Castle Lutwill

Castle Lutwill was the fortified manor of Baron Lutwill, one of the many petty barons of Tethyr during that country's Interregnum period.

Location
The castle was located east of the village of Masamont, which was north of the Sulduskoon River.

Structure
The castle's keep was made of stone and stood four stories tall. It sat upon a motte, an artificial hill, surrounded by a courtyard with walls. These walls were made of dressed stone and had sloped roofs but no crenelations. The wall itself was surrounded by a ditch partially filled with trash. A permanent bridge of wood crossed the ditch leading to the oaken gate. A long, flat, stone building served as the barracks. The door to the separate inner keep was iron-reinforced oak and was about in thickness, and it had arrow-slits for windows.

Interior
The keep was candle-lit. Curved staircases connected the floors.

The second floor contained straw-stuffed pallets for sleeping for the guards.

The top floor of the keep was a penthouse, separated from the rest of the keep by a heavy trapdoor. This was the baron's chambers. It was decorated with smelly animal pelts and tapestries. Silken pillows served for reclining. The windows of penthouse were thick, wavy glass and iron instead of arrow-slits like on the floors below.

Defenses
A detachment of trained guards, wearing steel helmet caps and hauberks, defended the castle.

Inhabitants
The castle was the home of Baron Lutwill. His chamberlain was a man named Whimberton.

History
In the middle of the month of Eleasias, in the, Baron Lutwill sent out a proclamation doubling the taxes on his subjects, which included the villages of Tweyar, Pansemil, Dunod, and Masamont. The villagers were at the time under training by Star Protective Services. Some of the villagers wished to fight back, and Zaranda Star agreed to aid them. She led them on a scouting party to Masamont to determine the strength of Castle Lutwill's fortifications.

Around seven days later, on the same evening when earlier in the day Baron Lutwill had sent out half his soldiers to collect the taxes, Farlorn Half-Elven and Golden Dawn approached the castle from the east, disguised as Fyadros, the Incomparably Wonderful Bard, and Zizzy, the Wonder Horse. "Fyadros" convinced Whimberton to let them stay the night to entertain the keep's inhabitants.

Well after midnight, Zaranda led her band of 50&mdash;including the members of Star Protective Services, Balmeric's mercenaries, and half of her trainees from among the local villages who had been selected by lot from volunteers&mdash;to the castle. She muffled the hoofs of the horses, and they reached the walls without incident. Farlorn lowered a rope to her over the wall, and she climbed up, and padded ladders were used for the raiders to climb up. Farlorn had killed the two sentries. Nevertheless, someone spotted them and sounded an alarm, and a crossbowman from among Lutwill's soldiers killed one of the peasants climbing a ladder, beginning the battle.

Zaranda sent a fireball into the barracks below, then ordered Shield of Innocence to lead a group down to it to fight any survivors of the magic blast. The gate was opened to let the rest of her raiders into the courtyard, as Vander Stillhawk tried to take out the crossbowmen shooting from the slit windows of the keep. Zaranda rushed down to the gate of the keep and used a spell to open the massive door.

Once inside, Zaranda fought her way upstairs with her saber Crackletongue and her spells. Meanwhile, from higher up, Whimberton used a magic ball to send lightning bolts on the invaders in the courtyard. Zaranda rushed up to the penthouse, where Lutwill and Whimberton awaited her. She fought Lutwill, a large man with a double-headed battleaxe, but Whimberton trapped her with a holding spell. A spell cast by Chenowyn caused Whimerton to fall through one of the windows to his death, freeing Zaranda from her paralysis and allowing her to cover the baron's head with a wolf's pelt and stab him through the face.

In the end, Zaranda's invaders took the castle with a loss of ten of her volunteers.