Location:

All over the Hyouto Archipelago, these towers watch over the coast lines and, straits, and seaborn passageways. It is hard to sail within view of the Hyouto coastline, without being spotted by one of these towers.

((Please traverse this thread, for all sea travel that would cross Hyouto lands.))

Description:

These watchtowers are the pinnacle of Hyouto Engineering. Rebuking the Eastern style, in favor of the more defensive and thick western style of fortifications, the watchtowers are uniformly round towers, 20 feet in diameter, and reaching up 50 feet high. Made of stone and fill mixed walls, nearly 5 feet thick, they're stout enough to perhaps survive one or two shots from enemy heavy artillery. More than enough time to get the warning out, or so they think.

When spotting a hostile ship, men on top of the tower position a large mirror during the daytime, to catch the sunlight, and beam it to a nearby town, alerting the villagers and getting them time to rouse the local militia.

During the nighttime, fire magi light massive signal fires on top of the tower to pierce the darkness and relay the alarm to the local militia.

Once their task is done, they make their stand in the tower. The tower is ment as a warning, not a serious fortification, thus the only weapon they have to fight back, is usually one fire magi, perhaps two other magi volunteers, a small number of mixed warrior classes, generally about 10-15.

Currently there is a project underway to modernize the towers with small cannons, however, it is slow going as it's hard to get a good cannon on the market, and most they do get, go directly into the navy.