@TheEdVerse Hi Ed! I'm trying to figure out the specifics of farmhouses in Eveningstar, specifically the way they were dug out of the earth "like a giant rabbit warren". What sort of methods did they employ to pull this off? Thanks!
— cluc2020 (@cluc2018) January 27, 2020
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By no means all of the farmhouses were like this. The oldest ones all were, though: you pile up earth into a hill, and build your house in the lee of it (prevailing wind in Eveningstar blows from the NW, so the hill, upon which you plant vine crops and shrub herbs for home. 2)
…kitchen use and to anchor the soil, and for the latter reason often plant fruit trees just upwind of the hill, too, stands to the NW of where you want your front door. Then you dig into the hill, and line those inner rooms with stone; the earth shelters them and keeps…— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) January 27, 2020
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…them at a fairly constant temperature. If you need to expand storage cellars, you can extend the hill, usually into a crescent shape, and tunnel it farther. Then your “front rooms” jut out of the hill on the lee (sheltered) side, the E or SE (the Stoneland-edge cliff jus 4)
…north of Eveningstar caused those from-the-NW winds to veer and blow straight E in some spots in the village. So your house is half (or a little more, or a little less) dug into its own little hill. Giving you rooms that in the frigid depths of winter would be free of all..— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) January 27, 2020
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…wind chill AND warm enough so that milk, water, other non-alcoholic liquids, and small critters wouldn’t freeze. 6)
So you started by building a stone house, or at least half of a stone house, with tile or stone roof sealed with a LOT of hardfired clay, pitch, etc. …and then you shovel-built a hill around it. The approach (the sidewalls of the entry "slice" into the hill) could be…— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) January 27, 2020
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…dry-laid fieldstone or timber cribbing or whatever you could afford, and could rebuild yourself in a few years as the shifting, settling earth inevitably shoved at it.#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) January 27, 2020
Amazing! Thanks so much! When you say, “the oldest ones”, what sort of period are we talking? By the 1330s DR, lack of space/larger families/increased local availability of Hullack and Dales timber led to more multi-storey and larger homes even for rural farm folk. Everyone still had a root cellar, but living in them fell out of fashion for "young new coin."#Realmslore
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) January 27, 2020
You'd think frost heaves would crack the floors, and walls would be out of true in a few years. I'm no architect but I've lived up north….
— Charles Quintin (@CharlesQuintin1) January 27, 2020
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You’re quite right. That’s why my note about ‘rebuild yourself.’ The floors are flagstone; they don’t crack, they heave, and you dig them up and re-lay them when you’re tired of tripping. Most of the in-hill rooms have timber crossbeams to keep walls from. 2)
…collapsing, as well as treetrunk support posts to hold the ceiling up, and are built that way from the beginning.
[Like my real-world farmhouse and barn. I live in Canada. ;} ]#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) January 27, 2020