New Land Part One

Finally, after two long months of travel, Iris and her tribesmen have reached their destination. Iris found that it was even more perfect than the map depicted.

There was a nice large mountain range with a mountain larger than the one from the Arctic Wolf Tribe as well as several other smaller mountains beside it. In between the mountains and forest, they were currently camping in, was a large stretch of mostly flat land. While some bushes and larger plants might need to be gotten rid of, the land was already quite good for building homes, roads, and farmland.

In the forest, just a short way from the entrance, a river could easily be found that Iris had already confirmed did have some clay in it. Although the clay was half a day's journey northwest of her current location, the clay could easily be dug up and dragged back for use by their tribe.

A few days' journey south and they'd be at the ocean. A few days to the north-west was Red Wood City. There were no tribes within less than a day's travel away in any direction so there would be sufficient space to build.

Iris had already spent a lot of time considering the issue of how to go about building over the last two months. After setting up camp for the night at the forest's edge, Caspian started the conversation among their family

"So, what's the plan? Now that we are here, we should get to work building homes right away. We've got some time left in the hot season, but, after that, there is only the harvest season to get homes arranged and food secured. Once the cold season starts up, it'll be dangerous for everyone if things aren't sufficiently prepared."

All of Iris's mates looked at her expectantly. Iris felt quite happy that they trusted her to have a plan in mind. Thus, she began her explanation

"Well, I'd like to build more than just a small cave dwelling here. I want to eventually expand things large enough to be comparable to even a medium or large beast city. However, we should start small.

I think we should use our finances to pay our fellow tribesmen to build homes and create farmland to start with. I also want to start with building homes from clay and stone bricks outside the mountain rather than starting carving out the mountain."

Caspian questioned this decision as he asked

"Won't that leave our tribesmen rather exposed to the elements in the cold season? The homes would take longer to build and wouldn't be as warm as a cave would be. Many times, in the cities, females don't leave their beds and huddle with their mates under dozens of animal skins for warmth. Even then, problems with starvation and freezing to death are more common with that style of home.

Besides, the mountain is right there and everyone knows how to build their own homes. We'd need more stone than we have in the long term anyways."

Iris nodded as she had expected this sort of response. However, she had a good plan in mind already. Thus, Iris quickly explained

"In my world, there were things called kangs or heated beds that had fires lit underneath the bed and a thin mattress like ours could be used on top of it. This gave the warmth of a fire even amid our cold seasons and was multipurpose as food could be cooked above the fire. They will require a flue and chimney for the smoke to escape, though.

I think we should have three different sizes for homes to accommodate different size families. The most basic home would be two-story homes for single males with a bedroom, living room, and a kitchen on the ground floor and a basement for food storage below the kitchen area.

Then we would have three-story homes for females with fewer males. This would have a larger basement for food storage since more people need more food. The ground floor would have a kitchen and living room only, but they'd be larger. Then the top floor would have three bedrooms with four beds in each corner plus a master bedroom for the females with a single bed. This would be enough space for up to one female and thirteen males if one male always shares a bed with the female.

Finally, the last type of home would be for larger families like Ivy had. We'd make the basement a little larger, but keep the ground floor the same. Then we'd just need a fourth floor with another four rooms with four beds each. This size of home should have room for one female and twenty-nine males. Of course, still only if the female always shares her bed with one of her mates.

The basements would be dug out with pounded dirt flooring and stone brick walls. They could then have shelving, bins, etc for storing food throughout the cold season for easy access. Families wouldn't even have to leave their homes to retrieve food. This area would only be a singular room underneath the kitchen area.

Then, for the ground floor, we would use stone bricks that have been pre-set with clay for flooring and have it cover up the basement floor far enough to cover up past the edges. Stone pillars would also be attached with clay to the flooring and set into the dirt flooring to add extra stability. We would need to have more than just a small entrance and ladder to the basement, though. I think we should use steps made from stone bricks and clay to travel between floors.

The kitchen could have a hearth like Basil's previous home with a shelf carved into it for cooking. While I like having a stone oven and stone stove, I think a hearth with a proper flue and chimney is better and we can always use clay pots for soup. This hearth would also double as an extra heat source in the cold season.

The living room can be left empty as I really think all furnishing decisions should be up to the residents living there. We should just do the more permanent features. Although, it is unlikely that this room would be used much in the cold season other than for going up and downstairs to reach other rooms as it would be one of the colder rooms in the house.

As I'm worried about beastmen using the bathroom close to the city or dumping a bucket like our previous toilet into the streets, I don't want to do a bathroom like our previous one. However, it is far too cold in the cold season for people to go to the forest just to use the bathroom.

Thus, I think we should do public bathrooms like my world had. Essentially, we'd build a separate building for each group of houses or neighborhood. A neighborhood could be say twenty houses with a street in between each set of ten. There would be deep pits dug out of the ground and stone-carved toilets with holes that led to these deep pits. Each toilet would be in a separate small room for privacy with a beast skin to cover the doorways.

For warmth and to melt snow for hand washing, a hearth could be built in a hallway-like area. A shelf with space for a bowl of snow could be available. Then a small table to set the bowl to cool while one bathes or washes their hands could be available in each of the rooms.

One would have to provide their own soap, toilet paper (weaved grass, beast skin, etc.), containers for water, and beast skins for washing, of course. However, this should cover both privacy needs, provide nearby bathroom usage, and comfort.

The hearth and kangs will all have to be lined up as much as possible with separate flues but shared chimneys. Even then, we will likely still end up with a minimum of four chimneys on the roofs. The roofs might look a little strange with multiple chimneys, but it's better than the alternative of dying from smoke inhalation. Also, windows are a bad idea since cold would seep in too easily in the cold months.

I want to charge monthly and yearly fees for living in the homes. I'm thinking that the amount we charge should be based on the type of home. Single-family homes being the smallest and cheapest, then average-family homes, and then the large family homes would be the most expensive.

I also think we should build a road in front of the tallest mountain with branching roads going off from it. Then we can have the houses built to the left of the tallest mountain and all the farmland, orchards, and any livestock we keep to the right side. We can build walls between sections of the city as well as watchtowers for guards.

The business district should be on the left side but further out from the mountains and closer to the forest side. However, that can wait for now since we should focus on the homes and farmland first."

After that long speech on how to build the homes, Iris still had to clarify many details. Beastmen weren't super familiar with many terms like outhouse or flue and also needed detailed explanations on how to build all the finer details. Plus, it was not common knowledge for beasts to know how to count higher than ten so numbers had to be explained.