Stonebarrow is a territory awarded to Marcus in Bretthollz for his services against the Goblin Siege of the city.
Pre-Marcus[]
Stonebarrow was a rather small village, consisting only of about a dozen houses all facing on the main road with a small square in the middle. The only noteworthy thing about it was that all the buildings were mostly made out of stone, which made sense since this was a mining town.
The quarry was a few hundreds meters from the village, dug into the side of a wood-covered hill like a huge bite mark left by a colossal creature.
Post-Marcus[]
A strip of land, about 15 kilometres long and 8 kilometres wide, entirely covered in Mold Wax. The old hill was converted through a combination of greater excavation, gathering wood from the forest and layering everything in mold wax into a humongous labyrinthine structure that looked vaguely like a termite nest, with hundreds of mold-wax spires rising up to the sky while countless holes were opened in the ground itself. The quarry itself had become a plaza where at least two thousand warriors could easily gather, and it was protected by a three meters tall wall made of stone and mold-wax. In addition to this Marcus had his drones divert the course of a nearby river, creating a series of canals and moats around the hill that provided water to the Hive and would have worked as an additional obstacle against an invading army.
That said, there weren't any doors, nor gates or anything that could be closed, and these fortifications and defences couldn't really stop a determined and numerous invader. However, that wasn't their purpose, as they were there only to restrict the movements and slow down a potential enemy army, while also forming a series of chokepoints that the defenders could hold. And while the attackers were kept at bay, the Vex could use a network of subterranean tunnels that the Digger Drones had prepared to attack them from behind. These tunnels spanned almost the entirety of Marcus' lands, and their exits were virtually invisible as they were covered by a layer of mold-wax, and the Vex could use them to move unseen to a number of strategic locations, thus giving them a huge advantage in manoeuvring.
To anyone with enough tactical savvy, it would be clear that what Marcus had built was not a bastion to repel attacks, but rather a complex and lethal trap, meant to catch any invading army and inflict horrifying losses.
The old village of Stonebarrow was a lone island of green in the middle of a gray sea of mold-wax. Marcus had decided to keep the place as he had found it and surrounded by a few trees for the sake of his friends, who may have otherwise found the landscape unsettling.
Amenities[]
- Pool
- The pool was inside a four meter tall mold-wax dome with a single entrance that looked pretty much like an igloo. A small staircase descended a couple of meters under the ground and led to a single circular room. This room was occupied almost entirely by a huge pool made out of some sort of glazed ceramic, which was actually simple clay that Felix’s fire magic had baked into this shiny, porcelain-like substance. Near the pool there was a rudimentary tap, which was connected directly to the canals near the Hive through a series of mold-wax pipes. A soft, relaxing blue light filled the room, coming from the mold-wax lined walls and the roof. The whole place felt like some sort of luxury resort.
- Baths
- The old dome-like construction was gone, replaced by a much larger square building made of mold-wax and stone, with a very large chimney on the side. Inside the building there were a couple of pools, a very large one at the centre and a smaller one on the side. Unlike the previous bathhouse, the floor of this one was made of stone rather than mold-wax, and the reason for this change was that Marcus had installed a large furnace under this one, located right under the large pool of water. This way, the fire would heat up the stone and the water above it, providing warm water without needing a sorcerer to heat it up magically. The Vex Queen had taken inspiration by ancient roman thermae for this building, in particular the so called tepidarium, and keeping in line with that design he had also installed a second, smaller pool of cold water, a frigidarium, to cool himself up after a hot bath. He had also installed some decisively non-roman features, including the shower he wanted to use right now. Ch 130