I have managed to establish a wealthy family in the campaign I'm currently taking part in. Always looking to inflate their status an strength, I've built the population of the village up, planning to make it a city.

I have two questions about this. First, are there any specific benefits in the rules for having progressed your lands this far other than the £1 per hamlet? If not, are there any reasonable changes I could request from my GM?

Secondly, and more importantly, I could have sworn I saw prices for the construction of castles somewhere in a supplement, but can no longer locate the info. Is this info available? If not, what would the cost be like?

You mean a town, I assume. Cities are much much bigger, thousands of people, and most of those people are not farmers, so they take thousands of farming families to support. You can't just make one spring up.

With towns, I can see the population glacially or thanks to one of the displacements caused by the Saxon Invasions growing from a village to a town. However, this has no impact on the way things are handled. Market towns are different, but those are established by the King, with special charters and rights. Also, they are much bigger, too. Finally, there is this small problem... You likely have limited amount of land, especially arable land. Even if you multiply the population ten-fold, that amount of land doesn't change. Now, the GM in his infinite kindness may have given you a chance to clear out new fields and settle people there, which would allow you to build a new hamlet and gain more income from it. Or, indeed, he may have allowed you to keep the population concentrated. But there is no great difference between a town and a village: it all comes down to the assized rent rather than the exact population. 50 more layabouts without land to farm or crafts to practice are just a drain of resources, not an additional benefit. I am pretty sure that there was another thread with a similar question, earlier...

As for the castles, your best bet is the Book of the Estate at the moment, especially if you are still in the Early Phase. Note that castle-building requires a royal permission (whilst there is a king), or otherwise it is illegal. Again, your GM might easily waive this if he wants, especially if the PK in question is in good repute and Glorious. A book of the castles has been mentioned in the forums as one of the books being worked on, but I don't know when it might come out. Lordly Domain has (slightly flawed, IMHO) rules for later castles as well, but you'll need to multiply the cost by 5 or so to match the Book of the Estate.

A Book of the Castle is indeed in the works
It's looking mighty fine too
Just a little more patience!

We are not sure if the Book of Castles will also be the Book of Sieges
I think the biggest thing is siZe for both subjects

My last character accumulated a total of over 19,000 glory in his life. Would that be sufficient cause to go to the King and Earl to petition for something like this?

What, generally, should the ongoing effect of a character with that much glory look like?

What's the year?

Oh, and when you say 'last character', do you mean the current one or the one before it? The past tense leads me to assume the latter, which is a totally different case since your current char might have only around 3000 Glory (1000 knighting + 1900 inherited).

Anyway, assuming that it is after 514 (the establishing of the Round Table), and your character has over 19000 Glory, he definitely should be a Round Table Knight unless he is an enemy of Arthur's or morally unworthy. That amount of Glory would make him one of the most Glorious Knights in Britain: pretty much everyone would recognize him (or at least his heraldry) instantly and know about his heroic deeds. He would be treated with deference by the normal knights, and perhaps even as a social equal by the barons, at least the average ones, despite his actual landholdings. A guest of honor spot in the high table of a baron would be his when he is asking for hospitality, save if the baron dislikes him or the RTKs in general.

On the flipside, he would also attract a lot of requests for help, being a famous hero. Any time any monster is prowling in the neighborhood where he lives or simply happens to travel through, he is the man for the job. And it wouldn't be any minor monster, either, that a normal knight might conceivably defeat, oh no. It would be something very big and dangerous, since that is why they need a great hero such as him! If he starts turning such requests down, well... it can only mean that he is afraid and thus a coward, isn't that so? And in particular if it is a lady asking for help, you can bet that the talk of the next Pentecost would be about this...

In our campaign, reaching the Round Table is a bit of a two-edged sword. It is the culmination of the Glory gathering, meaning that you have 'won'. You have made it into the Round Table. On the other hand, being in the Round Table tends also to mean that you are on the short list for all sorts of dangerous quests that people come to Pentecost to plead for King Arthur's assistance. This tends to mean that the lifespan of the player-knights who get to the Round Table tends to be shortish, too. Which is a good thing, in my opinion. The player group doesn't work too well if you have a guy who has almost 20000 Glory and a couple of newbies with 2000 Glory. With the top guys dying off more frequently, there is more of a chance for everyone to spend some time, in their turn, on the top rung as the 'party leader'.

To take this back to your question, would 19000 Glory be a good moment to go and ask the King and the Count for permission to build a castle, the first question to pop into my mind would be: why would you need to build a castle? If this is past 518, Logres is at peace (well, I can see someone in the reconquered Saxon lands wanting a castle to keep the Saxons subdued). The second one would be: can you actually man it? It takes quite a lot of trained men (full-time soldiers) to man the walls, around 10, in the case of a siege. So unless you have a smallish estate or some such, you probably wouldn't benefit so much from the castle in the first place. The final question would be, would the GM like PKs building castles? I don't mind, personally, since castles are fun. So if the King is Arthur and you have obviously proven yourself to be a loyal vassal what with being in the RT and all, he'd probably give his blessing for it. Whereas if the King is Uther, he'd take your request for castle-building to be a plan to defy the royal authority and he would grow more suspicious of you and deny you the right, too.

That . . . is complicated. My previous character is still alive, but the king was forced to banish him for a year and a day for slandering Queen Morgan. He couldn't prove that she had cast a spell on him, and the queen was "much agrieved."

He had been friends with Nineve, whose life he had saved. When she died, he planned to take her personal effects to Avalon. He had been there once before to be healed from the spell Morgan cast on him. He returned there, and is now in Avalon at least until his banishment is done. He's overdue, actually, but presumed alive.

It's 515 at the moment.

Ah. Well, that is bad for him. Since as far as Arthur is concerned, Morgan is his dear sister. Your character got lucky for just being banished for a year and a day for slandering the High King's sister like that, without any proof. This would definitely still count as a black mark against him when any permissions and favors from the King are concerned, especially if Morgan is actively seeking to harm your (previous) character. You do aim high when picking your enemies, don't you? :)

Well, it's important to note that it was because of what Morgan did that my character's wife was killed. She was very important to him and had saved his life many times. They had lots of kids together. Morgan comes along and gets her killed.

It's also worth noting that my character was somewhat close with Arthur, and had helped him through a number of battles previously with his advice (skill 26 in battle). He was the one who knighted Arthur, as well.

That being said, I do aim high with enemies. Even when I don't mean to.

My family looks forward to the day when Arthur knows the truth about that wretched woman.