Tags
Dungeons & Dragons, Fantasy, Labyrinth Lord, Maps, postaday2011, RPG, Urban
Another scan from my dollar-store notebook, Perrol-on-the-Mount is a mountaintop settlement within a set of fortified walls from one of my Labyrinth Lord campaigns. The original fortress is on the Eastern side of the mount, and the walls have expanded to include a large number of homes and shops that have built up here over the years.
Perrol-on-the-Mount
As usual, feel free to use this in your games, and if you want to do something cool with it on your blog, let me know about it and I’ll promote it here too!
You’ve made some beautiful maps! I made similar maps at one point — well for stories/novels that never materialized…. A few more of your posts and I’ll probably be inspired to start again….
Dyson, yet another example of your AWESOMNESS!! I like this one, a great self contained city….Rock On!!!
looks nice, but I would doubt that the city really expanded like that. Most likely it first expanded a bit and then the local rulers decided to create a bit bigger area inside the walls for further expansion covering most of the hilltop.
Might be interesting to know who would be the people left out of the city wall when there still seems to be room in the city. It might show that it would be people opf a minority. Maybe some inn or brothel, or some other ethnic minority. (maybe the hobbits have to leave every night and are not allowed inside the walls due to their inherent thievishness)
What?
I studied history. It’s a reflex.
Uhh, Geoffrey, many cities (I’m a medievalist) were completely encircled by walls…. And only later did they expand outside of the walls as the population grew….
so am I. And while many cities were encircled completely many had laws that had the intention of keeping the unwanted out and the “decent” folks in. Which lead to small settlements close to the city which were not covered by the wall.
Also in many cases walls were an afterthought which only came up when the citizens started to really emancipate themselves from their local lord.
In the case of Perrol-on-the-Mount I would assume that the fortress was one of the first buildings here, which then attracted other settlers (with the fortress as a center of trade and commerce in the area).
By the way, Perrol does not only have people living outside the gates, they also have an additional, unconnected small area in the north-eastern corner. How did that happen?
Geoffrey: Cool! Medievalists! I guess I’m more thinking of Italian hill towns which are often to this day completely surrounded by walls. I’m not denying that some had communities outside of the walls as well, but even many motte and bailey structures in England were built completely AROUND the existing town.
I’m not schooled in the period, but I do have a bit more than a passing interest…
It looks to me like the structure on the far right is the original stronghold/keep similar to a Norman Keep and was expanded to the immediate surroundings during a time of strife so that the gully across the front formed a natural moat-like defense.
To me, it looks like the portions to the left of that gully are more recent additions that came about to include a budding merchant presense (sp?) that was using the road that comes from the west and turns north. This may explain the two larger spaces on the left as stock yards…
The space that confuses me is the circular area on the north face that has a path to it, but no clear passage into the city proper… There are obviously watch towers in the corners, but the specific segregation from the city proper makes me wonder if this a religious order or maybe even penal space.
The town has expanded in both times of peace and times of strife as you can see in the varying sizes of the defense works – some tight watch towers and some large diameter abutments that could serve as artillery spaces for trebuchets or possibly even cannons…
There doesn’t appear to be a thriving community outside the city walls, that leads me to think the gates get closed at night and the structures are mostly inns and taverns to serve travelors who arrive after dark.
This is obviously a time of peace for this society or the structures right against the outside portions of the wall would have been burned down to give the defenders visibility of anyone approaching the wall and to keep traitors well back from the masonry and foundations.
That’s the story it tells me… 🙂
I like this one. I might use it in my campaign for the one mining town in the mountains near the PCs starting kingdom. Very cool.
The upper left encapsulation was once a small walled fort. You can get from it to the city proper using doors now cut into the curtain wall, but there is no gate as such between them so heavy equipment is still moved in using the roads.
and thanks for all the interest!
Great map! I am totally stealing this for my Greyhawk campaign. I’m thinking maybe a city in Ratik that’s located in the Rakers or perhaps in Geoff, Sterich, or the Yeomanry since they border the Crystalmist Mts.
I do have a question, however. The shape on the left of the map that is located inside the city walls but looks like the outline of a copse of trees; what is that?
It is, indeed, trees.