Here it is: a large Solitude-themed castle northwest of Riften for the successful Dragonborn after many adventures to finally rest your sword and armor. A place where you can store your many treasures and trinkets. 

After many years of playing Skyrim, I have throughout my gameplays searched for a suitable home that satisfied my desire for a grand castle. Many castles exist on the Nexus, but to my dismay, while there are several quality creations, I found that I was always dissatisfied with each one. I finally became fed up and decided that I would create my own, leading to this effort of several months: Castle Revelhost

Features:

A lavish, sizeable castle using as many vanilla assets as possible to keep an immersive look. This castle is nestled in the mountains northwest of Riften with an incredible view of Skyrim. Many rooms fill this tower atop the steaming pools far, far below.  Extravagant gardens, balconies, and walkways decorate the outer areas. Within you will find display halls with holders for unique weapons and armors found in your adventures. No costs nor quests will hinder your acquisition of such a magnificent home. 

This castle holds many secrets, and should satisfy adventurers of all creeds and caliber. Werewolves, Vampires, or none of the above: you will find a place here that suits your style. Whether you want to move in immediately or wait to enter until you have seen many moons on your journeys, I hold no judgment for those who wish to use this bastion from the wild, dangerous world of Skyrim. Explore its halls and chambers, enjoy the views from its high perch. Investigate its hidden themes. Sit and bask amongst your trove of treasures - you've earned a peaceful rest after what you have endured. Experience the bliss of nature-themed caverns and gardens, listen to the pleasant fountains, or dip into a soothing pool to relax. Bring your companions or family with you to appreciate this forgotten castle. 

Depending on which download you choose, you can have a host of guards, servants, and vendors including two bards, a groundskeeper, a governess for your children, a courtmage, two stable workers, and some secret creature followers. Enjoy!

Compatibility: Created for and works with SE, but has been tested with Anniversary Edition and should work fine. 

All containers are safe to use for storage.

Layout:

Interiors

*Entrance Hall - Entrance lounge, library (with lots of activatable bookshelves), office, and corridors

*Display Hall -  Over a dozen mannequins, several display cases and weapon racks, unique weapon and armor holders

*Throne Room - Throne hall, Courtmage's quarters, War Room, Dining Hall, Castle Kitchens

*Servant's Quarters

*Private Chambers - Many bedrooms and master bedrooms for yourself and any loyal followers you want to stay with you. Access to the Nursery wing, the Rooftop Garden, and Garden Pool from here.

*Nursery Wing - Rooms for up to six children and their governess, play room

*Dungeons

*Meeting Hall - For visitors and guests, beds and dining

*Guardhouse

*Groundskeeper

*Quartermaster

*Castle Cavern



Hidden Rooms
*Undercroft
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*There are three secret passages with hidden doors for you to find. Each hidden doorway has a switch somewhere on both sides of the door. If you have trouble with the hidden panel, look around for the switch! I promise there is one :)

Exterior
*Courtyard - Stables and Smithy, a small farm sits outside the gate with planters
*Garden Pool
*Rooftop Gardens - additional planters 
*Private Balcony
* NEW Stables - Horse and stablehouse.
*NEW Purchase system. The castle now costs 300,000 septims to own.

HEARTHFIRE MULTIPLE ADOPTION FRIENDLY INSTRUCTIONS: For the bless home spell to work, you need to cast it in the private chambers area. The kids will move around the nursery, private chambers, and garden area. They will dine in the dining hall.

UPDATING WARNING!!!!!

When updating to a new version, be sure to remove any dragonclaws, masks, or weapons/armor from the unique holders or they will be broken in newer versions! I'm currently looking into how to fix this, but so far the safest bet is to remove them before updating and replacing them after updating, or storing them in a generic container until I can figure out what the issue is if you don't want to do this each time there is an update.

Author's Note:
Lots of time and attention went into this creation. This is my pride and joy, and I hope you enjoy exploring this castle. Many thanks to others in the modding community for helping me out, and a special thanks to Skyrimlazz for their inspirational castles and details. This castle has been a labor of love for me over the past six months, and I learned a lot about modding on-the-go through this process. I intentionally wanted to use as many vanilla assets as were available, which anyone will tell you with castle modding is no easy feat due to limited objects to use with exteriors. My goal was to make a castle that seemed to fit the world with nothing that seemed like overkill. I wanted every element to appear believable -although I got a little carried away myself in the process. Overall I am satisfied with making the different styles mesh together into a cohesive looking castle. 

P.S. I tested it extensively and had friends test it as well, but it's likely you might find something I could have missed. If so, please feel free to comment and I'll address it with an update! The screenshots I took don't do this place justice. I intentionally left some pictures out so that you can enjoy finding some of the various hidden gems this castle provides. :) If you like this castle, please don't forget to endorse!

Update: Another special thanks to GamerPauly and sarcasticcoffeevibes for their great job with porting this to the Bethesda Website - now available for xbox download! ( https://bethesda.net/en/mods/skyrim/mod-detail/4293761 )

Future Plans:
Learning how to alter NPC appearances for castle npcs, will convert some guards into followers, adding an optional exterior stable outside of the castle gate, planning to create a Fomod version when this is done.

UPDATE:
I started a Patreon! I realize that while I like to share about my thought process on the mod page itself, it can cause a bit of clutter in the description, so finding a separate space to "blog" about where my head is at and progress etc. will be more efficient and less invasive for players who just want the neat details. Most of my posts will be free for the public. Feel free to stop by and check it out if you want to share your support or see updates on any new projects I'm working on! (https://www.patreon.com/RogueReverie)

Changelog:

1.0
*initial release

1.01
*Navmesh polishing, minor lighting tweaks, fixed some exterior doorways, laid groundwork for npc additions

1.01a
*fixed some reported glitches

1.01b
*navmesh polished (route into baths were too narrow so npcs couldn't navigate), fixed navmesh issue on balcony stairs, fixed other minor glitches, made sure all interiors are properly set to castle interior

1.01c - 7/31/2022
Fixed a glitch I realized while playing that I had inadvertently shifted the position of Castle Dour. Restored Castle Dour to vanilla position in this update.

1.1 - 8/5/2022

Here it is, the update everyone has been waiting for! NPCs added for a total of 27 NPCs including guards, servants, 6 followers, several vendors, and 2 bards. This update upgrades the castle to be Multiple Adoption Friendly, fixed some navmesh issues, tweaked some glitches, no more poltergeist books, added some rooms, fixed some exterior glitches, added some new exterior details, minor interior decoration changes. None of the original containers were touched, so you shouldn't lose any stored items when updating.

P.S. I tried to implement auto-strip to the pools but the original instruction thread I used in the past is gone. I may take another crack at it but probably not soon. I also use the Verdant grass mod, and am hoping to personally create a patch or if someone is kind enough to make one I would love to have one for this castle to remove the grass from the courtyard and the gardens.

This was my first time adding NPCs in these roles, so making them from scratch was only possible due to the great tutorials by Darkfox127. Check out his content if you want to learn how to make some of these things yourself! (https://www.youtube.com/c/Darkfox127)

The scheduling was really tough to get working, and some of them act a little janky at times, so please be kind with your feedback as I tried to make them all seem as lifelike as possible with their schedules :) The guards are intentionally wearing neutral armor so that they won't wear an opposing faction's regalia depending on who the player sides with. No ebony or steel plate, sorry. This was also my first time making merchants, so some of the inventory is not exactly the way I had envisioned, but I got tired of trying to tweak them to perfection. I might look at them again in the future but I need a break. (Fixed the inventory issues).

I had one missing thing in the older builds to make this multiple adoption friendly, and the missing fix was figured out by balcer58, so a huge shoutout to them as well for saving me a ton of time!

1.1a - 8/9/2022

Cleaned with SSEdit, removed deleted navmeshes, fixed a couple of idle markers, fixed inaccessible door in dungeon. Added Verdant Patch (I'd prefer to use to the vanilla textures for the garden, but until I figure out how to properly duplicate the vanilla land textures we are stuck with the dirt - Sorry!).

1.2 - 8/19/22

Lots of fixes, major lighting improvement in Meeting Hall and Deep Cavern areas, as well as fixing lighting flickers in the private chambers. Cloud storage added (all four container examples are in the Entrance Hall, lots of linked storage throughout the castle), new decorations added in some areas, upgraded to BSA format for quicker loading and smaller file sizes. Minor tweaks to npcs and fixed weird moving clutter. Added more weapon holders in some areas. New NPC vendor/servant in the Meeting Hall at the bar. Fixed door in dungeon, fixed hostile critters spawning in the chickens. Xbox version release soon.

10/14/22
Ported to Bethesda for Xbox users thanks to the work of GamerPauly ( https://bethesda.net/en/mods/skyrim/mod-detail/4293761 )

Version 1.2a - 10/16/22
Various decorations tweaked/added throughout the castle, some love given to two of the hidden areas. Added a new, second escape tunnel, added some more details to exterior, improved navmeshes, fixed some lighting. Attempted to fix the seam issue some people were complaining about (hopefully it is fixed for them).

Version 1.3 (10/22/22)
- Added the new exterior stables, tweaked courtyard, optimized navmesh, added two new npcs. The BSA package for some reason crashes, but the loose files version works fine. I'll be updating the verdant patch soon with the new changes, and hopefully will be able to figure out why the bsa version is crashing.

(10/23/22) 
- Last minute fixes, figured out I was packaging the bsa wrong so it is fixed now. Plans to optimize the navmesh further after I do some more testing. The new verdant patch is out as well, don't forget to update it or the old terrain will cover the new stables area. 

It is safe to update mid-game, I tested it on my endgame character.

Version 1.3a (10/24/22)
- quick fix for weapon cloud storage appearance

Version 1.3b (10/28/22)
- Fixed the smith merchant's inventory so it should now be properly stocked with smithing materials, fixed greyface bug for servant Vindus, gave one of the vampire followers better attire.

Version 1.3c (11/20/22)
- Fixed missing furniture that I missed when packaging last update (thanks to bug reports!), added KS Hairdos for npcs of castle. I got a little burnt out on the things I'm doing so updates have been a little slower for this castle. If you want more details on updates, check out my Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/RogueReverie )

Version 1.4 (1/12/2023)
- Lots of minor changes to decorations, swapped some weapon holders for shield holders, small changes to some of the exterior architecture, revamped some of the navmeshes, a couple of new secrets added, tweaked lighting in several of the castle areas. This is probably the final changes to the physical aspects of the castle. Any future updates will focus on scripts and adding patches! MAKE SURE YOU REMOVE WEAPONS FROM HOLDERS IN DISPLAY HALL BEFORE UPDATING! Some of them were completely replaced and you could lose what you had equipped there!

Version 1.4a (1/12/2023)
- Last minute additions, quick navmesh fix.

Version 1.4b (1/22/23)
- Optimized navmeshes, optimized multiple adoptions (family should mostly hang out in the throne room, private chambers, nursery, and the outdoor garden), slight movement of some items (to satisfy my OCD, needed to straighten some decorations so they were spaced more perfectly).

(1/24/2023)
- Added patch for Aspens Ablaze, .esl format, removes floating trees from Aspens Ablaze (and any subsidiaries that use Aspens Ablaze including mods like Lush Forests, etc.).

(1/30/23)
- Added patch for Immersive Creatures, the matriarch now spawns to the west between the castle and the ruined tower instead of the castle courtyard.

(3/23/23)
1.4c - Fixed two seams in the exterior of the castle, added scripts to make the teleport door inaccessible to npcs (hopefully) to stop them from using it to travel back into the cavern from the master bedroom.

Version 4/19/23 - read changelog for details on changes.


Warning:

When updating to a new version, be sure to remove any dragonclaws, masks, or weapons/armor from the unique holders or they will be broken in newer versions! I'm currently looking into how to fix this, but so far the safest bet is to remove them before updating and replacing them after updating, or storing them in a generic container until I can figure out what the issue is if you don't want to do this each time there is an update. A fix if you have already updated and need to reset the holders is to use console commands or an additem mod to add the item into your inventory, activate the holder to place your duplicated item, and it will overwrite the old info and the holder will work again.