The Ruins of Rystanburg Castle

Once one of the greatest and most powerful military fortresses in The Kaldari Highlands, the ancestral home of The Koslov Noble Family sits as an abandoned ruin overlooking the massive city of Rystanburg, a constant reminder of the price for insurrection and rebellion against The Eternal Empire.

Purpose / Function

Originally constructed in the earliest days of Kaldaria to serve as a defensive fortification overlooking The Central Highland Region of Kaldaria expansions continued to be added to the original fortress to increase it's military and cutural power as the The Port City of Rystanburg grew in both size and population. At it's peak in the fifteenth millennia, the castle served as the ancestral home of the noble family of Koslov, who served as Lord Paramount of The Central Highland Region of Kaldaria leading into The Inheritance War.
After its destruction in during The Naval Siege of Rystanburg, the castle was ordered to remain a ruin by the victorious Alvain Alliance, who felt the broken castle would serve as a potent reminder of rebellion. While the ruins has been walled off and trespassing into the old castle grounds is illegal, the ruins have become a haven for illegal activity and ill intentions from the retches of life in Rystanburg. Two hundred years after it's destruction, the ruin has become an complex maze of broken stairs, corridors, and tunnels intersecting with the cavernous bedrock the castle was originally built on. Those that are foolish enough to brave the ruins often do so for lack of a better option, as its lawlessness is often the only choice for those who with do conduct business guaranteed to be outside of the eyes of the authorities.

Alterations

Since its abandonment by the Koslovs, the ruins now serve as the absolute bottom rung of Rystanburg society. A festering hive of criminals, refugees, and the diseases, the surface of the ruins is pocketed by small groups of shanty huts and dig ins filled with the sort of rabble that even The Squalor's Nest District would find unsuitable. Rumors of the exact nature of the sort living in these ruins is varied, with stories of treacherous and ferocious monsters mixed in with sympathetic tales of non-human refugees retreating into the ruins after finding no other place to take them in the greater city. 
IN truth the citizens who call the The Ruins of Rystanburg Castle as their home are a group as diverse as the greater city as a whole. Most of the subcultures living within the ruins have been forced to create tight familial bonds between unlikely allies just to be able to survive the cold winter nights in Central Highland Region

Architecture

Constructed in the traditional Eastern Gothic style that remains popular in Kaldaria today, the castle was once a menacing and impressive symbol of Kaldari strength and determination. Constructed as both a political and military seat of power, the castle boasted six massive turrets extending out into the sea, connected together by a heavily reinforced bridge network. The six towers were regarded as an impressive architectural feat that is still emulated to this day, however the bridges and most of the towers now rest beneath the surface of sea, the ambitions of the architect's design no match for the unprecedented bombardment the fortress castle took during The Naval Siege of Rystanburg.

History

No sooner had the dust settled on The Inheritance War, then looters began to venture into the shattered castle in search of stolen riches. With the wounds of the war still so fresh, the capitulated lord of Rystanburg was forced to watch from a distance as his ancestral home was desecrated but the world of his cities populace. The remaining city guard did their best to deter looters, but with their numbers so few after years of war they were simply unable to enforce the vast avenues trespassers were able to access in order to reach the castle's ruins. Those that were unfortunate enough to be captured by the guard were punished harshly and arbitrarily by the residing Lord Koslov. At it's peak in the summer following the end of war the city executed 23 trespassers onto the castle grounds in a single afternoon. The spectacle of the mass execution was designed to deter further trespassing and looting, however all it did was ensure that those who wished to access the castle grounds did so more carefully. Few were willing to risk the lord's justice for venturing into the grounds, but the wealth being extracted from the grounds was far too great to be ignored completely. Instead it created an underground market of professional ruin raiders who could ensure extraction of specific heirlooms, relics, or even recover the bodies of lost loved ones when the castle fell, often being commissioned by the reputable denizens of the city. This new market brought an unprecedented amount of legitimate silver into the city's criminal population who in turn rapidly expanded the city's organized crime network. Many of the wealthy "legitimate" merchant families in Rystanburg made their first fistfuls of silver in this trade - a dark and embarrassing past that their descendants are determined to hide.
Other families, like The Magia Family instead doubled down on their interests in the city's criminal underworld, ensuring a level of control and legitimacy of the underworld that few other families can boast of.

Tourism

With official travel exploration or ventures into the ruins all but completely restricted by the empire, those who find their business requiring them to venture into the castle's ruins are best to slip through cracks in the ruin's perimeter wall without the city guard seeing, or perhaps barter through access in some of the many underground passageways that are rumored to connect the ruin to the city's expansive underground network of sewer tunnels and catacombs.
For most of the citizens of Rystanburg, the ruined castle simply lurks on the horizon as a constant reminder of the shame they feel in the role they played in the rebellion, and the ultimate formation of [The Eternal Empire. For others however, the ruins represent a part of their pride and heritage that was stolen from them by the alvain centuries ago, and instead builds upon an every growing sentiment of rage and humiliation that only grows with each passing generation.

RUINED STRUCTURE
15074 AoA

Founding Date

14681 AoA

Alternative Names

Former ancestral home of the Koslov Family

Type

Castle

Parent Location

The Port City of Rystanburg

Owner

Victor Koslov, Lord Paramount of Rystanburg

Owning Organization

Kaldaria