Chapter III: Domestic Architecture and Urban Planning#

Kethra Almanac • Approved 19 September 2026 • drafted 18 September 2026

Status: approved. Briana approved the whole almanac on 19 September 2026 (the Almanac Approval Decision). Where this file calls something a proposal, read it as approved, except the open points that decision lists.

Status before approval: Everything in this chapter is a proposal built on the spine.

Amended 19 September 2026, with Briana's approval: six cities were added to Other great cities: Brightwick, Corran Mouth, Arvenne, Tessmere, Port Serell and Stellan. The list was drafted on 18 September, before those cities were named, and each has 3.1 million people or more. Their lines are taken from their own almanacs.

Design note. Following the naming principles, Kethran architecture borrows motifs freely, and never from the same source as the name it carries. Aletheia has a Greek name, so its look is not classical Greek. It is terraced stone, blackreed timber and indigo glass, shaped by tides and red nights.

3.1 Habitat Metropolises & Sprawling Settlements#

Aletheia: capital of the Caldren Crown and seat of the Homeworld Assembly#

Setting. The north shore of the Thess estuary, about 60 km upstream from Landfall, at 34° N. The city climbs seven great steps of the Stair. The oldest parts sit highest. The newest and poorest parts sit lowest, closest to the rising water.

Population: 11.2 million in the metropolitan area, 4.3 million in the city proper.

Plan: seven terraces, from the water up

Defences:

• The Seawall, AL 1100s, is the medieval tide-and-siege wall around Steps 1–3. It still stands in part.
• The Long Gate, AL 2204, is the modern tide barrier: 11 km of gates across the estuary. It is closed for double springs and storm surges. In AL 2314 it closes about 40 times a year. In AL 2250 the figure was 22.
• Orbital defence is the responsibility of Homeguard Command and the Crown's Orbital Squadron.

Zones:

• Industry is downriver at Thessbank and on the south shore (Southmere). It keeps its smoke away from the upper steps, since the prevailing wind is westerly.
• Commerce is concentrated at the Exchange on Step 2.
• Wild reserves: the Duskwood Park, a fenced reserve of native forest that the city's Earthkin gardens surround but do not enter, occupies the steep ground between Steps 5 and 6.

Other great cities#

Frontier settlement pattern#

A frontier Hold is a seeded island in the Wild:

• The Hold-house at the centre: the Moot hall, granary and ember shelter.
• Seeded fields around it, in a ring.
• The Hedge beyond the fields: a cleared, burnt and patrolled boundary strip, 200–500 m wide.
• The Wild beyond that.

The standard Hold covers 40–80 km² of gardenland and holds 800–3,000 people. Holds are linked by dray-roads and by the rift railway.

3.2 Public Civil Engineering#

Water#

• Aletheia: three great aqueduct-pipelines bring Corran snowmelt 400 km down to the city, each built in a different era: AL 1300s, AL 1780s and AL 2120s. The oldest still carries water, and it is stone.
• Treatment: mandatory since the Salt Fever of AL 1422–1431. Water boards are among the oldest public bodies in the Crown.
• The Holds: wells, rift springs and cisterns. On the dry plateau, water rights are allocated by the Moot and fought over at the Compact.
• The Line Isles: rain cisterns on every roof, plus desalination in the large ports.

Waste#

• Tidal digesters. Crown coastal cities treat sewage in digesters, where Earth microbes break it down before it goes out on the ebb tide. The tides do the pumping twice a day.
• Night-soil return. Treated human waste is returned to the fields as fertiliser in every Kethran society. This is law, not thrift. Phosphate is scarce (see Chapter VI), and wasting it is a crime in the Crown and a sin in the Cantorate.

Energy grid (the Crown)#

The grid is national, with interconnectors to the Lesser Crowns. The Holds run on local fission microreactors, solar power and increasingly wind. Blackouts during ember storms are routine.

Transit#

• Crown Railways carry most freight. A high-speed maglev trunk connects Aletheia, Thessane and Hollin at 520 km/h.
• The Thess is navigable for 1,900 km, and barges move grain and iron. The tidal bore must be timed.
• Roads: Reach roads, plus toll highways in the heartland.
• The Rift Railway, AL 1890s, runs 3,200 km through the Eldvang rift and is the frontier's spine.
• Air: passenger aircraft between all major cities. It is 4 hours from Aletheia to Saltline and 9 to Eldhaven.
• Across the Line: Rovessa sea-carriers take most cargo, and passenger flights take most people.

3.3 Architecture Engineering & Construction Materials#

Materials#

Designing for Kethra#

What it looks like#

• Crown style ("Stairwork"). Terraced massing. Gold sea-stone. Deep, dark blackreed eaves. Indigo-glass windows. Stepped roofs that mirror the Stair. It is ornamented with song-bands: carved lines of family or civic verse running around buildings at eye level. On red nights the carved letters fill with shadow and the verses become readable in silhouette.
• Vardane style. Concentric walls, basalt, rank-coloured banners and severe geometry.
• Ilyr style. Houses cut into volcanic terraces. Sealed archive doors. Interior gardens under clear domes. Restrained, precise, almost without ornament.
• Frontier style. Low and wide, half-buried, built of earth and blackreed, with wind-towers. Doors are painted with the family's Gift-line mark.
• Line style. Brilliant white reefstone-lime houses on stilts, with lagoon walkways. It is borrowed from everywhere and belongs to no one.

3.4 Domestic Interior Layouts#

A typical Crown hearth (a Thessbank terrace house, Step 3)#

The Wild-press. Poorer households, and every frontier household, keep a Wild-press: a leaching trough and press for preparing native roots. It is kept separate from the Earthkin kitchen. Capital households with a Wild-press hide it.

A frontier Hold family house#

• A half-buried main room that serves as hearth, kitchen, workshop and sleeping space in the dark winter.
• A wind-tower and cool-cellar. The family sleeps in the cellar during ember summers.
• An ember shelter: a sealed, buried chamber with air bottles, reached from the cellar.
• The Gift-mother's room, next to the hearth. The mother's line is literally at the centre of the house.
• A dray-byre, sharing a wall with the house for warmth.

Private security#

• The Crown: voice-keyed doors (door-songs) in wealthy homes, and ordinary locks elsewhere. Warden call-boxes on every street. Chartered Houses keep private House guards, licensed and limited in number.
• Vardane: locks and watchmen. Informers are common. Officer families have household troops.
• The Holds: doors unlocked within the Hold and barred against the Wild. Strongrooms hold seed stock and Gift cultures. The most valuable things in a frontier house are the seed-chest and the Gift-jar.

3.5 Micro-Environments & Extreme Adaptations#

Suits and protective gear#

Guidance for AI actors#

• Height on the Stair is status. Asking an Aletheian "which step?" means asking their class.
• Night-shutters are universal. Waking someone by opening their shutters in the red-night season is a real offence.
• On the frontier, the seed-chest and the Gift-jar are sacred property. Theft of either is treated like murder.
• Orbit and the belt run on maintenance. In any scene there, a leak, a failing scrubber or unpaid dues are live stakes.

Prepared by Claude.