Dres lore

[Jale]

The rings are more of a luxury than anything, and were a slave to steal one then they would simply get caught levitating up to the top floor. They still have to pass through the front door. The penalty for such an affront (stealing an heirloom and trying to escape) would be severe enough to make such an attempt pointless.

In the grand scheme of things, getting up to the top of the house would not be the major problem for an escape attempt. It's getting past the guards as you do so, and getting past the guards at the top...and then escaping from the town, and then from the Dres lands to someone who wouldn't send you back. In fact it would be better for a slave to steal all the keys so they aren't an obvious flying escapee.

[Tyrion]

And if you had a very high level levitate ring it wouldn't be very hard to elude the gaurds, unless you plan on giving them all levitate rings and thats just silly.

[Jale]

You are right. Lets ban all levitation items in the whole game. Especially the shrine in Vivec, that will let the slaves fly away...

No matter how much the can very slowly levitate away, they still have to get through the front door past the armed, trained, skilled guards, before their enchantment is depleted.

And you are forgetting that high tech bit of kit that most guard outfits have, and the Dunmer are supposed to be good with...bow and arrow. Slow moving targets are pretty easy to shoot.

[blackbird]

I don't know if underground sections are a real good idea, because jungle trees, in real life, have roots and they could be also a problem.

[Jale]

That's the whole point of underground construction really: if they build expansive mansions on the ground level they have to clear large areas and digging up roots for foundations. By digging underground you bypass this...you just have to build quite straight until you get about 3 stories down.

[Tyrion]

Un-named gaurds are always horrible shots

I'm just saying this shouldn't be a common practice amongst the Dres. I suggested you have a fewer of the darker members use a particularly nasty version of this by treating the slaves like some kind of insect.

Three stories down is quite a long way down. Underground construction is good, but I think they should build up as well as down. That way they can stand out on a nice breezy balcony while the commoners have to sweat down in the cramped lower city.

[Jale]

Little physics lesson: heat rises, cool air sinks. So if you build down you get cool air at the lowest levels. If you build up, yes you might get a breeze, but on a still day it would reek from all the air rising from that dirty town below, and all the cooking fires in kitchens below and so forth would send hot air to sit in the topmost rooms, which presumably would belong to the owner of the house.

Upwards construction just doesn't make sense to me, for the Dres. Indoril and Telvanni build up, but I find down way more fun to build with, since you can get far more creative. If you are building a tower theres only really a couple of ways you can put in the staircase that makes sense, and thus there are only a few floorplans possible. Building down allows you to make lovely branching structures.

You also forget that the dunmer, especially the dres, love insects. Their armour is from insects, and insect-like, and the Dres use them as steeds. Building like a hive isn't something bad, to them it would be a positively good thing.

I see no reason for the Dres manor to go any direction but down.

[Tyrion]

Dres land is often swampy, not to mention overgrown. You'd hit water at any kind of depth. I also know that alot of the settlements are already built, so we're going to be working with what we're given as far as the layouts allowing large scale underground building. I know Balsan Mar can be built back into a hillside in that case. Building up however is always a good thing if for no other reason than by making an imposing structure to show off one's prominence and dominance. I've not condoned downward building either, I merely said they should build something imposing up top as well as building down.

[Jale]

It's not a question of water...regardless of where you dig you are going to hit water anywhere on land, its just a question of depth. And to suggest that they are building their towns on swamps is utterly ridiculous. They are building near them, yes, but I am certain that they are clever enough to forsake the swamps for areas of firm land.

I know that they should have something imposing above ground, but I would far rather see something that resembles a Balmora Hlaalu manor, which serves as an entrance, than anything larger.

Remember the first principle of lore: What is boring and mundane is wrong; what is interesting and alien is right. If we had all the money and workforce we wanted we would build a tower. Its more interesting that the Dres would build underground, because they view that as more prestigious: they can afford to overcome the problems you mentioned.

[Drizztinator]

Hi, I'm Drizztinator, formerly Drizzt Do'Urden from a long time ago, but enough about me, lets talk about Dres.

I've been following all viewable topics about Dres Architecture and stuff and I've begun to form my own opinions about the mysterious House Dres.

I've been noticing alot of talk about insect husks and such. Now, to me, I view these husks and stuff as temporary housing until actual structures can be built. The reason being is because if they are husks, they couldn't be that heavy, so you could move it somewhat of a small distance to where it needed to be, and there is very little effort needed to make it into a dwelling. However, I don't think the upper two classes, that is, the Alt-Julan and the Gah'Kogo, wouldn't be caught dead in bug husks. Therefore, I think that alot of established cities, such as Tear, would have more of a refined, finished look, rather than these bug husks a caripaces laying around everywhere. Remember, the Ashlanders use them because they are there, not because that is a tradition. Although I do believe that the lower classes and poorer merchants probably use bugs in their everyday lives.

As for building direction, which buildings are we talking about? The manors, or the plantations? I think we are talking about manors, correct? I thought that the Dres Territory was only marshy around Argonia. If my feelings are correct, Saltrice, is alot like normal rice, and therefore is very labor intensive, and requires either very marshy land, or extensive irrigation systems, or both, although that kind of environment would call for very suspended architecture, that would really complicate things, but this is just my two cents, for whatever its worth.

[Tyrion]

Jale, go find a swamp or a pond or something. Dig a hole next to it and see what happens. Even if they kept the water out it would be so damp as to be unhealthy. All that mold is not something you want in a high class Dres manor.

I know I might be acting too realistic and mundane. It's one of my faults as a modder. In my opinion if somebody is going to question something in the game that isnt directly related to otherworldly forces then it needs to be thought through again.

[Jale]

I live in a city next to lots of marshland. Know how we avoid sinking?

We don't build ON the marshes. We build near them. We manage. We managed with our medieval vaults. We managed with our deep, twisting bomb shelters. We managed with our crypts and with our tower blocks.

It's not a matter of you dig a few feet and OMGZ your are drowning. While it might be difficult, its doable, and they have the workforce and the skills to accomplish it.

Otherwise how would these locations have been constructed:
-Berandas
-Indoranyon
-Ald Daedroth
-Bal Fel
-Mznanch
-Ald Sotha
-Molag Mar
-Vivec
-Tel Fyr
-Telasaro
-Marandus

All feature underground construction very near water (or in the case of Vivec, ON water.)

Or if you want more real world examples:
-London
-New York
-Southampton
-Any of the Cities on the Nile Delta
-Miami

In fact judging by your objections...any city within a mile of water!

[CleverClothe]

Sure you can build in a swamp, fourth times the charm! </montypython>

Seriously though, it isn't like 100% of their land is swamp. I don't see any reason, real or lore, why the Dres can't have larege underground structures. I gets a unique but still Dunmer dimension to the Dres.

[Tyrion]

I'm not prohibiting the Dres building underground. Just so long as they're not doing it next to a swamp. It strikes me as a bad idea is all, and they've got plenty higher ground with which to burrow beneath.

Monty Python gives me an idea for some sort of city built on top of an older city thats been sunken into the swamp, or four sunken cities

Do we have something like that already? Not Mournhold though, technically thats just buried not sunken into swamp.

[Harke the Apostle]

If you build in areas with soil to weak for normal foundations, you can use your cellar as a kind of 'boat', the entire building being held up by the upthrust of the displaced soil, rather than simply resting on it, as would normally be the case.
So, having a submerged basement underneath a canton is not just a possibility, but a requirement...

Or you could simply have the Dres's ancestors use piles, that also works marvelously. We do that all the time in Holland.

[Tyrion]

I'm suggesting that their "basement" be the former town.

[Jale]

An abandoned underground town would be interesting in some areas. You actually get this in some towns...my city is peppered with vaults, from when the sea used to come right up to the city centre (reclaimed land now pushed it back), and I believe Paris has a whole underground labyrinth, which is a graveyard built into Roman Limestone quarries.

I think we should do this in one or two places, not necessarily all.

[Tyrion]

Which Dres cities have been around the longest? Anyone know?

[Zalzidrax]

Seattle, while built on a tideflat and not a swamp, also has a story below the existing city. At some point a bit more than a century ago people got tired of their drains going out at high tide instead of in. So they basically moved the entire city up a story starting with the roads. This made it rather inconvenient for a time to get from a sidewalk to a road without a latter, and vice versa. Also, accidently trying to step on where the sidewalk should have been from the road was usually fatal.

So an underground part of a city seems reasonable, half flooded with tons of creepy moss and fungus. And of course nefarious denizens.

[kebra]

For fun:

An entry of the catacombes of Paris

http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/159/kta1vn9.jpg

and a pic inside

http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/7820/kta2tn5.jpg

It's around 380 Km big and was just stone mines. It's a good place for party even if forbidden, but don't go alone!

[Jale]

Which Dres cities have been around the longest? Anyone know?

I would imagine Ald Dwerelyn and Ald Rotanir, since their names mean 'Old'. I mean places like Tear must be old, but I guess have been rebuilt quite a few times...probably deliberately razed to the ground in the name of progress!

[Tyrion]

Maybe there could be some sort of a sub-city in one of those. Half flooded and full of creepy things like Zalz said, underneath one of the older cities.

[herennow]

The idea of different levels for different echelons of society I recall being considered seemed like a good idea to me. I recall seeing a documentary about Old Jerusalem that said that there were archways for the priests to move from their houses to the temple without ever walking the streets. You could have an equivalent system for the higher ranks of Dres. Regarding the concept of vampiric rulers in House Dres, some of these walkways could be completely walled and rooved, to prevent sunlight reaching them (sort of sky tunnels). It would also present a mystery to explorers of the game, in that the upper paths contain the elite, but even higher paths contain unknown persons and are seemingly separate to the rest of the city.