Westfall Kingdom-A Complete, Self-Contained Medieval Kingdom - NO CC

Most "apartments" that I've seen on this site really work as little more than that- an apartment. My own creations are certainly no exception to this... with a few exceptions, they hardly even have much in the way of public areas; they're really just houses stacked on top of each other. Still, events conspired to inspire me to work on this lot, which should provide you with everything your medieval Sims could ever want- without ever having to leave the lot, if you choose to play things that way! Lords and ladies, serfs and scribes, kings and courtesans, I present to you- the Westfall Kingdom!

Since this lot has 4 distinct pieces, I've broken the description and the photos into four distinct sections for each individual apartment. There's also just LOTS of screenshots in the images above, so you can see more photos of each of the 4 apartments than I can put in the description. Also, since floorplan shots of the ENTIRE lot would have to be zoomed out so much that you couldn't see anything, I only included the ground floor for the entire lot, and also included individual floorplan shots for each apartment and the surrounding space- hopefully this makes things easier, and doesn't cause any problems. Please bear with me when it comes to things like that, I feel like it's the best approach, and there's a lot to cover in Westfall!



No medieval kingdom would be complete without a castle, so that seems a fitting place to start our tour of the lands of Westfall. Made from red stone imported from far-off lands, the castle of Westfall Keep stands in colorful contrast to the drab construction of other buildings in the kingdom. Twin gate towers stand on the shore of a deep lake, guarding the only passage into the castle itself. Sadly, age (and game limitations ) have made the drawbridge inoperable, but the massive door that serves as the second obstacle to those who would sack the castle, if they could, should serve as plenty of deterrent! Through that door, you will find another gatehouse (which is also where the ACTUAL apartment door is... obviously the two-storey castle door doesn't work, but it still seemed important to include!), and beyond that, your Sims enter into the inner courtyard of Westfall Keep.

A splashing fountain and neatly manicured hedges against the castle's inner walls keep the courtyard from feeling too lifeless, and should your Sims care to walk to the eastern end of the fortress, they will find a lovely terrace with a second fountain, looking out over the lake, and into the hills that surround the kingdom. A wooden balcony surrounds the inside edges of the battlements, serving as a perfect place to station your knights should the castle ever fall under siege. To get up to the balcony though, you'll need to go into the castle's inner chambers.

The rectangular keep of the castle houses the dining hall, a parlour, two bedchambers, and in a wood-and-stone addition on the top of the keep, a music hall, perfect for performances by traveling minstrels and fools. In the castle's main tower, your kingly Sims will find a respectable official chamber, a lounge, and a regal bedchamber at the castle's summit. Various other towers surrounding the castle house guardchambers, game rooms, libraries, a nursery, and a temple to the Two Ladies, the patron saints of Westfall.

No castle would be complete without a dungeon, and Westfall Keep is no exception! Deep below the keep, your Sims will find an underground kitchen where their servants can prepare them fine meals, and a barred door sits behind the wine shelves, with a narrow, dark tunnel leading beyond it. Follow this tunnel to its macabre terminus, two dank cells sit in the walls. Unfurnished beyond a mat of rotten plants, these cells are not a place any Sim would care to find themselves... especially if the single torch that lights the corridor outside were extinguished!

The castle apartment rents out for $12,169 per week, so it's certainly out of the reach of the peasants of the kingdom. Your royal Sims will also doubtlessly want to have servants to wait on them hand and foot, so they'll need a safe income. I would suggest at least one Fortune Sim, so that you get the stock income at the end of most days, but it's really up to you how you want them to make their money (for the full medieval experience though, your Sims should never leave this lot, so a regular job is out- Royalty does not stoop to manual labour!) As I said though, up to you!



Lords in a medieval castle would be ridiculous if they didn't have serfs and peasants to rule over, so next up on our tour of the Westfall Kingdom is the village of the poor peasantry. These humble farmers and gardeners don't have much to their name, and their days are spent in manual labour in the fields and orchards of the kingdom. The apartment itself is made up of three small cottages and their accompanying garden plots, and a small outhouse with two toilets. As furnished, each cottage has a bed, a kitchen/kitchenette, a bookcase or entertainment of some sort, and the all-important fireplace, to keep your SIms from freezing on cold winter nights!

In keeping with the completely self-contained gameplay that I'm trying to make possible, the fields in the village are larger than absolutely necessary, since I force my peasant Sims to provide all the foodstuffs for the castle and the church. Just crops might not be enough, so it's not uncommon for my serfs to have gold badges in both gardening AND fishing, but as often as not, they go to bed hungry. When I've played this kind of lot before, I've had peasants starve to death, if their harvest wasn't as good as they'd hoped, and all their food was tithed to the castle and church... life for a medieval peasant isn't easy!

Something you may have noticed missing from my description of the cottages is any kind of a bath. How are the peasants supposed to keep themselves clean then? Well, while the wealthy might be rich enough to bathe in their own castle, everyone else will be forced to make use of the town bathhouse, a new construction across from the cathedral. Be glad of that, peasantry! Just a few years ago, you would have had to try to find some way to bathe in the lake, and good luck getting that action to appear in your queue!

The last part of the village is the tavern, a must-have for any medieval farming community! Small, mismatched, and cold, this tavern still has ales and ciders available, hopefully enough to dull your Sims senses, since the inn is right next to the town stables! There's really no REASON for this part of the lot, but it seemed boring to just have forest, so I made a trampled dirt area, water troughs, and a small stable building right next to the lake.

The village rents for $3,096 per week, a little higher than I might have hoped for, but your peasants shouldn't be able to get ahead in the medieval world, so hopefully that weekly rent will keep their household funds from getting too high!



A kingdom would often see travelers passing through, and for the last few months, Westfall has played host to a travelling band of gypsies (forgive my political incorrectness here- I'm trying to hit as many stereotypes as I can!) This band of wanderers has set up camp in the bluffs on the northeastern edge of the kingdom. Their colorful tents and wagons can be seen from the village below, and lively fiddle tunes are often heard drifting down from the pine forests in the evening.

This camp is made up of three "wagons" and two small "tents" in a clearing among the granite spires and towering pines of Westfall. Each wagon has a couch or bed, and a tiny kitchen space, as well as an eclectic collection of trinkets that the wagoneers have accumulated on their travels. Unlike the village cottages, however, these wagons could not really be seen as providing even close to all that their occupants would need to live- the Gypsy community is a COMMUNITY, so things like the outhouse (again, no bath or shower- use the village bathhouse!), the grill, and even things like the fiddle and the bubble machine, are in the center of the wagon ring.

This apartment requires a bit more imagination than the other three do, unfortunately, since I couldn't find a good way to elevate the wagons off the ground, and there is no wonderful wagon wheel sculpture like there was in TS1 (I loved that sculpture!), not to mention the fact that the path up the hills to the camp is WAY too narrow for a wagon of that size... so you may want to find your own way of making this lot work. Perhaps you're fond of CC, and can find a wagon wheel to put on all sides of the wagons. Maybe your gypsies will settle more permanently, and you'll redesign the apartment into an artist's retreat. Or it could be that you'll play this lot like I do, and just imagine those things that you're not able to build in-game!

This camp is the least expensive of the Westfall apartments, coming in at $1610, easily affordable for three Sims talented enough to earn money with tips, or by selling paintings- I would recommend limiting the interaction between the gypsies and the other members of the kingdom (again, going for stereotypes here) to reflect the mistrust that wandering groups could expect to meet with, but as with everything else, it's entirely up to you!



Finally, no kingdom would be complete without a church, and Westfall has a beautiful cathedral on the eastern edge of town. This apartment's entrance is to the north, not in the cathedral itself but rather in the convent that sits below the cathedral, but the apartment includes much of the church building itself. Through that door, you enter into the common area of the convent, a spartan room with a kitchen, dining table, and bookcase filled with illuminated manuscripts and books of holy writ. Passing further into the apartment, your devout Sims enter into a small courtyard, with a quiet fountain in the center, outhouse against the far wall (again, no tub), and a row of doors that open onto the cells for the nuns or monks to sleep.

The convent is far from luxurious, with the four "bedchambers" each being a tiny, 2x3 room, with room only for a simple bed and a candle. Sims do not choose the life of a convent because they expect luxury, however. Instead, they are expected to spend their days in quiet meditation, and contemplation of the Infinite.

On the south side of the courtyard, a steep staircase descends into a small hollow against the foundation of the cathedral. Should your Sims follow this stairway, they'll descend into the crypts below the cathedral, with sarcophagi and coffins lining the walls, and religious artworks hung on the stone walls, or sitting unseen in a shadowed corner. At the far end of the catacombs, a stone stairway rises up to the rooms above. Two floors up, it opens onto the attic space of the cathedral, and the main room of the second part of the apartment. Here, you'll find a second dining area and kitchen, and two more small cells for monks or caretakers. In the back, above the apse, there is a simple seating area, perfect for meetings to discuss the management of the diocese. Should your Sims continue up higher, the towers become the only real usable space, with another small library in seclusion from the rest of the world. A narrow hallway runs the length of the cathedral, which can be used for hanging portraits of the various rulers of Westfall or other fine artwork, but really not anything else. One story up, Sims can emerge onto the balcony above the narthex of the cathedral, commanding views of the whole of Westfall.

The main floor of the cathedral is NOT part of this apartment- instead, it is open to all, and indeed, all local Sims and any visitors who happen by are EXPECTED to attend services on Sunday mornings! Pews line the aisles and the middle of the transept, and a piano sits at the southern end of the transept. In the crossing, there is an altar, and in front of it, a wedding arch, where virtually all the wedding ceremonies of Westfall take place. The apse has seating for the holy Sims that conduct services, and at the back stand sculptures of the Two Ladies of Westfall, carved in the finest white marble.



This is a huge lot- 5x6 and around $800,000 worth of buildings and objects, so chances are if you have a smaller computer, it will tend to lag somewhat. It's certainly still playable though, and once you have Sims moved in, the fact that items inside other apartments vanish means that your machine won't have quite so much to render, so that should help. This lot as uploaded has never been occupied, though I have playtested a clone of the lot, and haven't seen any major issues (as always, let me know if YOU come across any, and I'll try my best to address them!) The lot is also completely CC-free, although with the huge variety of medieval CC available on MTS, I would actually encourage you to download some, and use them to add flavor to your own reign over the Westfall Kingdom!

Lot Size: 5x6
Lot Price: $1610 - $12169

Additional Credits:
I was inspired to start building something like this in large part because of seeing Tatiana Dokuchic's "Castle Le Fay" lot (check it out, it's awesome!), and loving the addition of a village aspect to a castle lot, so thanks to her! Thanks also to the community members who prompted me to resume work on this after having forgotten about it for months- I hope you all in particular enjoy it!