A Troglodyte Castle, Industrial Sludge and nostalgic RPGs
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Deep forests, giant mountains & weird dungeons. I speak about TTRPGs, video games, music and what I like.
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Summary
🏰Castle Of Brézé: A Troglodyte Castle
🎸Fange: Industrial Sludge Chaos
🧙What I’m Up To
Between castles, Industrial Sludge music, and nostalgic RPGs, this week felt like wandering through different realms…
🏰Castle Of Brézé: A Troglodyte Castle
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| A Troglodyte stairs in the Castle Of Brézé |
One of my uncles lives near the city of Saumur. This place is full of caves and troglodyte places.
As a dungeon enthusiast, I'm always excited to explore places like that 😉 And that’s what we did last week-end.
Fun fact, each house in my uncle’s town has its own cave system, and they can go pretty far!
They used to be mines to extract the Tuffeau stone and then they were used to make and store wine. The whole region is deeply steeped in winemaking culture (Angers, Nantes, Saumur, …) and of course we drank some during our weekend trip!
We visited a Troglodyte street with its own old tavern but what I really want to show you today is the amazing Castle Of Brézé.
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| Inside the caves - Castle Of Brézé |
This Castle is a very peculiar one as it has a castle under the castle. Yes, there’s a 4 kilometers (2.49 miles) cave system beneath the castle!
And it was fun to delve into these caves after playing so many Dungeon Crawler 😛I’m still wondering how life really was inside these moldy cold walls back then.
The underground system has a lot of stuff: defensive structures, a bakery, a stable, a wine press, troglodyte homes, storage etc.
Note that Castle Of Brézé was originally built in the 11th century and later rebuilt in Renaissance style. Its underground tunnels were used as real defensive structures, not just for storage or living, which is quite rare in European castles.
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| View from the castle inside the castle with the Troglodyte map |
Even if you don’t speak French, you can see some photos of the castle in this video.
I would love to play a TTRPG game inside those caves one day though!
🎸Fange: Industrial Sludge Chaos
Last Friday, it was concert time with a 4 band night crafted by Vinyl seller/Tattoo store/Label: Frozen Records.
As we were busy, we only got to see 2 of the bands this time: the Parisian Death Metal/Hardocre band Glassbone and the local yet amazing French band called Fange.
We arrived in time for Glassbone, the 3rd band of the evening.
I’m not a fan of the Death Metal genre, but Glassbone was heavy enough to keep me enthusiastic the whole set, and that’s enough for me to consider it a win, as I get bored really fast even in front of stuff I like. The Hardcore riffs blended into the Death Metal savagery keeps the whole crowd headbanging and it was a cool moment.
Then came Fange.
Fange has a peculiar genre life, as it started as a very powerful and angry Drone/Noise/Sludge ala Eyehategod to evolve into something more Industrial and even emotional, keeping the powerful side into a gigantic and explosive sound.
To this date, I still don't understand why this band isn’t more known,even in the French metal scene, as it’s something quite unique.
The show, as usual, is a blend of cathartic screaming, stroboscopic effect, massive guitars’ riff and heavy drum machine sounds.
We weren’t that much that evening, but the whole crowd was still fascinated by the energy the band deployed.
It was my 4th time seeing them, and it was awesome every time!
Find Glassbone’s music here and Fange’s music here.
🧙What I’m Up To
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| Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion Remastered Screen cover |
This week, I had more time for myself, and I finally had the time to try Bethesda’s remastered version of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
I’m a huge fan of the whole The Elder Scrolls series, and Skyrim is probably the game I’ve played the most in my life. So I was quite happy when Bethesda released Oblivion two weeks ago without any previous mention of a remaster to come.
The game is now a beautiful Unreal Engine 5 game with amazing lights, even if the character’s animations are still old and the whole world is pretty empty (well, the game is from 2006 so…).
But I enjoyed it nonetheless and it’s a pretty cool game to patiently wait for The Elder Scrolls VI. 🌝
Otherwise, it was my birthday this Wednesday and we had a blast... eating and drinking all around our newly made bonfire 🔥
Holidays are coming to an end, and I’ll be back with more time to craft my Gévaudan setting, my Youtube channel and all the other stuff to come 😉
That’s it for this week!
Let me know if you enjoyed this article, if you played/read/watch any of the stuff I mentioned this week 😀
See you next Friday!
Cheers !
Sleepdrifter
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