Homes

A home is a house of your own. It stands on a province lot, where you buy the lot, build a steading on it and make it yours; a home with no lot stands in the Outfields, north of Silverspire.

Getting one

Councils put lots up for sale. You need not belong to the province or its council to buy one, only have the standing the lot asks, and many ask none. province lots lists every lot for sale, its rent and the standing it asks, and whether you have it; on the web, each province's page shows the same lots and rents (open the map at icesus.org/maps/provinces.html and click a province). Stand on the lot and type buy lot: the post shows what the lot and a cottage on it cost, what is fixed today and what can change, before you pay anything. buy lot confirm buys it. If the council changes the terms in between, you are shown them again and nothing is taken. You can have one home on a province lot at a time.

Once the lot is yours, its post carries your name. Reading it, province home and the letter in your mail all say what to do next: clear wild ground with prepare ground, buy a steading blueprint at the blueprint loft of the storehouse, stand on your lot and type build steading. It shows the cottage commission, and build steading confirm lays the steading out and pays it.

To reach the blueprint loft, go into the storehouse, east to the general store, then up. Type buy steading blueprint there. The loft takes the price from your bank first, then from your purse.

Building

A cottage goes up in stages. Each stage needs hammer-work (build with a hammer) and its materials: give your own with build deposit, or draw them from the stores with build deliver, paying the province for them. The foreman signs off a ready stage at the weekly inspection on the day of the Creation, every twelve real hours. A stage that is not ready costs you the crew's wages, and if you cannot pay them the crew leaves until you can. province home shows what the stage still needs and when the next inspection is, and a notice tells you when a stage is signed off.

Friends can help. Anyone with Worker standing in the province can put in hammer-work, and mission register gives it at once. Anyone can give the site their own timber or stone with build deposit. Only you draw on the stores and only you pay; the notice names who helped on each stage.

Inside

house                              who owns and shares this home
house describe short <text>        rename this room
house describe long <text>         add a line to how this room reads
house describe long <n> <text>     replace line <n>
house describe item <name> <text>  describe a thing here
house describe sound <text>        add a sound to this room
house list                         show what you have added
house clear short|long|item|sound  take it away again
house clear all                    take away everything you added here

An item can answer to several names, each one word, joined by commas with no spaces: house describe item bench,seat A bench of split pine. Every room keeps its own plain description. What you add comes after it, and house clear takes away only what you added.

Who comes in

house access add <name> coowner    share everything, chests too
house access add <name> guest      let them visit
house access remove <name>
house lock                         shut guests out
house unlock                       let them in again

Nobody else comes in, the council included. Any character can be on the list, your own other characters too.

The owner and each co-owner get a latchkey. It forms the first time you walk into the hall of the finished home and stay a few moments, and turn latchkey brings you home from anywhere after that. Guests get no key. help latchkey tells more.

Your home is a safe place to end a session, as an inn is. Leave the game inside it and your equipment is put away beside you; you wake there with it, and a restart of the world carries you home unharmed. This holds for the owner and co-owners. A guest may sleep there too, but if the home no longer lets you in when you wake, because the rent is owed or you are off its list, you take your things and let yourself out.

A home that was once a shared city apartment stays shared: if its owner leaves the world for good, it passes to one of the apartment's other owners who still shares it, rooms and chests and all.

Storage

The storehouse general store makes chests and racks for homes:

buy home chest     a chest for you and your co-owners
buy guest chest    a chest your guests can open too
buy home rack      a rack for weapons and armour

Set it down in any room of your home but the stable, and type secure chest (or secure rack). An old apartment chest or rack, and a herb cabinet or other piece of furniture, is fixed in place with bolt. Typing the same command again takes it up, once it is empty. A secured chest keeps what is in it. Anything left loose on the floor is gone when the world restarts. The owner and co-owners can secure, open and empty a chest, and guests can open a guest chest.

A chest holds up to 100 items, and a carpenter's strongbox 200, counting everything in bags inside it. One that already holds more keeps all of it, but takes nothing new until enough has come out. A chest also bears only so much weight and bulk, so a load of heavy things can fill it before it reaches its count. Looking at a chest tells you how full it is, by whichever runs out first.

A home has places for so many chests and racks in all, in whichever rooms you like. The hall gives one place, a vault gives more, and every other room gives one more, whether you built it or it came with the home when it moved. A home never has fewer places than the chests and racks it held when it came, so one you take up can always go down again. install in your home says how many places it has and how many are taken, and when every place is taken, secure and bolt say so.

A lantern and the arms display take no place, and nor does the first herb store, mushroom store, quiver tree, bookshelf, charm cabinet or tool cabinet in a home. A second of a kind does. When your hall holds no chest or rack, it says where in the home they are.

A carpenter can make a home's storage hold more. A strongbox or arms rack bound in metal takes one place in a home, as a storehouse chest or rack does, and holds more. A strongbox takes twice the items of a storehouse chest, and for both the richer the metal, the more they hold. A banding kit rebinds one already in place in richer metal. Stand by it with the kit and type apply kit to strongbox, or name the arms rack or tool cabinet instead. Chests and racks from the storehouse or a city shop take no bands.

Carpenters make two cabinets for a home as well. A charm cabinet keeps charms and boons on velvet shelves, hundreds of them, and grows richer to look at as it fills. A tool cabinet keeps toolboxes, design cases and keyrings with everything in them, up to 300 items; it is bound in metal as a strongbox is, and a banding kit rebinds it the same way. Fix a charm cabinet in place with bolt charm cabinet, and a tool cabinet with secure tool cabinet. One that holds anything stays fixed.

Herbs and mushrooms

Herbs and mushrooms have stores of their own, made by carpenters too. A herb cabinet or a mushroom hamper holds hundreds, the finer the work the more, but keeps nothing until it is fixed in place in a home: bolt herb cabinet, or bolt mushroom hamper. Once its name reads "(bolted)", it is ready:

put greyroot in herb cabinet          put one in
put all greyroot in herb cabinet      put in all the greyroot you carry
get 5 greyroot from herb cabinet      take five out
get all greyroot from herb cabinet    take out all the greyroot
get all from herb cabinet             take out everything
look at herb cabinet                  what it holds, and the room left

Name a herb or mushroom in the singular, greyroot even where the list says greyroots. The owner and co-owners can put in and take out, and guests share theirs through a guest chest. One that holds anything stays bolted. A herb box, which reads as a wooden herb container, and a mushroom barrel hold a few dozen and need no bolt: carry them anywhere, and put greyroot in box or get all from barrel works the same.

Bringing in a second home

If you own a second home that stands in the Outfields rather than on a province lot, you can bring its chests and racks into the home you stand in. Both homes must be your own; a home on a lot gives up its lot with house leave first.

house merge <home>            what would come, and what goes
house merge <home> confirm    bring them in

Each one comes with everything in it, to the room of the same name here or else to the hall. No room is added, but this home gains places for them, on top of the places it has, so it makes no difference whether you bolt your own chests before or after. The other home then closes for good, and its fittings, its descriptions and who may come into it are not carried over. Empty its stable and take up anything loose on its floors or hanging on its arms display first, or the merge will not go ahead.

Rent

Rent is taken from your bank once a game month, about every two and a half real days, and goes to the province treasury. The council sets it within a range, by the size of your home, so it differs from province to province. A lot not yet built on pays the cottage rate. A tower brought into a province pays no rent for its first months. province home shows your rent and anything owed, from anywhere. A home costs its province no upkeep and eats none of its food: its rent is what the province earns from it.

When the council raises the rent, every owner it touches gets a letter, and the new rate is charged only after three real days' notice; province home shows a rise that is coming. A lower rent is charged from the next month.

If your bank cannot cover a month, you are sent a warning. After a second unpaid month the home is shuttered: nobody can go in, and everything inside stays as it was. No more rent is charged while it stands shut. province home pay clears what you owe, from your bank and then your purse, and opens the home at once. Inside, before it comes to that, house pay does the same. Anyone may pay what is owed on another player's home: province home pay <owner> pays the home that player keeps on a province lot.

A council cannot put out anyone who pays. If the rent goes unpaid for about three game years, some three real months, the council may reclaim the lot. Your home then goes whole to the Outfields, with everything in it, and owes nothing there.

If a province is given up, the homes on its lots stay where they stand, and no rent is charged until someone claims it again.

Leaving

house leave, inside your home, says what leaving means, and house leave confirm gives the lot back to the province. Your home goes whole to the Outfields, north of Silverspire, with its rooms, its chests and everything in them, and pays no rent there. Nothing you paid for the lot comes back. Pay anything you owe first. If you have bought a lot and not built on it yet, province home leave gives it up.

A home in the Outfields can be given up for good once it is empty. house leave there names a room that still holds something and a few of the things in it, chests and racks included: an empty one comes loose with secure, or bolt for an old apartment chest. Lead out any creature, and bring mounts and wagons out of the stable with request. When nothing is left, house leave confirm closes the home. Nothing you paid comes back, and anyone who shared it loses it too.

Moving

A home can move to another province. Stand at a lot for sale there and type house move: you buy the lot as buy lot would, and your home moves onto it whole, rooms, chests and all. Anyone inside stays inside. The move itself is free, and rent follows the new council's rate from the next month. Pay anything you owe first.

The council of the province can also move your home to other prepared ground in the same province. It moves whole, with everything in it, and you get a letter that names the council member who moved it.

A home in the Outfields moves into any province the same way. If you own more than one home, name the one to move, as in house move tower. Only one of your homes can stand on a province lot at a time.

Fittings

A home grows with what you fit into it. In any room of your home, type install to see what can go in next and what it costs, install <name> to read what it adds and the full price, and install <name> confirm to set the workers going. Each line names the fitting and the version of it that goes in next, as in "Arms display: wall rack", so install arms display or install wall rack tells you about it. The owner and co-owners can install. Whoever does pays the silver from their bank, then their purse, and pays the province for the wood, stone, clay and carpentry parts taken from its stores. Iron, steel, brass and bronze come first from bars you carry, have on the floor or in your own cart, and the stores sell you the rest. Some fittings also want goods carried in: planks, bars of copper, silver, gold, platinum or titanium, rare cut gems, furniture sets or skins. A bigger home opens new fittings and finer versions of the old ones. A fitting is yours for good, and it stays with the home when you move it, though a home in the Outfields takes no new ones.

Fittings a cottage can take go in at once. Those that need a house or bigger are built. Everything is paid when you confirm, then a crew raises scaffolding outside, and the work runs in stages, signed off one a week at the most on the day of the Creation. Each stage wants hammer-work: wield a hammer or mace and type build at the site. One piece of work runs at a home at a time, so another fitting, build upgrade, house move and house leave wait for it. The owner can call the work off with abandon at the site, and what was paid is not returned.

Some fittings make room:

Fitting	What it gives
rooms	more rooms, each with a place for one more chest or rack
vault	a strongroom off the hall with more places for chests
stable	stalls off the hall for mounts and wagons
trophy wall	a wall for the heads of your hunts
arms display	weapons and armour on show in the hall

The rest are the home's look: the hearth, floor, walls, lamps and table in the hall, and the roof, yard, banner, battlements and belfry outside. Each adds its line to what visitors read, and the belfry's bell rings when the owner comes home.

The garden outside adds its line too, and it grows greens, and roots as well from a kitchen garden up. The owner and co-owners pick them with harvest garden outside the home. A bed holds only a few days' growth, so pick it often. Only a winter garden still grows in winter.

The owner and co-owners keep their own mounts and wagons in the stable. There return <mount> leads a named mount you own into a stall and request <mount> brings it back out; park <wagon> and request wagon do the same for an empty wagon, and stalls shows what stands where. A mount you ride or lead can pass between the stable and the hall; the other rooms turn it away. A led mount does not follow you in with enter at the Outfields gate, so ride it in. At the trophy wall the owner hangs a head mounted on a trophy-plaque with add <trophy>, and trophy list reads them. The owner and co-owners put weapons and armour on show with put <item> in display and take them down with get <item> from display.

The Outfields

Homes that stand on no province lot stand in the Outfields, a walled field in the hills north of Silverspire. The old towers and the city apartments all moved there when homes opened. From Silverspire's north gate, follow the road east and the narrow path beyond it to a wooden bridge; just across the bridge, the new path turns north along the river. The way is long, the last of it across the badlands.

At the Outfields gate:

homes              the homes you may enter
enter <name>       go into one, by owner, by name or by number

Whoever an apartment or a tower let in came along on its home's list, so the old apartment keys open nothing now.

A home in the Outfields pays no rent and is never taken back, but nothing new is built there, and no new home can be started there: a new home begins on a province lot. To grow one, stand at a lot for sale in a province and type house move. Once it is empty, a home there can be given up for good with house leave (see Leaving).

See also

provinces, province, council, install, latchkey