,  with some nice improvements. They sent me pictures, information, and videos and I have posted all of this to the website.

Here is a quick overview of their projects:

Gabe’s Trebuchet - Gabe created what I call the Ferrari of Table top Trebuchets. he went all out and painted his with flames along the side and well you can see from the picture that its pretty nice. He used a bicycle wheel hub as the pivot and I have more about this on my site. He also made some mods that give the swing arm and string more room.

Adil’s Trebuchet - Adil created two videos about his treb and I have them on the site. His treb is unique in that he took my design for a ten inch machine and he cut it in half to a five inch machine. He also did away with the string and pouch which is a nice solution because the string and pouch can be a trouble spot. This makes it sort of like an onager. It is kind of a hybrid and I call it the Trebupult.

If you every wanted to make your own mini siege engine or if you just want to take a look at the projects I have everything right here: How to Make a Trebuchet

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This is an article I have just completed. It gives an overview of how to put medieval weapons in your writing.

If you write fantasy or are thinking about writing fantasy you probably are going to have medieval weapons in your created world. Today’s reader of fantasy is very savvy when it comes to weapons and armor and you want your writing to be accurate and to make sense when it comes to weapons. They are often a big part of the story. In this article I explain some important things about medieval weapons, how to get them right, and I look at some of the more popular types of weapons.

This article is quite large so I am not going to put the whole thing on this blog. An overview of some of the topics I cover are:

• how to get the weapon to sync flawlessly with the technology of the world you are building,
• how medieval weapons are subject to an arms race and the advances of technology
• A philosophy of using weapons and why you should avoid having uber weapons (every uber weapon should at least come at some cost to the user
• A Brief overview of how medieval weapons developed in our world because of advances in metal working skills and the availability of ores
• A list of some of the more common medieval weapons like the flail, mace, sword, polearms etc.

You can read the full article on my medieval website here

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