In the Caliphate of Azithan, known as the Necromancer Empire ...
the Church uses lifeless are used for public works projects. The most obvious is agriculture: thrashing wheat, grinding flour. Less obvious are the parks, bathhouses, and roads.
I'll ask you: What is special or different or weird about lifeless produced public works projects?
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Nothing is proportion correctly. Benches are either too tall or too low. Same thing with toilets. Steps can be a real mess. Everything is still useable, just uncomfortable.
ReplyDeleteHah. And the benches -- for, say, toilets -- are probably consistent within that particular public bath. So, you'd have 50 toilets, all higher or lower than works.
ReplyDeleteThe Caliphate has some real problems of ergonomics!
Project come in two styles. Unique and sloppy, as David descibes, or massive and uniform.
ReplyDeleteOn large scales and working with the right tools and materials, lifeless can build cleanly. Heavy mouldings are placed, supports hammered into place inside them, and a limestone-based concrete poured in. A few days later, the mouldings are removed, leaving yet another fairly same-y warehouse-sized block of a building to be worked into something more palatable to the living.
Probably same thing with roads: there is exactly one width of road.
ReplyDeleteI suspect the church would both sponsor artists and artisans, and if they do pour concrete, have big stacks of standard "decorative wall" mouldings, too.
ReplyDelete"Ah yes, the #3 Prophet. We use that in all our bath-houses"
that's another good point. As mentioned earlier, there is a demand for artisan human labor.
ReplyDeleteThe Church probably gets in on that, and is a big user.
::does research::
OK, concrete is at least as old as Rome. So, yeah, concrete is totally poured. Concrete is everywhere. Or something sufficiently similar as to effectively be concrete.
Part of civilizing a new place is building public works, and making sure that every time the new Faithful use the potty, they are starting at a picture of The Prophet.
I think that undead labor is extremely reliable, you can consistently get the same result, but it takes a lot of micromanagement to get them accurate, this bench should be between 2.5 and 3.5 feet high.
ReplyDeleteDepends on how good the programming is. On both how good the priest in charge is, and on how good they were initially built.
ReplyDeleteNo color anywhere. They can sense shapes, but they can't "see" light bouncing off of things, and they certainly can't detect pigment.
ReplyDeleteUncomfortable textures. No pleasing smoothness to anything, no softness, everything is either rough, or sharp, or oily, or splintery. The dead do not experience Touch, and don't understand the need for tactile comfort.
I like that, Sean Gomes . There's assuredly some call for artists, but, yeah, the Lifeless can't do color. That's a nice add.
ReplyDeleteIf the lifeless lay concrete, they lay it and then try to smooth it down according to their commands. But, they don't really know what the end product should be like. They have no understanding. Either -- as in poor areas -- it is left like this, or a living artisan goes back over it, smoothing out the concrete.
Makes for some interesting politics of housing.
ReplyDeleteThe truly poor live in "unfinished" public housing. As one moves up the social scale, it's more and more polished and colourful... And either clearly church-sponsored (which would be one style) or "natural" / "independent" in style.
So the successful merchant is surrounded by woods, has rugs down, and all manner of intricate things; there's probably a concrete structure under the frippery, but it's not all that visible.
The high priestess, on the other side, has high-arched chambers where the concrete has been enameled over in colour and sacred images (not at all disguised; just beautifully finished), with pale reliefs affixed to the walls, and "built-in" furniture of equally finished slabwork.
Things like that.
When a lifeless begins to malfunction it starts etching, carving, or drawing a picture into everything it works on. As it progresses it starts creating this picture into everything. Every zombie makes the same picture. The priests have tried altering the ritual to stop this, but it doesn't work. Nobody knows why this is.
ReplyDeleteThe unfinished public housing is great slabs of concrete, poured efficiently and not bothered to be smoothed out.
ReplyDeleteThe church provides something like room and board for those who need it. For a few cups of flour a week, you get an unfurnished room, exactly square. There's a window, itself square and in the dead middle of the room. These are built as cubes: 3 rooms long, 3 rooms wide (one is the hallway), 3 rooms high.
Depressing, but no one is exposed to the elements.
One entertaining thought: If paint and concrete are also available to the poor, they might very well do their own finishing and alterations. And give that lifeless probably don't work ladders, there'd be plenty of scaffolding around that might well just be abandoned around them.
ReplyDeleteWhich would make those cubes riotous shantytowns of cheap folk murals and patterning, uneven finishing, and loads of wooden walkways, bridges, rooftop gardens for the non-wheat needs...
Going further: wild murals might even be seen as an act of defiance against the Caliphate.
ReplyDeleteThe things I learn: Rome had first-floor retail!
ReplyDeleteFrom wiki:
The ground-level floor of the insula was used for tabernae, shops and businesses, with the living space upstairs. Like modern apartment buildings, an insula might have a name, usually referring to the owner of the building. The insulae (apartments) could be up to six or seven stories high, and despite height restrictions in the Imperial era, a few reached eight or nine stories.
Doing something similar: Five story tall cubes, but still cubes. Because it is more sad that way. The first floor is rented to businesses. The second is larger cubes, for families and people with some wealth. Tradesmen, mostly. Certainly no members of the House of Lords -- they own these things. The third floor starts to get smaller and worse. By the fifth floor, most of the rooms don't have windows.
Being made of concrete, they can't burn. But they can fill with smoke for sure.
Sean Gomes When he peasants do it, absolutely. When the Priests or the Lords do it, it is an act of faith.
ReplyDeleteColor, then, is a matter of heirarchical position. The Lifeless are grey, and wear grey. What they build is grey like concrete. The Faithful have colors as befitting their station. Outsiders wear whatever they wear.
ReplyDeleteThe faithful are assigned colours... Or allowed a greater range?
ReplyDeleteKind of a critical difference there - a form of uniform code, or a sumptuary law?
Really just that colors are expensive, si the poor faithfully look a lot like lifeless
ReplyDeleteHuh. I'd have thought they'd make a fairly intense effort to not look like lifeless, though I'm not entirely sure I can say why. Something about class distinction, taken to the extreme where one class isn't actually people, kind of thing.
ReplyDeleteHuh. Maybe. I'll have to do some more thought brainjuice later!
ReplyDelete