Trebuchet – an absurdly excessive siege engine, perfectly suited for Turnip28, the game and setting created by British artist Max FitzGerald.
"In the endless drizzle, where the mud was far deeper than the philosophical musings of the local peasants, lay the village of Tuberville. Its wooden walls looked as if they'd been built not for defense but to give climbing plants somewhere to rest.
Atop the only hill that refused to consider itself part of the swamp stood a trebuchet. Old, creaky, and cobbled together from what remained after yesterday's lunch, it might have been the pride of the local engineers—if any could be found.
The spotter, a man named Crow, squinted into the distance. Dressed like a pompous scarecrow, he rasped loudly and nasally: "Awright, lads," he called out to his team, who were more interested in figuring out how to divide the last dry sock among five men than in the battle ahead. "It's time tae show the enemy what we're made o'!"
"Made o' mud an' neeps, sir?" one of the soldiers ventured, struggling to pull his foot out of the mire.
"Exactly!" Crow exclaimed, not quite catching the comment but adopting an air of confidence as though that had been the plan all along. "Load the projectile!"
The soldiers struggled to lift an enormous turnip—possibly the largest of their harvest and certainly the most ill-tempered. The turnip cursed loudly and snapped at its captors, but they managed to wrestle it into the trebuchet's sling. The machine groaned as if preparing to file a union complaint.
"Ready... aim..." Crow hesitated. Aiming was pointless; the trebuchet shot wherever it pleased. "Fire!"
The mechanism let out a sound like an ancient cow sneezing, and the turnip soared into the sky. All eyes followed its flight, which was at once majestic and utterly unpredictable.
"Looks like it's headin' fer our camp, sir," one of the soldiers noted.
"It's a diversion tactic!" Crow replied quickly. "The enemy never expects an attack from behind. Especially our own behind."
The turnip landed squarely on the roof of their own mess hall, prompting a sigh of relief from the cook, who had been running out of ideas for feeding the troops anyway."
