Ultimate Castle Building Challenge

[SowZ]

You have one million gold pieces and all WOTC sources, (including dragon.) Your castle must house and feed one thousand people, (level one commoners,) without the need for outside provisions. It must encompass one square mile. Extra comforts and entertainment is optional, but nice. You are a level five expert. Any spell can be cast for DMG prices. Any magic item or material is obtainable. You cannot hire any permanent denizens beyond your thousand commoners. Make the castle as impenetrable and defensible as possible.

[Demonic_Spoon]

Can we choose the commoner's race? If not, what race are they, human?

My expert specializes in Knowledge(Religion)(skill ranks, feats, items(including scrolls) etc), buys a knife of sacrifice, makes a altar, and sacrifices one of the commoners to the dark gods. He wishes for a ring of wishes. Wish Loop. He resurrects the sacrificed commoner. Builds a opulent square-mile filling fortress of decadence. Fine silk beds and furniture, the finest cuisine prepared by world class chefs, renowned bards hired to relaxing music to the commoners, a big library because why not, etc. The servants are not "hired", they're enslaved.

[SowZ]

Can we choose the commoner's race? If not, what race are they, human?

My expert specializes in Knowledge(Religion)(skill ranks, feats, items(including scrolls) etc), buys a knife of sacrifice, makes a altar, and sacrifices one of the commoners to the dark gods. He wishes for a ring of wishes. Wish Loop. He resurrects the sacrificed commoner. Builds a opulent square-mile filling fortress of decadence. Fine silk beds and furniture, the finest cuisine prepared by world class chefs, renowned bards hired to relaxing music to the commoners, a big library because why not, etc. The servants are not "hired", they're enslaved.

Hmm, cool, cool. Let's do round 2. This time, no wish or infinite money loops, please. But good call, good call.

[Story]

One obvious approach is to buy dozens of Lyres of Building along with golems to continuously play them. But unfortunately, you need 48 to continually protect every 300ft radius sphere, so if it really has to be a square mile, that's not so feasible.

[ninjamaster1991]

I pay a Wizard to cast Genesis a few times. At slightly over 26k GP* per casting, I could get 37 castings, plus some left over. However, a demiplane a mile wide** takes exactly 30 castings, for a total of 800,000*** gold, give or take. Now, with that 200k**** gp, I can pay for the Permanencied Gate (or some item) to and from the demiplane, and the things like houses and farms for the plane to protect.

Edit: Crud, forgot to finish the footnotes, and made my insanecryptic ramblings slightly clearer.

*: 26,530 gold pieces, to be exact.
**: 30 sequential Genesissies Genesi Geneses gives a diameter of exactly 5400 feet.
***: 795900 gp, but that last 4100 can go to the wizard for over 2 months of labor.
****: 204100 gp, and this is getting ridiculous.

[relytdan]

THE DWARVEN REDOUBT
Stronghold Size: 141 stronghold spaces
Total Stronghold Cost: 600,000 gp
land upto 1 square mile not much more than 100,000
leaves 300k for upkeep & or dragons...

[Captnq]

How long do those commoners need to live?

What I'm saying is, Zombies stack much easier and don't complain about benefits as much.

[SowZ]

Interesting solutions. Golems would be interesting, but how would you keep the castle safe? Preventing teleportation and such. The demiplane idea is definitely solid.

Assume that the commoners should live normal length lives and will birth children at a rate equal to that which they die at.

[shaikujin]

Some ideas:

1) Build an underground lair (preferrable shaped like a flying saucer or Millenium Falcon) that's apprx 1 square mile, but only ever 20" high (2 floors, since some of the wondrous architecture only reaches 20")

2) Build it out of hewn stone (Cost of hewn stone walls is free if stronghold is underground). Since cost is 0 gp, it takes no time to build it, so instant fortress!

3) Assign the entire square mile of the lair as 1 single stronghold space (stronghold spaces are normally 20 x 20 x 20 ft, but stronghold builder's guide does mention that it can be any size)

4) Add all the mobility modes including max speed, burrow, fly, teleport and plane shift. Only 1 stronghold space, so this would be cheap.

5) Add all beneficial modifications to the single stronghold space (those that do not indicate they only affect an x by x area, but the entire stronghold space), such as the ones that gives dimensional lock, haste, anti-scy, mindblank, gentle repose etc. Prevents enemies from finding and getting in without using Wish

6) Add those modifications that affects people entering it for a certain duration, such as the one that paralyzes anyone that enters it for a few rounds. So the commoners that have been living there for years would not be affected, but wizards that wish them selves into the stronghold will be paralyzed (I think there's a save to negate though).

For even more paranoia, add the one that does a Mordenkainen's Disjunction on anyone that enters the area.

Another effect would reduce undead to 1d4 hp (not "by 1d4", but "to 1d4")

7) Add the 11 d6 damage rotating blades to the the external walls

8) Add the reverse gravity effect that causes falling damage to anyone that enters


By now, this place is hard to find, and cannot be scry'ed. Any intruders that makes it to the outside walls and tries to manually break-in will take damage every round. For ranged and ranged siege attacks, the stronghold will teleport/planeshift/burrow/fly away.

Any one that somehow teleports in (such as via wish), will be paralyzed, MJD'd and be easy pickings for 1000 commoners.


9) Make free hewn stone walls internally to section areas off room-like areas to serve as sleeping quarters (but do not serve as additional stronghold space).

10) Make 2 entrances to the lair. Both guarded 24/7 in 6 hour shifts. Serves as mundane choke points

11) Give the stronghold that modifier that creates revenue. Specifically via farming of foodstuff (something that grows indoors without sunlight, say mushrooms and rothe from Underdark). It provides 1% annually as pure profit beyond labor costs and other expenses. I take it that "other expenses" would include the 5 sp daily to give the commoners 3 good meals a day.

They are also stockpiling 10,000 gp (1% of 1 million) worth of foodstuff every year.

12) Add some unseen servants to do the farming and other stuff

13) Everfull larder can supply 5 meals everytime it's opened. Hang it above a conveyor belt with the door facing down. Have an unseen servant open and close it 24/7. Everytime it's opened, 5 meals of food falls out (hope it's not soup) onto a converyor belt. I guess the unseen servant can open it once a round normally. But the entire stronghold space is under haste. So double rate.

10 meals evey round. That's 7,200 meals every 24 hours. 1000 commoners would need 3000 meals a day. Net gain of 4,200 meals daily.

Gentle repose means nothing rots.

Conveyor belt (made of free hewn stone of course) stretches throughout area designated as dining area, like those sushi restaraunt. Food that reaches the end of the belt is stored into stockpile.

Power provided by a couple of decanter of endless water which powers a couple of watermill for power/automatiion, provides fresh water and also waters the farms.

Several bags of devouring will serve as disposal for excess stockpile and waste products.

14) Permanancied Gust of Wind to provide fresh air and air-conditioning (lots of body heat generated by 1000 warm bodies).

15) Another few unseen servants will be tasked with walking around in circular routes, strumming a lyre of building. Strumming it (1 standard action) will cause a 300 foot radius area to be immune from damage for 30 mins.

Each route will be designed so that they can cover as much area as possible before reaching the starting point again every 30 mins.

All routes combined to so that all parts of the stronghold is covered continuously with invulnerability.

Or, a series of conveyor belts (in safely covered conduits) moving fast enough to move an unseen servant 600 ft a round. Weee!! Or waterslides powered by decanters of endless water.

Or just use a series of platforms of jaunting each 600 ft apart for max efficiency. Only 49 are required to ensure the 1 square mile stronghold is entirely covered by 300 ft radius (600 ft diameter) lyre of building.

Allows quick deployment of commoners to areas under attack.

Should be really cheap.