Game of Thrones weapons master Tommy Dunne on designing the show’s siege weapons

Medieval warfare was brutal and deadly. When armies weren’t hacking each other to pieces with sharp objects, they were seeking shelter behind high castle walls made of stone. When that happened, medieval commanders used siege weapons — ballistas, catapults, and trebuchets — to fling stones, fire, and giant arrows at their enemies’ defenses.

Naturally, those kinds of weapons appear on Game of Thrones, and it falls to armorer and weapons master Tommy Dunne to make them, in addition to crafting the show’s swords and armor. Dunne recently spoke to Popular Science about his work.

"When I build a catapult, a trebuchet, a ­giant crossbow, it looks and feels authentic. I look at all the historical references I can dig up. I’ve had 25 years to amass a library on weaponry of all ages and ­cultures—but at the end of the day, my weapons are original."

Siege weapons get a lot of screen time during Daenerys’ siege of Meereen and the Battle of Castle Black, when the Night’s Watchmen atop the Wall used catapults to fire on the wildlings below. They looked like they packed a punch, although Dunne is careful not to get carried away. “Keep in mind, these old weapons were deadly,” he said. “They were meant to kill….Unfortunately, in my world, it’s not all about that—you err on the side of safety. So as engineers, we’ll look at Roman and Medieval siege weapons, make sure we get the right look for the show, and then make them just powerful enough to throw a projectile off-camera.”

"We’ll throw objects—light objects—30 feet in the air, and 50 feet away. In a real siege, a catapult would need to throw farther than the enemy archers’ range, so real weaponized projectiles would fly 10 times farther than ours."

The weapons must look and feel authentic, but even on a show like Game of Thrones, that can be prohibitively expensive.

"Another concern is getting your money’s worth out of these devices. They aren’t cheap and can take up to eight weeks to build. So we make sure they’re not one-hit wonders. One catapult we built for Game of Thrones stood 12 feet high by 8 feet wide, weighed one and half tons, and fired barrels with a sling mechanism."

Doesn’t that sound like fun? If only we could rent those things.

In addition to working behind the scenes, Dunne has made a couple of cameo appearance in the show. He popped up in the season 4 premiere, holding Ice…

…and appeared in the pilot giving Robb Stark a shave.

With Daenerys and her army on their way to Westeros, we’ll probably see a lot more of Dunne’s work in season 7.