Buildings

[Philster401]

My first question is how do you deal with this? How much do you worry about this?

What are most of your buildings made out of? Real? Imaginary?

Style of buildings?

How large? Tall? Old? Purpose?

If they are very old how do you deal with erosion? Example: if a castle is very old like, thousands of years, is it falling apart or is it still lived in and very active?

Research where can you find good information on thing like this?

 

[Butterfly]

Types of Castle, Chateau Fort and Manor House and History of Castles

 

[Svrtnsse]

I worry about it as much as is relevant to the story.

In my current WIP, which is a short story, the state of the dwellings is largely irrelevant. What IS important is the impression the reader creates of them. This is the introductory paragraph of the story:

Winter had grown old over the forests and the hillsides, and little by little the days grew longer, but not by much, for spring was still far away. In the burrows, lanterns and candles kept the darkness at bay, and where anfylk gathered, they talked of summer.

We learn that the anfylk live in burrows and that they use lanterns and candles to keep the darkness at bay. This should steer the reader's imagination in the right direction, and they'll make up the rest of the description themselves.

Later on, there is also an inn mentioned, but there's no real description of that either. It's because the feeling of the inn is more important than how it actually looks:

She hurries through the garden and past the stables, where the horses dream of warmer days. Up the road through the village, to the inn at the top of the hill, she turns. It has a name, the inn, and sometimes the villagers argue about what it is, but just for fun. No one really cares. There’s just one inn.

It’s a small village.

From this we learn it's an inn that's so old the people of the little village has forgotten what it's even called. This, along with the rest of the impression of the setting, should be enough for the reader to create their own image of the inn.


I realise the above probably isn't all that relevant to your question, but it's an example from the lighter end of the spectrum when it comes to describing buildings/architecture.

An example from the other end would be Ben Aaronovich's books about PC Peter Grant (see Rivers of London). The latter books in the series get more and more interested in the archaeology of the setting (modern day London), and descriptions of buildings and details of buildings become rather quite common. I'm not particularly analytical, but it's enough that even I noticed it and found it a little bit annoying. Apart from that they're good books though.

 

[skip.knox]

Let's see. I'll try to sort the questions into categories. First, how much do I worry about this? Exactly as Svrtnsse says: however much the story needs. In some, the buildings are incidental and I worry about them as much as plant life or the economic system. In others, the building is important, so I put some thought to it.

Which takes us to the second question, which seemed mostly to center on age. You can and should do some research. Find old buildings and read about them. But I can tell you one thing right now: people change buildings more drastically than does Nature (except for things like earthquakes!). Castle, palace, whatever, if it's been used for more than a century, it's been modified. Take a look, for example at Diocletian's palace in Split. The Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletian's_Palace has a nice "before" and "after" picture (ancient and modern). That place is huge, and so were the changes, but you'll find the same phenomenon in *any* structure. People adapt the architectural environment around them to suit the needs of the moment.

Which is another way of saying you can have your buildings modified pretty much as you please, and blame it on people. Or orcs.

If you are talking natural aging, then I'd look at pyramids, or some of the ruins in southeast Asia. In such cases, climate will play a more significant role.

 

[Penpilot]

If you are talking natural aging, then I'd look at pyramids, or some of the ruins in southeast Asia. In such cases, climate will play a more significant role.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think your comment about people doing more changed than nature applies very much to the pyramids, too. The pyramids were covered in smooth, white limestone, but people carted those away to make other things after the pyramids were abandoned. And the sphinx had a nose, until someone either chiselled it off in the 1300s or the British/Napoleon fired cannon balls at it.

How decrepit a building gets depends on how well people maintain it. If nobody cleans and makes repairs, of course the building is going to be run down. But if take care of it, make repairs, clean off moss and dirt, then the building can last forever. There are churches that are thousands of years old that are still in use and are in great condition.

 

[skip.knox]

You are right, penpilot, regarding the pyramids. Regarding "maintenance" of buildings, what I was trying to say was that in maintaining (that is, by simply using) buildings, humans inevitably modify those buildings. No old building stands unchanged. People add to it or change it or even destroy parts, in ways that would shock a preservationist. That's why I said the OP can pretty much have old buildings look however they need to look, and blame humans for it. The impulse to keep structures unchanged is a modern impulse. In some ways, one could argue it's a fundamentally inhuman impulse. In other ways, it's profoundly human. People are complicated. I wonder if elves are simpler.

 

[KC Trae Becker]

t's profoundly human. People are complicated. I wonder if elves are simpler.

What an interesting thought. Could you elaborate? How would elves be simpler?

 

[skip.knox]

Not sure. I always like to think of my non-human races as differing from human races. So, if people are complicated (which they are) I thought maybe elves or dwarves or whatever might be something ... different. Simpler would be one possibility. Another would be that they were internally consistent but would appear mysterious and even contradictory to outsiders.

How would this work? Again, I've not put a lot of thought to it. But here's a run at it.

My gnomes are a race that appears to be inherently subservient. They are, in some places and times, essentially like medieval serfs. Not slaves, mind you; that's different.

But I didn't want gnomes to be exactly like serfs, so I have made them inherently subservient. They live to please, as the saying goes. A race with that mind-set, and with some marketable skills, would almost naturally be exploited by humans. By orcs, too, but I don't want to wander too far into my world of Altearth.

Gnomes are, to human eyes, simpler. They do what they're told, within the parameters of their skills. They need tending to and they need protecting by their naturally superior humans, but there's no point in treating them like humans because they aren't.

And, indeed, they are not. They are different. Are they truly simpler or is that perception merely the result of human arrogance toward obsequiousness? That's where I'm not sure. But I can say that gnomes rarely behave in a contradictory way. They rarely play mind games or are afflicted with ennui. They don't display the range of emotions and behaviors humans do, so in that sense they at least appear to be simpler.

I threw the question out on elves just for fun. I'm still toying with that race. Maybe they *seem* more complex but in fact are simpler. Than again, maybe "complicated" and "simple" are inadequate adjectives.

 

[ThinkerX]

What an interesting thought. Could you elaborate? How would elves be simpler?

Not sure. I always like to think of my non-human races as differing from human races. So, if people are complicated (which they are) I thought maybe elves or dwarves or whatever might be something ... different. Simpler would be one possibility. Another would be that they were internally consistent but would appear mysterious and even contradictory to outsiders.

Like Skip, I gave some thought into making my nonhuman races different from humans.

Goblins and Hobgoblins differ from humans at a base biological level, which in turn affects their overall racial outlook. Put simply, goblin and hobgoblin males outnumber females by a hundred to one - or more. Yet the male drive to procreate is very strong. Hence, the males try to stand out from the pack, or eliminate potential competitors. Which leads to a society where certain forms of assassination are acceptable, as is raiding neighboring communities...of any race. Whatever it takes to land a mate.

Goblins and hobgoblins are also pack creatures. They are hatched from leathery eggs, not born, typically in batches of three to twenty. These siblings form packs with rigidly defined ranks, with various packs competing or cooperating as the situation merits.

Architecture: Opportunity permitting, these races dwell in large blank cubes, each with a statue of unusual aspect in front. Interior chambers are large and few, for they are highly social despite the rivalries. Members of other races stay in large red cubical buildings, while civic offices are the same, only black in color.

And so on with the other races. Rachasa are 'cat-people' noted for their impressive physical ability - able to leap straight up for as much as twenty feet, or as much as a hundred feet horizontal given a running start. They also tend to see others as 'prey.' They are typically organized into bands of up to a couple dozen. To them, currency is a abstract concept or game and fire is something to be feared. As such they remain locked into a primitive tech level...though there are exceptions.

Elves are alien souls trapped within once human bodies, which affects their architecture and outlook.

And so on.

 

[Svrtnsse]

I can't help but help derail this thread further. The notion of how/why elves would be simpler is quite interesting.

One contributing factor, I think, is age. Would elves get stuck in the habits they developed while young and growing up, or would they adapt to the world around them as it changes?
Humans being mortal and relatively short lived are the ones driving innovation and development in my setting. They're curious and want to know how things work and tinker with new things to try and make things easier. Their time in the world is limited.
The elves are immortal and they have all the time in the world to figure things out. Perhaps that's why they seem simpler. They stick with what they know and they're slow at adapting new and modern technology.

I've got a short story about an elf who have moved from a little backwater countryside village into the elven enclave in a modern city. She mostly still live the way she used to, but she's absolutely delighted and fascinated by having music come from a little machine with knobs and buttons and glowing lights on it.
Before she moved into the city, she lived for a few hundred years in an all-elven village without electricity or any other modern conveniences of the city.

Back to buildings.
I think that if you're used to having your temple/dwelling look a specific way, you'll maintain it to keep looking that way. If you've kept it like that for hundreds or thousands of years, you'll probably be reluctant to make any radical changes to it without thinking it through very seriously first.

 

[SugoiMe]

Love the discussion about non-human races! Maybe we should make a new thread about it?

About buildings. Like Svrtnsse, I describe as is necessary for the plot. The same can be said for other architecture, such as bridges. For example, in my secondary world, there's an old, natural bridge made from interconnecting roots, mud and stepping stones, but its construction isn't written in the creation stories of recorded time. My MC is fascinated with origins and mysteries of the past,so I explained them in more detail. It helps broaden the reader's perception of the MC, and he later finds out how it got there in the second book when he discovers uncharted land.