Example Strongholds

Now that you know all about how to put a stronghold together, as well as what kind of components you can use to do so, here are a few examples of how to go about doing it.

You can use any of the five strongholds listed in this chapter straight out of the book. Present your favorite to your Dungeon Master and say, “This is what I want.” Then you need only come up with the gold and wait for the building and decorating crews to work their magic—figuratively and (sometimes) literally. Note that the stronghold costs listed below may be altered by your choice of location, and don’t include the costs of hiring or equipping staff.

Of course, there’s no reason for you to go with a prebuilt home straight out of the catalog. Feel free to make as many modifications as you like. Add on a few rooms. Maybe play around with building an outpost or two as an adjunct to the main place. The work done here may only be the impetus to get you rolling on your architectural masterpiece, but you have to start somewhere. Even if you end up straying far from the examples listed here, by the time you’re done reading this chapter you should have a better idea about how things are done.

The chapter begins with something simple, the kind of cheap (read: “inexpensive”) keep that many characters aspire to own when starting out, unwise in the ways of the world and impressed by just about anything new that they see. Think of this as a “starter” stronghold. By the time you can afford to build something like this, you’re probably thinking about working your way up to a nicer model.

Then we move on to something truly unusual: an undersea coral castle deep beneath the waves off the coast of some distant land. It may be easiest for water breathers to live in such a place, but that doesn’t mean it’s entirely off limits to landlubbers.

From there, we descend deep underground, into a dwarven redoubt far from the waters and the sun. It’s the kind of home that only a dwarf would love, but he would love it with a passion unmatched by few. Carved out of mountain stone, this place is rock-solid in more ways than one.

After that, we shoot upward into the clouds, to explore a floating tower in the sky. Life far above may be relatively quiet, but it presents its own kinds of troubles, even for the kind of spellcaster powerful enough to build and maintain such a magnificent place.

Last, we wander straight off the face of the planet— right out of the Material Plane, in fact—and into the most fantastic stronghold of all: the citadel of the planes. This amazing building exists in several different worlds at once, a fact that is both its greatest strength and its worst weakness.