Architecture
Glass builds in stone & timber, shifting the ratio with the climate.
In the coreward lowlands — the warm, wet, fertile heartland — buildings rise on short stone stilts above the damp earth. Ground floors are mortared stone: warehousing, workshops, defensive refuge in times of trouble. Upper stories are timber-framed, with large shuttered openings for cross-ventilation & moveable interior screens in place of solid walls. Roofs are steeply pitched & arched, shedding Glass’s heavy rains through curving gutter channels that throw water clear of the walls below. Deep overhangs shade covered porches & verandas where much of daily life takes place in the warm months. In river towns & flood-prone coastline, stilts raise the whole structure a full story above ground, & stone piers anchor it against seasonal inundation. The overall impression is vertical, airy, & oriented around moving water in every form — rain off the roof, humidity through the rooms, floodwater beneath the floor. A wealthy merchant’s townhouse, with its stone-vaulted ground floor & timber residence above, would not look entirely out of place on a Venetian canal.
In the rimward highlands & taiga fringe, where winters bite & the temperature swings wide, the balance inverts. Stone dominates — thick-walled, small-windowed, hearth-centered. Ground floors are fully enclosed, upper stories transition to hybrid construction with timber bands coursing through the stonework at regular intervals, lending the walls just enough flex to survive the island’s intermittent tremors without catastrophic failure. Roofs remain steep (snow sheds as readily as rain) but the deep eaves of the lowlands shorten; heavy snow loads punish overextended overhangs. Openings are smaller than in the south, but not sealed; maritime damp demands some airflow year-round, or interior walls weep with condensation. Chimneys are prominent. The visual impression shifts from the airy timber verticality of the coreward towns toward something heavier, lower, & more fortified-looking — appropriate, given the Arcades have always been the wilder & more contested edge of Glass.
Between the two extremes, the transitional middle country blends both modes without committing fully to either. Stone-and-timber hybrid construction throughout, moderate overhangs, moderately-sized windows. These are the birch-country villages, & their architecture reflects the pragmatism of people who endure hot summers & cold winters in the same house.
Salamander Warrens
Salamander-built spaces are a world apart. The mining clans build into the earth rather than upon it, & their architecture reflects entirely different priorities: structural support against cave-in, ventilation in enclosed spaces, water drainage in perpetually wet rock, & navigation in total darkness.
A mine colony is a warren of interconnecting tunnels dug to salamander proportions — tight, winding, & navigable only by creatures with cave joints & an instinct for subterranean air currents. Surface structures are minimal: ventilation shafts disguised as cairns, reinforced entrance gates set into hillsides, & perhaps a modest trading post or gatehouse where business with surface-dwellers is conducted. Below, the colony sprawls according to the logic of the ore body it follows, with living quarters, storerooms, & shrines carved into stable rock wherever the geology permits. Timber is used sparingly for shoring & fuel; stone is everything. Temperature underground is constant year-round, so the thermal problem that dominates surface architecture simply doesn’t exist — & neither does the rain. A salamander colony’s architectural concerns are ventilation, structural reinforcement, & controlling the flow of groundwater through drainage channels. The warrens are effectively impregnable to non-subterranean armies. They are also, by human standards, deeply claustrophobic.
Surface-level salamander structures tend to be low, heavy, & half-buried stone or excavated earth, with massive lintels & minimal windows. They are warm in winter & cool in summer by virtue of being partially underground, solving the thermal problem that drives human architecture toward timber without needing to abandon stone. A salamander lodge looks, from the outside, like a mound of earth with a door in it. From the inside, it is surprisingly spacious, dry, & well-ventilated.
Harpies
Townbirds generally roost or live in human structures; bell towers, warehouse lofts, house attics, or anywhere else with a high perch & clear launch. A prosperous lord who subsidizes a harpy flock might build dedicated roost-lofts into his compound: open-sided upper platforms with perching rails & enough overhead cover to keep the rain off, accessible only by flight.
In the wild, harpies shelter in cliff faces, large trees, & natural overhangs, constructing often no more than a windbreak of woven branches & whatever is required for short-term comforts. Their camps are seasonal & disposable. The only harpy-specific architectural tradition of note is the signal roost — a prominent high point, often a dead tree or rock spire, stripped bare & used as a perch for message relay. A line of signal roosts across a mountain ridge is as close to infrastructure as wild harpies get.
Coralers
Coralers don’t really build on the land so much as emerge from it. A Coraler settlement on Glass is a cluster of vast white concrete shells — domes and bulbous forms cast from crushed coral, lime, and seawater, rising along the coastline like an overturned fleet. The concrete sets hard enough to shrug off siege engines & salt-spray alike, and the material is abundant anywhere coral grows. Surface shells serve as watch posts, trading gates, communal gathering halls, and the mouths of the deeper amphibious warrens below. They are low, curved, and windowless, with no-hearth construction because you can’t use fire underwater, and every Coraler structure is designed around the assumption that most of its inhabitants will spend most of their time submerged.
The real city is below the tideline. Beneath the white domes, a maze of water-filled chambers, coral-carved passageways, and tidal airlocks descends into the reef. These lower reaches are dark, cold, and navigable only by creatures with ink-blood & amphibious instincts — bioluminescent paint daubs navigation markers & territorial claims on the walls in neon streaks. Forges, smithies, and kitchens are confined to partially-drained surface chambers or nearby human settlements; below the waterline, there is no hearth, no smoke, no flame.
On Glass proper, Coraler architecture is a conquest adaptation. Inkland Hold repurposes captured stone foundations with white-concrete shells poured over the top — the old human fortresses become the waterline gate, and the Coraler warrens spread downward & outward into the coastal shallows. The result is hybrid & somewhat ramshackle: human walls reshaped to Coraler proportions, sea-gates cut into former postern doors, and the whole structure settling gradually into the sand as the concrete cures & the reef reclaims the foundation.
In their native Inner Sea, Coralers don’t build structures at all — they grow them. A coral redoubt is a living reef, shaped over generations by selective culling & encouragement. Coral lanes become corridors; coral ceilings become roofs. The reef is its own fortress: impassable to surface armies, self-repairing, and endlessly reconfigurable. No empire has ever invaded the deep coral, because there is nothing to invade — only millions of square miles of living rock, every inch of it defensible.
Fortifications
To counter salamander tunneling, fortresses are built on solid bedrock. Where bedrock can’t be found, intricate moats produce canals, gardens, irrigation, & defense. Water-castles & garden-forts are commonplace.
Walls are wider, not taller. A 40-foot tall wall that resists Glassian earthquakes is dramatically more expensive than a 20-foot wall & tunneling pressures from salamander magic encourages wider bases regardless. The average Glassian city wall is 30 feet wide & 20 feet thick, with extensive roofed wall-walks (to shield from harpy scouts) & armored defensive towers.
The strongest possible fortress site on Glass is a rocky coastal promontory with bedrock foundations, cliff faces on the seaward side, and water defenses on the landward side.
- Miners can’t penetrate bedrock;
- Coralers can’t scale sheer cliffs;
- Conventional siege can’t breach water or thick walls;
- Aerial reconnaissance can’t see through covered fortifications.
The Arcades’ castles are almost purpose-built to be as unassailable as possible & Lord Arcades’ armies of Jiangshi & undead allies provide the greatest defensive setup imaginable.