Fantasy RPG Forum - Standing Trials

The city is located on a flat plateau on top of a hill. In the valley below, at the riverbanks, there may be docks for the kind of boats that are flat enough for river traffic and come there to load and unload goods to or from the city. There is maybe some buildings where goods can be stored temporarily, maybe some homes too, maybe some fishermen and small boats. This is part of the farmland plains. Is it so?

There’s several avenues up to Etzos. There’s no trees on the slopes, only stone and low vegetation. There’s also no houses on the slopes. Is the city built exclusively on the flat top plateau ? Is it built as five flat “floors”, like flat discs stapled on each other, and you go up/down to the adjacent floors on stairways and/or ramps?

A traveller would first arrive to the perimeter. There’s no wall around it. (The wall comes on the inner side of the Ward ring. The perimeter is an open city area, and it’s totally flat. Is it built with a systematic layout, with well-ordered streets with pavement on, cobblestone for example, and no randomely windling streets? Or is it not meant to be imagined this way? Perhaps simpler streets, sand, mud, a more of an organically growing maze?

I imagine the timber and adobe houses to have dark/tarred timber and natural brick colors in red and terracotta hues, or possibly the brick is sometimes covered with grout and painted. How do you think of the timber and brick houses?

I imagine the pure wood houses may be on the simpler side, made of planks. I don’t know if they are grey, colored, or dark brown/black due to tar. How have you imagine them to look?

And I’m wondering if the houses are built in rows or stand-alone. It would make sense to me if the timber and adobe structures would more often be rows, but the wood houses would more often be stand-alone due to need to prevent fire from spreading from house to house. Don’t know if the two types of houses are built all over the areas or if there’s different sub-areas with different houses.

How many floors are the houses in the perimeter? How broad or narrow are the streets? And what’s the height difference up to the ward ring? Are the rooftops of the perimeter below the ground of the ward ring? Is there a slope between the rings, or is there kind of “a vertical wall”? Are the “discs” (or floors) of the city stone terrasses "carved" out in the hill, or are they huge constructions built of stone?

I’m under the impression people can enter straight into the perimeter, and although there can be soldiers around and random checks on new arrivals can occur, there’s no regular control; you can just continue in via one of the ramps. Is it really just to enter the perimeter, no guards, no control? Or have I misunderstood this?

I don’t know how the ramps up in between the perimeter blocks and up to the Ward ring are meant to be imagined. Are they are simply broader outdoors streets and you can move freely from (example) the people’s market into the south-west housing area and from there over next ramp to the barracks? Or can the areas only be reached via the Ward ring?

I’m wondering if there’s any vegetation, weeds, patches of grass and low bushes, climbers on housewalls, pot plants, gardens? There’s also a tent shop and I’m wondering if this means tents can be set up in the perimeter.