Hey everyone! I have a hit a minor bump in the road with my novel! My MC is about to infiltrate a castle, medieval European in style and age! He has gotten to a former occupant of the castle, someone that would know a lot of about how one could sneak their way into such a establishment - but I am failing to come up with anything that I feel is properly original! Hiding in food carts, sneaking in the bathroom way etc - just feels very cliché! Does anyone have any idea or any pointers to help start the steam on the brain factory? Thanks!
Just a quick point, cliche doesn't inherently mean bad. When it comes to things such as the fine arts (writing, painting, dancing, etc.), I firmly believe that there is no bad idea, only bad execution. But if you want originality, I've never seen this one done. Your character could just go through the front gate. Straight through. I mean launch across the moat into the closed gate and smash right through it. However, from what you're asking, it seems you mean a sneaky way through. Personally, I feel like Mulan had a nice way of doing it, but not really the kind of thing that requires an informant. So, how about there's a special event coming up, and they sneak in with all the commotion. (I think they did that in Six of Crows, kind of) If you want the truth, it's that all the ways to sneak into a properly built castle have probably already been done. I mean, castles come from a very popular genre. My overall point, embrace the cliche, because you can bet your buckets someone has already done it before, but make sure to do it better than everyone else.
Well, some of this depends on just where the castle is. In the animated film Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (a great movie by the way, watch it sometime if you've never seen it), the main characters sneak into a castle through a series of giant gears and moving machine parts, as they come in through the castle's sophisticated water-pump moat thing. If the castle itself has (or could have) a unique feature like that, then you can have more fun with a cliche 'sneak in through the moat' idea. If it's more like a down-to-earth realistic castle, then I dunno if I can think of any super original ways to sneak into it. Scaling the walls, hiding in a cart, swimming across a moat, disguised as a guard or something; any conceivable way to sneak into a castle has pretty much been done already. I suppose digging into the castle from underground might work. Or, perhaps this castle has a little-known secret path that leads to/from an outside cave. Some castle had secret escape routes that traveled underground.
Marcus Orelius summoned his generals aside the trebuchet. 'I shall inspire the troopers,' he said and he climbed the levers of the trebuchet, and rested in the bucket. 'On my command, unleash - you know the rest, soldier, do it.' ... so use that - the 'reveal' would be that he's wearing his old tunic before all that weight loss business, and he floats down like a parachute inspiration, firing with his tommy- gun sword.
I've got this hollow bellied horse, life-size, crafted from the finest acacia—lend you it for a song and 500 Athenian drachmas....
I think it being believable is more important. Alternatively, do you need to detail how they sneak in at all? How many getting hired as one of the guards?
Make amedieval wing suit out of sewn flax and get fired into the air from a trebuchet then glide over the walls in the dead of night
Does your MC actually have to 'sneak' in? Many medieval castles were almost like mini-towns in that there was always hustle and bustle, and plenty of comings and goings. Is your castle just a form of garrison or fort (i.e. just housing soldiers) or is it more like a court? If the latter, human nature would suggest that nobles then were much like nobles now, and fell avidly on new and novel forms of entertainment. After all, even 'courtly' castles must have been pretty cold, boring, uncomfortable places in the middle ages, and many people who consider themselves above the common herd like a bit of entertainment! Could your MC walk boldly up to the castle gates and be allowed to enter by virtue of the fact that he has a fascinating skill/treasure/animal/item (tobacco/sugar/rubber/coconuts)/history that would make him a desirable prize to entertain the bored denizens of the castle? E.g. In the Matthew Shardlake novels, CH Sansom describes a fad for sugar among the aristocracy (sugar parties and rich people painting their teeth black to show they were wealthy enough to develop tooth decay from eating too much sugar). Another fad was for parrots, which were considered to be almost magical because of their ability to talk. Just a thought....
So, medieval castle is a pretty broad brush to be working with. The medieval period was about a thousand years long (approximately 400CE to 1400CE, though some people make the argument that it didn't really end until the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1920) and a castle can be anything from a fortified manor house with palisade walls all the way to something like Windsor Castle that was built in the 11th century and at present staffs around 500 people. I'm also not sure how far your character would need to get into the castle. Would getting past the first wall be enough, or would they have to make their way up into the keep? Either way, I guess the best way to get in would be through either the front gate, or the smaller side gate (or wicket gate). Unless the threat of attack is imminent, then it's unlikely anything would be sealed and your character could either walk in on the pretense of having business in the castle if they look well off, or working in the castle if they doesn't. If you're worried someone would recognize them, you could have a friend on the inside that could open the door for them when the guards are asleep. I know it doesn't sound exciting, but more castles have been taken that way than by a full frontal assault.
Here is what you do: 1. Get some gold (enough for about 20 people) 2. Chop down a tree 3.Pay said people to use tree as battering ram on the front gate/draw bridge 4.Sneak around the back. 5. Use rope and grappling hook to scale fortification 6. Do whatever the hell you want, the guards are dealing with the BS invasion force. If magic is involved, then you could in theory launch his ass over the wall with trebuchet. Or they could rig together a crude hang glider and freak the shit out of the people.
I'm guessing that using a secret tunnel would come out as another cliche to you. Maybe you can try to have your MC smuggled inside the castle as a worker in the kitchens or something like that, for example. Also not entirely original, but realistic and effective at the same time. But I'm sensing that what you're looking for here is some spectacularly ingenious way to infiltrate the castle. A trick worthy of Ulysses, so to say. It kind of reminds me of the tricks and stunts used in the Assassin's Creed games.
Quite the contrary actully, I would prefer to keep it as realistic as possible, keeping within the set rules of my world - my MC is not a superhuman or wearing full plot armor!
Well, in that case, I would try something like using a disguise to smuggle the MC inside the castle. If your MC already knows someone who is working in the castle or is familiar with the layout, that's a good starting point.
Full plot armor? I wish I had that for all my novels . . . If you have to have something sneaky, you could have him come up through one of the garderobes (toilet outlet). Though admittedly, it might take a bit of wall-climbing, depending on how high above the moat the outfall was. Oh, and a note--- most medieval castles had dry moats. They made anyone who climbed down into them a sitting duck for the defenders on the walls.
A lot will depend on how vulnerable the people in the castle feel. As @Pepys said, castle gates were often left open, so commerce could be done easily. If the owners of the castle weren't worried about being attacked, they probably would be fairly slack about it. On the other hand, if the enemy is at the gate, they would probably keep the gates shut and would certainly search every hay wagon, box and barrel that might conceal an intruder. The guards at the gate would probably lose their lives if they allowed an enemy to pass in unnoticed, so they'd be very motivated to make sure that didn't happen. Coming in via the gate would take a lot of doing, in that kind of scenario. On the other hand, castles were fortresses and were limited as to food stocks, etc. So it would not be possible to survive very long without allowing coming and going. Set the situation up so that it's believable. I think coming in via the front gate is probably MORE believable than some strange tunnel or whatever. You see lots of stories where people get in via a sluice gate or something like that, but I'm sure it wasn't all that easy to pull off. (Literally, as well as figuratively.) Your character might get in disguised as somebody openly delivering a vital product to the castle. Somebody driving a wagon loaded with supplies would probably be admitted without a lot of heehaw—especially if they've done so several times, and have become familiar and seem harmless to the guards at the gate. Eventually, on one of the trips, the driver can suddenly vanish and be absorbed into the castle somehow. It might take quite a long time before people figure out what's going on.z I think the 'familiarity' angle might be more effective than hiding or sneaking in. If the person is a familiar visitor, then their appearance won't cause suspicion.
I haven't read all the replies, so apologise if this has already been said. But if you want something completely original to your story, then you could consider introducing a specific flaw into the specific castle they are trying to infiltrate. A blind spot in the ramparts, a disused service tunnel, a crumbing section of wall... anything which is unique to the castle itself will differentiate it from other castles and therefore make the method of intrusion unique.
Generally speaking Garderobe shutes are too small to climb - I suspect the builders had thought of that. (of course he could write one that isnt for plot reasons). Another random fact Garderobes weren't technically toilets. On the whole you'd pee and poop in a bucket , then tip the bucket down the garderobe. Also people often hung their clothes over the garderobe shutes overnight so the ammonia would kill lice and fleas .. I guess smelling like shit was preferable to dying of plague (you can tell my six year with the National Trust weren't wasted )
Considering a suit of armour costing back then what a decent used car costs today, they were pretty much exclusively locked up until they were needed. Not only that, but knights and people that would be wearing armour are generally surrounded by pages and such, so assuming you knocked out a fully armoured knight, then it's likely that by the time you switched armour with him, someone would have reached the castle and let someone know about it. Also, also, people just randomly approaching a castle in full armour weren't really a common sight outside of war, so even if they did ride in alone, they'd likely gather more attention by the guards than they would otherwise.
The only exception would be after a major battle - there are records of English forces taking french castles in the 100 years war by riding back after a battle flying false colours (taken from a vanquished french host) and being allowed in. It didn't happen much the other way round because the french thought flying false colours was dishonourable - the English were less concerned about honour than they were about winning.
