Craefort - barbarian hill-fort/village

[Gamerprinter]

I'm starting a new D&D homebrew campaign, and at this moment more concerned with encounter locations than the region or world itself. Loosely working with my Celanta map - I'm gonna change it for this new campaign (cold on top, hot at the bottom), as well as having a Conan-esque flavor.

Unfortunately my players want D&D 3.5 fantasy, not sword and sorcery, so I'm taking out the demi-human races, but leaving the current level of magic, spell use and magic items. I want to be like Conan, like Jason and the Argonauts, like Odyseus, like Beowulf - the heroic age, and still keeping the players happy... this is a home brew.

The PCs will be barbarians from the cold north, a land still locked in the Ice Age with Plieostecene mammals (mastodons, cave bears, etc.), ogres, hags and giants with the last few remaining dragons in the world.

To the south are the Old Kingdoms (land of the Celts), the Empire of Cer and the Nine City-States further south, Egypt-like Umir (Lich Priest King) ruling a desert kingdom steeped in magic south of that, a steaming jungle rich with monsters and ruins beyond that, and a ruin of lost city from a past age at the horn at the World's End - only sea is south of that... it is the Campaign to World's End.

[WIP form, no furnishings yet...]

Craefort is a hill fort village, inhabited by the nine extended families of the Pictish Great Clan, Crae. The fort is built against a hill, with a stockade of great Sentinel Spruce trunks surrounds the base of the fort pierced by a single gate. The fort is really a network of interlocking longhouses, with larger common areas between.

1. The main entry to the fort from the yard with the stockade, is called the Hounds Hall, as the forts hounds are kept here, the houndmaster is quartered here with his dogs and family. The stablemaster and animal handlers of his extended family is in the longhouse chamber adjacent to the Hounds Hall, so he can be kept close to the stables in the yard. A ladder of stairs reaches the next level of the fortress.

2. Crafters Common and surrounding longhouse chambers belong to the various craftworkers of the clan including: timberwrights and woodcutters, spinners, wool-dyers and weavers, smiths and stoneworkers. Also on this level the longhouse chamber between areas 2 and 4 houses the Clan Sorcerer who works permanent enchantments through tattoos onto the clan warriors.

3. The old tower is a stone structure built by a Crae ancestor in a forgotten age long ago, the height of 3 stories, though only the base, stairs winding up to the roofed Watch Deck atop. The base serves as the fort's smithy, the most important craft of Crae. The Smiths longhouse chamber is beside the tower. A 10' rise of ladder steps access the tower from the chamber below.

4. The Chief's Great Hall - surrounded by the closest kin to the clanhead in four chambers. The men here serve the highest posts of the clan - Clan Druid, the Runemaster Bard and the Clan Champion, the longhouse chamber nearest the Great Hall, is Chief Malcolm Crae's abode. A short ladder of stairs rises from the Sorcerers chamber to halls of Crae.

I don't want my barbarians to be limited to warriors and shaman only, I desire a more complete culture of classes, though their isolation from the south still makes them barbarous in the comparison.

This will serve as the typical Pictish stronghold, though I may create a walled roundhouse farmhouse, a hamlet of 2 longhouses with a stockade, and a broch tower of a more powerful clan. Perhaps a couple monster caves too.

After that, I'm leaving the north and beginning the march south through the Old Kingdoms of Celts - the next part of the campaign to World's End!

GP

PS: I'll be adding those other encounter areas to this same thread.