Wall Description
The wall of the Free City is a uniform 30 feet high along its entire length, except where the gates and gate houses interrupt it. It is 18 feet wide at its base, and made of solid granite fitted together in a tight pattern. The platform along the top is ten feet wide, with a parapet running along both the inside and outside edges.
Access to the wall top can be gained from each gate house. Additionally, hidden compartments are located inside the base of the wall at 300-foot intervals. Each of these contains a dozen ladders, and their locations are known to all officers and sergeants of the City Watch.
During an emergency, the ladders would be pulled out and used along the entire inside length of the wall. The thousands of fighters of the militia would then use them to climb to the parapets, then pushing the ladders to the ground behind them.
The wall top is regularly patrolled, both where it borders the city and where it runs between two city districts. During daytime, the typical patrol is one watch man placed every 300 feet along the top of the wall. At night, the guard complement is quadrupled, with two sentries standing together every 150 feet along the wall. Also at night, torches are maintained on the wall top by the Lamplight ers' Guild. These torches are placed at 150-foot intervals, but staggered from the guards so that each sentry station is 75 feet from a torch in each direction.
The City Walls
Hundreds of years have passed since the defenders of the City of Greyhawk last faced a enemy army. Though the city triumphed then, it is far better prepared to repel an imvasion should the same thing happen these days. The Old City’s walls have been reinforced to the standards of the New City’s walls, built just after Zagig Yragerne’s reign. The city walls are now 30 feet high along their entire length except at the gates, gate houses, and towers. Huge granite blocks were fitted tightly together by dwarf and human stonemasons, the walls measuring 18 feet wide at the base and 10 feet wide at the top. The top of the walls has a walkway for sentries, with an inside and outside parapet. Access to the top is permitted at each gate house, but secret compartments are placed along the inside wall every 300 feet, in which a dozen ladders are stored per compartment. The total length of the outside walls, excluding those of the Grand Citadel, is about 12,400 feet; the Grand Citadel is surrounded by about 2,800 feet of wall.
Two additional walls divide the city into three parts. The Nobles’ Wall to the north sets apart the High and Garden Quarters from the rest of the city, and the Black Wall (soot-stained by countless old fires from stoves, ceremonies, and mass conflagrations) separates the Old City (Thieves’ and Slum Quarters) to the south from the New City. The Nobles’ Wall is also called the Upper or New Wall, and the Black Wall the Lower or Old Wall. The Nobles’ Wall is almost 2,500 feet long, and the Black Wall just over 1,800 feet.
In the daytime, one watchman of the Greyhawk Militia is placed every 300 feet along the top of the surrounding wall. At night, two sentries stand every 150 feet along the top, and torches are kept lit there by the Lamplighters’ Guild, alternating every 150 feet with the sentries (sentries thus have torches 75 feet to the left and right of them). In practical terms, about 65 sentries are on the wall during the daytime, give or take a dozen depending on circumstances. At night, this number rises to over 250. The exact numbers of sentries on the wall at any time is kept secret.
By law, no one can build a structure that uses a city wall as one of the structure’s walls. (This keeps anyone from tunneling through or otherwise harming a wall.) A minimum distance of 5 feet is required between the city walls and interior buildings.
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