Housing & Furniture¶
You can own a house. It costs silver once and then it is yours — no rent, no lease, no term, and nothing that takes it back off you for being away a while.
Behind your own door you get a lockable room nobody else can open, floor space that keeps what you leave on it, furniture that does real work, and a board to hang your deeds on.
Where to buy¶
Two towns keep a housing register, and they are opposite cases. Coldhollow will practically press a house on you; Emberford has a queue.
Coldhollow: the Shuttered Row¶
Coldhollow lost most of its people across two bad winters and a fever. The houses those people left are still standing — boarded properly, roofs looked at twice a year, and the town reeve holds the deeds until somebody takes them on.
Go west off Shuttered Lane. The row opens between two dead hedges: eight houses, a common well, and the reeve's office at the top with a stove lit in it.
| Where | What |
|---|---|
| The Reeve's Office (north off the turning) | Reeve Halvard Tamm, the register, and every deed on the row |
| The row's well (west along the row) | Joiner Bess Trewin's handcart — furniture |
Emberford: Kiln Bank¶
Emberford is winning. The river works, the road south is open, and everything feeding the furnaces upriver comes over its quays, so people come, and five houses do not become six because a great many people would like them to. What you are paying for is the flood mark: everything below it went in the flood year, and everything above it never had to be rebuilt.
Go north up the stair from The Quays. Sixty-one steps, and a chisel-cut line at the bottom showing how high the river came.
| Where | What |
|---|---|
| The Wharfinger's Office (north off the stair foot) | Wharfinger Adela Cutts, the bank register, and the waiting list |
| The bank cistern (east along the bank) | Cabinetmaker Osric Yarrow's handcart — the same furniture, the same prices |
Buying a house¶
HOUSE LIST read the register (at the reeve)
HOUSE BUY <number> take a house on (at the reeve)
HOUSE what you hold, and who can work your door
HOUSE SELL sign it back, emptied, for part of what you paid
HOUSE LIST numbers what is standing empty and what it costs. HOUSE BUY 3 signs for the third. The reeve takes the price out of your bank account first and your pocket second.
What's on the Shuttered Row (Coldhollow)¶
| House | Rooms | Price |
|---|---|---|
| The Netmender's Cottage | 1 | 12,000 |
| The Chandler's Cottage | 1 | 12,000 |
| The Drover's Cottage | 1 | 12,000 |
| The Cooper's Cottage | 1 | 12,000 |
| The Weaver's House | 2 | 30,000 |
| The Carter's House | 2 | 30,000 |
| The Physician's House | 2 | 30,000 |
| The Factor's House | 3 | 60,000 |
What's on Kiln Bank (Emberford)¶
| House | Rooms | Price |
|---|---|---|
| The Limeburner's House | 1 | 25,000 |
| The Ropemaker's House | 1 | 25,000 |
| The Pilot's House | 2 | 55,000 |
| The Tidewaiter's House | 2 | 55,000 |
| The Ironmaster's House | 3 | 100,000 |
One house to a name
You may hold one house per town, so a Coldhollow cottage and an Emberford house at once is allowed. Sign back the one you hold in a town before taking on another there.
They come with their people's things still in them
Every one of these was somebody's. The netmender's net is still half-mended with the needle holding the place; the ropemaker's walk hooks are still in the beam, going away from you into what is now your ceiling; the pilot's survey of the river is on the wall, corrected in three inks over forty years. LOOK at what is in the room before you start rearranging.
Your door¶
A house door answers to the register, not to a key. There is no key to your house anywhere in the world, so there is nothing to lose and nothing for anyone to find.
UNLOCK <direction> works for you, and for nobody else
LOCK <direction> shut it behind you
HOUSE GUEST <name> let somebody else work your door
HOUSE UNGUEST <name> take that back
Guests are named, not keyed — take the invitation back and they are out the same moment, with nothing left in anyone's pack to argue about. You can have eight standing invitations at a time.
Storage: the floor is yours¶
What you leave in a house stays there. Through logout, through death, through reboots. A house floor is not the open ground — nothing decays there and nothing sweeps it up.
Each room's floor holds 25 things. A two-room house holds fifty, a three-room house seventy-five.
A chest counts as one
A container on your floor counts as a single thing no matter how much is inside it, and furniture does not count at all. A cupboard and a chest turn one room into far more than twenty-five items of storage.
Compare with public lockers, which are per-town, rented weekly, and capped by slot. A house costs more once and then costs nothing.
Selling¶
HOUSE SELL at the reeve returns 60% of what you paid, but only once the house is completely empty. No reeve will take a house back with somebody's belongings in it, so nothing you own can ever be lost to a command you typed once.
Furniture¶
Joiner Bess Trewin works a handcart beside the row's well. She makes what she sells out of the timber of the three houses that came down before she arrived.
SHOP see the cart
BUY <piece> buy it
PLACE <piece> set it down for good, in a house you hold
GET <piece> ...and pick your own furniture back up
Rooms furnish by slot¶
A room holds one piece per slot. Place a second piece into an occupied slot and the old one comes back to your hands — a room is a set of choices, not a heap.
| Slot | What goes there |
|---|---|
hearth |
firedogs and fire irons |
bed |
where you sleep |
table |
the large surface |
seat |
stools, settles |
storage |
cupboards, chests |
floor |
mats and rugs |
wall |
hangings |
light |
candle-stands |
trophy |
the trophy board |
The cart¶
| Piece | Slot | Price | Does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rush-seated stool | seat | 250 | SIT on it; rests you a little |
| Woven rush mat | floor | 300 | |
| Standing candle-stand | light | 600 | |
| Scrubbed deal table | table | 700 | |
| Framed wool hanging | wall | 800 | |
| Cast-iron firedog | hearth | 900 | |
| Rope-strung bed | bed | 1,400 | rests you well |
| High-backed settle | seat | 1,500 | seats three; rests you |
| Corner cupboard | storage | 1,900 | holds 12 |
| Trophy board | trophy | 2,200 | hangs 6 things, and reads your deeds |
| Iron-bound chest | storage | 3,200 | holds 20, and shuts |
| Feather-tick bedstead | bed | 3,600 | rests you best of all |
| Bundle of split firewood | — | 60 | feeds a hearth fire (see below) |
Furniture earns its place
A chair is not decoration. SIT on a settle and you recover faster than standing; a good bed is better again. Cupboards and chests are real containers, and what is inside one costs you nothing against the floor.
Placed furniture is fixed. Nobody can carry your chest off, but you can pick it straight back up, because it is yours.
Making it home¶
An owned house can be dressed, room by room. All of it is the owner's to choose and all of it leaves with you if you sell.
HOUSE DECOR the joiner's pattern-book of room styles
HOUSE DECOR <style> dress the room you stand in (OFF bares it)
HOUSE SCENT the scents a room can keep
HOUSE SCENT <name> give the room its smell (OFF airs it out)
Decor adds a chosen paragraph to the room's description — the homely room, the bare one, the workshop, the study, the half-garden. Scent is what SMELL answers with when a nose is put to your parlor: woodsmoke, bread, lavender, pine or beeswax. Each room of the house makes its own choices.
The fire¶
A placed hearth holds a real fire.
LIGHT <hearth> lay and light it — takes a bundle of firewood from your hands
LIGHT it again feed a burning fire another bundle (hours bank, up to a full day's evening)
SNUFF <hearth> put it out
A bundle burns about two hours; a hearth banks up to eight. While it burns, the fire shows to anyone who LOOKs at the hearth, and it warms the room: everyone recovering there heals a little faster, the same ledger a good chair pays into. The fire is honest: wood burns down, and an untended hearth goes to embers and then to cold.
Pets live here too¶
Stand in one of your rooms with your pet and PET SET HOME. A pet that loses you — however that happens — makes its own way back to that room and waits for you there. See Pets.
The trophy board¶
The one piece that keeps score.
Hang up to six things on it and everyone who looks at it sees them. Underneath is a strip of soft lead, and when you look at your own board it is cut with your deeds — your name, your title, how many feats you have earned and the last of them.
That engraving is what visitors read. A board says what was true when its owner last stood in front of it, so look at your own board now and again if you want the plate current.
What people actually hang
Trewin, who makes them: "People hang the wrong things on them, and they are wrong in the right way — not the biggest thing they ever killed, mostly. The first one. Or something a friend gave them."
Summary¶
HOUSE LIST / HOUSE BUY <n> / HOUSE SELL at the reeve (Shuttered Row, Coldhollow
or Kiln Bank, Emberford)
HOUSE what you hold
HOUSE GUEST <name> / HOUSE UNGUEST <name> who else can open your door
SHOP / BUY <piece> at the joiner's cart (the row's well)
PLACE <piece> furnish a room, one piece per slot
HOUSE DECOR <style> / HOUSE SCENT <name> dress the room you stand in
LIGHT <hearth> / SNUFF <hearth> the fire (firewood from the joiner)
PET SET HOME a pet's room to come back to