Official Buildings
There are surprisingly few official sorts of buildings, and there is no custom of erecting them in any special way beyond the need for size and efficiency – though that may also be due to the use of Dwarf labor.
Guild Halls are the most common of the more official buildings. These large structures often have several meeting rooms, a residence for the Guild Master and their family, storage, and warehousing facilities (as well as offsite stuff) and more. Guilds do not sell things. They arrange for the selling of them by members.
In Cities, the large Banks will often have a large place and some sort of furnace going, as they are typically attached to or near the Realm’s Mint, be it closed or open.
By and large, most official buildings are built of brick or quarried stone, with the stronger the stone the more desired. Walls are uniformly built of vast and large bricks, layered thickly to be able to resist the impacts of and started a good twenty feet deep to resist sapping.
Housing
Housing on Wyrlde for the most part is a standard affair, even though materials, design, and the like will vary.
The typical home has a small, immediate plot of land that is attached to it, and will have a fence or wall around it and the home. Outhouses will usually be just beyond or at the edges of this fence, and the area enclosed can vary considerably according to the size of the family and the pattern of its growth. There will usually be some form of firepit outside, often covered to protect from the elements but open on three sides. Stock will have a shelter of some sort close by, and there may be a small pen for assorted animals. There absolutely will be a garden that changes seasonally.
The home itself will usually be around one thousand square feet, usually two stories, though the second story may be no more than a sleeping loft reached by a ladder. The home itself will have a cooking fire, a way to vent that, sleeping, bathing, and common areas to accommodate the assorted activities they need to do. The vast majority of homes are close to self-sufficient in terms of food – heavily based around vegetables since the common ones grow in all seasons. Meat is typically eaten once or twice a week, more if the family is wealthy, or if they choose to do the traditional stews which can be left all day.
Weather in much of Wyrlde means that winters are cold and spent indoors, and the need to have a way to defend oneself from bandits, raiders, and other dangers means the houses and fences will be sturdy enough to help do that.
Homes are often built-in community and involve celebrations and possibly even a rite in some locations if there is a shrine nearby. Most of those who do get blessed are done by Antelle, Galle, Lamia, or Melane, but some are blessed by Kybele, and of course the goal of many is to bless the Hearth through Gaea.
That blessing comes to a point of head when a child is 3 years of age, as if the home itself is consecrated, then the child cannot enter. A simple blessing, however, is usually all that is sought.
The realms all tend to have different styles of housing, with one common feature being a broad covered space called a porch on many of them – these function as extensions of the house, and there is a long history of using them when warm as the main areas of family life.
General Housing
Most people live in what are typically called Cottages. Built of stone, adobe brick, logs, or similar material, roofed with thatch and slate or ceramic tile, they are typically small dwellings, and exist in most Cities as well as towns. A fairly large space is used, as there is typically a garden close at hand, and while in cities there will be a community well, in Villages and Hamlets there may be a private well.
Most homes are fairly crowded, furnished sparsely, and yet quite homey and well lived in.
Akadia
Akadian homes are nearly always square or round stone and wood structures. The typical residence has a main room on the bottom where a hearth sits vented outside, with stairs along one wall leading up to a sleeping area, and a sharply peaked roof.
Wealth is established by the height of the towers, and as wealth is tied to magical power, it also means that mages will have taller Towers. Common Mage towers are at least three or four stories tall, with the upper floors being laboratories, storerooms, or studies.
Antilia
Wood frames, low angled single direction roofs that shed towards the back of the house, with long porches out front, these homes are long and rectangular, with a hearth room in the center venting directly and rooms reached along the porch. The houses are sided with long, thin strips of wood set to overlap each other, often painted bright colors.
Aztlan
Azlian homes are built mostly on stilts, raised typically eight to ten feet off the ground, reached by broad staircases and having wide broad porches all around that can be sectioned off using screens of fabric or rice paper. The Hearth I s always center of the homes, which are often built out of wood. Gardens are typically grown beneath the house for the family use. They tend to have bulbous roofs, in which warm air is captured and vented out through fans.
Dorado
Doradan homes are square, sturdy structures built of a sub baked or kilned brick, with a single window and door. They are large structures, surrounded by low walls that mark out the garden and well area, and have flat roofs that include channels to let water run for collection or provide sleeping space through a laddered hatch.
Durango
Durangan houses are typically two or three stories, with two to four rooms per floor, built around a central staircase. Simple peaked roofs, with walls built of exposed timber and plaster bound stones. Hearths are located on the bottom floor and vented there. Durangan homes are mostly closely clustered, and in some cases a single home may have what they call “apartments” – each of the rooms on a floor is a home. Durango is laid out in a surprising grid system, very regular, but has a history of using the alleys between buildings as places of terror.
Hyboria
Weaving cottons, wool, and plant fibers, Hyboria is a home of woven walls and triangular pointed shelters, often as high as thirty feet for the more permanent locations but using shorter poles to support the wrappings that form their homes. It is shocking how fast two people can raise a house or drop one – and Hyborian peoples like to be on the move.
Islandia
Raised on thick, often cultivated and still living stilts, reached by moveable, folding steps or ladders, the raised homes of Islandia are round or pointed with the points facing into the wind, and the porch areas beneath them. Some have noticed that the houses resemble the pontoons that make up the hulls of most ships – designed to cut through storms, which can happen with little or no warning, and meant to resist and survive even flooding or massive tidal waves.
Kahokia
Kahokian homes are round or square or triangular, depending on the larger grouping, and always slightly sunken with long entry ways that have a rounded roof. They are mostly domed structures, supported by posts. Sod is used to cover the lodges, and often adds additional garden space for a family. Hearths are located outside the homes, which are small, compact, tight, and used for family only.
For many gatherings, they raise a fur or hide covered open sided shelter.
Keris
Keris has the unique trait of building its homes within the sea, using carefully cultivated coral and collected shells and when they do reach land those buildings are all flowing and lack solid angles. They are very fluid in their style, and homes are often interconnected among families that have strong ties, and there is always access to water.
Lyonese
Within Lyonese, the houses are generally rectangular, and divided up into three main sections, with outhouses part of the property indoors and having a space to clean out night soil from the alley side – and there is always an alley side. Night soil is usually collected in Lyonese by people who transform it into fertilizer for crops, and also the same folks are generally responsible for cleaning the streets of trash, debris, and horse or similar droppings. It is an oft cited concern that leashed bears make for messy streets. The houses separate by having an entertaining space up front, a kitchen in between, and then a family space in the rear, with guest and family bedrooms on the sides and upstairs. Lyonese homes often have a small shop built in that fronts the house, and in this case, the shop takes up a large area while a work area is off to the side (baker’s ovens, blacksmith forges, and the like. Rural homes tend to have the same set up, and one peculiar thing about all Lyonese houses is that they have no windows on the outer walls, though shops may have an awning that can be raised or lowered. Situated around the kitchen is a large open space, usually about ten feet wide (the homes are always at least thirty feet wide and 90 feet long, and the rectangle is important to them) that is utterly open to the sky, and allows in light, that can be draped in bad weather.
Qivira
Qivira homes are typically raised above earth four to eight feet, approached by often ornate, wide banister, stairs to a broad patio typically around six to eight feet wide that stretches around the entirety of the house – even as it is added on to for the needs of the family. The patio is covered by a wide, curving sloped roof, the supporting posts sticking out and heavily decorated. Internally, the building is more or less a single vast open space but is divided by movable walls. Everything in the house is made of wood and bamboo, and it will feature a sometimes-complex arrangement of runners for the moveable panels that are divided and filled in with a thick paper also made from bamboo or, in poorer homes, with woven bamboo sheets. It rains often in Qivira, so the wood is often stained and treated to become more durable, and they developed a form of shellack that is used extensively to waterproof and protect it, and for the tiled roofs they use bitumen like most do.
Inside there will be a kitchen with a stone hearth, a larger family area, and then small rooms for family members, who often will sleep two to a room. Qiviran furnishings are of note – they are almost all of the same height, about twenty-eight inches off the floor — and do not have backs. Square, stout legs support them, and this applies to couches, chairs, beds, tables and more. They use a thin woven bamboo cushion that is usually filled with small stone beads – smaller than a pinky nail, about the size of a fish egg and gathered from the shores – for what we from Sibola would call a rather uncomfortable rest, but they use woven blankets of incredible complexity and fantastic rugs to add cushioning. Even steel shod boots stop tapping the polished bamboo floors when they come to one of these rugs.
Survival of someone wearing steel shod boots into the house of a Qiviran is questionable since they do not wear shoes within the home, ever.
Sibola
Sibola’s homes are two stories of stone construction, built around a central hearth, and often include access to an area for animals in the winter. They are round buildings with woven thatch for roofs, slightly sloped.
Urban Dwellings
In Cities and Towns, a common kind of dwelling is a two- or three-story structure that incorporates some form of shop or workspace and a common area on the lower floor, and on the upper floor has sleeping and bathing areas reach via a set of stairs in the common area.
The particular building sort can vary, according to materials available, but in most cities, they are fashioned from brick or wood and stone with plaster or stucco (sometimes with cement). They are often decorated to stand out, and most have some sort of signage or other. These buildings are often built close tighter, with perhaps a narrow walkway between them, but in some cases are built right up against each other, possibly even sharing a wall (common to Durango).
The only buildings taller than three stories in any City or Town are official function ones, such as a Guild or Temple, or the homes of the wealthiest. Average square feet are right around 1000, and the wealthiest might have a 3000 square foot home, but only Nobility can afford anything larger and that is usually the Manor Houses.
In cities, people are often taxed on the size of their home. Large families are not common in cities, so often the largest homes will also be the oldest, having grown from the original families who founded a city.
