The Lore of Castle Silva (Textural Concepts and Design)

Castle Silva is also well known for their advanced use in medicine practices, combining ancient clerical magic with modern (still medieval, moving out of the dark ages though) medicinal practices.

Castle Silva’s halls are adorned with nothing but the finest of tapestries, silk and crushed velvets, illustrious vases, various paintings from the kingdom’s finests artists hand picked by his highness himself, etc.

Castle Silva is nestled between an old stronghold of the ancient dwarven race who left more than it’s share of valuable artifacts and an abandoned dwarven mine that still can be mined, long after it was abandoned. The dwarves that mined there, peacefully coexisted with another ancient race, the gnomes.

The gnomes drew up the schematics for many of the machines that were used to mine precious gold, silver (ancient silver, mithril) and precious gemstones.

The dwarves foraged the machines and kept them working in excellent condition.

The peace treaty between both races were kept as long as the dwarves kept the gnomes safe from any and all threats that should ever befallen the gnomes’ race.

Since both races depended upon each other for survival, the gnomes for their advanced technology and the dwarves for their vast knowledge of wild game hunting and survival of harsh winters, the two races peacefully got along wonderfully. Both races also having a common shared interest, wealth from beneath the depths of those ancient mines.

The gold served as proper conduits for their advanced technology theories as well as payment for the dwarves services.

So by the time the kingdom of Silva settled there, the mines weren’t that much weathered and could be easily revived again by the race of men, after the early clerics started decoding/translating those as ancient schematics left buried by the dwarves in the stronghold. (This is closely linked to the hidden level in HoC, The Workshop. The Workshop level consists of the later internal machinery ran by both the dwarves and gnomes. The level’s end boss is named, ‘The Greater Machine’)