I know a demiplane would be easier, but let's say you needed a sanctuary on golarian.
You're extremely wealthy and powerful in whatever form you prefer.
How would you do it?
Unpleasant environment / difficult to reach seems like a good start. Middle of the desert or top of a mountain.
4. Doesn't work; reverse gravity does nothing about pressure. The pressure from the surrounding core material is of course incredible.
Where did steps 5, 6 & 8 go BTW?
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I would build a simple castle, have it be a little run down.
Outside I would put a sign that said "Castle of Terror: A Level 1 Adventure." And I would hire a few CR 4 or 5 guards for it.
Any high level group of murderhobos won't bother with my castle, because they aren't going to waste their time on a level 1 adventure, and my guards should make short work of low level groups.
Thus, my castle is impregnable.
Permanent demiplane with the dead magic quality. Now you can't use magic to get in or out.
Inside you have a nice fortress composed of stone walls and such (whatever you like) with lots of golems roaming around to protect it. Preferably adamantine golems.
Whatever you do as far as magical construction should work fine so long as the last thing you do is make it dead magic.
If it really must be on the material plane, get access to burrow and go deep underground and start mining. Mine out your base. Caste teleport trap/forbiddance.
Again: the fortress needs to be on Golarian, which means demiplanes are out.
Fortress =/= small area. Typically houses minions and servants as well as the master of the keep.
I'm aware that nothing involving more than one person is truly impregnable, but the idea is to get close.
A secret panic room underground isn't a bad idea, but I'd rather beat teleportation in by keeping moving; there's no way of beating that with a save vs teleport trap. Keeping moving means that old info (say from a dissatisfied servant) is useless to teleport to. Also you don't need to allow possession + blood money into the game. A ship in other words, maybe linked somewhere via a teleportation circle for resupply and/or rulership. The teleportation circle is an obvious point of assault, you may want a secondary fortress over the other end.
Patrols of planar bound aether elementals over the horizon should help you keep clear of everyone without being seen. If your enemies get close anyway, other planar bound creatures attack. Makesure you have defenders suitable for aerial and underwater fighting, unless you have a way of making the ship fly.
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Go for the Floating Fortress. With enough illusions and magical protection from scrying, combined with the ability to move, no one's going to find you. They can't sack what they can't find.
Hire competent guards, and give them something that protects against charm spells. Pay them well, good benefits like: vacation, rings of regeneration, access to a good cleric for health care and religious needs.
A couple of adamantine golems that have erratic patrol paths.
Make all adventures/guests check all: weapons, rods, wands, staves, component bags with the quartermaster.
Any ventilation system must be made so gnomes and halflings won't fit. Teleportation traps, that auto teleport anything ant sized or bigger outside. To keep out pesky familiars and bonded animals.
Befriend a dragon or three. White if you're evil, Silver if you're good. Hire them to guard your fortress in the Crown of the World. For the fortress itself, setup teleportation circles from a safe location only you know about into your fortress so you don't have to traverse the cold desert to get there. The fortress itself is under a permanent Endure Elements spell (via magic item). Walls and doors made of Adamantine or Living Steel. In between the outer wall and inner wall have a foot of lead throughout the entire fortress. Since your guard(s) are dragons, find magic means to float the entire fortress in the sky so regular ground forces can't attack your fortress directly.
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Miles of forbiddance. In all directions, alternating LG and CE. Key the spells to include entrance to only your men and yourself.
What? Why on earth would you be worried about someone teleporting into your prismatic bunker? The teleport trap is irrelevant, it simply can't be done. We're talking about a 10 foot radius sphere buried in a random location in the planet's core, a sphere that is completely immune to divination and blocks out all spells and effects. Nobody has any way of gaining information about it or anything in it, so there is no way to teleport to it. But if you're honestly worried about teleportation, just go into paranoid arcanist mode. Fill the whole area with a dimensional lock, a wish-duplicated forbiddance, and a hallow-attached dimensional anchor, then just protect yourself when teleporting in with greater spell immunity and/or aroden's spellbane. It will be even more impossible for anything to get in.
You're forgetting that the OP specified a fortress which keeps minions of various kinds. Which presumably leave occasionally. Enemies get the info to teleport there from them. Getting the minions in or out sounds like a pain with your setup too.
Meanwhile, the aether elemental patrols aren't there to find or stop high level enemies, they're to find ordinary fishermen or whatever and come back with a warning so you can steer the ship or flying fortress away from them. And with the new rules in Ultimate Intrigue (I wish they'd admit it is a change, but it's a 'clarification') scrying doesn't work for teleportation info. So long as you keep moving your minions can't provide info for teleportation.
Find a nice blue police box.
Turn the inside into an extra dimensional space.
Load up on sonic bases attack spells.
Use Leadership to find a sassy, yet clever female cohort.
Use teleportation to randomly move the entire thing around Golarion.Don't forget the colony of great wyrm time dragons hiding in the engine room!
Speaking of which, time travel from great wyrm time dragon simulacrums would help out a lot with building an impregnable fortress. So instead of "bunker by a black hole," should we go with "bunker at the start of the universe" or "bunker at the end of the universe"? Anyone know anything interesting about Golarion cosmology?
You can park it next to the restaurant at the end of the universe.
I think any fortress Is going to have room(s) that are more impregnable than others. The prismatic sphere room or the room closet that's actually a demiplane, etc. I guess the point is to make it difficult for armies to siege it and inconvenient for anyone else.
Flying covers a lot of it. Moving moreso.
Cloud Castle of the Storm King is probably one's best bet for a baseline fortress.
Yeah, if it needs to be on the material plane, the Cloud Castle is probably your best baseline. Make improvements to rooms within to make it extra fortified.
Also to note, With 8 (maybe 10) mythic levels and mythic levitate one could make their own flying castle on the cheap. It'd be time consuming depending on the size, but still a cool concept.
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1. Line all of the walls with lead to prevent divination. (besides a small room behind a lead door which you use when casting divination spells of your own)
2. Build it deep underground so that any failed teleportation attempts will take substantial damage. Also prevents foes from flying past defenses.
3. Have no normal entrances to the surface.
4. If you want minions etc. to have access to the surface (rather than being an undead lich stronghold) have a permanent circle of teleportation to the slum of a major city. Have a permanent circle of teleportation back into your stronghold, but have it teleport to a spot which is filled with lava 99% of the time, but is safe for perhaps 30min every day or two. (make sure to give all of your minions awesome watches) During that 30min have all sorts of nastiness on contingency & guards to attack etc. if anyone but your minions appears.
5. Have various illusion and/or stone shape spells up which make significant changes to the appearance of your stronghold consistently so that your minions can't properly describe it if they're captured/interrogated/dominated.
Simply make flying fortress.
Nice start, but too obvious as is. You need more.
A flying fortress, hidden by illusions (or whatever stops people from snooping- I trust the Schrodingers in the audience know how to do this), with a second regular fortress underneath.
The underfortress is there for multiple reasons. For one, it is a distraction, fooling people into thinking that the flow of goods and the destruction of enemies in the area is solely for a normal fortress. People conquer the underfortress and believe they succeeded, and then never realize the upper fortress.
Another reason for the underfotress is because it can also help to defend the upper fortress (assuming the illusions and diversions don't work). It can be difficult to defend the underside of a flying fortress. While attacks from below would need the invader to have both flight and burrowing... well... that includes some dragon varieties, as well as any caster with some flight spell and earthglide. Also druids with flying AC's that turn earth elemental. So having some nice balistas on the underfortress helps since they can attack from a lower level. And it doesn't arouse too much suspicion, since a normal fortress wouldn't want fliers above it anyway.
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Line all the walls with a lead sheet, prevents scrying magic.
Magically treat all the walls to strengthen them.
Mummys mask AP has some descriptor text on the magic used on the flying pyramid to prevent teleportation and Scrying, its layering of a couple spells and then permanency. It is not technically allowed per the rules the the AP did it so it is a good place to start.
If you cant have a flying fortress, make an underground fortress.
Trap every entrance with a teleportaion circle into a death pit of despair.
Simulacrum everyone. Multiple times. they maintain your fortress.
Start work on making your army. Of adamantine Golems. And Cannon Golems.
I know a demiplane would be easier, but let's say you needed a sanctuary on golarian.
You're extremely wealthy and powerful in whatever form you prefer.
How would you do it?
You're not giving enough details....
It's not for a specific level or game. It's a thought exercise. It's left intentionally vague so you aren't otherwise limited.
Knowledge is power. So wipe your own memory after creating this sanctuary: it'll be a lot safer that way.
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Charon's Little Helper, I like the way you think. Some of this is similar to my bunker suggestion, but with much less reliance on high-level magic. Keep in mind, though, that lead only blocks spells that say it does. So things like locate object and scrying will be prevented, but it won't help you if you have powerful enemies trying to find it with vision or discern location, or ask questions about it with commune or contact other plane, or even try something weird like tectonic communion.
Thanks. I'm with you that infinite spell-casting & resources could be better, but I wanted to keep it semi-reasonable, and I was thinking of the sort of thing that you'd get before you're able to get your own demi-plane.
As to a couple points -
1. I don't think that Vision is much of a threat so long as you keep at lease semi-secretive about the stronghold. They might gain some info - but not enough to teleport there.
2. As to Commune & Contact Other Plane, I'm not sure how yes/no answers could tell enough info about your stronghold to teleport to it, though I suppose that they might be ready for your defenses when able to find your teleportation circle in. Plus - the info isn't really reliable.
Really though, those are both GM Fiat spells anyway, so there's only so much you can do against them.
3. Tectonic Communion wouldn't work at all.
Tectonic communion functions as commune with nature with an even greater range. In outdoor or natural underground settings, the spell operates on a radius of 100 miles per caster level, extending even underground without penalty.
For every 2 caster levels above 13th, you may glean an additional fact from the list presented in commune with nature.
Communities, dungeons, and signs of civilization (such as roads, farms or other constructions and settlements) exist as dark and unknowable blots in your perception of the spell's area; you're aware of their location and existence, but can't discern any information regarding them.
The stronghold as described would appear as a blob - but they would have no idea if it was YOUR stronghold, and they wouldn't know anywhere near enough about it to teleport there.
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The stronghold as described would appear as a blob - but they would have no idea if it was YOUR stronghold, and they wouldn't know anywhere near enough about it to teleport there.
You only have to know where the place is. The blot gives this away. Then you just teleport to the closest point to the place and scout from there.
Superman has used that trick before. Someone thought they could hide their building with lead walls. That only made the place stick out like a sore thumb.
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The stronghold as described would appear as a blob - but they would have no idea if it was YOUR stronghold, and they wouldn't know anywhere near enough about it to teleport there.You only have to know where the place is. The blot gives this away. Then you just teleport to the closest point to the place and scout from there.
Except... the place in question is literally miles underground. I don't think that it helps all that much as you can't really scout it out.
And the blob isn't due to it being lined with lead. It's due to it being a dungeon/sign of civilization. So, all dungeons would appear the same to Tectonic Communion.
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I think that whatever you dream up, if you show it to people here they'll pick at it and eventually find an opening.
But that's the thing: information. One of the most important layers of defense needs to be a solid layer of disinformation, making sure people bring the wrong tools for infiltrating your fortress. Instead of teleporting into your sanctum they'll be teleporting into a trap.
I've always found an underground dungeon is the best option. All you have to do is do one thing that no NPC does.
Don't play fair.
Have living walls that move about and can ruin maps, include teleport traps with no hint of a sign they've been activated that push people deeper or into loop areas. Keep the entrance double-vault doored with a couple of heavy thugs with a siege weapon in it pointed at the outer door (Dire ape skeletons I use myself)
Treasures that are cursed, secret doors that lead nowhere interesting or safe, a maze where none of the clues lead to the exit and you've just memorized the route because any idiot that can't remember the exact directions through his own death trap deserves to lose a limb. Riddles that have no answer.
And then fill the entire thing with sooty air, fire damp in the depths and make sure there's a way you can track well meaning people that stumble in (Well, 'stumble in' through the two heavily fortified doors and the guards, adventurers man) and save them before the fumes, lack of food and disorientation kill them.
Roach Motel.
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I've always found an underground dungeon is the best option. All you have to do is do one thing that no NPC does.
Don't play fair.Have living walls that move about and can ruin maps, include teleport traps with no hint of a sign they've been activated that push people deeper or into loop areas. Keep the entrance double-vault doored with a couple of heavy thugs with a siege weapon in it pointed at the outer door (Dire ape skeletons I use myself)
Treasures that are cursed, secret doors that lead nowhere interesting or safe, a maze where none of the clues lead to the exit and you've just memorized the route because any idiot that can't remember the exact directions through his own death trap deserves to lose a limb. Riddles that have no answer.
And then fill the entire thing with sooty air, fire damp in the depths and make sure there's a way you can track well meaning people that stumble in (Well, 'stumble in' through the two heavily fortified doors and the guards, adventurers man) and save them before the fumes, lack of food and disorientation kill them.Roach Motel.
While that would be an effective death trap, I don't think it would qualify as a sanctuary. You probably wouldn't want to live there either.
It's interesting actually - the compromises that many ancient fortifications made so that they would actually be livable structures. They knew that they were a bit less secure that way, but there's a limit to what you're willing to put up with on a daily basis.
How about a custom Teleportation Circle that is keyed to a combination of alignment, vocal, retinal, fingerprint, blood, password, and hand gesture? If you meet all the criteria (which admittedly, all could theoretically be replicated and/or researched; but together would be quite the challenge, especially if you make sure you aren't some sort of well known public figure), you get teleported to the fortress. If you don't you get teleported to space/sphere-of-annihilation-/other-imminently-dangerous-place-of-your-choi ce. A Vigilante would be even better at this, as they could key it to their private persona, so that even if someone had met and researched their public persona, if they tried to replicate the entrance criteria, they'd still fail since they'd be replicating the wrong persona, since they shouldn't know about the private persona.
Even then, assuming they had done enough research that they knew all of the stuff to replicate, would they be willing to risk it? Would you bet your life on the idea that all of your research was correct, and that you've correctly duplicated all of the criteria in such a way that you will pass inspection by some obscure force such as magic? In the real world, technology can be understood, and therefore it's results can be predicted. In Pathfinder, magic is an obscure and fickle essence. The fact that Wish spells don't always go the way you expect is a shining example of this.
:smurfatar:
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While that would be an effective death trap, I don't think it would qualify as a sanctuary. You probably wouldn't want to live there either.It's interesting actually - the compromises that many ancient fortifications made so that they would actually be livable structures. They knew that they were a bit less secure that way, but there's a limit to what you're willing to put up with on a daily basis.
The latest episodes of Peldor are about this exact thing (and this entire topic really). The more impenetrable you make a location, the more of a hassle it is to frequent the location. If you have to jump through 100 hoops to enter/exit your lair, you're gonna get tired of jumping through those hoops, and probably eventually start cutting corners. That's why I said it's best to make an impenetrable fortress that you never plan to leave. Like dungeons and their bosses, or pharaohs and their pyramids; they weren't designed for people to come and go, they were designed to keep people out, and that's it.
You could ignore the RP element of it all, and just say there are 10,000 hoops to jump through to enter/exit your lair, and it takes a weeks worth of journeying, spellcasting, etc. to bypass/setup all of the obstacles, and your character is happy to do it. In reality, your character would go insane doing this over and over, or would have to already be insane to be this paranoid; to the point that your character shouldn't be under your control any more.
The entire problem with the subject in the first place is that, no matter what you do, no matter where you draw the line and say "ok, this is secure enough, it would take X amount of effort to get past all this" where X is what you consider to be an unreachable amount of effort, someone could come along and say "hm, it takes X amount of effort huh? I can can do X amount of effort."
Really the only way to be truly impenetrable is for there to not be anyone/anything else that would/could want to penetrate it. So the answer is to use the supposedly "infinite resources" to just destroy everything else in the multiverse, leaving your humble fortress in a vacuum in which it is completely safe.
:smurfatar:
I know a demiplane would be easier, but let's say you needed a sanctuary on golarian.
You're extremely wealthy and powerful in whatever form you prefer.
How would you do it?
Ridiculon's guide to building a Completely Impregnable Fortress "on" Golarion
Step 1. Build a model of your fortress.
Step 2. Take compiled works of Golarion and arrange them in a single stack.
Step 3. Place model on top of Golarion stack.
Step 4. Profit.
My preferred method of power and wealth is U.S. dollars.