VoxRationis
2018-02-26, 02:01 PM
So it's fairly common to see fantasy art with implausibly tall castles, stretching many hundreds of feet into the air, constructed of a tight cluster of spires, often with little to no clearance between them. The first page of Part 1 of the fifth edition Player's Handbook of D&D is a good example of what I'm talking about. Dominion's cover art has a less preposterous one.
Leaving out, of course, the structural difficulties in extending castle architecture to such heights (by saying that either the stone is magically reinforced, or the construction is actually much less medieval than it looks, supported with girders of highly advanced metals, or the majority of the interior is some sort of projecting rock formation), has anyone ever included such a site in their games? Has anyone mapped out the vast interior of a castle of such size? What reasons have you put forth in your settings for why someone would invest so much in building so high? In short, what have you done to run with this concept?
Leaving out, of course, the structural difficulties in extending castle architecture to such heights (by saying that either the stone is magically reinforced, or the construction is actually much less medieval than it looks, supported with girders of highly advanced metals, or the majority of the interior is some sort of projecting rock formation), has anyone ever included such a site in their games? Has anyone mapped out the vast interior of a castle of such size? What reasons have you put forth in your settings for why someone would invest so much in building so high? In short, what have you done to run with this concept?