Twin Falls Island

[DaltonSpence]

You know, in a fantasy world there are all sorts of reasons why a castle could be as large as it currently stands. However, if you do want to bring it down a touch, a real simple fix would be to modify the scale from 50 feet per square to 25. That would cut the square footage to 1/4 its current size.

The tower is ... well ... central to the purpose of the design, so changing its dimensions wouldn't work too well. Since the castle was mainly supposed to be residential and not military in purpose, I decided to remove the outer curtain wall and connected structures making the inner octogonal base the outer wall. This let me move the castle much closer tp the island's western tip, making it a bit more defensible. The ditch, pond and Castle Ditch Road were also moved west.

Also, as it stands, your bridges are a full 20 - 30 feet wide, enough for heavy vehicle traffic (wagons or something similar) to be going in both directions at once. If there are hundreds of vehicles crossing the bridge each day in both directions, or the builder was extremely aggressive, that makes sense. However, if you mean for this to be somewhat out of the way, then a reduction in scale could work for you here too by decreasing the bridge width to 10 - 15 feet, limiting vehicle traffic to one direction at a time.

The two lanes (16' between bridge walls, wide enough for two 6' wide oxcarts to carefully pass each other) were quite deliberate; I see this as the major trade route between the two nations. There is another fording place 50 miles upriver, but beyond that the Dioscuris is fed by the Great Freshwater Sea that runs eastward for hundreds of miles to the foothills of the Greater Divide. Trade to the west is impeded by the Lesser Divide and hostile Lowlanders.

One of the main duties of the gatehouse keepers is traffic control; if a wide-load wagon (larger than 6' across) is waiting to pass, an extra toll is levied and a flag goes up signalling the gatehouse opposite to halt all oncoming traffic. Since they have to wait until the incoming traffic already on the bridge arrives, such wagons usually travel in small convoys for convenience. This is only permitted at off-peak periods, and never at night for safety reasons.

EDIT: Changes to Tower.

--

Dalton "who has no clever tagline right now" Spence"