Lost Castle: Kristagna

Now that they’re at the castle, the adventure goal will be character-specific: different characters may have different goals, such as finding treasure, finding knowledge, or going home again.

The forest ends at a clearing and within the clearing a castle sits on a slight rise, four tall towers girding it, low outer walls surrounding it. The outer walls are of granite stones, the inner walls and inner tower of smaller stones. A golden dome rises from the north side of the castle, and in the center an arch of white marble encloses a great golden timepiece covered in arcane symbols, moon phases, and Roman numerals.

The timepiece reads not only the correct time, but also the correct zodiac symbol (the “arcane symbols” on the clock) and phase of the moon. The clock has three hands, one for the hour, one for the zodiac, and one for the moon. Since, for these astronomers, the actual positions of the stars was important, the zodiac dates will appear to be wrong: they do not follow the Ancient dates, but rather follow the current dates. Each astrological month begins approximately:

1. Aquarius: February 17

2. Pisces: March 12

3. Aries: April 18

4. Taurus: May 14

5. Gemini: June 21

6. Cancer: July 20

7. Leo: August 10

8. Virgo: September 16

9. Libra: October 31

10. Scorpio: November 23

11. Sagittarius: December 18

12. Capricorn: January 20

The moon hand points to the new moon at “12” and the full moon at “6”. The hours run from 12 at the top to 1 through 12 again, with 6 at the bottom. However, the hours do not run steadily. In the morning, ‘6’ is always sunrise, and in the evening, ‘6’ is always sunset. True midnight and true noon always occur at ‘12’. It is likely that the moon hand points now to the full moon, at 6. The moon hand is mid-sized; the astrological hand smallest, and the sun’s hand longest. The astrological hand is likely in Virgo, coming close to Libra.

Characters with architecture, engineering, or other skills that might let them assess the quality of the castle will see it as a fairly standard piece of work. Some design ideas were seriously flawed (the walls of the inner bailey would not normally be so close to the walls of the outer bailey). The castle’s design was enough to fend off normal attacks by orcs and goblins, and keep out wildlife, but probably contributed to its fall when met with a more determined effort. Given the size of the attacking army, however, it isn’t clear how successful a better design would have been.

The clock and the dungeon are, to characters with the skill to see it, clearly of far better quality than the rest of the castle. To those who can recognize it, both are of Dwarven workmanship.