Aidona Keep

The keep towered far above Lida and here family, built as it was on the Acropolis. Although Lida had never been up to the Acropolis, much less inside the keep itself, its silhouette dominated the darkened skyline of Aidona and she could have drawn it in perfect detail without a single glance.

Aidona Keep is the seat of power in Aidona. It is a large castle that sits on the Acropolis and is visible from most places in the hub. It houses the lord of Aidona as well as the hall in which council meetings take place.

Architecture

Aidona Keep is constructed from large blocks of gray stone. Its walls have been sanded and polished until smooth and flat. The outer walls are thick, around ten feet wide and thirty feet tall, with an interior hallway about twenty feet up that runs the length of the outer walls. This hallway has narrow windows every twenty feet that face both the castle's courtyard and the hub outside. This allows the patrols that are stationed along the wall to have visibility on both sides in case of an attack. The top of the walls is walkable, with a crenellated parapet facing the outer edge.

There are four towers on the outer wall, one on each of the northwest, northeast, southeast and southwest corners. They rise about ten feet higher than the rest of the wall and have crenellated parapets behind which guards will patrol.

Inside the outer wall, the keep itself is a large and squared building about the same height as its towers. It has four stories and is built out of the same grey stone blocks. The addition of the west wing had made the keep into an L-shape. It is more intricately decorated than the outer walls, with larger windows and plenty of decorative carvings. There are decorative columns along the length of each of its walls, and the builders of the expansion worked hard to match the architectural style of the original building, creating a cohesive appearance as though it had all been built at the same time.

The keep contains a vast number of rooms for a wide variety of purposes. The lord of Aidona has their own set of private rooms - including 3 bedrooms, a private dining room, a parlor, and a private library are among these. There are also the large rooms which the public can, under certain occasions, visit. There is an audience chamber for the public to bring their concerns to the lord, as well as a large ballroom and grand dinging hall which are used on occasion for grand balls, feasts, and other festivities. The keep has a large staff, who are also housed in the building, a large kitchen, several smaller dining rooms for more private functions, numerous offices for some government employees, and a council hall where the lord meets with their council.

The keep's courtyard has been altered many times over the course of its existence, as its function is usually up to the lord who is currently staying in the keep. It currently has a wide, paved pathway which runs between the main gates of the outer wall and the keep as well as some water features and a mushroom garden.

History

Construction on Aidona Keep began in AV 1102, after the hub had grown large enough to necessitate the election of a lord. The first lord requested that a keep be constructed to house them as well as to serve as a place for the lord's council to meet. The planning itself took around a year to finalize the architecture of the building and to ensure there were opportunities for the keep to be expanded as needed.

The keep was built using gray stone blocks pulled from the mines. Aidona was very efficient about the products extracted from its mines, but the high demand for stone blocks for the keep put a strain on relations between the miners and the government, as the mine workers now had to dig specifically for the stone rather than handing off their excess, as that excess was not generated nearly as quickly as it was being used. More, less experienced miners had to be hired, which shortened tempers further as less experienced workers were more of a liability and could do more harm than good. Construction on the keep had to be stopped altogether in AV 1104 while the new hires were trained. It resumed in AV 1105 once the mine workers felt that it was safe to proceed with the stone excavations.

The keep took almost ten years to finish between the delays and the sheer amount of work required to extract the stone, process it into blocks, transport it between facilities and the keep, and to place each block securely.

In AV 1321, the keep's first expansion was authorized, owing to the hub's population growth which elicited the need for more administrative staff and thus more places to house them. The plans were finalized in AV 1328, but the expansion was halted due to the increasing number of outsiders visiting for the Obelisks which put great stress on Aidonian industries and took the lord's attention away from directing the construction. It was decided to put the plans on hold until things settled down enough to focus on the expansion, but this did not happen until after Aidona was sealed in AV 1339. Construction finally began in AV 1343, four years after the shutdown began, and although there was no current need for an increase in administrative staff due to the gates closing, the expansion moved ahead as planned in anticipation of future need. This new section, called the West Wing, was finished in AV 1349 and then left unused until after the hub reconnected with the outside world in AV 1387.

An earthquake in AV 1541 led to the destruction of part of the outer wall of the keep, which was built on the edge of the Acropolis. The eastern edge of the Acropolis, as well as the wall above it, crumbled down onto the street below, injuring a few but thankfully causing no mortalities. Because it was only the outer wall, the castle grounds were simply shifted to allow room for a new wall. The cliffs all the way around the Acropolis were then reinforced with pillars to prevent such a collapse from occurring again.

Founding Date

AV 1102

Type

Keep

Parent Location

Aidona