Shield-Wall

Spoiler warning!

This article or section contains plot spoilers for the Mortal Engines quartet. Proceed at your own risk.

The Shield Wall is a structure that was introduced in Mortal Engines. It was a wall that protected Batmunkh Gompa.

Description[]

The Wall is made of black volcanic stone and the remains of destroyed cities, notably their deck plates. Behind it, the Wall was then made of steel and stone, with buildings resting against it. Cannons line it, and a flag with the symbol of the Anti-Traction League snaps in the wind.^[1]

There is a central square in the middle of the city that has stairways branching out from it. Shops, booths, houses, and markets line the terraces.^[1]

There is narrow street known as the "Street of Weavers", where handwoven baskets are sold. These baskets are hung on poles, so that they look like hanging bird nests.^[1]

The Wall is made of stone, and the rusting corpses of traction cities line its outsides. Cannons line it, and there is an entrance that allows only airships to pass through. On the other side of it, buildings climb up the wall and the mountain valley it sits on.^[2]

History[]

Mortal Engines quartet[]

Mortal Engines[]

The Wall became a target for the MEDUSA mounted on London (), but before the entire wall could be destroyed, MEDUSA self-destructed and exploded, destroying London behind/within it.

A Darkling Plain[]

The Wall was rebuilt, but the city had degraded from a vital fortress to only a brief stop, for airships and other vehicles on the way to the front lines.

Film[]

The film's climax occurs in and around the Shield Wall. The MEDUSA partially succeeded in taking out a sizeable fraction of the wall, and blasting away the cannons, but the super weapon collapsed in flames (as the wall also laid in flames).

Trivia[]

Maps from the film portray the Shield Wall as lying near Lake Baikhash and the Tian Shan mountains, roughly around the modern day Kazakhstan-China border.
In the original version of Mortal Engines, the Shield Wall was known as "Winterbourne's Dyke", a massive earthen tunnel that separated the West Country from the rest of Britain.^[3]