Wildling Raids

[Legate]

You should remember though that long range weapons are in yards so 600 feet is only going to be 200 yards. So at most archers are going to be taking a -2D on any attacks. Which means a really good archer will be able to reach the top and hit something while most of the rabble probably will not.

This is where you start having problems with a non-complicated system. You lose a lot of range firing a bow in an almost vertical trajectory (hence the benefit of having the high ground in a battle). IMO, I would have to say that a Wildling archer should have double the normal penalty for that kind of shot (-4D) to hit a target on The Wall.

[Paedrig]

I do not speak about the game stats, it is more a matter of plausbility. As far as i know even the famous english longbow (and the also famous compound bows) could not hit a target which is 600 yards ABOVE. Such a distance whould be allready challenging (but not impossible) - but verticale? No, i do not get this...

[superbat_99]

The wall is up to 700 feet not in yards and longbows are able to reach that height. The only question would be how much power is there behind the arrow.

[Flagg]

Another possibility for hitting someone on the top of the wall is to climb to the top of a tall tree. Sentinels can reach over 100 feet tall, IIRC, closing the gap considerably, especially in places where the Watch can no longer keep the forest cut back.

I'd also say that "700 feet" is a rough estimate. I doubt it's a uniform height for its entire 300 miles. I could see it easily being significantly less than 700 feet in certain spots.

[ceranko]

In reality you probably couldnt even see someone at the top of the wall from the bottom, think of seeing someone on top of a skyscraper from the sidewalk, I mean really try to hit them with a bowshot. Its laughable. Martin was influenced by Hadrians wall and thought it was cool but 700ft high? I hope the nights watch has good spyglasses to see that far down at night or even during the day.

[Kajani]

During day this should be not impossible - if the wildlings did not use some kind of sophisticated camouflage... And yes, 700 feet are a bit two much, 300 would be more than enough. On the other hand, it is magic, build against a foe which once try to slaughter all living beings in the whole continent. Sounds a little bit more like the kind of "buildings" which were erected by the dark lords in Middle-Earth - Barad-Dur, and even more like Angband, a fortress and a group of mountain together. We should not forget that the wall was erected in times when the children were still present, and hasn't they crush a whole land-bridge, creating the Stepstones in their try to stop human invasion? In that times anything seems possible and I guess it was in large parts their magic (or perhaps better to say the magic of humans which had similar powers) who made it possible to create the Wall. If you think in a way to crush hundreds of square-miles of land to stop one invasion, than why not erect a artificial line of mountains to stop another...

By the way, I wonder if Martin was only inspired by the great roman wall or also by the Great Wall (the Great Walls – there are different since more than 200 BC) in China…

[Paedrig]

superbat_99

Sorry, i had written yards but i still mean feet. And while i am certain that a longbow arrow could go 600 feet WIDE i am not convinced that it can reach a target 600 feet HIGH. Shooting at a higher target is allways more difficult and the reach of the bow significantly minimized - and with a realy small target 600 feet above...
No, that goes for me not as plausible.

But this is of course only my opinion...

[Legate]

superbat_99

Sorry, i had written yards but i still mean feet. And while i am certain that a longbow arrow could go 600 feet WIDE i am not convinced that it can reach a target 600 feet HIGH. Shooting at a higher target is allways more difficult and the reach of the bow significantly minimized - and with a realy small target 600 feet above...
No, that goes for me not as plausible.

But this is of course only my opinion...

Not just your opinion.

[Iron Legs]

In Clash of Kings, Crowfood Umber complains about the Wildlings' crossing the sea with boats and attacking Umber's Lands. Eastwatch's crows were too few to stop them.
Also, who says the Watch know all the tunnels under the Wall? Perhaps there are some secret ways. Of course is dangerous. And Gendel's sons are always hungry.

[Flagg]

And Gendel's sons are always hungry.

If you take those stories to be anything more than utter nonsense, what do you expect these beings to actually be?

[Kajani]

Given the fact that some of the norther tribes are said to be cannibals, I think Gendels children could be some kind of low-tech tribes in the dark (a tribe of Gollums, so to speak - or of under-equipped maggots and snagas, as the Uruk and Uruk-hai would say about the norther Orc-bands... but surely less organized and cultured than the Orcs). I for my person did not really believe that they exist, because if they would they sure would have raided the North once and than, coming out of their caves, I mean over the centuries they must fiend the one or other way out on both sides. But that is a matter of opinion...

[Flagg]

Perhaps there are some naturally occurring cave-dwelling animals that are apocryphally associated with the legend of Gorne and Gendel. Lots of real world cultures have whimsical folktales about the origins of odd looking creatures.

[Paedrig]

Of course on a continent where magic exist (or had/will exist) nearly everything is possible - even that the lost remnants of Gendels raiding party did become some sort of underground canibals.
If someone really like such things he can allways let inspire him by the numerous (mostly bad) films of men eating creatures/mutants etc. hiding below the surface.

Allthough i would think the idea of an underground tribe of (more or less) intelligent people (or people which were...changed by some magic effect f. e.) gets more, if you do not reduce them to simply (and most time realy stupid) canibals and abducters like thus creatures are in many films...

Concerning the ideas of animals it is still (if you play the logic card) the question, how such big animals (if the stories are an indication for their real) appearence get their food...
Of course this would also occure in the case of human/semi-human "children of Gendel"...
But in the end - who needs logic all the time...

[Flagg]

Maybe they're dwarves

[Kajani]

Paedrig: Hey, even cave-living cannibals could be "charming" - the Tolkien-Orcs, for example...

Flagg: Hm, perhaps more like the dwarves in the Edda, which have some, but not all in common with the "typical" fantasy-dwarves. Tolkien-stile dwarfes are masters of stone and steel, and while sometimes also cruel most times cultivated and "good" people (even if they slay the one elf or the other...). Even "bad" dwarfes like the druegar are much more civilized than I have heard about Gendel's children...