THE
HOUSING
OF THE AVENNORIANS |
The
Avennorians have many different styles of housing
due to their mixed ancestries and the influence of styles imported from other
tribes or areas which have formed the face of many a town. As locally found
building material has been used mainly, the appearance of houses and towns
varies with the area in which they are located as with the money the future
owner had available.
So all can be found from the primitive hut made out wood to the finest manor
house out of white Varcopasian granite a rich merchant has built for his wife.
Generally the housing can be divided into three main categories, the simpler
farmhouses found in the middle of the country, near the forests and where the
soil isn‘t as fertile as in the coastal regions, the big farmhouses or estates
in the flatter areas near the sea and the cities like
Ciosa,
Marcogg, Klinsor, Ravenport or
Lorehaven. There are many individual or local customs as well though, which
are worth mentioning like the whalebone
huts on the east coast. Not to mention the poor huts which don‘t follow any
tradition, but are built obeying the need to use what was available and cheap to
realise.
The Big Cities.
When approaching one of the most ancient towns the
Avennorians have built,
Ciosa, weather defying multi-storey
buildings out of black and grey granite with dark grey slates on the roofs are
greeting the incoming sailors. This look partly share
Marcogg and Klinsor,
all using the dark granite of the Caeytharin Mountains and the nearly black
slates, though Marcogg has white
claybricks as well as a structure out of dark painted
wood and white plaster. The only other "dark"
town is Ravenport. Its founders wanted to create a
Ciosa of the
west-coast, hoping the town would develop to an as
wealthy city as the old Ciosa.
So they imported the dark grey granite from the Hawkeye Quarry in the Caeytharin
Mountains and the slates from Griffin‘s Marl.
Lorehaven however as a younger town
preferred to use lighter materials like brick and wood and clay tiles of a soft
reddish brown in colour. So the city is full of muted, warm
earth tones and colours. This choice
may well be the result of strong Darian bloodlines in their population.
Generally said - everybody who is proud of his
Avennorian or even Glandorian ancestry and can afford it tries to show his
wealth with building big houses, where possible out of granite, with
glass-windows and with a distinct boat-shaped roof. If these houses are very
comfortable to live in, with most times just one or two chimneys is not
important, as long as it looks representative.
Those not gifted with rich forefathers or the talent to make money easily are
forced to decide, if they should take the still expensive limestone and build a
smaller house or the cheaper construction with wood and claybricks in
between, which might enable them to build in a grander style. The
interior however often doesn‘t match the magnificent looking exterior, except
from the entrance hall and a first attached room for visiting guests.
The Bigger Farmhouses and Estates.
Here are described the bigger farms or the even greater manor houses with
attached farming, not the solitary houses built by rich people near the cites
who wanted to have a summer residence.
In the flatter areas like the Twynor Farmsteadings we
find big farms with more than two buildings. They are owned mostly by the upper
Avennorian classes, often the owner is only
present now and then to keep an eye on them or for recreation, hunting and
feasting. In this case a bailiff looks after the farm. The estates served as a
kind of small fortification and though there is no need for it today, this state
is well preserved.
These bigger properties consist mostly of three big buildings, grouped around a
big place and are built together: The main house, which is very elaborately
done, dependant on the money the owner has, the stables which are opposite and
the big barn connecting the stables and the main building. The place is closed
by a simple wall with a nicely decorated gate, which gives the first impression
about the wealth of the owner and his farm or estate. On ground level not many
windows can be found on the outer walls, and if so, then they are small or of a
late date. The barn has none on the outside, but two huge doors, one above the
other. On top of these gates is a gable with a tackle which helps to unload the
harvest.
In the less noble farms of this kind, life takes place in the inner farmyard.
There is the dunghill near the stables, a well near the house, a little fenced
herb garden, hens and geese are allowed to run free, occasionally even the
pigs, the kittens are playing and
the guard-dog is chained to a long bar along the wall of the house which allows
it to move and hinder any stranger who might have found his way through the main
gate to enter the house.
The grand estates, though they have been nothing else than farms before, banned
all the dirt and dung producing livestock to the back of the stable or barn,
where they live in a fenced area. There the space between the buildings is not
longer a farmyard, but courtyard, with grass, flowers, a tree or two and small
useless paths. The front side and entrance of the house (now called mansion)
present themselves more noble, the plaster is always fresh whitewashed or shows
even a light colour. There may be a plastered road which leads up to the front
door, so that coaches can drive directly to the entrance. The stable is still
where it is, but now on the side of the "courtyard" only the
horses are held, where the poultry and
the pics have on their dens on the outside wall.
These big fortified homesteads house a lot of people. Without the owner and his
family, which is often not living there at all, up to thirty or even more
persons are finding work there - the bailiff and his family, several farm
labourers, male and female, maids for the farm work which has to be done in the
house and house servants for the owner family.
With the need of more space, these houses needed to be quite big. With enough
space available, they didn‘t build more than a full first story though, but the
base area grew up to twenty
peds in breadth and up to forty in length. These broad houses required a
huge roof, so the number of half-storeys grew up to seven! Gables were built in
the roofs to allow light in, though only towards the courtyard.
These houses are mostly build out of stone, though the stone may be covered with
whitewashed plaster. On the east coast slate is used for the roofs, on the west
coast tiles are common as well.
Some of these estates have a hulkroof which is quite steep and curved,
distinctly looking as if a boat‘s hulk was turned upside down. Only recently
erected mansions may have more full storeys, but they tend to go away from the
closed form as well and set the house in a distance to the stable and barns.
The Farmhouses.
Though these wooden houses have of course changed in appearance and how they
have been built since the time of the Darians in 12.000
b.S., they have still much in common with them. They might have now a fundament
out of stone and the walls of the ground level may be out of brick or clay, but
the rest of the house is still entirely out of wood and the roof made with
straw, reed or wooden shingles. At times the coloured patterns on the
whitewashed walls in the rooms are the same as when the Glandorians arrived. The
floor plan hasn‘t changed much, though sometimes the barn is now attached to the
main house in a right angle. But the front side of the ensemble is still
preferred to face to the south if possible. The reason may be, that most of
their inhabitants are mainly of Darian blood, some even claim that they are pure
Darians, though this may be doubted after twelve millennia. Normally the
buildings are big enough to house a family, with the grandparents, maybe an
uncle or aunt, a farm labourer and a maid.
What material is used depends where exactly the buildings are located. So near
or in a forest where the farmer owns a patch of trees the house will be entirely
out of wood. In regions where wood is scarcer due to the deforestation centuries
ago and a potential house builder has to buy the boles and blanks, he may only
do the roof truss out of it. Common are now as well a mixture out of wood and
clay walls, or wood and brickwalls, the wood giving the stability and the clay
mixed with straw or the bricks filling the spaces in-between. Sometimes the
wooden structure is visible, sometimes not.
The houses are built more in an ensemble now than in old
times. The upcoming wars seem to have forced the inhabitants to stick closer
together and occasional the effort was made to fence the whole village
(palisades). The tavern and the fire
pond is now mostly in the middle of the village, the temple and quarters for a
priest or two though at the rim - perhaps to allow more privacy when
worshipping.
The Huts and Shags.
Poor people don‘t have the choice of what kind of house
they would like to own or which material they prefer. Especially those thrown
out of the place where their ancestors lived for centuries, due to a war or
economic reasons don‘t think about where or how to build the shelter they need.
In old times those few of the Glandorians who didn‘t manage to stay close to
their conquering brothers, those of early mixed blood or those who just didn‘t
fit in any society were forced to take what they found - either
whale bones and skin left over from the
big whaling business - or any piece of
wood from the next forest. Their tradition they gave to their children where not
the thatched wooden houses of the farms or the stone houses, but the shags and
huts out of whatever material was available. They might have gained some wealth
later, but their houses didn‘t show any of the above described characteristic
features.
The best example are the settlements on the Mithral Coast. After the Glandorians
had mixed slowly with the Darian to form the
Avennorian tribe all these moved in this area who didn‘t find a place in the
new society, but due to the harsh living conditions there never assembled any
notable wealth. Uprooted they hadn‘t any tradition they carried with them and
most of the villages and small towns from
Parthanul up to Holt have more
or less flat roofs, with the exception of Marduran, which was able to afford
some more sophisticated buildings.
Special Features and Buildings.
Stonehouses can be found elsewhere in
Santharia as the houses built out of a wooden
structure filled with another material. There are however three special features
which are only seen in Manthria and
Brendolan in regions which did once belong to the
Avennorian Kingdom:
The Hulk-Roofs
Old stories tell us, that for the first longhouse Troi
Ciosa built, he used the hulk of his ship which ran
aground on the shores of Ghish-raa (Darian name for the peninsula), the place
Ciosa
was built later. It was of course smashed in parts and not able to sail anymore,
but lore tells, that all his man lifted it up, turned it around and put it on
top of some walls erected before. This can be doubted, he might just have done
it like it was done for the last millennia: If a boat or bigger vessel, be it a
barek or
triton was too old and insecure to be used as ship, its planks were taken
apart and reused as the supporting parts of a roof. Some might have needed to be
replaced with new ones, but in general they could be utilised, saving his owner
a lot of costs. Or they were sold to people as a cheap surrogate for new wooden
boles who wanted to build a shag, a barn or even a house, thus bringing in money
as well. This is done till today, with all sizes of buildings, but the old
ship's hulks are only used for secondary structures like barns and storage
houses, where it doesn't matter, if the roof leaks in places. Sometimes smaller
boats can be seen on meadows, their hulk turned around and placed on a few
boles, to give the cattle shelter, be it from rain or the
sun.
However, once the Avennorian
tribe grew with importance, influence and wealth it became fashion, to have a
house with a Hulkroof, as they were called by then. It was seen as an
Avennorian tradition, and
now new buildings got new roofs, built in this way. This
was of course more expensive than a roof with straight timbers, but the prestige
gained was worth the prize.
The
Whalebone
Structures
Even more noticeable as the hulk roofs are structures out of
whalebones which can be found till today
quite frequently along the east coast, mostly south of
Ciosa, though some are
found in the north as well, but not farther up than where the Mashdai River
joins the sea. It is said that in former times, in the first centuries after the
landing of the "Svarring Joling", Troi
Ciosa's ship, all Glandorian houses were build out of
whalebones, like
it is mentioned in a fragment found by Capher, a compendium-researcher, some
years ago in the library of the Starcharts Astrendum:
"The Avennorians' houses near the sea are dome shaped
whale boned structures covered with
whale skin. In the
towns and central land areas their houses are dome shaped
whale boned
structures chinked with stone or wood and covered with moss or sod. Some of the
houses especially the ones owned by the wealthier people are ornately covered
with the insides of oyster shells, which reflect the
sun and give off
a rainbow of colours. The King's palace is completely
covered with such shells inside and out. All of the houses have windows made of
finely crushed shells on top of their houses to allow the
sun to warm and
show off the home."
Now researchers assume, that this is only the imagination of a collector of
historical based myths, not an accurate description of how the Glandorians built
their houses, nor how their king lived. The knowledge how to do windows out of
finely crushed shells is lost as well - if they existed at all.
Today these whalebone structures are
rarely used as living quarters, and if, only by the
poorest part of the population. Most times they serve for storage and working
purposes along the coast, where the wind
carries the smells away more easily, which are part of the
whaling business. The flensing docks near
Klinsor are probably the most famous example, being the biggest of their kind.
They are around two peds
high and up to five in diameter, of dome shaped structure, but one connected to
the next, so that long halls are formed in which the business takes place.
Shells and other
Ornamentation
Prized are the Avennorian houses because of their
decoration with the shells of oysters,
the highly prized pearlfather of the
trysters and all the embellishing
substances and material made out of crushed or less perfect shells.
The most valuable and perfect shells are only used inside
the houses, as decoration around windows and door frames in the visitor room or
the main living rooms if the owner can afford it. The mantelpiece may well be
loaded with pearlfather shells as some
of the furniture. In wall panels or the filling of doors often
a prepared, formerly not so perfect shell of
oysters is used.
The chalky outside of the shells are removed with certain dangerous liquids till
the shell itself loses all its stiffness and can be pressed to a flat shimmering
piece. Many are glued carefully together, so that a magnificent plane piece of
pearlfather is
formed which is put on a support, most often a thin wooden plate. What could not
be used for these panels is crushed till it is a fine
powder, then mixed with a special kind of glue and used as a weather tight paint
on the granite outside of the house. This
pearlfather paint looks especially nice on the darker
varieties of the granite like it is used in
Ciosa and neighbouring big towns. It adds a light shimmer to the dark
appearance which is a beautiful sight when the
sun shines after a short shower. One
building in Ciosa excels
with the use of this paint: The Starcharts Astrendum has
not its walls, but its roofs covered with this colour, the slates of the big
central dome as well as the main two towers and the plenty little ones. A
mirrored ray of the Injèrá
from the central dome might well be the first glimpse a ship approaching
Ciosa gets of the
town.
To compare the shell-decoration of the Avennorians
with another of their customs - the carvings and wooden decoration of the houses
in the interior of the country may for some seem like the comparison of a
beautiful Centoraurian horse
with a brinn‘sy of the
Ráhaz-Dáth. But a
Centoraurian horse might
look strange in the wilderness of the desert, so the
shell ornamentation would be off on a wooden farmhouse. However, the carvings
like those in Shneerin as the light
planks and slender boles in the gable of the many wooden houses, which were
added in a way so that they form rectangles, triangles and so on,
have their own beauty - and a functionality the shell-covert beauties of the
towns and estates lack.
Information provided by
Talia
Sturmwind
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