There are four sites near Longdendale that seem obvious as covenant locations. These are suitable either for player characters or, if they are settled in this area, a rival covenant.
Highstones
The simplest of the four suggested settings is at Highstones. This location was a Roman “fortlet”, a sort of waystation between the large fortress at Melandra and one further into the land of the Briganties. Where that was isn’t currently known but was possibly at Penistone. Highstones is in the deeply-wooded Longdendale valley. My notes say it is close to the manor house at Tintwhistle but to me it looks closer to Crowden.
The site is along the Roman road that runs up through the peaks, used to carry salt east. Characters here would do better to have an inn than a castle. The path over the peaks takes more than one day and the traditional starting point is Edale, and the first night stop is Crowden. Folkloristicaly there are five inns on this road.
When designing the fortlet my initial idea was to use the floorplan of a milefort. Mileforts are fortified gateways which the Romans placed along the two walls that separated off what’s now Scotland. The fortlet doesn’t have the tremendous cost of a full fort: but it’s small enough that the magi may have to place their sancta carefully. The space is roughly a square 50 meters across. The aura may be even smaller than this. There’s a small record for it
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1019061
Melandra Castle
Melandra Castle was a Roman fortress laid out in the traditional grid. The modern name suddenly appears in the record just after the site is rediscovered by an antiquarian. Archaeology seems to indicate a Celtic name like “Ardotalia”. It is on a Roman road that leads south to a fort called Navio near modern Brough. The road, in the modern day, is called Doctor’s Gate, which isn’t a period name. “Gate” in this sense is a Scandinavian word meaning “road”.
In 1220 it may have a small castle on it, but an alternative suggestion is that it was a royal hunting lodge. There are not a lot of peasants around a hunting lodge, but there are foresters and their families. Similarly there’s not a lot of cropland directly adjoining, but trade is possible with nearby supplements. This gives a larger Aura space and the possibility of Roman spectral armies.
Mouselow Castle
This is a Celtic hillfort which predates Melandra and it faces across a valley. It’s too small for the standard Roman camp layout, which may be why it was not reused. Local folklore says there were burials, either under cairns on the summit or beneath the entire mound. It also says the two castles used to rival each other: Romans in one and Celts in the other, or in a more recent version of the story from the “Legends of Longdendale” the Romano-British on one side and the Saxons on the other. The land between the two is said to be haunted by the warriors of each side. This space has some ready made defences, dry moat trenches, and plot hooks based on burials.
In 1220 it’s agricultural land that is difficult to plough because of the hillfort ditches. Characters could access it trivially.
Beeston Castle
When Ranulf de Blondeville gets back from the Holy Land in late 1220 he discovers that the king’s men are vacuuming up all of the spare land they can, so he decides to build three castles simultaneously on his larger properties. The one in Cheshire is at Beeston. Oddly he never lives there, nor do any of his heirs. The whole place is run by his constable, who lives in the gatehouse: this castle never has a keep.
Here we have a rich nobleman with something he wants: a castle. As an added bonus his design suits basic Terram magic better than many other castles. Beeston Castle still exists, and it’s on a rock outcrop with cliffs on three sides. His plan is to cut a trench through the fourth side and throw up walls and a gatehouse on the approach. The player characters might even be responsible for the sharp cliff faces: that’s simple Perdo Terram. It has some of the deepest wells of any castle in England. In real life they were dug but a magus could ignore the Minecraft rule of never mining directly down to carve a cylinder into the rock. There’s a piece or land that looks remarkably like a landing spot for flying animals in the inner ward. De Blondeville brings an architectural idea back from Egypt: the D shaped towers on his curtain walls are hollow so they can’t provide cover for besiegers who take the wall. For Terram magi that makes the towers a twisted wall rather than a Structure, and are thus easier to make.
One of the Major Site Boons in Covenants is a Natural Fortress and it is suitable here.
This covenant is all but unassailable because of peculiar geography that limits attackers to a single line of advance. A covenant in Scotland, for example, is sited on a headland that has sea cliffs on three sides. Only a curtain wall and a stout gatehouse are needed to retain it. Covenants in similarly defensible positions should take this Boon, which includes the defensive works used to secure the single direction of possible mundane attack. – Covenants p. 7.
When I wrote it I was thinking of Tantallon Castle in Scotland, but it suits this place as well. The art on English Heritage shows the benefits of the site.
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/beeston-castle-and-woodland-park/history/
Games From Folktales 