Necromancer's Castle - NO CC

THIS LOT IS NOT FLAT. I wanted to make a mountainside dark magic castle that felt almost built into the mountain itself at first, which means it couldn’t be a flat-edged lot. As such, DO NOT place this lot directly adjacent to any other lots, since this can cause your neighborhood terrain to ‘tear.’

I’m not sure a $400,000+ lot can properly be considered “small,” but at least by medieval fantasy castle standards I do think I can get away with saying it’s a smaller lot! It’s only a 3x4 footprint as well, so in that regard it is honestly smaller than most of mine, but it’s still 8 playable floors, so it’s definitely still larger than most similarly-sized lots.

I did playtest a clone of this lot to make sure routing and other gameplay issues were addressed where possible. The only things I’d still caution you to watch out for are traffic jams on the path leading from the street to the castle, and potentially also in the top of the high tower with the (piano) pipe organ manual. The rest of the castle should be routable basically as you’d expect. To access the necromancer’s grotto in the caves beneath the castle you’ll need to use the bookcase door in the catacombs, and since there’s no accessible “front door” (since you actually enter via a staircase instead of a door) guests and newspapers seem to just route to the mailbox, but everything else should still behave as normal.

As with all my creations, no CC is needed anywhere in this lot, so you should be able to just drop it into a suitably isolated part of your neighborhood and move in your friendly (or not-so-friendly) neighborhood necromancers and start raising zombie servants of your own! Read on if you’d like another in my ever-growing litany of shared fantasy universe storytelling vignettes about this particular bit of the continent of Tessim!



According the generals of the Iron Circle, the front lines extended west all the way to Alleford. According the most of the allied kingdoms of Westfall, they extended east to Bellgate, or even the Hallowguard River. According to the few people who still lived in the 500 miles separating those lines on the map, it didn’t matter which side the soldiers were from, they’d still always steal your grain (if you were lucky) or burn your barn and fields to deny them to the enemy (if you were unlucky). Not many people still lived in those disputed lands. Most of the common folk had been driven out over the last few decades, fleeing to one side or the other, or running into the disputed and isolated mountains to the northeast. In that direction a few Knights-Commandant and battlemages had set themselves up as local kings for as long as they could hang on to power over the desperate people who remained, but sometimes they stumbled on older and more powerful forces that had been at work in those mountains since long before the War of the Iron Circle.

At first it seemed like this was just going to be another warlord turned would-be king. Early in the war, an Iron Circle expeditionary force had been sent north along the Lost River, heading towards the foothills of the eastern Stormwall Mountains, and eventually they’d travelled so far that they stopped receiving any commands from the King or the military leadership. The Knight-Commandant had started to seize more and more personal control over the soldiers, and despite their reluctance, he’d insisted on following a rumor of a castle or holdfast high up in a nearby mountain pass. There were all sorts of dark rumors swirling around it from the starving peasants they left behind in the lowlands, and the Knight-Commandant thought it might be a good place to fortify and hole up for the winter.

That was 32 years ago.



Today the winter wind was absolutely howling off the Stormwall peaks to the north, but by the time it reached the small hamlet at the valley floor it had dropped to a low, cadaverous moan. For a moment, Ajska though he heard music, almost like the bagpipes his canton had used to signal across mountains and fjords growing up in Valterre, but the sound didn’t last. His group had been travelling for three weeks, following rumor of an abandoned castle somewhere near the headwaters of the Lost River. Rather than offering to show them the castle if they paid up front for a guide, the villagers here had fearfully warned them away, which was all the proof Ajska needed that they were finally in the right place. He told his companions he could smell treasure up in the mountains ahead of them.

Still, the trail was damnably steep, and the snow these last few days had just made things worse. Tandie was tall enough that she managed to stay out of the worst of the drifts, but Ajska and Alden both struggled, and every few hundred feet it seemed like the path turned into ice-covered slate steps, or even a crumbling cobblestone bridge across the ravine. Pausing for a moment, again he heard a loud, deep musical element to the wind, and Tandie had paused too, cocking her pointed ears up the mountainside. “Do you hear something?” she asked, turning to look at the other two. Ajska nodded. “Any guesses? Ain’t supposed to be anyone living this far up in the Stormwall…” The music shifted keys, and now Ajska swore there was an unhappy animalistic grunting or groaning sound carried down the valley as well, reminding him of the stupid beasts of burden they’d used for hauling siege equipment during his days in the army.



“Look, up there!” Alden’s gruff voice cut through the blizzard. He pointed with his arm outstretched high up on the valley’s slopes, and through a momentary break in the clouds, Ajska saw a red tiled roof and an orange glow that seemed almost like firelight, but… off somehow. Before any of them had a chance to take a good look though, the clouds and snow rolled back in, cutting off their view. Ajska was sure he’d seen a few more bridges through the storm in that direction though, so cursing under his breath, he started forcing a path through the snow in that direction. The music was much clearer now, louder than anything Ajska had ever heard except from cavalry horn calls on the battlefield, seeming as though an entire orchestra had somehow been captured in one of the stony mountain peaks.

Eventually the castle was close enough that the snow could no longer obscure it from view, no matter how heavily it swirled around them. Looking up at the imposing stone walls, Ajska thought he saw a few flashes of movement in some of the archways. As he stared, the music suddenly cut off, and what looked like a figure stepped away from a high window. The cold this high on the mountain was biting… Tandie still seemed to be doing alright, but Ajska was losing feeling in his toes, and he could tell Alden was stumbling on numb feet as they crossed yet another narrow stone bridge. Strangely, the path curved away from the main castle for a moment, and Ajska realized it actually led into a smaller watchtower built away from the central keep and connected high overhead by a massive viaduct. He kept his hand on his axe as they stepped into the stone staircase, expecting at any moment to be stopped or threatened, but no one appeared. The three of them carefully climbed, coming into a larger and more ornate room at the top of the stairs, and still saw no one. Alden pushed open a door at the end and jumped back, but still no threat appeared. Snow swirled into the room, whipping his hood back, but the top of the viaduct was just as deserted as the rest of the castle. Strange glowing lights sat in place of the torches Ajska would have expected- burning without flame in the howling blizzard.



The doors at the far end of the viaduct were massive, but swung open at just a slight touch from Tandie. The three of them stepped into the darkened interior, blinking the snow-blindness from their eyes for a moment. Ajska looked around and then leapt back in shock. A slack-jawed soldier in Iron Circle armor stood not three feet from him. From behind him he heard Alden swearing and turning he saw two more grey-faced soldiers standing near him. Yet despite their sudden arrival, none of the soldiers seemed inclined to do anything other than stand there holding weapons and breathing in a shallow, laborious fashion. Ajska stepped closer and waved his hand in front of the soldier for a moment, getting no response. He snapped his fingers under the man’s nose and didn’t even elicit a blink, so he drew back his arm to strike the soldier.

“I’d caution you against that. I don’t know where you come from, but around here it’s considered exceptionally poor manners to strike a host’s servants, and it might set a precedent you’ll come to regret,” said a thin voice from deeper in the room. Ajska froze, slowly turning his head and peering through the gloom. A dark-robed figure stood up from one of the thrones he could just barely make out through the darkness. “I suppose you’re probably here for the same reason they came though,” said the man. He gestured to two of the soldiers, who swung the massive doors shut with an ominous boom. “You heard rumor of my small castle, and thought it would be an easy target, perhaps you hoped for treasure… Well, rest assured, there is treasure to be found here, though I’m sorry to say you won’t profit by any of it. Still, those soldiers have served me well for the past three decades, so I suppose if the rumor of gold brings others like you to my gates, eager to serve me in undeath, if not in life, then it’s worth my time.” The man stepped closer, and Ajska heard Tandie let out a gasp of shock as she saw the orange necromantic light playing in the eyes glinting out of his ancient face. Ajska went for his axe, but one of the soldiers closed an icy hand around his arm, the grip as strong and as cold as iron. The necromancer walked closer, peering into Ajska’s face. “Now, tell me,” he said slowly… “how will you serve me?”