Richard Garriott has put the property known to many Ultima fans as Castleton up for sale:

A flamboyant video game developer is putting his vast party pad on the market: a roughly 65-acre property on Texas’s Lake Austin that includes a life-size medieval village, lighthouse and pirate ship.

The spread is asking $45 million, which would set a new record for Austin if it fetches its asking price, said Gary Dolch of Kuper Sotheby’s International Realty, who has the listing with his wife Michelle Dolch.

The asking price is evidently $45 million, which puts it safely out of the reach of a crowdfunding effort…and, indeed, which exceeds the (known) budget of Shroud of the Avatar by a fair margin. One wonders what has motivated the sale?

It’s also worth noting — as Rustic Dragon has already done — that the sale of the property will not impact the currently-in-planning HoBLotH IV, but it will likely mean that said event is the last HoBLotH to take place at the site.

Hail all. By now, many of you have seen that Castleton has been placed on the market for sale. For those that do not know, Castleton is the venue for HoBLotH (and other) events.

The obvious question to ask here is:
“How does this negatively affect HoBLotH IV?”
The short answer is:
“It doesn’t.”

It does, however, affect The Hearth of Britannia in general as well as potentially positively affecting HoBLotH IV. The Hearth has been advised to continue planning to use Castleton for HoBLotH IV in November. However, The Hearth will not count on using Castleton for HoBLotH V, should there be one.

Given that this is the last planned HoBLotH/Ultima event for Castleton…
It is imperative that it is also the greatest
HoBLotH/Ultima event ever.

Thus, The Hearth will be re-prioritizing its projects for the remaining months up to HoBLotH IV. The main goal of The Hearth of Britannia is now to make HoBLotH IV the absolute best event that it can be.

Which, in turn, means that work on the Hearth of Britannia cookbook will once again be put on hold until such time as HobLotH IV is over and done with.