Raised by a talented Wizard-Noble of old Phalorm, the Seven Spires is a small ornate castle made of seven overlapping towers set on the edge of the Neverwinter woods.

The small castle was used officially as a research space for the wizard-noble, but also served as an escape from court politics in the young war-based nation of Phalorm, and as a watch point over the growing orc menace in the region. Being fairly close to the settlement of Neverwinter, ties were maintained with that growing settlement and information about the movement of the orcs was exchanged.

The Seven Spires were unfortunately built on a dirt plain where bedrock was too deep to dig down to. In time this means the spires are doomed to slow collapse as the weight of the towers presses down and outwards on the foundations.

Whether or not Phalorm survives the orc hordes it was meant to defy (it doesn’t, the orcs destroy it less than a century after it was founded), there is only so much time before the years will do the orcs’ work for them and the towers begin to collapse upon themselves. Less than 900 years later, the seven spires will look more like a jagged collection of broken teeth than the castle as shown here.

With full credit to Mike Schley for the original Cragmaw Castle map upon which this is based. I love that map and found it really inspirational.

After posting this, I talked to Ed Greenwood about Cragmaw Castle. Turns out it was one of three identical-layout “Castle Crag” fortresses, all built and designed by the same man, Konstal Cragar (whom very few humans knew was a mere front for a dwarf stronghold-building firm run by Clan Blackstone). The other two Castle Crags were in Cormyr (became Castle Kilgrave in the TSR-published Realms) and (ruined and overgrown) in Shadowdale.

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