Bit earlier this month than usual but I liked this one a lot, and it's good for general fantasy writing as well as RPG world-building:
Why Castles are Abandoned
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Abandoned ruins, perhaps especially castles, are a fun place to explore in fantasy, including TTRPGs. Castles can vary from enormous to little more than a tower, they can have settlements nearby or be isolated, and their ruins can be almost entirely intact or mostly rubble. They also make handy lairs for villains and bandits, nests for monsters, and haunts for ghosts and spectres.
But why do castles become abandoned?
Why Castles are Built
One of the first questions to ask is why a castle is built in the first place. If the reasoning behind this changes then the castle might be abandoned even if wholly intact. Castles are fortifications which naturally means they have a military role, but what is this?
Is a castle there to provide troops to safeguard trade caravans from brigands? To protect imports arriving by ship? Is it a major bastion against a deadly rival, or is it simply there to act as a glorified watchtower?
If the reasoning for its foundation is changed, the castle may no longer be worth the expense of maintenance. However, they are very costly to build in the first place, so there should be some reason for having them. It might simply be that a lordly family believes their status requires them to have a suitably impressive home. But there should be some reason behind it.
Environmental Catastrophe
In a pinch, you can’t go wrong with an earthquake. A castle falling to bits because of this is eminently possible, especially in a kingdom where earthquakes are rare. Somewhere that has them often will probably build in a way to make them more resistant (Chinese pagodas and Japanese castles are very different to European castles) but even the strongest castle can be brought low by a strong enough earthquake.
Water matters a lot. If a castle’s water supply dries up or the river changes course that can be enough to make the expense of solving the problem too high. This is even more the case if the water gets contaminated with poison.
Coastal erosion is another strong possibility. If half the castle has fallen into the sea, the king might well conclude the surviving half is not worth rebuilding. Similarly, if water levels are rising this could be a good way of having a mixed environment, with twelve feet of water totally submerging the ground floor and making the floor above difficult terrain due to the depth of water.
Economic Changes
On the other side of things, if a castle is built to protect a port but the river has been depositing sediment and the coast has gradually been moving further and further from the harbour it might lose trade and eventually not be worth protecting.
Castles could well be built to protect valuable but finite resources. If the nearby silver or gold mine is exhausted, the castle may be abandoned as there’s nothing to guard any more.
But let’s say the gold mine is still going strong. If the castle guards the road east but the trading partner that way has imposed an embargo due to a diplomatic bust-up then, if it lasts long enough, this may make that particular fort redundant.
The general economic picture should also be considered. A castle might be fulfilling a useful purpose, but if the kingdom’s short of cash for whatever reason then some forts may be abandoned to make ends meet. On the other hand, if the economy is flourishing, perhaps a new, better castle will be built, and the outdated older one will be abandoned in favour of the newer, better fort.
Conquest, Politics, and Plague
Border raids are a good reason for having a castle. But if they stop occurring, then the need for the castle vanishes too. There are multiple reasons this could happen. One kingdom could conquer another. Or there could be a marriage alliance. Or maybe one side throws up an impenetrable magical barrier and the raids are no more.
Plague is good for a lot of things in world-building. It can devastate a region so there’s insufficient manpower for many castles to be maintained. Or it can wipe out the livestock so there’s no reason to go raiding any more, and thus no need for the castle that previously helped guard against such shenanigans.
There’s also the instance of full-blown societal collapse. This doesn’t happen very often, but the departure of the Romans from Great Britain provides a pretty good example. Major walled settlements were simply abandoned. The Anglo-Saxons conquered what would become England, and it took centuries for small kingdoms to coalesce into big ones before finally England was founded by the House of Wessex. Alfred the Great, and probably before him the other kings of Wessex and Mercia, built forts and fortified settlements throughout the land, but this was about half a millennium after the Romans left.
New Threats
New threats can render even the most impressive fortifications too weak. The walls of Constantinople were famously fearsome, only falling to the bizarre Fourth Crusade and the eventual onslaught of the Ottomans. However, the latter were aided by the advance in gunpowder weaponry that didn’t exist when the walls were constructed. In addition to newfangled technology like that, a castle might become obsolete if new enemies emerge.
Twenty foot high walls might be fine against bandits, but versus invading frost giants it might be rather less effective. And against flying monsters it wouldn’t do much at all. In that circumstance, subterranean fortifications might be preferred, or castles with arcane protection.
Stolen Stone and Crumbling Foundations
Even if a castle is entirely intact upon abandonment it can be missing pieces decades down the line. This is because stone is great for housing but expensive. Nearby peasants may well take the stone from the castle to bolster their own homes. Without maintenance, the castle will gradually feel the effects of erosion and time. And burrowing monsters could make the foundations crumble all the faster.
Mongoose
