Many moons ago, back when paper-and-pencil RPGs were kind of new, Dragon magazine issue #86 included an article featuring a castle with which I've been somewhat fascinated ever since. That article was called “Great Stoney: Build Your Own Carboard Castle” by Arthur Collins.

The castle was imagined originally as “The High Keep of the Grand Chapter of the Order of St. Raphael” (dubbed “Great Stoney”, for short) -- the implication being that this massive structure would serve as the headquarters and meeting place for an entire chapter of crusading knights. I've decided to re-imagine it a little, and give it a more Nordic/Viking “face-lift”, though I've kept the nickname because, frankly, I couldnt come up with anything catchier.

I built this castle in a private Realm. It is as close to the scale of the original floorplan as I could make it. The castle is octagonal in shape, about 132 blocks in diameter. Each story is five blocks tall. The perimeter walls are two stories tall and at least four blocks thick.

There are eight two-story perimeter towers, one three-story guard tower, and four five-story support towers. The main, central tower is eight stories tall, and there is a watchtower on top of the central tower that adds an additional three stories, for a total of eleven.

There is a main gatehouse and a postern gate, a stables, a two-story great hall with a third story above the great hall for lodging, as well as a main chapel (more like a cathedral) with a roof that tops out at five stories.

Beneath the castle are several rooms, to include a smoke-house, a brew-house, and a winery that I converted into a swimming pool just because. Also, a dungeon, crypts, a crypt chapel, and an armory.

It's about 85% finished: some of the roofs and floors need to be closed up, most of the rooms themselves need to be decorated, a lot of the windows still need to be put in, and so on. But the structure itself is essentially complete.

For the castle's exterior and most of the outbuildings in the Realm, I drew a lot of decorating inspiration from several well-known Minecrafters, namely: BigBadBam, 2G1A Tutorials, Jeracraft, and Jamziboy.

Some of the photos were taken in the Faithful texture pack, and others were taken in the Conquest texture pack. I built the castle in a snowy biome because I thought it looked more picturesque.

This my first major project in “Vanilla” Minecraft. I didn't use any mods or terrain editing software. The mountain on which the castle was built was cleared by hand in Survival mode, and the entire first level of the castle was done in Survival mode as well. After that, I lost patience and switched to Creative mode. :-) Still, the build took several weeks to complete.

Anyhow, feel free to leave any comments or ask any questions. Even though it took a long time to build, it was a lot of fun to do, and it was especially fun see a fantasy castle from my childhood come to life, so to speak.


Cheers,

Wolfpack_Six