A Question About Heortling Steads

[Jeff]

Just now, Jeff said:

I'd certainly commission art that looks far less Northern European today.

But one thing I really want to emphasize is that the Orlanthi of Dragon Pass are NOT Vikings, Irish or British Celts, or La Tene spiky haired Celts, or ancient Germans. They have a very different background, context, and society. And so naturally they have different architecture, different clothing, and different appearance. 

[Jon Hunter]

4 minutes ago, Jeff said:

But one thing I really want to emphasize is that the Orlanthi of Dragon Pass are NOT Vikings, Irish or British Celts, or La Tene spiky haired Celts, or ancient Germans. They have a very different background, context, and society. And so naturally they have different architecture, different clothing, and different appearance. 

Jeff one question is the climate of Satar Mediterranean or more temperate?

[TRose]

13 minutes ago, Jon Hunter said:

I think spirit magic needs something(s) to represent this kind of common magic which isn't adventurer, not as game focus but as a catch all for day to day magic. 

 Well there is the repair spell. But will Repair fix a leaking roof is the question?

[Steve]

I'm really looking forward to the artwork in The Coming Storm. Hopefully there will be a lot of stuff to help flesh out what Jeff is trying to explain here. A picture paints a thousand words and all that ...

 

[Jeff]

1 minute ago, Jon Hunter said:

Jeff one question is the climate of Satar Mediterranean or more temperate?

Dragon Pass has a strongly varied climate. Boldhome is only about 120 miles from the Choralinthor Bay. 

Sea Season it gets warm wet winds from the south.

Fire Season, it gets warm winds blowing from the southwest.

Earth Season is dry with winds coming from the east.

Dark Season alternates very cold winds coming across Peloria (although not nearly as cold as they were before the Glowline) with dry winds from the east.

Storm Season has big thunderstorms coming across Peloria into the Pass.

[Jeff]

Dragon Pass is coldest in Dark Season, with most precipitation in Storm and Sea Seasons. Fire and Earth seasons are hot, Sea Season warm. Storm Season is warm one day, then cold the next. Then warm again. And like in any mountainous area, how wet or warm it is depends on what side of what mountain you are. Frex, west of Mount Rainier is a rain forest, but east gets quite dry.

[Jeff]

I also suspect that in Storm Season, we alternate from cold wet (snow) weather from the north, with dry warm weather from the east, with warm moist winds from the southwest. Making things a mess.

[Jon Hunter]

3 minutes ago, Jeff said:

I also suspect that in Storm Season, we alternate from cold wet (snow) weather from the north, with dry warm weather from the east, with warm moist winds from the southwest. Making things a mess.

The reason I asked was id always imagined a temperate climate, so visually a northern European look worked. If its closer to a mountainous Turkish climate or high altitude palestine the re positioning of visuals may make more sense to me.

[Paid a bod yn dwp]

59 minutes ago, Jeff said:

I'd certainly commission art that looks far less Northern European today.

Thanks for that. Does that hold true for the wilder Orlanthi like the Skanthi. Would the RQ 3 illustrations in dorastor still hold up for them? 

[Jeff]

24 minutes ago, Jon Hunter said:

The reason I asked was id always imagined a temperate climate, so visually a northern European look worked. If its closer to a mountainous Turkish climate or high altitude palestine the re positioning of visuals may make more sense to me.

The distance from Karse to Boldhome is pretty similar to the distance between Venice and Merano or Innsbruck. Nochet to Boldhome is pretty similar to the distance from Genoa to St. Moritz. And I view Esrolia as being humid sub-tropical like much of northern Italy, Sochi, or coastal Bulgaria (or Savannah, Charleston, or DC - but a LOT closer to real mountains). Dragon Pass is further inland and significantly higher (pretty much all of Dragon Pass is above 2000 feet). Thanks to the Rockwoods, it is where coastal Kethaela meets continental Peloria, but things get really screwed up by the dry and warm Urox winds from the east.

[Joerg]

On 9.3.2016 at 4:20 PM, M Helsdon said:

The Sun Path varies with the seasons, so the relative angle of the Sun will vary. Regarding house orientation, I see an alignment north/south, east/west as implicit in an Ernalda House, and living quarters, at least in Genertela, being on the south side to gain maximum warmth.

The variations are slight, comparable to being on the equator at the solstices. For all practical purposes, the sun is overhead at noon. The full force of the noon sun will hit the roof.

The real variation between summer and winter is not the angle of the sun, but its time in the sky. The winter days have 10 or less hours of sun, the summer days 14 or more. But still the sun will be overhead at noon. In summer slightly to the north, in winter slightly to the south, following the tilt of the sky dome. (Noon is the moment when the sun eclipses Pole Star - at any day in the year.)

The amount of heat that reaches the surface world varies between summer noon and winter noon, too - it isn't just the time the sun is in the sky, but also the amount of heat per hour which varies.

But putting your living quarters on the south side won't have much of an effect on the warmth inside the house.

 

Edited July 1, 2016 by Joerg
solstices, not equinoxes

[M Helsdon]

A selection of rural and urban 'Ernalda Houses':

• At the top a two storey town house, belonging to a wealthy clan. The courtyard is partially roofed, with a colonnade. The hearth for 'entertaining' is to the right, the family hearth to the left. Rooms for servants and workshops lie at the rear of the house. Two sets of stairs lead to the upper floor: the family stairs on the left, servants' on the right. The family rooms: sleeping accommodation, shrines etc. are on the upper floor.
• At the bottom, two large houses with an enlarged internal courtyard, a more modest carl's house, and a cottar's cottage.

The two storey house has an internal gallery on the upper floor, with windows overlooking the courtyard. I imagine in the Esrolian equivalent the gallery might be on the outer wall.

Edited March 9, 2016 by M Helsdon

[Jeff]

This is superb Martin. I love it.

[M Helsdon]

9 minutes ago, Joerg said:

The variations are slight, comparable to being on the equator at the equinoxes. For all practical purposes, the sun is overhead at noon. The full force of the noon sun will hit the roof.

On Glorantha, the equinoxes are when the Sun's path precisely bisects the Sun Dome - when the Sun will be directly overhead at noon; in summer the Sun Path heads north and the Sun is bright and days are longer, in winter, south and the Sun is pale and days are short?

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, Jon Hunter said:

Add to that the look and feel of KODP and other stuff.

However I do like square Esrolian house as an option.

I've also had the idea of a round larnsting house that uses the round shape to reflect the air and movement runes.  

You could even suggest that a round house is seditious in Lunar controlled areas

The concept of a Larnsting house is a bit funny - a good Larnsting never spends two (consecutive) nights under the same roof. A smartass might construct a complex with multiple houses, so he can switch around. A devout Larnsting (and I don't see how you can be a Larnsting without devoutly moving around) wouldn't bind himself to a house. I have no idea what Sartar did - he probably avoided sleeping in his palace, using it only for his day activities in governing his kingdom.

Buildings need to accommodate climate. Ignoring 12 weeks of regular deep snow and cold by placing buildings that won't keep at zero degrees (Celsius) inside with a single fireplace is crazy.

I happen to have had a couple of days without central heating when we had serious frost outside, and without a gas heater in the middle of the house I would have had to exchange all pipes inside the house. As it was, I managed to keep a temperature of about 3°. Taking a shower was real freshening, I tell you...

However, these are normal conditions in winter in primitive housing. This goes even more for stone castles than for wooden farmsteads, where the stink of the animals will provide welcome warmth of say five degrees above freezing. A devoutly sky-clad Orlanthi who is immune to wind chill will still be forced to stay close to the hearthfire, or swirl around in the smoke.

Round houses symbolize Fire or Light, and might be a typical Lodrili house shape. Darkness is circular, too, but massive. Moon is circular, with a central divide. With this in mind, the only Orlanthi who are semi-likely to use round houses for living quarters would be the Enerali who trace their descent from Ehilm the sun, or possibly Elmali.

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, Jeff said:

But one thing I really want to emphasize is that the Orlanthi of Dragon Pass are NOT Vikings, Irish or British Celts, or La Tene spiky haired Celts, or ancient Germans. They have a very different background, context, and society. And so naturally they have different architecture, different clothing, and different appearance. 

If a culture is grain farming, cattle and sheep herding in temperate climate (hot summers, cold winters), they had better have costumes and housing that fits the theme. One reason why I keep looking for pre-Columbic North American housing in the area which regularly sees snow is to see how a culture unimpeded by contact with Celts, Saxons or Romans would build. The parallels to band ceramics neolithic housing are staggering, and the band ceramics style of buildings survived in principle to become what people think of as Viking.

The beehive agglomerations of the Minoans or Kanaanites resulted from their need to assemble huge numbers of manpower to maintain their irrigation works, and had little trouble with heavy snowfalls. The contemporary farmers north of the Alps and Carpathians had summer temperatures comparable to modern North Africa or Sicilia, but still heavy snow falls in winter. Reliable amounts of rain made communal irrigation works irrelevant, so the steadings could be further apart.

The Orlanthi clans are different from the Germanic concept of "Sippe", which was a lot closer to bloodline than Orlanthi clans ever were. (There were no clans as such on the European mainland, not among the majority of the Celts, nor among the Germans or Norse. While Tacitus had no first hand experience of the people he held up as a mirror to the Roman Empire, he would have mentioned clans if they had them.)

The Viking polytheism did not stress emulation of the deity to the extent that is claimed for the Orlanthi. The Germanic migration groups didn't think much about changing their major deity to that of their opponents in battle if that gave them battle luck - imagine a Gloranthan group attempting this. The ancient Greeks' relation to their deities isn't mirroring the Orlanthi attitude, either. None of these cultures had a concept of spirits of reprisal.

But how far are we going to take the differences? The Orlanthi are a culture of flyers, so why don't we have roof flaps and landing platforms before those? Ernaldans are happy underground, so why don't Orlanthi steads have elaborate cellar systems? (Certain farmsteads in Bavaria have such artificial underground structures, without any recognizable practical purpose, so probably for cultic reasons. Heortling steads don't appear to have them.

 

[Didier]

Well, Sartar was always travelling, even when he was king. For exemple : "Sartar was loved by the common tribes people, for he often went disguised among them and searched for those worthy and just enough to help convey the kingdom towards a good future" (Composite History of Dragon Pass, The Kingdom of Sartar, in King of Sartar)

We know why, now   

 

About round houses... There is a kind of stone round huts of old that were used by the shepereds :

    

You don't find them only in France, but also in Spain, Italie too, and i'm quite sure you can find them on other countries. Most of them are built in the exact same way the stone "beehive" huts of Bronze Age Ireland were built. When I imagine a young heortling sheperd and his alynx inside, I can't help to think to young Orlanth and Yinkin in Kero Fin cave ^^ In my Glorantha, there are the typical shelters for Sartar's sheperds home away because they have lead their flocks of sheeps to the "summer" pastures  

Edited March 9, 2016 by Didier

[Jon Hunter]

2 hours ago, Jeff said:

The distance from Karse to Boldhome is pretty similar to the distance between Venice and Merano or Innsbruck. Nochet to Boldhome is pretty similar to the distance from Genoa to St. Moritz. And I view Esrolia as being humid sub-tropical like much of northern Italy, Sochi, or coastal Bulgaria (or Savannah, Charleston, or DC - but a LOT closer to real mountains). Dragon Pass is further inland and significantly higher (pretty much all of Dragon Pass is above 2000 feet). Thanks to the Rockwoods, it is where coastal Kethaela meets continental Peloria, but things get really screwed up by the dry and warm Urox winds from the east.

So the differences between rome or venice and the mid alps would be good comparisons?

[Jeff]

18 minutes ago, Jon Hunter said:

So the differences between rome or venice and the mid alps would be good comparisons?

Yes. Or between Thessalonika and Sofia.

[M Helsdon]

Last one in this series for now... An Esrolian townhouse.

Whilst the general layout is similar to the Sartarite townhouse, there are distinct differences. The main entrance does not directly enter the building but opens onto a vestibule and then the central courtyard. The main doors are directly ahead, with a waiting room for visitors and clients. An audience/feast hall with a raised platform is to the left, and entry to the private portions of the house lie beyond this with an imposing staircase up to the family rooms. Offices and storerooms lie to either side of the corridor leading to the stairs. On the other side of the house are the kitchens, rooms for retainers and storerooms. The upper floor is occupied by the family, with the matriarch having a suite of rooms in the upper left, and other large rooms for other important members of the household. Elsewhere are rooms for children, and chambers for the older sons and daughters.

Looking at the latest map of Nochet, many of the Great Houses have a similar layout with a central courtyard, but tend to be rectangular complexes instead of square.

Edited March 9, 2016 by M Helsdon

[Paid a bod yn dwp]

3 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

Last one in this series for now... An Esrolian townhouse.

Whilst the general layout is similar to the Sartarite townhouse, there are distinct differences. The main entrance does not directly enter the building but opens onto a vestibule and then the central courtyard. The main doors are directly ahead, with a waiting room for visitors and clients. An audience/feast hall with a raised platform is to the left, and entry to the private portions of the house lie beyond this with an imposing staircase up to the family rooms. Offices and storerooms lie to either side of the corridor leading to the stairs. On the other side of the house are the kitchens, rooms for retainers and storerooms. The upper floor is occupied by the family, with the matriarch having a suite of rooms in the upper left, and other large rooms for other important members of the household. Elsewhere are rooms for children, and chambers for the older sons and daughters.

Looking at the latest map of Notchet, many of the Great Houses have a similar layout with a central courtyard, but tend to be rectangular complexes instead of square.

Very interesting. I've learnt a lot from this thread. Where would I find the map of notchet?

[M Helsdon]

2 minutes ago, Paid a bod yn dwp said:

Very interesting. I've learnt a lot from this thread. Where would I find the map of notchet?

http://www.glorantha.com/nochet-city-of-queens/

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, M Helsdon said:

Last one in this series for now... An Esrolian townhouse.

Whilst the general layout is similar to the Sartarite townhouse, there are distinct differences. The main entrance does not directly enter the building but opens onto a vestibule and then the central courtyard. The main doors are directly ahead, with a waiting room for visitors and clients. An audience/feast hall with a raised platform is to the left, and entry to the private portions of the house lie beyond this with an imposing staircase up to the family rooms. Offices and storerooms lie to either side of the corridor leading to the stairs. On the other side of the house are the kitchens, rooms for retainers and storerooms. The upper floor is occupied by the family, with the matriarch having a suite of rooms in the upper left, and other large rooms for other important members of the household. Elsewhere are rooms for children, and chambers for the older sons and daughters.

Looking at the latest map of Nochet, many of the Great Houses have a similar layout with a central courtyard, but tend to be rectangular complexes instead of square.

Nice design!  Do you have a rough scale for what's likely supportable for roofing (given some slope and likely terracotta tiles in Nochet)?

As I noted on the G+ thread: Many of the halls of Nochet are likely complexes of these townhouses built over differing periods as the particular House grew,  added additional buildings for junior branches of the family, interior gardens, pig sties or other domestic animals, specialized craft buildings, etc. The Enfranchised Houses are effectively small palaces but likely retain similar features in certain wings.

I think these variations will account for not only rectangular, but other somewhat irregular forms across the city, but I'm going to play around a bit with this model and see how it works for my players' House's hall complex. 

[M Helsdon]

9 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Nice design!  Do you have a rough scale for what's likely supportable for roofing (given some slope and likely terracotta tiles in Nochet)?

As I noted on the G+ thread: Many of the halls of Nochet are likely complexes of these townhouses built over differing periods as the particular House grew,  added additional buildings for junior branches of the family, interior gardens, pig sties or other domestic animals, specialized craft buildings, etc. The Enfranchised Houses are effectively small palaces but likely retain similar features in certain wings.

I think these variations will account for not only rectangular, but other somewhat irregular forms across the city, but I'm going to play around a bit with this model and see how it works for my players' House's hall complex. 

The roof: not overly large - see the thatched roofs on the previous page for the size of the roof span. I would hazard that the slope of roofs in Esrolia would be less than in Sartar - less snow. As a model, the Romans could span a roof space (using wood) of up to 30m wide, but that indicates a large and expensive building; ordinary homes would have a much smaller unsupported span.

In drawing these, both the Sartarite and Esrolian, I had a relatively small size in mind, with a width no greater than an ordinary Roman house. The interior courtyard actually permits a larger size because the individual roof spans aren't great. The chieftain's hall, on an earlier page, is large and expensive, with its roof approaching the maximum possible for the 'period'. Regarding weight, thatched roofs, if properly made are thick and heavy, at least as heavy as a tiled roof. I've watched a house being thatched, and whilst the individual bales were light enough for a man to carry up a ladder, in total, the thatch is no slight weight.

When buildings 'expand' over time there are a number of trends: demolition and rebuilding on a grander scale; the inclusion of other neighboring properties, simply knocking through walls (the irregular layout becomes a feature); a mixture of the two. Based on the ruins of building that grew in that way (the temples at Luxor and Karnak come to mind), an irregular outer edge is likely, with only the entrance façade being tidied up. Away from the street, I would expect large complexes at Nochet to be fairly haphazard.

Regarding roof span - wrong period, but it shows what can be achieved:

http://www.visitparks.co.uk/places/cressing-temple/

These barns built for the Knights Templar were very large and ornate for the period, but they show the sort of span basic engineering can give.

Edited March 10, 2016 by M Helsdon

[Salla]

I love this thread.

I must ask re the Esrolian houses, why do the Oxen need stalls?