can you describe what Arabel looks like from the street on a typical day? What do the buildings and people look like?Cobbled streets (overlaid by tiny mud and dung patches here and there), all wide enough for 2 large wagons to comfortably pass and still…
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) September 18, 2017
…leave room for foot traffic. Buildings three or four floors high (with cellars, too), and steeply-pitched shingle or shake or slate …
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) September 18, 2017
…roofs (almost no tiled roofs due to winds and severe winter cold), those roofs being steeply-pitched ("highpoint") to shed snow; many…
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) September 18, 2017
…chimneys and dormers. Half-timbered ("Tudor") upper floors that jut out over streets, lower floors of fitted fieldstone and/or brick. …
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) September 18, 2017
Most buildings battered/weathered, but good and solid (rebuilt often due to chimney fires, high storm winds, winter "claw"). Many warehouses
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) September 18, 2017
…and wagons; clearly a caravan/trading city, wherever your eye falls. Many horse troughs and pumps (freeze during winter, when cellar…
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) September 18, 2017
…pumps that don't are used exclusively), but kept filled in other months in case of raids out of the Stonelands, so city never runs short
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) September 18, 2017
…of untainted water (Crown law about this). Other laws: streets may not be blocked except by Purple Dragons and Town Watch (i.e. be …
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) September 18, 2017
…careful when parking wagons). People: wide ethnic mix of humans (drow, "goblinkin," and half-orcs not welcome), dwarves. A passing…
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) September 18, 2017
…scattering of gnomes, halflings, and elves. Much transient (caravan and peddler/wayfaring merchant) traffic. Covert Crown spies keep…
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) September 18, 2017
..watch for Cormyr over who arrives and leaves (to guard against rebellion, not just invasion, though this is more historical holdover…
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) September 18, 2017
…than sharp concern, these days). Rainwater shed from roofs goes down wide pipes into barrels and cellar-cisterns. Youth with slings…
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) September 18, 2017
…keep pigeons and the like rare sights within the city walls. Camping paddocks for caravans outside city walls, policed by Purple Dragons
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) September 18, 2017
(who provide firewood, and forbid the cutting of brush for some distance around Arabel, except for the brush clearing they themselves do, ..
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) September 18, 2017
…to make sure any potential besiegers lack cover).
Think that covers the basics. Just ask if you'd like more.— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) September 18, 2017
A pleasure!
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) September 18, 2017