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| Building a Castle |
---------------------
The merchant guild contains the masonry spell which allows
you to build a castle.  There are various rules about where
the foundation, or first room of a castle may be located, so
consult with your local merchant while you are picking a
location for your new home.

There are various things to keep in mind while building a
castle.  First and foremost is placement.  If returning to
your castle at the end of the day is problematic with the 
location you have picked out, then you may want to consider
finding a new spot.

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| Enhancing your Castle |
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Each room a merchant creates for your castle has a generic
description.  If you would like to give your castle a custom
look, you may ask a merchant for a 'paintbrush'.  This
magical item allows you to redescribe any room in your 
castle, but is only usable once, so be sure to have your new
room description planned and ready.

If your castle has a number of residents, you might want to
consider adding a board as well.  This board allows your 
residents to leave notes to each other, as well as allow you
the castle owner to post notes of interest to all castle
tenants.

Most dwellings have doors.  A merchant can add a door to your
castle to add protection.  The level of protection a door 
offers is related to the cost of the door.  For current
information on doors and the base cost of each door, check
out 'help spell locksmithing'.

Another spell you may want to take advantage of is the
'stone shielding' spell.  This is available from your local
geomancer or yamabushi member and effectively seals a room 
from anyone or anything attempting to teleport in.  This is 
especially handy for  keeping demons and angels out during 
the demon and angel events.

Though not specifically a part of castles, chests and boxes 
are a main reason why someone would purchase a castle.  
Castles are safe zones where you can drop your chests and 
boxes for saving equipment over a reboot.  Help spell 
'create chest' shows the current base costs for chests and 
boxes.

Merchants, provided they have a gem to use, can also put 
traps on your castle doors and chests.  Traps help ward off 
any  potential intruders and/or thieves.

For the ultimate in defense, contact your local alchemist.  
A castle can't always be defended by you, the player.  In 
order to rest a little easier at night, you can hire an
alchemist to construct golems for you.  These creatures 
guard the halls of your castle and attack anyone who is not 
a friend to the castle.

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| Maintaining your Castle |
---------------------------

Wear and tear can be repaired with the repair castle spell.
This can occur from a variety of factors, mostly event-based.
Castles that get in too bad repair can eventually collapse.

Older castles and castles built by merchants with a low % in 
the masonry spell are not very sturdy.  This can be remedied
however, provided enough gold.  Merchants are able to use
their knowledge of masonry to upgrade the maximum condition a
castle may be repaired to.  The cost of an upgrade is highly
variable, based on the skill of the merchant you hire, and
the current maximum condition of the castle itself.

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| Castle Defense |
------------------
Golems - Guard the corridors of your castle and/or
         attack intruders on sight

Doors - The best defense against intruders without
        the pick locks skill.  More expensive doors
        are more secure and may have traps

Chest traps - Merchants can create these out of gems
              they have a variety of effects on 
              hapless individuals who dial the wrong
              number on your combination locks.

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| Powers of a Castle Owner |
----------------------------
You may give your friends special privileges in your
castle on a room by room basis.  You can assign
privileges to a player with the command:

castle  

Privileges:
  friend - will not be attacked by automatic defenses 
  unfriend - removes a player from the friends list
  enemy - blocks player from entering the castle when
          set in the opening room, even if it becomes
          a settlement (see HELP SETTLEMENTS)
  unenemy - removes a player from the enemies list
  tenant - can change description of room or have a key
           made for a door in the room, and add friends
  lease - can do anything you can within that room only
          including creating adjacent rooms

New rooms built will inherit these attributes from 
the room they are added to.

There are other options which a castle owner may
change at will.  Among those are whether or not a
room is outdoors, has windows, or is light/dark.
A full listing of these abilities and the commands
for invoking them may be found while in your castle
by typing:

castle help

See also: castle descriptions