Gaddr GamesDungeons and strongholds
Barrows, hollow hills, troll caves and orc mines to delve; ringforts, brochs, hillforts, ruined keeps and dragon lairs to conquer; their garrisons, lords and hoards, and how they fill again.
Dungeons and strongholds are laid across the Isles from the world seed, at their true size: from five minutes’ fighting to half an hour. Every cell of the land (about 900 m across with the default setting; 1,600 m when strongholds are rare, 650 m when they are everywhere) may hold one site. What kind it is follows the land and the area level.
Dungeons to delve
| Site | Where | Who holds it |
|---|---|---|
| Barrow | the downs and moors | the restless dead: skeletons, walking dead, barrow-wights |
| Hollow hill (Sidhe mound) | the old woods | the Aos Sí and their hosts |
| Troll cave | the uplands | trolls |
| Orc mine | the uplands | orc warbands |
Delves run one to three levels of ten to seventeen rooms, joined by stairwells: barrow passage tombs and corbelled crypts with cists, the domed round halls and pools of the hollow hills, troll caverns with stalagmites, timbered orc galleries with cart rails. There are guard rooms, shrines, forges and vaults, and the lord’s pillared hall on the deepest level.
Strongholds to conquer
| Site | Where | Who holds it |
|---|---|---|
| Ringfort (rath) | open country | orc warbands |
| Broch | the coasts | the Fomorians |
| Hillfort | hilltops | trolls and cyclopes |
| Ruined keep | across the land | liches and their dead |
| Dragon lair | high in the mountains | a dragon |
- Raths are bivallate (two banks and ditches) with a souterrain underground.
- Brochs stand in a village of wheelhouses.
- Hillforts have three ramparts and ditches some 160 m across following the hill, inturned gates with towers, a great hall, roundhouses, granaries and pens.
- Ruined keeps have a curtain wall with drum towers and a gatehouse, a ruined bailey, a four-storey keep and two levels of crypts.
- Dragon lairs descend through a chain of caverns to the hoard.
Garrisons and lords
Every site has a garrison, and its lord, named for the place (“Orc Chieftain of Ráth Dubh”). Defenders take their posts as you draw near. Garrisons and lords are as strong as the site’s area level, so a broch far from the first landing is a different fight from one near it.
- The first defeat of each lord gives a bonus skill point.
- Every lord laid low is told of: your renown grows where it fell, and most of all for a first victory.
- The lords of the land set charges against these places, and the guild board sends you to clear them or to bring back an heirloom from a hoard. See Towns, trade and the watch.
Chests and hoards
Sites hold chests, finer iron-bound chests, and the lord’s hoard, which gives twice the rolls of loot. Press E to throw one open and its loot spills out before it.
They fill again
Sites are pure functions of the seed, so nothing of their shape is saved, only what you did to them: who you killed, the chests you opened, what you dug. A site left empty of foes fills again three days after it was cleared.
If the Fair Folk are off
A world made without “the Fair Folk and other horrors” has only beasts: its strongholds stand empty of their lords’ darker kin.
Written from the game's source and content as of commit 02e81b2 (2026-11-01).