DJ Duk

July 10, 2004

Bailey - Literal

A Bailey is the first hurdle in the Dark Age's "motte & bailey" competition. The purpose of the game is to kill your neighbors and take their things.

Initial gear includes a sword and shield. Advanced players may also include bows, crossbows, horses, catapults and hired goons of all sorts.

One player (the Defender) builds a motte, a thing a bit like a hill but with a different name so obviously different in some way. On the motte he puts a donjon (or Grad, or Burgfreid, or any other word you prefer to use that means tower. Note: you may never use the word tower to describe this donjon even though it is obviously a tower. If you just say tower all the other historians lose a little bit of their souls.) Around the tower he puts a palisade (it means fence, its like tower, if you say fence the music dies) called a bailey. Despite the obvious parallels between our Bailey and a group of sticks sticking out of the ground in a line I have been unable to find any record of the bailey being named for Bailey. Bailey's mother categorically denied my assertion that she had named her son after a fortification and reminded me his name is actually Aaron. Spoilsport. Once the Defender has his motte and bailey (not to mention his donjon, or grad, or whatever) he puts everything he owns inside of it and waits around and does his best to kill anybody who tries to enter without knocking.

Some time later the other player (The Attacker) comes along and tries to gain entry to the bailey and take all of the Defenders property. He employs a number of strategies the first of which is simply knocking and asking for the valuables. Since this only really works if you're the Pope becoming a Pope is obviously desirable. If knocking fails the Attacker usually must resort to attacking the bailey with fire and the sword (and a great many hired goons if he's played this game before). Naturally, a successful Attacker carries away a great deal of loot.

There are many variations on the game that we simply haven't got time to go into here. A quick review; being the Pope is good, being the Pope's neighbor isn't, Bailey and bailey are different words that both mean group of sticks. Bailey has a real name and a family and may actually be a person, and hired goons make any difficult task a bit more palpable.

Posted by DjDuk at July 10, 2004 02:04 AM