Skeaulvradkt Kiondju (Soulburn Castle)

[ladiestorm]

So now that I finished the Horn & Stars Tavern, I've moved on to my second project, Lorkandan's Skeaulvradkt Kiondju, or Soulburn Castle in the common tongue. This is the ancient homestead of the Lorkandan Royal Family, and the origin of the Tieflings in my 5th ed campaign.

Soulburn Castle rests in the rocky foothills of the mainland's Dryiptalhecht (Demon's Heart) Mountains.

I've had to restart this map three times now, so I'm not as far along as I would like to be, but you can(hopefully) start to get an idea of what the castle is going to be like. It's a dark, sinister places, full of secrets and pain.

I will admit, I'm going to need some help with this one.... I haven't the foggiest idea what I'm going to do with this castle. The dungeon, I know EXACTLY what I'm doing there... but I can't really start the dungeon, until I have a good idea of what the layout of my castle is going to be. I have a fairly blank slate so far, so I could use some suggestions. oh, and the grid won't be there at the end... that's there mainly to help me keep things consistant between the first and second floor, which right now, is an exact copy of this one....

I hope you enjoy the process!



And as always, please feel free to comment, critique, rate, rank or run away as you see fit!

[waldronate]

Aaaaa! The Comic Sans! It burns!

Looks like a good start, though.

[Mark Oliva]

So now that I finished the Horn & Stars Tavern, I've moved on to my second project, Lorkandan's Skeaulvradkt Kiondju, or Soulburn Castle in the common tongue.

Exactly. In the ruins of the Æsir Empire, we call it Sálbrunihöll.

I can't really start the dungeon, until I have a good idea of what the layout of my castle is going to be. I have a fairly blank slate so far, so I could use some suggestions.

Hmmm. Gee golly whillikers! And without knowing where you want to go with the castle, it's pretty difficult for anyone here to suggest how you should get there. It sounds like you're off to a restless weekend.

But to follow your suggestion and run away as you see fit, I'll risk foaming at the mouth a bit and say that the wall running over the stone foundation in three of the four corners isn't really that way that these things are built. The underlying stone terrain really should extend out at least 10 feet/3 meters past the edges of the wall.

But to not end on a churlish note, happy weekend!

[ladiestorm]

So what you're saying is made my outer walls too big. Ugh...I was afraid of that. But that makes sense...because they wouldn't want the walls falling into the most due to erosion. Well, that's a problem...lol.

So, back to the drawing board. 4th redrawing's the charm?

[cyderak]

I like the Comic Sans...... I have no idea why people don't like it.

A good touch-up would be to add furnishings and objects. makes it more appealing.

I love the animals in the moat. That is something you don't see very often with maps is creatures or Non-player characters that float around in the background (i.e. waitresses in an INN...... bar patrons....... squirrels and the like in an outdoor setting.)

[waldronate]

Hating on Comic Sans is popular on the internet. My problem with Comic Sans is that the curves at the tops of the letter are asymmetric enough to make my (admittedly damaged) visual tracking bounce up and down across the line, which causes me a number of problems. I had a project manager who insisted on using Comic Sans for his documentation just so that it would make me ill to read them.

Anyhow, enough of that. The castle walls aren't necessarily as bad as Mark Oliva suggests. It will depend entirely on the underlying geology. The map suggests that this is an area with stone underlying a thin soil layer. The soil was scraped off, a moat was excavated, walls were erected, and water was provided to the moat through some non-obvious mechanism. If this castle was a rebuild or expansion on an earlier revision, then that would explain extra thickness of the walls. The view also prevents visibility of the foundations, which might be enormous blocks of hard stone, which will effectively eliminate erosion over reasonable time scales, even if submerged in water.

A google images search on "English castle wall structure" will turn up a number of images where the castle foundations are directly in water. If you haven't seen it, http://www.slideshare.net/carinaantu...s-books-castle is a simple introduction to castles of various periods. Castle construction varies widely by period and locations (compare fortifications in the late Roman period to early Renaissance to late Renaissance).

If we add fantasy elements to the design or construction, castles might look quite different. Walls made of solid rock, for example, have very different properties than ones made of small blocks glued together with comparatively weak mortar. Moats of arbitrary size might be much easier to carve and there might not be excavated material to deal with. In a classic castle design, there is never a need to worry about aerial assault. Tunneling was the big threat for classic castles because collapsing a tunnel under a classic mortared wall will collapse it; collapsing a tunnel under a solid stone wall will do little. Of course, if stone can be manipulated easily, walls would need to include materials to prevent such things. And on and on...

The best advice I can give for the design of fortifications is (perhaps unfortunately) the same as my advice for most things: have a reason for it and ensure that it's well-adapted to its context. Designing a castle to fit the sheet of paper is certainly a good adaptation for its context, but night not be a good reason for that design.

[waldronate]

Long ago, TSR published their "The Castle Guide" supplemental book. It has a lot of useful information on castle construction in the second half. http://www.ekkaia.org/rpg/dnd/castleguide.pdf is a (likely bootleg) copy of this item.

[Mark Oliva]

So what you're saying is made my outer walls too big.

I suppose I said that indirectly. My real reaction was that the island inside the moat was too small, but it comes out the same.

they wouldn't want the walls falling into the most due to erosion.

There's that. But one also needs to be able to maintain the wall, fix it after an attack, etc. And then again, there also has to be space between the wall and the water to represent the area needed for the land to slope down to the water, etc. There are many issues with which one has to deal when building a castle or fortress with a water moat.

Another question is the source of the water. What fills the moat and keeps it filled? If you look at many real-world castles with water moats, you'll find that a small creek flows into and out of them. Others really do rely upon rain, and they go dry at times and are very shallow at others. In such a moat, your swimming moat beasts wouldn't survive.

However, all of my rambling here is based upon real world examples. In fantasy lands, one has a lot more latitude, particularly latitude provided by magic. Then it's only a question of how far one wants to let magic cause the setting to veer from reality. Thus, in a fantasy setting, one also could have a moat filled with perpetually boiling oil or, perhaps more preferable, Upper Franconian lager beer.

[Mark Oliva]

A google images search on "English castle wall structure" will turn up a number of images where the castle foundations are directly in water.

That's another variation that has many real world prototypes. I know of a number of castles not too far from here that were built and then had, in effect, a pond dug out around them.

The best advice I can give for the design of fortifications is (perhaps unfortunately) the same as my advice for most things: have a reason for it and ensure that it's well-adapted to its context. Designing a castle to fit the sheet of paper is certainly a good adaptation for its context, but night not be a good reason for that design.

I couldn't agree more. It's excellent advice.

[ladiestorm]

Well, I've gone back to the drawing board, and came up with something I like much better. And then my hubby asked me a question about.my map, which caused me to realize that I could have do e it slightly different and saved myself hours of work!!!

Oh well. I will post my newest rendering to.orrow or Monday.

Oh, and in regards.to my moat...the water comes from a completely mundane source - an underground spring, or river. This castle rests in the rocky foothills of a volcanic mountain range. The river was found when the builders dug the moat. The underground river feeds a lake not to far from here.