Experiments in Khazad Architecture

[Jubal]

Experiments in Khazad Architecture

Introduction

So, I've been playing a lot of Return to Moria lately. It turns out that if you give me a) a game with the ability to make little buildings and living spaces and b) put that in a setting I have a lot of love for, compounded by c) a recurrence of the sort of brain health stuff that makes me really not want to face the world very much, I end up building a lot of tiny dwarf buildings.

The essential pitch of Return to Moria is that you, a dwarf, are trapped as part of an attempt to return to Moria in the Fourth Age of Middle-earth. Your party (the game allows for up to eight players in a hosted world) make your way through Khazad-dum, making encampments and constructing and forging things you need as you go and unlocking the lore to build more ancient dwarf-work along the way. Unlike in Tolkien's version, this Moria has more of a sense of day/night cycles, more plants and a fuller ecosystem, so one can be well underground and still have e.g. an area of elfin trees living under sun-stones placed there by Narvi when the dwarves were still elf-friends, and even in the mines there are oats, root vegetables, and the occasional wandering goat to forage.

This also allows for some varied biomes, which I've made use of to produce some quite varied ideas for different sorts of dwarf base. Given I'm usually playing solo I can't really revamp large areas - a sort of small fort with a few buildings is about the maximum defensible perimeter from orcs - but I can find a variety of different ways to build, and some of them are rather pretty.

So, somewhat inspired by Rob Haines' Elden Ring photo gallery, I thought I'd make a thread with a post series of the different pseudo-settlements I've built in the game-world inhabited by myself, Tash, and LincolnIvy (but I'm the host so I do the building when they're not around and we do adventuring when they have time). My dwarf, Umadatu (the name is Babylonian), features in a lot of the pictures. I'm going to roughly do them in the order they were founded in our game, though there may be out of sequence bits and I may add a few pictures of things I did that aren't bases.

Places Where Songs Are Heard in Durin's Halls
The Hearth-Halls of Westgate

[Jubal]

Westgate

Overview
Westgate is, as the name implies, at the western entrance where our dwarves were first trapped by a deeply unwise attempt to use blasting-fire to get in. They discover that the Doors of Durin are sealed by runes made with a creeping, lingering shadow: unable to get out, they resolve to go east. The first place they find is an encampment used by Balin's expedition at one point, largely ruined but with the remains of a hearth and an old map-stone still visible.

In our playthrough, Westgate as our first base camp also became the primary settling-place of our dwarves. A renovated hall contains places for smithing, brewing, and food-making, and smaller rooms and buildings around could house more dwarves if needed. A stout crenellated wall has been built across the eastward road into the mountain, and some barricades narrow the westward route: a few plots of earth allow for growing some berries and mushrooms, and fires burn on the walls. It is also where the spoils of the mountain are kept - the piles of gems, ingots, rare stones, wood, and other materials needed for life are carefully stacked around the place.

My aim has been very much to make it a place where one could imagine returning from a cold night foraging and opening a dark door in a wall to fires burning inside and a welcome ready, and I hope I've succeeded at that.

Pictures

Views from the West

The Main Square

The Hearth-Hall

From the East Gate and Overlook

Detailed notes
As one might expect I started with the central 'hearth-hall' and then built a bridge over the road to some of the mining veins and scaffolding over the other side. This area I initially used for overflow storage as one had to go through the base, up, and over the road to reach it, making it relatively safe. Building a secondary hearth made it easier to do the storage side.

The next phase was building the crenellated curtain wall to slow orc attacks from the east. I still need to replace this with something stronger than regular stone, but it generally does the trick. On the west side I opted for only open barriers to the (also stone-repaired) bridge. I used roof sections as sort of front-barriers to help direct attackers into a smaller space while keeping defences low enough to be easy to shoot over.

Having done these elements, and expanded the base to allow for them, the large ruined brewery building was now inside the base anyway, and we'd unlocked granite which matched its construction, so I got on and worked on that, repairing (in places knocking extra holes in and then renovating in a slightly renewed style) each floor of the building. As of time of writing we still don't have ironwood so most of the actual brewing equipment is still broken.

The last stage to date was adding in an extra large adamant column pillar on which are propped two more single-room lodgings: these aren't very practical because it takes a while to get up to them but I might yet find a use for them. I've also recently converted some of the storage areas opposite the main hall into actual little homely buildings. Adding more lighting and flags has also helped make the place feel more like it could be a home as well. One of the things about RtM is that the survival element rather pushes against overexpansion and creating personal space for characters, because it's convenient to have all of one's facilities as close together as possible, so the hearth-hall is still the primary workshop, social space, food space, and sacred space all in one.

Will I add more to Westgate? I'd like to, but hard to know. A further building around the corner has been renovated but not added to the base yet because I'm nervous of the perimeter size, though possibly if I just slap a reinforced adamant wall in place then that'll be secure enough to not need to worry excessively.

[Jubal]

Hordeshall

Overview
Hordeshall, so named because it's the first place you get a horde event in the game upon descending into the mines, is one of the simpler bits of architecture, and was the second base to be built. The "camp" in an old building gives a fairly pre-made square start: the main additions were simply repairs and a big ol' tower at the front to give a fortified, castle feel.

I decided to reflect that feel on the inside, keeping the lighting relatively dim and based around candles/candelabras with a lot of wall banners for decoration. It's a less cluttered, less cosy space than the Westgate hearth-hall, which I think reflects what I was aiming for pretty well.

This place was a major base for the mines when we were doing those areas: I don't go there as often now.

Pictures

Exterior

Interior

Detailed notes
Not much detail to add here, excepting insofar as possible expansions go. One obvious addition would be replacing some or all of the tower with Adamant, the current Granite is (comparatively) flimsy. I could also make a larger tower: one issue with it at the moment is that it requires rope ladders to move between levels, which are slower than stairs.

Beyond upgrades, turning the outer area where Umadatu is standing in the pictures into more of a courtyard is something I've considered (and indeed a way I've developed this site in other worlds, which may be why I've not done so in this one).

[Jubal]

Trollhome

Overview
Trollhome was the fourth, rather than third, settlement founded in my main run, but it is in the mines and so "goes with" Hordeshall perhaps more than with Deeplight, the main Lower Deeps base.

Unlike a lot of other bases which were made to give us a quick base for exploring an area, Trollhome was built very rapidly on the fly - it was the first place I and my two co-players actually fought a troll. As part of this, we essentially rock-carved a gallery in a tunnel too small for the troll to get into and were fighting with hit and run missiles and dodging the large rocks it was throwing. Our weapons weren't great, though, and we needed supplies. Supplies like food, so I retreated a bit and built us a little fire and a table so we could have a mid-battle snack where the angry troll couldn't reach us. Thus was Trollhome born.

I built Trollhome into what might be my favourite settlement I've built in Return to Moria. Unlike a lot of other settlements built in larger and more open spaces, Trollhome has a lot of dead-end passages, which I capped off with walls and turned into separate houses. The centre of the village construction I filled up with plants of different sorts, with a few workshop bits available in the main building. It provides a nice little semi-fortified location and a very cute village as a result.

Pictures

Outer Walls

Main Village Centre - Overviews

Main Village Centre - Aesthetic shots

Interiors

Detailed notes
Not a ton to say here - Trollhome uses the simpler end of RtM's kit, using the rougher early-game stone walls and basic bedrolls to keep a more rustic and cosier feel to the place.

I've been wondering about where I can, or indeed should, adapt Trollhome to be liveable for NPCs in the expansion, as it could be a really nice micro-settlement. I think the main problem for that is the size. The NPCs can't really deal with rope ladders, and too much of the construction here is built around them to save on floor space. I might have a go at it sometime, though.