The Home of Lord Shaaladel

[Orryn Emrys]

I have an opportunity to run a side quest next week to extract an NPC from house arrest at the home of Lord Shaaladel in Calanis. The PCs are between adventure #7 (Trial of Echoed Souls) and #8 (O, Wintry Song of Agony) at about 14th level.

Does anyone have any ideas for what Shaaladel's residence might look like? It's the home (palace?) on an elven king in an elven city "built over a crescent rift carved out by a waterfall." I need to come up with a floorplan and everything, if anyone has any advice. (Or good floorplans for an elven palace, for that matter.)

Cheers!

 

[RangerWickett]

The two times it cropped up in my campaign, the PCs visited Shaaladel's palace because Rantle wanted to marry Shalosha. That didn't go over well. Then later, in their fight with Pilus (which was wildly different than the one published in adventure 11), they used the Torch to teleport the battle from the 'bridge' of the airship to the roof of Shaaladel's palace, which they knew had a dimensional lock. The torch, being an artifact, overcame the resistance, but no one was able to escape by teleportation. (The PCs were fed up with spellcasting badguys escaping at the last moment.)

So, layout? Hm. Ah wait, now I remember. The 'crescent rift' I had in mind was that two rivers meet at an obtuse angle, and they both cut the bedrock open into a massive waterfall. Like, draw a crescent moon. Each tip is a river flowing in, and the thick central area is where they meet, and their combined power carves open the earth so that there's this huge curtain of water.

Dinky pic, but here's my general idea of the layout.

A full palace would be grandiose and huge, but if you want something more manageable . . . I had a three-tier structure, with gardens on the roof of the first and second tier, and then the throne room (and guards and such) on the third tier. It's not intended as a fortress, but rather an estate, like Versailles. Lots of windows and mirrors, long hallways. Major guest rooms would be at the 'front' of the building (the end 3-tiers tall, facing out over the waterfall), because that's the best view.

 

[Orryn Emrys]

Thank you! That is extraordinarily helpful, sir!

I feel like I want to try to narratively summon some of the soft grandeur of Rivendell the way it was presented visually in the movies, but with an edge that befits Shaaladel's hard interior. I really like the tiered structure idea, as well. My take on Shaaladel actually makes an opulent palace fairly unlikely; I think my PCs assume that he's marginally out-of-touch with reality - as in caught up in his own version of events - but very hard and warlike in his ability to commit genocide. I want a place that both surprises them and validates their observations, so I think a manor-like estate that takes advantage of the awesome vista below is just about perfect.

I'll definitely need to construct some kind of floorplan and defenses, since we're likely looking at a midnight raid on Monday night.