In the real world, they often make firebreaks to defend against fire: a strip that’s cleared of everything flammable, whether it’s buildings, trees, or whatever.
In realms being invaded by the city of Dis, and whether other supernatural threats loom, they make felbreaks. A felbreak is a strip of land (or sea) cleared of everything known to provide nourishment to demonic, eldritch, and otherwise preternatural invaders: people and creatures to sacrifice, empowering relics and magical artifacts, etc. Felfighters remove curses, lay ghosts to rest, and encourage people to not perform divinations in or for the felbreak.
Sometimes it works! A DW front involving an advancing unnatural threat can be stymied by a successful felbreak, pushed aside like a classic vampire held at bay by the upheld cross or ward of a true-believing vampire hunter. The threat may turn, or retreat, or dissolve.
Sometimes it doesn’t work. Fire can leap across too-narrow or insufficiently-thorough firebreaks. Unnatural forces can stream over, under, or through a weak felbreak. Then it’s the defenders’ turn to fall back.
Awesome. The first, botched (my fault) session of the Planarch Codex that I ran was about how much difficulty Dis had in absorbing the elemental Sea of Fire, which serves as a natural felbreak. Dis got around this by tunneling under the Sea — absorbing the corpse of an ancient giant Cthuloid monstrosity that the legendary Djinn/Ifreet patriarch slew, wrapped in chains, and cast down beneath the flames, where it lay sleeping eternally until the city started consuming it.
Hah! Glad to hear I’m in the groove.
Nice idea! Gives another reason for why that giant constantly-patrolled wall is occupying such a large swathe of your kingdom; it’s protecting a felbreak that’s stopping Dis from consuming the whole shebang.
Yup. Though something like the northern wall in Game of Thrones would be very much like trying to keep the zombies at bay with a wall of steaks and hot dogs. 🙂
“You know what you do when the Ravenous City comes knocking? You build a wall, the biggest you can, not a magic wall you see… not a wall with runes that can hold back the fiercest assault, not spells to turn aside hostile magics, not bound with guardian spirits… just stone and chain and mortar and men to walk it. And they watch both sides.”
😀