Dragon Warriors

It's hard to find a decent picture of a motte & bailey castle on the Internet. Usually, they're very neat; with an even motte and a nice, nearly circular bailey...

...So I was quite pleased to see this reconstruction drawing of a small motte & bailey castle, such as DW characters might encounter in the northern lands of Ellesland.

(Taking my cue from DW Book 6, page 22; “the perfect gentle knight of an elegant castle in, say, Chaubrette cuts a very different figure from his rough Elleslandic cousin, sitting in a draughty keep, clutching a wench in one hand and a brimming mead-horn in the other” - I tend to see castles in Ellesland as more 'primitive' than those of the Coradian states. The further south in Ellesland you travel, the more wooden forts are replaced by stone keeps and curtain walls... As you cross the sea to the mainland, the castles start to get more elaborate - with extra towers, gateworks, &c.)

The attached image is a reconstruction of Halton Castle, in Lancashire in the late 11th Century.

Today, only the motte and some earthworks remain. I'm attaching a plan of the site from Mary Higham’s short piece, "The Mottes of North Lancashire, Lonsdale and South Cumbria", 1991.
(Should anyone be interested.)

Another motte and bailey - somewhat larger this time, with shell keep and adjacent town. I'm not certain, but I believe it's a reconstruction of Totnes (Devon) in the late 11th Century.*
* If someone knows otherwise, please feel free to correct me!

I like this image, as it gives a good idea of the size and layout of an early medieval town (and might assist when drawing town plans). Note the space between buildings and walls - space for cultivation. Densely-packed cities (so popular in fantasy fiction) are largely a product of the late Medieval and the Renaissance period.

What do you do with that old Selentine fort on your lands that's slowly crumbling into ruin? Do you raid it for stone? Or do you simply build your castle (and town) in one corner of the ready-made defences? Patch up the worst holes et voilà... The Selentines left their mark on the land, and I'm sure more than one lord would have made use of these old fortresses.

(Reconstruction of Leicester Castle in the late 11th Century.)