#akkala citadel

[l1ve-l4ugh-lov3craft]

HI, CAN I TELL YOU ABOUT THE AKKALA CITADEL?????

Yes? Wonderful. Come, friend, have a seat. I have...a lot to say lol

Eight years later and I am STILL not over how absolutely genius this fortress is, like are you kidding me????? Everything from location to design to its inside defenses is just *chef's kiss* PHENOMINAL, and so because I have no filter, I am going to barf all my thoughts I've had on it in the past many many years.

Before we begin, shoutout to the WONDERFUL video by Zeltik that touches on this a bit and gave me a wonderful basis for my brainrot in the first place. Definitely go and watch it it's fabulous NOW! Let's get into the madness shall we? First let's talk about the location cos OHHHH MY GOSH. This was, hands down, THE best place they could have possibly put a fortress of this magnitude in Hyrule and I am going to tell you why. First of all, allllllll along the northern and northwestern border of Hyrule, there's those massive canyons

Passing over that in a way that would be effective military-wise is kind of impossible, so it provides a natural defense from invaders from those directions.

If you were to come from the South, you would hit the Gerudo desert and not only have to face the might of the Gerudo military, but also cross this EXPANSIVE, scorching desert before you can even make it to Hyrule field, and by that time, the royal leader could have very easily sent an army to intercept anyone trying to attack, so that's right out.

Which leaves coming from the Faron region next which is okay??? I guess??? but that's a LOT of swamp and forest you have to cross through, AND you go right past the Great Plateau where any army would have been seen and intercepted eventually. This takes us closer to the eastern coast of Hyrule, and you would be hard pressed to try and travel through Necluda, cos just l o o k at all these mountains you'd have to cross:

Horrible. And you probably don't want to go through Zora's Domain cos that's yet another heavily fortified and well prepared city in and of itself (please ask me about this one too I beg of you I love talking about Zora's Domain)

Any military leader with a brain isn't going to go through Death Mountain for obvious reasons, so really, all that leaves is this tiiiiiinnnyyy vulnerable spot in Akkala

And where did they put the citadel??? Right at the heart of that vulnerable spot >:D Like a boss.

AND SO! if invaders came in from that coastline, they have three options: They can take the path through the Akkala Highlands, they can go through the Torin Wetlands and up to the pass it connects to, or they can take the trail up to the Sokkala Bridges. All of these are TERRIBLE OPTIONS Akkala Highlands path: If they come up this way at the start

this will work allll the way until they get about here:

once they get here though, you are now not only bottlenecking an entire army meant to invade a kingdom (so probably roughly 1,000-1,300 people), but you're also directly under the shadow of the Akkala Citadel. There are archers there to fire on you, and they had a canon post on that side to potentially fire either at the incoming soldiers or fire at the opposite canyon wall to rain debris and rocks on them.

TERRIBLE for the other army.

And even if some did manage to survive, it would be painfully easy for the infantry at Akkala Citadel to send foot soldiers down below to cut them off.

SO THERE GOES THAT OPTION (and admittedly, I think it's probably the worst of the three)

Next option is to go through the Torin Wetlands and up into that same pass by the Citadel

this is ALSO a bad idea because the Torin Wetlands are a DELIGHTFUL tactical advantage for Hyrule. Once you get to that pass, you have the same problems as option one, but now you first have to pass through this wide marshland to get there. This will immediately slow down your army, and if that wasn't bad enough it's also in clear freakin view of the citadel and so they would be able to send their entire militia of archers and potentially even cannoneers to fire on the advancing army and take a bunch of them out before they could even make it to that pass.

So a smart general may say the best option is to go around the long way.

now this eliminates the pass and also slowing down at the marsh, and you could even make it almost all the way to the citadel without hardly any losses probably BUT! The first hurdle is those bridges. Wonderful for Hyrule, terrible for the opposing army. The three Sokkala bridges are SMALL, even smaller than the pass an army would have to go through with the other two options. This military leader would basically have to send their soldiers single file unless they have a way to expand the bridges to make them wider (which, admittedly, could be possible with a bit of foresight, but for now for simplicity's sake let's just assume they didn't think that far ahead).

This brings in an EXTREMELY slowly advancing army right to the heart of the Akkala Citadel's battery.

There are three locations with canons we see in BOTW that cover pretty much the entire open area the opposing army would come in on. And when you look at the amount of space each post covered

There is not a SINGLE spot in that valley a cannoneer couldn't easily reach. And, of course they would continue to have archers to pick off individual soldiers as well.

And if SOMEHOW

BY SOME MIRACLE

enough soldiers make it through that hell to be enough of a problem, there are plenty more soldiers in the citadel to cut them off as they come up the hill AND IF THAT'S NOT ENOUGH! there was this:

by the time we get to botw, it has been destroyed, but that is ANOTHER smaller stronghold that was probably pretty well manned in and of itself.

AND WHAT'S MORE

There's even this long cliff road with very little room to operate, so it would be extremely easy for the citadel to send over some soldiers to post up there and cut off anyone who tried to make it past. And with so little room to operate, it would not go well.

Ain't NOTHING getting past the Akkala Citadel, guys.

And that isn't even touching on the fact that the whole thing is build of solid stone??? And carved into a mountain??? The entire reason it fell in the first place was because the Guardians had enough of fire power to destroy the citadel that they had never seen before (also they could climb walls but that's a side note). This implies that no one in Hyrule or the neighbouring kingdoms had even CLOSE to that level of destructive power, so to try and raze it to the ground would have been impossible.

AND!! it was the most heavily fortified fortress in Hyrule second to the castle itself, and to most likely their military personnel would have been equal too, if not slightly more than even Hyrule Castle. That's A LOT of people!! With most likely endless support and resources from the castle and villages nearby as well.

It was placed geniously, it had impenetrable defense, it had a potentially endless supply of resources and people to use said resources, it was just

argjfbdkjgbks You guys don't understand how much I THINK about this place aghhhhhhhhhh

[intexda]

Link: *lands in Terray Town on a glider out of nowhere*

Hudson: Oh hey, link! You're back early.

Link: Akkala's haunted

Hudson: What?

Link: "Loading arrows and readying the shrine teleport* Akkala's haunted

[hyrule-photos]

akkala || akkala citadel ruins

[sunset-peril]

Missing Children Incident vibes.

R.I.P. Akkala Citadel Soldiers.

Oh haha theyre like a group of silly ghost guys with a leader!!!

OH.

[bluebelledmoon]

okay ONE last hc before i go to work

Post botw link will go on some small adventures on his own and help out with wiping out the last few waves of ganons monsters still lurking around.

He’ll come across ruins like the ones in the Akkala Citadel or Mabe Vilage and find old books that are abandoned, old, and have had their pages ripped out. He would gingerly take out a soft cloth he keeps for this very reason, and bundle up the salvageable pages and bindings in his pack so that they wouldn’t get any more ruined. Link would come home after his week long journey and take them to Zelda for her to rewrite and save. He unties the string holding the small bundle together and lets the cloth fall open to reveal a small pile of stained booked and ripped pages, but legible text of anthologies, her old teachers poetry, rito evolution, and even descriptions of fauna she’s never heard of before.

Sometimes he’ll hit the jackpot with a small box with pages of pressed flowers that haven’t been seen in a millennia made by a little girl, or even a few handwritten books on minish and hyrulean history tucked underneath loose rotting floorboards. Sometimes, he’ll delay coming home for even longer on his journeys because he hasn’t found anything, and even just wants to bring a single piece of paper to her.

[villanelleskiss]

nothing has ever scared me more than my first encounter with gloom hands in totk

[sittingoverheredreaming]

I really love the Lurelin side adventure in ToTK, but it must be so bittersweet for Link to be recognized as the village’s hero and have everyone treat him so warmly when he died defending Hateno, his (implied) hometown, and he’ll never be anything more than a stranger there, especially since his house (which I always assumed was his family home before the Calamity) is only referred to as Zelda’s by the villagers

[fuck-em-up-your-grace]

Oh God I went to Akkala Citadel and experienced the horrors

[navysealt4t]

thinking about fort hateno. thinking about akkala citadel . thinking about how it was everyone's last final stand with no hope and no chance of escape. how even if they couldn't save all of hyrule, they had to atleast try to save the towns that were still standing. illness

[l1ve-l4ugh-lov3craft]

please tell us what you have to say about pre-calamity characters. I ate up your analysis on the Akkala citidel.

Oh my gosh wait that’s so nice of you thank you! I fear you may be underwhelmed cos that post was probably the best work I’ve ever done or ever will do lol. I do LOVE all the little people who live in my head though so I shall share some of them :)

My first and possibly favourite is Dilia who lives rent free in my head as the castle Royal Head Librarian. He's Hylian and about in late 20s to early 30s. Any sensible library's gonna have library staff and so I created him as part of that. I imagine there's also about five or six additional librarians as well under his leadership who help with organising the books and keeping the place all neat and tidy :) He was also brought on a bit because I got to thinking about how much time Zelda probably spent in the library researching ancient technology. I like to think she came to trust him as she grew up and saw him as like a cool older brother or uncle figure :) My guy probably had his role as castle librarian passed down to him by his mother or father, so he's lived there his whole life and knows all there is to know about the histories of Hyrule. He's a walking font of knowledge and I definitely think he and the court poet have compared notes before on the events of the first Great Calamity. He's got a penchant for forgetting the castle library hours and leaving it open well into the night because he's gotten too comfy at his desk and forgot to check the time periodically lol He's just a big ol nerd and I love him deeply, and so he got to survive the Calamity and move to Kakariko Village because I don't want him to die horribly.

I also, while we're on the subject, LOVE the court poet. He's not an OC, but he's an integral part of the world that I think about him enough to have headcanoned him to life lol. I read 'A Hylian Romance' by sillythings on Ao3, and he's called Chanson in that so that's what I call him XD I absolutely LOVE this because regular royal courts would have some person who is purely there to entertain the lords and ladies at banquets and meetings and the like. And so rather than have a Fool, they had Chanson. I love thinking about this witty, sassy guy who would have been the SINGULAR person in the castle allowed to openly insult King Rhoam to his face and not get executed for it (such was the privilege of court Fools and Poet).

The next one requires a bit of my personal thoughts on the rank system for the Hyrule military, but I'll TRY to keep it brief. Basically, we see soldiers' weapons, knights' weapons, royal guards' weapons, and royal weapons in-game. I was thinking about the training facilities in Hyrule Castle itself, and there's really not a whole lot there. It's mostly indoors as well, which isn't ideal for maximum army training. HOWEVER! Outside of the castle grounds we see the Military Training Camp (obviously), the Akkala Citadel, and the Coliseum. MY personal theory is that the Coliseum is actually another combat training camp rather than a coliseum for entertainment and I'll have to make a post on THAT after this to explain why lol ANYWAY! That tells me that the Hyrulean military force was sort of ranked Soldier -> Knight -> Royal Guard -> Royal Family. The soldiers probably trained at the Military Training Camp because of how little we see of stone ruins. It wasn't made as sturdily as the Castle, Akkala Citadel, or Coliseum, and thus would be fitting of the lowest ranked fighters to train there. Rauru Settlement is right there, and so I think that was where most of the soldiers and their families lived, and I just LOVE the idea of all the bright-eyed young people of Hyrule coming from all over the kingdom to train under the banner of the crown together. And they spend the entire day working their BUTTS off training in this new, grueling regiment that's kind of made to weed out anyone less dedicated (like bootcamp essentially), and then hurry home back down the hill to sit by a fire together and dance and enjoy eachothers' company.

(side note, I think Hylians are a very musical race. Not for any particular reason other than I love the idea of fun Hylian festivals) Let's seeeee, et me rapid fire off a few of my other ones before this post becomes too long XD -Love the idea of bringing back Talon and Malon (and Ingo I guess) pre-calamity who raise the finest horses in all of Hyrule that usually even make it to the castle itself as the royal family and royal guards' mounts - Ronin is a knight character I've been slow cooking in my head who's posted at one of the gatehouses in the castle, and he's got a lil secret (except it's not actually very secret cos everyone else in his regiment know) thing for one of the castle maids, Enid. And the go to a festival together one day when they have time off and I love them dearly - They don't have a name yet, but I've ALSO been thinking of the potential for a religious figure (a high preist or priestess or smthn) who oversees worship at the Castle Town Cathedral. I feel like it was more of a shrine to Hylia that had a lot of believers come and go rather than weekly services, but there still would have been someone who lived there and maintained the cathedral grounds - THE BELL RINGER! Again, they don't have a name, but I found the bell tower one of my first playthroughs of botw and the bell ringer has had me in a choke hold ever since. This strange, quiet outsider who was more in tune with Hyrule than anyone else and who was content to just sit in their tower most days and watch the people below. BUT ALSO the absolute tragedy as Calamity Ganon swarmed the towers when it emerged and would have corrupted and infected the bell ringer with the potent malice and killed them before they even had a chance to escape.

idk I just think pre-calamity is SO neat and one day I'd love to write a bunch of character anthologies but first I gotta get up the motivation XD

[nadhie]

I love that knowing your way around the botw map gives you little nuggets in totk

[hyrule-photos]

akkala || akkala citadel ruins

[three-bunnies-in-a-trenchcoat]

Huh. This music kind of reminds me of the Demon Dragon fight.

[sunset-peril]

CRAP

DANG

QUIT FEEDING ME ANGST IDEAS

[kayespuzzles]

Things I wish they added in totk

Have castle town rebuilt, and have that concept festival celebrating link defeating calamity ganon

Have more towns built, and maybe have link build some of them. Maybe save some of them from monster raids

More people!!! Doesn't have to be interactable!!!

More travelers, like a lot

Leave the sheikah tech in place, like guardians. Can dismiss the shrines/towers, as they were only for the use of link and can vanish now that they are not needed

Work on sage powers.... they are lacking and almost inconvenient

More special location areas, like orchards, large gardens, clothing stores, goofy accessory stores, sheikah weapon store, game parks, arrow games, bomb games, parry games

Let that traveling skeikah art guy have a house with an art studio!!!

Be able to enhance more than one clothing at once from the great fairy

Change the enviroment/fauna/flora of the depths and sky islands to reflect which region they are on the overworld map

More zonai outfits!!!or zonai versions of prev outfits

Everyone knows link.

Zelda has dragon features after transforming back to human

More horse types/coats

Mail????? Do they not have mail there

Major cities have dedications to the champions of calamity ie statues

The divine beasts are still there, maybe in disuse and out of the way

More silent princesses everywhere, growing abundantly in hyrulean sacred areas, with the sundandalion growing in zonai sacred areas. Both are grown in shared sacred areas

Link has scars from where raurus arm was connected to him/patterning

Tauru zonai research guy has a purpose and lore

Give link more emotions. He is not the emotionless teen from 107 years ago.

Pet. Animals. Not negotable.

Cats??? Where are the cats

Permanently retake some of the more memorable locations from monsters and make them villages, like akkala citadel, lanayru promenade, fort hateno, deya village ruins, sage temple ruins, lanayru wetlands, etc...

[youwishyouwasme1234]

HYRULE IS PURPLE!!!

Akkala citadel~

Prolly could have gotten a better angle but oh well.