[Freebuild] Castle Construction

[Grover]

The Tales of Lady Gwenllian

Spoiler

0. Introduction 
1. The arrival of Lady Gwenllian aboard the Cedar Serpent
2. Scouting a Site
3. Early Spring in Prenmôr
4. The Fishery and Shrine at Prenmôr
5. Opening of the Prenmôr Quarry
6. Concert in Prenmôr   
  6a. Fish Fryday!
  6b. Highway From Hell
  6c. The Dead Drop
7. What will Tomorrow Bring?   
  7a. Rumors
  7b. Palisade
8. Ambassador Gisela
9. Prenmôr Forge
10. Castle Palisade
11. Brewery at Prenmôr
12. Trade in Prenmôr

Castle Construction at Prenmôr

The winter in Prenmôr had been cold but largely uneventful.  No more work on the castle was possible with the cold weather, which prevented any new mortar from setting, and the partially built walls were covered with straw and daub to insulate them until spring.  Aside from winter brewing, which kept Lady Gwenllian and some of her household busy, there was little to do besides repairs and sharpening tools.

The same had not been true for Ambassador Gisela.  Gisela had learned from her father Staffen that the revenge for her brother's death was at hand, and she had traveled back to Varlyrio to take part.  The usual fraught and overly complex machinations Varlyrio was known for had transpired, but this time her father wound up on the losing side.  Staffen had been betrayed by cowards, as she told it, and Poppa had been kidnapped in Kaliphlin from her secret location, with her bodyguard Tsiri, the Kaliphlin Champion, having been murdered in the process.  Gisela, ruthless as ever, had bribed, threatened, and eviscerated her way through the secrecy surrounding the kidnapping, and, again as she told it, rescued her sister from a fortified residence in Kaliphlin where she was held captive by mercenaries paid by the De Carlo family who (at the time) sat in the Rego's chair in Varlyrio.

Presently, Lady Gwenllian walked through the brisk spring air, observing progress on the castle construction with Gisela and her younger sister Poppa struggling to keep up with their long strides.  Mohatu, ever watchful, trailed not far behind.

"So you did not have to fight the De Carlos?" Lady Gwenllian asked.

"No, m'lady, only the mercenaries, who were no match for our hired muscle.  The De Carlos had left Poppa with them, since they themselves were too incapacitated from the qui amat capras disease."

"Isn't that the uniquely caprine venereal affliction arising from direct contact?" Lady Gwenllian asked.

"Yes," Gisela nodded. "It is fatal and victims deteriorate quickly once symptoms appear, but it can lay dormant for years.  Fortunately, it cannot be passed from person to person.  Unfortunately, or so it would appear, there was a family proclivity for a, er.... herd mentality, since few of the De Carlos were spared," Gisela quipped.

"I guess that's one way to ... goat," Lady Gwenllian commented, smirking at her own jest and rather proud of herself for being able to make a pun in the Historican language that was still at times a little new to her.  "I am glad that you are back.  The winter allowed some fine brewing, and we are now have a large stock to sell.  Are you ready to find  some trading partners?" she asked.

Gisela smiled her crooked, mischievous smile.  Seeing the expression on Gisela's face, Poppa skipped a step, understanding the trouble it meant.  However, she knew that Gisela's scheming would not be directed at her, so she picked her skirt hem up off the ground a bit more and ran forward another few steps to catch up.

"Yes, I believe there are some nearby dwarven communities that are always thirsty," Gisela said.

Lady Gwenllian nodded her approval.  "We will need plenty of gold to finish the structure."  She turned to face the construction and nodded toward the workers.

Gisela and Poppa watched the work with her.  "Why are the walls so thick, m'lady?" Poppa asked.

Lady Gwenllian smiled.  "The walls are thick to stop rocks and other devices fired from siege equipment, and to hold all the weight of the stone above."  She pointed to the round tower and wall section being constructed in front of them.

 "The lower part of the wall flares out, and is called a batter.  It not only strengthens the construction because the base is wider than the top, but it also deflects missiles dropped from the defenders on the wall above out into the attackers below."

Poppa's eyes widened.

"The inner and outer part of the wall is solid stone that is held together with mortar, but the inside is filled with gravel, lime, and other small rocks.  This provides solidity and also pours out onto attackers if the wall is ever breached, say, with a battering ram."

Lady Gwenllian pointed to the scaffolding. 

"The walls are built with natural placement for scaffolding.  The workers call them 'putlog' holes, and logs are stuck into these recesses in the stone wall.  These form a ramp upward, and are braced to the ground with other logs.  To these are added a ramp and then further supports.  Every so often, there is another set of holes.  In this way, ramped scaffolding all around the structure allows workers to slide heavy mortar, stones, or gravel up the ramp without having to lift and carry it up stairs."

"Putlog holes at the top of the wall are even and allow for hoardings to be installed on the walk in times of war.  These project out over the wall and allow cover for defenders to drop missiles and other weaponry onto attackers."

Poppa watched the workers for a while, fascinated with all the simple, yet rather ingenious engineering and design principles that went into this structure.

Gisela tugged at Poppa's sleeve.  "Let us return to Lady Gwenllian's house.  You shall remain under constant guard until we are assured the threat from Varlyrio is passed, and that may not be for some time."

Lady Gwenllian nodded, and turned to Poppa, bending over and putting her massive hand on Poppa's small shoulder. 

"I give you my word I will protect you while you remain in my care," she said to Poppa, who smiled up at the enormous warrior.  Lady Gwenllian couldn't be sure, but she thought she saw a slight smile of approval on Muhato's leonine face out of the corner of her eye.

 

----------

Well, it has been a while!  After my (hopefully final) move, it took quite a while to get the house fixed up and my Lego collection organized, but I am back in business now and hope to be putting out some more builds soon!  It took me some time to learn how to insert images now that BBCode is gone, and I'm still unsure how to do spoilers or if that is even possible, so hopefully this post isn't too cluttered.

Glad to have Lady G moving along again, and hope that we can get some new fires lit here in the guilds.  As always, C&C welcome!

Edited June 24 by Grover

[Basiliscus]

Brilliant work! Love the inclusion of my characters and I really enjoyed the way you managed to extract them from their perilous predicament following the last story update. Great job too on the microscale model of the castle. Whilst I'm not building much myself these days, I look forward to reading more of your stories!

[jtooker]

Great build! The stone techniques are great, especially the 1x2 cheese slopes are the bottom.  I may have to steal this technique sometime.  It works well with the round tower too.

 

Congrats on the move/setup.

[Grover]

9 hours ago, Basiliscus said:

Brilliant work! Love the inclusion of my characters and I really enjoyed the way you managed to extract them from their perilous predicament following the last story update. Great job too on the microscale model of the castle. Whilst I'm not building much myself these days, I look forward to reading more of your stories!

Thank you!  I am glad you enjoy seeing your characters stories weaving into some of the Avalonian story.  I'll keep them going and when you have time, you can stop in and read!  The microscale is kind of funny, I'm not a huge microscale fan, but I keep updating the microscale build for every story drop I have so one can monitor the progression of the castle build as it happens!

4 hours ago, jtooker said:

Great build! The stone techniques are great, especially the 1x2 cheese slopes are the bottom.  I may have to steal this technique sometime.  It works well with the round tower too.

 

Congrats on the move/setup.

Thanks!  I spent a lot of time with the stone setup.  The batter is a little fiddly, as are the round walls, but I'm really happy with the look and stability.  As the castle walls go up, I'm going to stick with the technique and will hopefully have removable floors.  I still have to figure out how to incorporate the arrow loops and the windows on the round tower, but it's coming along!

And thanks for the congrats on the move/setup.  As anyone who has moved with a Lego collection knows, it is *not* easy to do.  My last place was a temporary rental and I was there almost 3 years.  Sooo glad to have a permanent space again.

I'm hoping that we can get some more action back into the Guilds soon!

[SimWies]

What a great build @Grover. Love it! It really feels alive, almost as if one could hear the bustling sounds of such a construction site.  I especially like the round tower under construction!

[T-86(swebrickLUG)]

Great build and continuation of your Prenmôr-storyline @Grover

A truly bustling scene where the highlights for me are the angled lower section of the walls, the spill from the bricklayers, the guy pushing a cart of stone and so on! 
 

You have also managed to do something I never really succeed with myself, using both fleshes and traditional yellow heads!

Glad to see someone building for Avalonia again. Makes me want to get back to building for my Dandelume-story again. Perhaps I’ll  doubledip for the summer joust!?

Take care and keep up the good work!

[Kai NRG]

I love the dark brown tracks left by the wagon, that's a really great detail.  These kind of WIP builds are always fun, and yours is so full of activity with all the animals running around, makes for an entertaining build!

[Grover]

On 5/11/2025 at 11:23 PM, SimWies said:

What a great build @Grover. Love it! It really feels alive, almost as if one could hear the bustling sounds of such a construction site.  I especially like the round tower under construction!

Thanks!  I tried to make the whole place seem like things were moving, so glad it came across!  The round tower has been a design I've been working on and refining ever since I found the original I based it on over on the innova lug website (which now gives me errors).  I have a pic in a spoiler below for anyone interested on how it's constructed.

Spoiler

This round tower uses SNOT tiles attached to snot plates, holding onto normal studs on top plates and bricks via friction when held front and back by a brick.  It is solid and load bearing all the way down, can be almost any radius, and is largely free form, which works for interior and exterior curves. The only issue is, as you see here, when the space between inner and outer walls is thin, it's hard to get larger fingers in between them.

I spent a long time trying various techniques, and none of them looked as good and were as sturdy as this.  Although it is parts intensive, I'm very happy with the look.

 

22 hours ago, T-86(swebrickLUG) said:

Great build and continuation of your Prenmôr-storyline @Grover

A truly bustling scene where the highlights for me are the angled lower section of the walls, the spill from the bricklayers, the guy pushing a cart of stone and so on! 
 

You have also managed to do something I never really succeed with myself, using both fleshes and traditional yellow heads!

Glad to see someone building for Avalonia again. Makes me want to get back to building for my Dandelume-story again. Perhaps I’ll  doubledip for the summer joust!?

Take care and keep up the good work!

Thank you!  I try to go for realism as much as I can (although it is a fantasy world, so I prefer the term 'realism' over 'historically accurate').  I was fascinated about the 'putlog' holes when I read about them and knew I needed to build a castle under construction scene out of Lego.  One other fun fact: over 2/3 of all livestock in the medieval period was fowl!  So I have tried to incorporate as many chickens as possible, as they generally ran everywhere in the medieval period.  Since Prenmôr is on the coast, I also try to add seagulls (and whitewash) as much as possible. 

I tend to use the fleshies and yellow heads to signify various lineages.  Usually, the fleshies signify some sort of non-human ancestry in my Lego world, so you see a lot of elf and dwarf fleshies, but there are definitely exceptions. 

12 hours ago, Kai NRG said:

I love the dark brown tracks left by the wagon, that's a really great detail.  These kind of WIP builds are always fun, and yours is so full of activity with all the animals running around, makes for an entertaining build!

Thanks!  I tried to make the darker dirt freshly torn up by wagon wheels and thought the dark brown underneath brought that out, although admittedly it used almost all my dark brown!  I have been collecting it for a while, but broke quite a bit on this build since the older dark brown was brittle.  Not sure if that is fixed now or not.