Warrenhold

"When she was building it, Stasya considered Warrenhold to be an investment in humanity itself. She wanted this place to change the world."

―Voreese

Warrenhold is a castle created by Stasya Orlov and currently owned by Hector. ===

Layout

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Warrenhold is composed of eight towers, of which only the Entry Tower actually reached above the surface. The rest of the castle is entirely underground in a huge natural cavern. The towers are connected by bridges, although some of these appear to be damaged at present. Inside the Tower of Night is a pit that goes all the way down to the Undercrust. This pit, named Warrenhole or Do’orach, was there long before Warrenhold was built, and was the reason why it was built where it was. Only six of the eight towers were ever named, since Warrenhold was never used in its intended capacity and those two towers were only ever used for storage. The eight underground towers all boasted twenty-four floors, with the exception of two--those being the Star Tower, which only had its top nine and a half floors, and the Entry Tower, which required thirty-two in order to reach the surface.  Expectedly, the Tower of Night was shown to be the largest with an average of twelve rooms per floor compared to the others’ averages between seven and ten. In total, the castle had seventy-one lavatories, twenty-five hearths, six gathering halls, four kitchens, four adjacent bathhouses, one multilevel library, eight rainbow shrines, and then about six hundred empty rooms of undesignated function. This was not counting any of the buildings above ground or in the lake below Warrenhold. 

Entry Tower

The Entry Tower was not the largest, but it was still the tallest by an extra third, as it was the only tower to reach all the way up to the surface. And according to Voreeese, it was also one of the things that made Warrenhold so easily defensible. Any invading force had only two options: storm the bottlenecking Entry Tower or dig through forty-six meters of nearly solid rock. 

Star Tower

The Star Tower was unquestionably the shortest and smallest of the eight. It was the one that was half-destroyed and hanging from the ceiling. Voreese seemed surprised at the sight of it and unfortunately couldn’t explain how or when that had happened.

Tower of Night

Larger than all the others and composed entirely of nightrock, it was still completely intact. Even its doors were nightrock, uniquely made so that they would slide horizontally instead of needing to be pushed or pulled open. Voreese said that Stasya did this because the doors were too heavy for normal people and that the locking mechanism for them had also been quite far ahead of its time. 

The remaining two had never received names--or at least not ones that Voreese was aware of--because they had never really been used for anything other than storage.

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Material

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The primary building material of Warrenhold was going to be a special Integrator-made stone called Nightrock. Nightrock had a number of interesting traits. Unfortunately, the process of creating nightrock was too time-consuming even for Stasya, and she ended up only building one tower and an inner sanctum in each other tower out of it. Nightrock has several interesting properties:

• Extreme durability: Nightrock is not indestructible, but it can stand up to a huge amount of damage before it will break. Voreese claimed that it would require someone of Harper's level or higher to damage it.

• Regeneration: even if it does get damaged, Nightrock will naturally repair itself over time. This was incredibly impressive, especially for the time. Even with more modern techniques, Haqq was extremely impressed with himself just for creating the regenerating material of Hector's Magic Shield, which was tiny compared to an entire castle.
• Aura of dread: The stone of Warrenhold radiates a faint "taste of death" which causes creeping unease in any living thing that approaches. People who have had the effect explained to them can tune it out, and servants do not even notice, but in animals and uninformed humans the unease will gradually escalate to full-blown terror. Very unintelligent animals like rodents or bugs are affected most strongly. This was originally intended as a pest control measure, since Stasya had a particular dislike of insects.

The rest of the castle is also made out of special stone, but it only has a measure of Nightrock's unnatural durability and the feeling of dread, with no ability to self-repair.

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Purpose

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The original purpose of Warrenhold was to serve as a trade center that would allow commerce between the surface world and the Undercrust. Unfortunately, This purpose was never realized and Stasya died without ever earning the respect she deserved both for her plans and her accomplishments. Hector never asked Voreese how Stasya died, because he assumed that the story would be very sad.

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History

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At several times in history Warrenhold was inhabited by kings and besieged by invading forces. Its defenses were only ever breached once, and that was only because the defenders allowed invading forces in so that the war could end. More recently, Hector was made Lord of Warrenhold and given the opportunity to restore and rebuild it. He made some progress before being called away to meet the Rainlords. After Parson's attack, the Rainlords accepted Hector's offer of sanctuary and made Warrenhold their base of operations, later joined by some of the Sandlords after the defeat at Uego Desert.