How tall a tower? and courses of stone

...or what about giving a newly created party of PCs a home, having them design the floor plan, plant it in a village near the town, facing a common green ("OK,I buy a goat"!) - a basement hideout on the street of knives, a small tower mouldering in the wilds inherited... sort of an instant, beginning investment in the campaign locale.

Villagers trying to convince wandering PC's to go eradicate an outboiling of goblins is one thing - when those goblins are threatening the PC's stuff (Not the goat! Spare the goat!), it could be something different... maybe...

How about a home loan? By DMG, 500 gp to build a two-story stone building, 120' of outside walls... take about 12 weeks (handwaved for starting PCs) and they automatically have a 'home base' built largely to their specs. Weird. Who's got the deed to the land? Who issued it?

Could be an interesting way to build a continuity toward endgame. Some people would knee-jerk hate to have a house imposed upon their characters though, I'd bet... just not the kind of thing they feel like thinking about (eh, leave that to the mapper...)

The problem I'm having with the stronghold-style endgame is coming from (I think) looking at it in a vacuum. High level characters would ostensibly develop after a long course of low and mid levels, in the course of which, the laws of the land (and some notion of the NPCs who are the effectors and beneficiaries of those laws) would have been created/established. So then, through organic play, a fighter attracting followers would have to...

1. Stalk far into unclaimed wilderness and stake a claim, or
2. Be granted land from a ruler, judge, etc, or possession over a stronghold already built.
3. Claim possession of a pre-existing castle and be prepared to defend it
4. or any number of other scenarios, depending on the particulars of the campaign

Hmmm. Unfortunately, I think that my lack of experience running/DM'ing high level characters is kickin' in. My first game of Tunnels and Trolls lasted a long time (playing with 2-4 of my buddies for 3-4 years), and I can remember 3 of the characters, all of which essentially just retired (one building a flying skyship-thingee and seeing the world, another disappearing into the shanty slums of Wydgess to rule the thieves, and another who searched the world for an isolated forest to build an elaborate arborial mansion (a la Burrough's Tarzan) - oh yeah, he had a diamond fist. Wonder where he got that... ;)

So out of that set, I got two floorplans (flyingship, treeborne mansion), and then we pretty much stopped playing. So this is when I was 12 or 13 or somesuch. How would it go now?

>>> this reminds me that there's a really awesome solo adventure written for T&T by one of the fellows (jongjungbu) at the Trollbridge that models barony play - it's a very well put together PDF product, and a unique solo adventure. Link to PDF