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[Aklyon]

Ah right, His Splendiferous Grace Sirrah Jerrah Ferdemont VI, Bard of exceptional charisma and by amazingly good luck, survived the assault on the castle while some less fortunate leaders did...not. On the various chairs in the room are your second/quartermaster/CLO the arch-magus, your HR/NHR Chief (who also had excellent luck to have survived), and General Crack, whoever they are under that incredibly durable full helm. You lead The Comradely Association of Adventurous Beings of Various Shapes and Sizes, who smite evil*, occasionally play gitars, engage in comradely (and/or adventurous) cooperation if they feel like it, and are objectively superior in their pursuit of superior objectives. Some survivor or another from the necromantic groups comes in and suggests we reanimate the monsters, and then leaves to go find a snack or something.

You ask the arch-magus about how to dispell the curse, and ask Full Helm how many crack(ed-in-the-head) commandos are left.
AM:"It can't be that difficult, and we have plenty of mages left. I'll go see." She stands up and walks off to the...north? To the probable north of the castle. You need to find a map of this place, or have one made. Being unsure of directions in your castle is not very charismatic.

FH: "Not many! Good workout. We should find some more monsters to workout with later after things have settled down and sorted out. Better than training dummies."
Well, fighting is technically exercise. Though it was certainly much more difficult than a 'workout' to take the place. Next, you ask the Head of Non-human resources if we could make good use of reanimated monsters. Having no idea for once (usually he has an answer for any sort of race, from elves to various golems and inbetween), he just shrugs and asks why we'd want to bring back to life all the assholes we had to kill to get in here in the first place? He does kinda have a point, but you'll need to find help somewhere...

[~Neri]

Just don't put the souls back in the corpses. Actually wait. Use the souls as batteries. Solves two problems in one go. No undead going rogue and no ghosts coming back to cause problems.

[Flying Dice]

Better make a knowledge check first to see how soul mechanics work here. If it's like Elder Scrolls and you can vacuum the suckers up for cheap, mindless energy, all's good. If not, well... we don't want a bunch of haunted shit in our castle, do we?

That aside, the preface suggested that the place was populated with demons and assorted other nasty things, which says to me that a lot of them will be rather tough to manage either exorcising or putting down a second time. If we do do the deed, probably best to have it done outside by someone expendable.

--

Unrelated, let's get the castle mapped out and thoroughly searched for traps and stragglers. Don't need any nighttime surprises, mm?

[Aklyon]

Its basically the whole range of Bad Things, the more powerful (and just as dead) lords having ended up attracting significantly more Bad Things. It could be a slog through hundreds of slime varieties, or it could be a squadron of squadrons of mini-dracoliches here to kick intruders' ass with their undead dragon-ness. There may or may not be actual demons, and so on. For the same reason, we can't reanimate every one of the dead monsters, since some of them are already re-dead, and making unreundead would just confuse everyone involved

[Flying Dice]

Never trusted undead anyways. Good old fashioned meaty-type meatshields are cost-efficient, and golems are tough.

[~Neri]

Why the fuck can't we make unreundead? Lets Do It.

[ATHATH]

Why the fuck can't we make unreundead? Lets Do It.

Yeah! Reanimate a beholder as well.

[~Neri]

Has anyone reanimated potatoes before? Lets make a rotting undead potato golem.

[ATHATH]

Has anyone reanimated potatoes before? Lets make a rotting undead potato golem.

Hm... Scratch the rotting part (use magical preservation), but stick metal rods in it and give it electricity powers. I like it!

((I suspect that Kevak and I will become R&D.))

Instead of raising the Beholder as it is, we should skin it (with the eyes and such on the skin), make it a cloak, reanimate it, and give it to one of our necromancers.

[Aklyon]

Much to the confusion of Armored Hat when he sees them, you go and ask the arch-magus (after the curse is removed, which cost one of the weaker mages' sanity) if unreundead could be useful workers for the CAABVSS.
The answer turns out to be (souls d6:4) no, but they are good at finding traps without triggering them. The normal undeads are put to work digging, out what probably used to be a moat in the far past, but currently is just a huge circular collecting point for sand, mud, rain, and small animals.

About a month later, you've got a general idea of the entire castle and the traps it previously had, but haven't yet managed to find a decent cartographer to draw it for you. Someone also scribbled all over the world map in the throne room to bring it up to date, and your Quartermaster/Chief Looting Officer finished sorting out all the loot from both monster (mostly gold of varying currencies, now all reforged into ingots for simpler trade later, or for minting) and previously-dead (Many coats and other nice things borrowed from the less fortunate leadership of the assault). One of the more ruined rooms was stripped of sheets and rugs, and the resulting pile of fabric cut up into big sheets to cover up the undead you'd stripped down of all their stuff. A beholder was also eventually found among the dead monsters and made into a cloak. What to do next...

Spoiler: World Map V2 (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: The CAABVSS (click to show/hide)

Major members:
His Splendiferous Grace Sirrah Jerrah Ferdemont VI, Leader and Bard.
The Arch-magus of Bureaucratic Affairs (Second in command/QM/CLO).
The Honorable Head of HR/NHR.
General Crack/Full Helm/Armored Hat, Expert warrior and instructor. General of tactical acumen and head-bashing.

Holdings:
Ancient Castle (intact, if in need of improvements)

Loot:
Lots of gold (ingots)
Lots of upholstery (old and fancy-looking)
Lots of general loot (split between the surviving members, includes coats, armor, candlesticks, etc.)
Some weapons (in usable states)
Lots of broken weapons

Known Staff:
Some large number of undead
A smaller number of unreundead
'Not many' crack commandos
Some necromancers

[Aklyon]

Its been quite some days and I wasn't expecting to have no suggestions at all. Moving on, dangit!

There is 7 or so nearby castles if we were going to besiege someone else with undead and unreundead (if there is anyone else in them currently), as well as a number of villages and towns. Besides the gold and other tradable items, amongst the group the Arch-Magus totals a Fair amount of Gnokian currency, which will continue to be the main one until the Sizable Empire (still in debate as to proper naming) announces a new mint. Bartering is also a possibility with the amount of loot you have.
Oldlandic currencies (the kind you'd find on trade ships from the Old lands) are considered valid along the coastline for the sake of practicality, in the capital during non-aggressive political visits, and considered scrap metal anywhere outside shouting distance of the city guard from either area.

However, theres also the question of whether the nearby villages & towns recognize the CAABVSS as actually ruling the area. It would probably be easier to start building the army back up if you could ask for volunteers to protect the area (against evil, of course) and start paying only the ones who pass some sort of training instead of having to pay them beforehand like mercenaries.

While your bardly self was pondering these things, someone affixed a first draft of a top-down castle map to the wall next to the adjusted world map. Superb.

So, shall we Scout nearby castles for occupants, Send Metal Helmet to recruit new and possibly adventurous recruits, or Do Something Else?

Spoiler: Castle map the first (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: The CAABVSS (click to show/hide)

Major members:
His Splendiferous Grace Sirrah Jerrah Ferdemont VI, Leader and Bard.
The Arch-magus of Bureaucratic Affairs (Second in command/QM/CLO).
The Honorable Head of HR/NHR.
General Crack/Full Helm/Armored Hat/Metal Helmet, Expert warrior and instructor. General of tactical acumen and head-bashing.

Holdings:
Ancient Castle (intact, if in need of improvements)

Loot:
-Currencies:
--Lots of gold (ingots)
--A fair amount of Gnokian currency.
Lots of upholstery (old and fancy-looking)
Lots of general loot (split between the surviving members, includes coats, armor, candlesticks, etc.)
Some weapons (in usable states)
Lots of broken weapons

Known Staff:
Some large number of undead
A smaller number of unreundead
'Not many' crack commandos
Some necromancers
At least one novice cartographer

[ATHATH]

Scout. Test to see if the beholder cloak's eye rays work. Make that potato golem.

[spümpkin]

Send Metal Helmet to go get recruits. Dead or alive.

[Aklyon]

The scouts eventually make it back, with the following reports of the nearby castles:
1 is occupied by minor amounts of monsters. Usually this would be 'significant monsters', but you took over a place with far more of them in it.

2 of them have been claimed by dragons. Theres a chance they might be able to be bribed into leaving them though, if they aren't too old. The old and polite ones will throw the bribe messenger far enough that they are solidly unconscious, while the just plain old dragons will kill the messenger over the insult and claim the bribe for themselves anyway. The potato golem was eaten by one of the dragons for its mana, so perhaps sending it out with the scouts was not the best idea.

1 of them is 'claimed' by bandits. They're probably just hiding.

Lastly, the rest are actual claims by would-be kings. They shooed away the scouts before they got particularly close to the castle. In the meantime your main man (or possibly woman) of fightery and metal hats, Plated Helm, went to recruit some more people for the cause, preferably not additional undead, though they wouldn't be bad either. You go and see if you can find that cartographer to make a third map to label with the scout info while he is away, and to see if they've tested the beholder cloak yet.
---
The town appears to be fairly well-built, but not especially big. Its otherwise a fairly average looking town for the land. Where should you go to first for recruits? The Angry Goat, the tavern? The Council Building, to ask the town leaders first? Or should you be direct about things and just go Shout In The Market and see if anyone walks up to you?

Spoiler: The CAABVSS (click to show/hide)

Major members:
His Splendiferous Grace Sirrah Jerrah Ferdemont VI, Leader and Bard.
The Arch-magus of Bureaucratic Affairs (Second in command/QM/CLO).
The Honorable Head of HR/NHR.
General Crack/Full Helm/Armored Hat/Metal Helmet/Plated Helm, Expert warrior and instructor. General of tactical acumen and head-bashing.

Holdings:
Ancient Castle (intact, if in need of improvements)

Loot:
-Currencies:
--Lots of gold (ingots)
--A fair amount of Gnokian currency.
Lots of upholstery (old and fancy-looking)
Lots of general loot (split between the surviving members, includes coats, armor, candlesticks, etc.)
Some weapons (in usable states)
Lots of broken weapons

Known Staff:
Some large number of undead
A smaller number of unreundead
'Not many' crack commandos
Some necromancers
At least one novice cartographer
A number of scouts
Zero potato golems left

[~Neri]

Why don't we just ask the dragons if we can use their castles. They dun need to move anywhere, and they can designate areas they don't want us in as off limits. I doubt they use the whole castle.