Heir of Aurelian

It was the summer of sophomore year, and Frank was in the middle of playing a video game on his computer, alone in his parent’s house. His sister was off partying as per usual. As for his mother and father, they were on some beach in Thailand for their second honeymoon. Thus, Frank, who had come home from college for the summer, had the house entirely to himself.

Naturally, this meant he ordered a meat-lover’s pizza, along with a few energy drinks, and was in the middle of a gaming marathon. Though not a popular streamer, Frank, or as he was known in cyberspace, EducatedFool was well known for going on twenty-four-hour gaming sprees whenever he could manage.

Today was special, why you might ask? Because he was playing a real time strategy that had just been released. The appeal of this game was that it had the political features of the most popular medieval grand strategy series, with the intense simulated battles of the most popular real time strategy series.

The game had multiple start dates to choose from. However, he and the friends he had chosen to play through the marathon with had specifically selected the Second Crusade and because of that, he chose the Kingdom of Jerusalem as his faction. Meanwhile, one of his friends had opted to play as the opposing Abbasid Caliphate, all while mocking him for his choice of faction.

“Bro, there’s a reason Jerusalem lost this war in history. You simply do not have the ability to draft as many troops as the Abbasid Caliphate. You really must be an educated fool, speaking of which, where the hell did you even come up with such a username, and why on earth would you call yourself that?”

Frank ate from his slice of pizza with one hand, while ordering his trebuchets to pound the gates of Damascus with the other. After taking a large bite of the delicious food, he responded with a stoic expression on his face, as if his friend’s insults did not harm his mental state in the slightest.

“It’s the name of my favorite song, sue me… You should be less concerned about where I got my username, and instead about your gates, which are about to collapse.”

The trebuchets continued to throw boulders at the enemy’s gate until it splintered apart. Immediately afterward, Frank overheard his friend curse his name. However, that didn’t stop Frank’s onslaught, as he quickly commanded his dismounted knights to charge through the center of the broken gate.

It did not take long for the Abbasid infantry crumbled beneath the might of the Knight of Jerusalem. In the end, the city was captured by the crusaders, and several options appeared for Frank to select from. He could either occupy the city, raze the city, raid the city, or purge the city. Naturally, because he was playing as the crusaders, Frank merely smirked before purging the Muslim population and shouting the words “Deus Vult” into his mic.

The feed of the streaming chat instantly broke out into a fight between guys LARPing as Crusaders, and overly sensitive man children who took offense by his virtual actions. Frank could only laugh at the chat as one person had spent thirty dollars on a super chat just to curse him out and call him an Islamophobe, to which he responded with a particularly venomous remark.

“Bro, it’s just a fucking game. Are you really so pathetic and childish that a virtual representation of a massacre offends you? Man, you are so lucky to live in a world where you can be so soft and spineless without needing to fear violence.

Because you wouldn’t last fifteen seconds in the medieval period! Dude, you need to grow up, and become a man, because this third grader mentality of yours, and people like you, is not going to get you far in life!”

After his little tirade, the chat devolved into a horde of spam, repeating the words deus vult until eventually another super chat came in, asking him for one of his signature historical lessons. Frank read the exact words to the question before laughing. Afterward, he began to do as was requested of him.

“Alright, since you asked so kindly, fine I can give you a little historical lesson, gather around kids, and listen to professor educated fool talk about the trebuchet, and how it came to be!”

The moment he said this, his friend, who was playing as the Abbasids, cursed him and walked out the door of his room. He was not willing to listen to another one of Frank’s historical rants. As for Frank, he continued his story, educating his little cult of fools on historical truth.

“So the trebuchet actually originated in china, where it was carried westward by a group of nomadic barbarians by the name of the Avars. Eventually, in about the sixth century AD, the Avars made use of the trebuchet against the Byzantines who copied the design. After that, it spread across Europe and became the preferred siege weapon until the invention of the cannon. Or I should say until Cannons became mobile enough to be effective on the battlefield.

Basically, a trebuchet operates by making use of the energy from a falling and hinged counterweight to send a projectile downrange by using mechanical advantage to achieve a high launch speed. If you want peak launch speed and accuracy, then the counterweight would need to be much heavier than the projectile, since this means that it will fall much quicker.

As you can see from my screen, this is what a proper trebuchet should look like, and it’s actually quite easy to create one. I experimented with making a small trebuchet in my backyard once. It was fully functional. Of course, my mother made me take it down after I launched a bowling ball into my neighbor’s chimney. Fuck, I ended up spending that whole summer fixing that fucking mess.”

The entire chat broke out into laughter as they made fun of Frank for destroying his neighbor’s chimney. In the end, he responded in a way that shut them all up.

“Hey laugh all you want, but I ended up losing my virginity that summer because the woman whose chimney I busted was a milf who had a fetish for teenage boys. So fuck you guys!”

The chat burst out into laughter once more, as Frank’s friend came back into the room and sat down at his computer. He had his own pizza. As he chastised Frank for going off on another historical lesson.

“Are you done with your history lesson yet? Cuz I’ve got like an hour before I have to bail, and you have to play with the rest of these fuckers!”

Frank smiled and nodded his head before goading his friend into attacking one of his more fortified cities. After this, Marcellus awoke from his dream and gazed out the window. The sun had risen, and he had once more fallen asleep in his office.

Perhaps this so-called trebuchet would prove useful for his armies. He quickly got to work designing the device he had seen in his dream. In the end, he had a working prototype which he quickly sent to his manufactorum to test out.

One thing was certain, Marcellus was lucky he had this dream now, because he was on the brink of total war with the Eastern Roman Empire, and every technological advantage he had would be of monumental help.