The Castle of the Barony of Breathnach is actually much much older and bigger than the current inhabitants are aware of.
Back during the war of the gods (4 thousand years or so) the castle of Breathnach was originally the great human fortress called Breawerch Hold . It was one of the largest and peculiar ones ever built by humans. There were many smaller ones built subsequently, inspired by it, but none ever managed to rival it. It was strong enough to rival even the best of dwarven or elven forts.It gave the gods a bit of a headache… which is impressive.
Breawerch Hold was not built by the hero who was claiming the throne of the gods, it was built instead by a clan leader who wanted to protect his people from the increasingly hostile world they lived in. He had some … interesting methods.
A bit of background
Humans were not known for their abilities building in the Greenlands preferring instead to live a simple farming, or semi nomadic lifestyle. This was because for a very long time there were not a lot of humans. Only those who had accidentally fallen into this world and their descendants. Humans when they did build, built small homes made of wood, mud and thatch, very rarely built in stone . Human royalty and courts were usually held in open air in sacred groves, or in big colourful tents. Humans traveled on foot or horseback or boats. They belonged to roving clans who would wander The Greenlands trading with anyone who would take them.
Because of this, the number of humans in the Greenlands was not apparent, and it seemed quite small. When the wars broke out, the world became increasingly hostile to humans. Smaller clans were being wiped out by the angry magical folk. Because of this humans took to sticking together more, and it became apparent quite quickly that there were, in fact, quite a lot of humans in the Greenlands. Much more humans then the gods had originally thought, and these humans had iron and now travelled together in vast and dangerous war bands.
One of the leaders of one of the biggest human war bands, settled himself down in the most defensible area he could find and decided to reinforce the area, to create a safe haven for his people. His actions brought all of the lesser human clans in the area to him.
The disparate humans pooled their resources and set about building a fortress to protect them and their families. Some humans had attempted this before but they rarely produced anything of note. Breawerch Hold was to be different and unlike anything the world had seen before.
The Building of the fortress
As with many things the humans rarely made anything new, instead took pre existing ideas, and adapted them in, lets say, creative ways. This modus operandi is very effective.
Because many of the human builders had lived among dwarves for a while, and because humans are not powerful enchanters like many of the other races, Breawerch Hold had quite a lot of similarities with dwarven fortresses. But a lot of it was definitely human. No other race would do the insane things they did.
The fortress was an interesting challenge to build, as it had to not only handle physical attacks, but it also had to withstand magical attacks. It really was a tour de force that took 15 years to build fully to completion. It was destroyed 25 years later in one of the biggest battles of the God war. The fortress was worked on solely by humans and their servants. In the time of war and uncertainty, the king did not trust any other race not to sell out the fort’s secrets.
The first part to be built was the underground tunnels and storage rooms. These were stolen straight out of the dwarven fortress manual, of course made bigger for human heights. The humans dug a great network of tunnels and lined them with iron and spell cancelling materials. Since magic is limited to what its caster can think of (i.e its not limited) … the humans building the fortress really get … creative with their solutions. Human spell work has a reputation for being extremely homebrew and well, creative. With absolutely no moral compass. There were many spells used in the building of this fortress that would make even the darkest of gods question their purpose in life. But if it worked and would help the humans survive, the king wanted it.
You have to remember that this castle was built during a period of great unrest. The building grounds would often become a battlefield. More and more humans came to it, hoping for safety in numbers. The people lived there in tents mainly, creating wooden and enchanted fortifications. It was a time where everyone slept in their armor. Once the tunnels were built, the humans finally had a safe place to store food and belongings, and hide their families when attacks occurred. A lot of the settlement then moved underground.
Many of the local Greenlands magical folk would attack constantly trying to destroy the fortress and get rid of the humans. But that didn’t do much, as the numbers of humans kept rising, as more and more came to join the fighting and building. So larger enemies start taking notice of Breawerch Hold, and the battles got worse.
The Perimeter Walll
In between this constant fighting the humans managed to built the outer perimeter walls. These walls were star shaped, 40 feet tall and around 10 feet thick. They circled an area roughly a kilometer diameter.
These perimeter walls did not have towers, but were lined with makeshift siege engines it was mainly a heavy duty deterrent. Its outside was coated with broken shards of metal and stone. It also was covered in heavy duty shielding and deterrent spells of all kinds. Poison, spikes, curses, wraiths, barriers, pain spells, spells of all kinds were carved into those walls. The walls themselves were full of talismans, and enchanted items. Many of the stones themselves were made of material that were known to make non-humans sick. It was even said that many human mages put their own bodies into the walls. As you can imagine, the bad Juju of this place was of epic proportions. Any elf or any of the sensitive folk not heavily trained in combat and heavily shielded could not go within three to four miles of the place. Normal Plants growing unprotected would die within a mile.
This perimeter wall was guarded by two kilometers of explosives, traps, and tricking enchantments like mazes. It only had two roads that were safe to take all year round to get to it.These two roads were basically armoured tunnels. Once the perimeter walls were built the humans moved inside and released a wide variety of unpleasant servant creatures outside the walls that would attack anyone who was not on the heavily guarded main roads. This was quite efficient for dealing with the goblin kind and anyone who would try to sneak in. For a while this atrocity of a place was at peace. This was because all the civilised magical beings, including the demon folk were too busy staring at it in shock wondering if the humans had gone insane.
The Outer Wall
The outer wall was built around 200 meters away from the perimeter, its shape was a less pronounced star. It was built higher than the outer wall by ten more feet, and was reinforced by guard towers along it. All along the top of this wall were embedded platforms and crenelations from which humans could fight. This wall was thinner than the perimeter wall, relying instead on its height and turrets. It also was less cavalier with its spells protecting it. Instead choosing more wholesome spells, so that the humans inside would be less affected.
The inner walls were built as battlements to the castle inside. These walls were a rough circle and were almost as thick as the outer walls, but were hollow in many places. Inside these walls were the fortress itself. The fortress itself had six big main towers each seven stories high with great flat platforms on the top of them. Spread between these were the actual castle buildings that meandered on for miles. The caste itself was about four stories high, but its basement went down another four stories. One of its main defenses was its maze like structure. It waa huge heavy squat stone affair. The windows were small, the walls were five feet thick at the smallest. Underground as a testament to human ingenuity, there grew magical gardens lit by spells to feed the fortresses’ people in time of siege.
These underground tunnels were a unique feature of this castle, stolen from the dwarves. They were used as storage for food, weapons, and people. Each room was enforced with iron and spells so that most asters would have great difficulty moving the earth. The storage rooms and tunnels ran all under the fortress and were split by the walls. No tunnel went underneath the walls though. Instead the earth underneath the wall foundations is so filled with curses and bad juju that if any fool was to dig under them they would immediately regret their existence.
The whole castle was an interesting place, in that it was simultaneously the most cursed and safest place for humans on the greenlands. The place was cursed in that most of the defences used every kind of spell you could imagine from the holiest of spells to the foulest of blood magic. The sheer amount of magic in some places meant that people who lived in them would have to wear really powerful protection talismans at all times and would have to cycle out quite regularly.
It was a place so messed up that only a human would live there, because the rest of the races were not suicidal.
The fall of the fortress
Breathnack castle finally had its defenses tested seriously four years after it was completed. The hero heard of this great fortres for human and decided to go test it out against the gods. The king of the castle was the son of the man who had originally set about building it. He could not outright refuse the hero, as he was human and he had sworn to protect all humans, but … Since the hero was now in such a powerful fortress of course his enemies attacked. The war was brutal. The castle was tested to its limits, it almost fell many times but somehow, its horrible peculiarities always managed to save the day somehow. It was very heavily damaged though.
It finally fell in the last great battle before the sun and the moon sealed away all enchantments. Breathnack’s fall was well remembered in the magical world as the humans in it determined that, if they were to fall, they would at least take a lot of their enemy with them. The ensuing destruction was horrific. Noone survived that battle. Not even the fortress.
The current Breathnach castle sits in the ruins of the previous one. It is built out of the remains of one of the guard towers and west wings. It was rebuilt very crudely by humans about a thousand years after it fell. At this point all magic had been cleansed from the area, and apart from a few weird weapons and bones popping up every now and then, the small castle is very much a peaceful place. The humans have long forgotten what this place used to be, only remembering that there always was a castle there.
It is abhorred by all members of the magical races old enough to remember what it is though.
Current day
The current Breathnack castle is only four stories, it has a great hall, a solarium, and an armory. It has a lot of lesser buildings tacked into the side of it inside its walls. The walls are only standard medieval castle thickness (four feet), and are around 30 feet tall. It still has access to some of the very shallow tunnels, but only the unes directly under the castle, as almost all the other tunnels were toppled when the castle first fell.
