Ballista

A ballista is a Northern siege weapon which resembles an enormous crossbow. These weapons with arms strengthened with bronze plates and strung with horsehair are capable of propelling heavy bolts up to a mile away, but because of their sheer strength, the recoil of each shot causes the weapon to shift from its original position, so the same target cannot be hit on two consecutive fires. An experienced crew can cock and release two bolts each minute, equalling a deadly and very costly weapon. In 1267, during the Second Northern War, each ballista was valued at eighty florens in Nilfgaard.^[1]

The following is considered game canon only and may contradict Andrzej Sapkowski's works.

In 1269, King Foltest of Temeria gifted Baroness Maria Louisa La Valette several ballistae as a birthday present. Two years later in 1271, he found himself on the receiving end of said gifts when she attacked his forces outside La Valette Castle.^[2]

End of game canon content.

CD PROJEKT RED's The Witcher franchise[]

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings[]

In the Prologue, Geralt helps Foltest's soldiers aim one of their own ballistae at Count Etcheverry. He then later uses one himself to take out some of the La Valette troops on one of the towers. In Chapter I, Vernon Roche asks him to sabotage a different ballista in the compound outside Loredo's residence.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt[]

Despite no sieges in the third game, a decent number of balistae appear along the Pontar river, the border between Velen and Redania, correspondent to their skirmishes with the Nilfgaardian Army. Later during The Battle of Kaer Morhen, Vesemir and Lambert fix one of the first balistae in the keep to help in their fight against the Wild Hunt.

The book Golem, or Man's Most Faithful Servant describes that a ballista was used some hundred years prior, to defeat the first golem ever created, during a pogrom of nonhumans in Maribor.