City - City of Hawk's - Enlarging the City of Greyhawk

City - City of Hawk's - Enlarging the City of Greyhawk

Years ago I began working on a smaller version of Gygax's Greyhawk City from his City of Hawks novel. Today I see the city as much, much larger than depicted in either the City of Greyhawk Boxed set, or the map from Living Greyhawk Journal #2 and the population much, much larger than that given in the various Greyhawk setting source material from the Folio through the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer.

In the 'City of Hawks' novel the scale of Greyhawk is monstrous. If the map is 3 miles to the inch then the city is roughly 6 miles across and 9 miles top to bottom. 54 square miles within the walls and over 30 miles of walls, well over if the inner Old City wall, the Foreign Quarter wall, and the Bastion fortifications are included. And, for the most part, these are not a single set of walls, but a double set, so 60 miles of walls along the outer edges.

from the City of Hawks novel.

"A double wall encircled the city. All of Greyhawk - Old City, the larger area called New Town and the Citadel too were within it. The outer curtain was some twenty-five feet high. This wall splayed out at the base where it met a ditch, or moat, or some other watercourse, and was topped with serried merlons and crenels to protect defenders in time of war.

Between the outer and inner walls was a relatively level sward a hundred or more feet broad. The outside edge of this strip of grass was level with the battlements that topped the outer wall. The crowning stone of the inner wall was much higher. The city had been built on a large hill - not especially high, but large in area. Those on the sward between the walls could look upward forty feet to where machicolated battlements stood topping the massively thick curtains of the inner wall. At intervals there were bastions on the outer wall, and matching them on the inside were tall towers.

Wherever the walls were pierced by gates, the sward was broken. Every way that led into the city resembled a road at the bottom of a canyon. Travelers from the outside would pass through a gatehouse first, then a long passage, open above, but flanked by walls on either hand; then a tunnel that bored through another, bigger tower."

Even if guard towers were only 2 per mile that would be 120 guard towers. There are also 11 exterior gates running through this double set of walls, each with an outerwall gatehouse, and an innerwall gate tower. I would say the minimum number of guards per gatehouse would be 30 and at least 30 more for the tower (which would leave only 10 men on duty at either end of the gateway at a given time). That would be 660 guards for the exterior gates.

Between the double walls there is a 100ft sward and these are broken by fortifications that run along the road between the inner and outer gates. From 1 to 2 companys of cavalry patrol these areas (again 30 to 60 men). If we take the minimum of 1 company, which is around 30 men, with only 10 on duty at any given time, then we add an additional 330 guards.

So, at bare minimum there are nearly 1,000 guards needed for the walls of the city, not counting the Bastion fortification, the Citadel, The inner wall or gates between the Old City and the New or the gate and wall to the Foreign Quarter. This is not a number dependent on the square miles of the city area or the perimeter of the outer wall.

Now, add 5 guards simply patrolling every mile of wall, triple that to 15 for on and off duty, add some type of officer or non-com and double that for the double wall and it is another 40 guards per perimeter mile, or 1,200 additional guardsmen for the size of the city depicted in City of Hawks.

Add in the Citadel, Inner gates and walls, and the Bastion fortification and the minimum force of guardsman is passing several thousand.

To man the walls and gates would be a very expensive proposition for the city so my thoughts turned toward the towers and gates having a guard made from the people of the city; guilds and religious orders. Each guild would have its own militia training and some its members would be responsible for maintaining and manning specific towers and sections of wall. The same could be done with religious orders and my thought was to have each city gate manned by a militia with some clerical assistance of specific deities. 

As I mentioned my idea about nine years ago was to decrease the size of the City of Greyhawk, but I no longer envision a street by street, building by building map of the city. I see Greyhawk now as a monstrous city, as large as a DM wants it to be. I'm thinking of Imperial Rome with a sprawling population and people from across the Empire and beyond inhabiting its homes, shops and streets. I want specifics on small details, people, shops, towers, streets all detailed but beyond that detailed street something new and undiscovered, adventures waiting to happen, new people to meet, new worlds to explore, all within the walls of Greyhawk.