Hey team!
It’s been a while since I’ve last checked out anything Oldtown related, which is precisely the reason why I stepped down as project lead, but earlier this week I finally took some time to check out all the new and exciting stuff happening in the city.
I think great work is being put out, but there are two things I noticed that concern me; development at (mostly finished portions of) the city walls and changes in the setup of city districts compared to descriptions in the Oldtown document. It’s going to be a long read, so please bear with me.
City Walls
I noticed this portion of the walls, which was adequately finished in December 2019, has been removed and replaced with new (WIP) sections including a new gate. I must admit I am a bit upset this section has been redone for a number of reasons.
The Jaeger gate as it was in 2019-2022
The Jaeger gate now (I know it looks worse due to the lack of shader)
First of all, this section was a perfect match with our vision for not only the defences but the aesthetics and general feel for the entire city. During both Dutchguard’s leadership of the city’s defence team as well as my short tenure as it, this portion of the wall has been upheld as the gold standard for the defences in terms of simple elegance, proportions, palette, shape and state of disrepair.
Secondly, this small section of wall was for all intents and purposes finished or nearly so. Redoing this part of the wall was entirely unnecessary, especially considering the city walls north, east and west of the city were and remain in an unfinished state. In fact, the rest of the city’s defences are still in the same state as when I posted
this update regarding the city’s defences, which for some reason has been removed from both the discord and the forums, on June 27th 2022. This same update pinpoints the exact portion of wall that has now been redone to be exempted from being changed.
Thirdly, the new style of the replacing gate seems to be heavily inspired by Roman architecture. Westeros never had a Roman Empire with Greek inspired architecture, and while we included a limited amount of Roman architecture in our inspiration, we made an effort to focus on solely medieval architecture wherever possible. The style description of the oldest architecture in Oldtown is described as the following;
Oldtown.doc chapter 4. Architecture; Uthor’s Oldtown [OT I]
Features include very little intricate detailing, small windows and doors and thick walls in the larger structures. Residences are usually rather low, but can occasionally have a storey built on top in a differing style or material.
This description matches more or less with the description of early Romanesque architecture which emerged after the fall of the Roman Empire, or Roman architecture without the detailed columns, arches and statues they are known for. At no other place have we used Roman architecture to depict the architecture of the First Men.
Additionally, the circumstances under which the oldest walls of Oldtown were built do not make it likely a lot of effort would have been put into making the gates fancy. From the canon document:
A World of Ice and Fire, Oldtown
For thousands of years thereafter, his descendants ruled Oldtown and the lands of the Honeywine as kings, and ships from the world over came to their growing city to trade. As Oldtown grew wealthy and powerful, neighboring lords and petty kings turned covetous eyes upon its riches, and pirates and reavers from beyond the seas heard tales of its splendors as well. Thrice in the space of a single century the city was taken and sacked, once by the Dornish king Samwell Dayne (the Starfire), once by Qhored the Cruel and his ironmen, and once by Gyles I Gardener (the Woe), who reportedly sold three-quarters of the city's inhabitants into slavery, but was unable to breach the defenses of the Hightower on Battle Isle.
The wooden palisades and ditch that had protected the city therefore having so obviously been proved inadequate, the next King of the High Tower, Otho II, spent the best part of his reign surrounding Oldtown with massive stone walls, thicker and higher than any seen in Westeros to this point. This effort beggared the city for three generations, it is written, but such was their strength that later reavers and would be conquerors were persuaded to seek for plunder elsewhere, and those who did presume to attack Oldtown did so to no avail.
Oldtown was not having a good time when it build the first stone walls. It had been sacked thrice and had seen at least three quarters of its population sold into slavery. The drive to build stronger stone walls would have been extremely high, enough so that the effort beggaring the city for decades was seen as necessary.
Fourthly, the shape of the gate implies it is partially collapsed. Although the gate would be old, since it’s still in regular use it would be maintained to such a degree where even if it would collapse, the damage would be fixed. This is a setup of a gate in the modern age, where city walls have been obsolete for at least 500 years and the only reason it’s still standing is because nobody bothered to invest in removing the structure.
Fifthly, and although I realise this is still work in progress, the old gate featured a postern gate which seems to be lost in the new design as well.
I hope the original section is still out there somewhere so we can roll back these changes.
Setup of Caulkburn
First of all, I want to make it clear I’m not expecting major changes here. The district is mostly finished and changing anything in its current setup would be unreasonable. However, I do want to point out there are some discrepancies with the descriptions in the Oldtown document which will ultimately have a wider effect on the perception of the rest of the city.
The Oldtown document is the result of years of team discussions, research and planning, all condensed into a relatively short booklet of 55 pages in order to communicate the plans to the server as clearly yet short as possible. However, behind every sentence in the document are several pages worth of information, discussions, correlations and considerations that are not clearly communicated in the document, but do form the basis of the plans.
Naturally, team Oldtown is free to give their own interpretation to the city and the Oldtown document, but please realise deviating too much from the document comes with the risk of losing the realism and cohesiveness for which we prepared for so many years upfront.
Now to the point, the key features at Caulkburn are described in several chapters and subchapters in the document. Key aspects are described as following:
Oldtown.doc chapter 5. Layout & districts; The districts of Oldtown
These districts are located outside the city walls and mainly feature docks and industry. While buildings in the city are commonly made of stone, wood is much more common in the sprawl along the Whispering Sound.
Districts in the Whispering Sound sprawl are Caulkburn and Undercroft.
Oldtown.doc chapter 5. Layout & districts; Caulkburn
Caulkburn is located outside of the city walls on the eastern bank of the Whispering Sound, and is known for its many shipyards and workshops that make the air thick with smoke. Few people actually live in this disctrict, but the few who do are amongst the poorest of the city.
Ships lay anchor in the Whispering Sound or dock in the large harbour at Caulkburn for repairs. Goods are produced further inland, such as sails, ropes, lumber but also iron and steel, glass and leather.
Features
- Wharves, workshops where boats, galleys and ships are made.
- Lots of industry that is not desired in the city.
- Lots of industry that are focussed on boatbuilding.
In short, the district is set up as follows:
- It is sprawl outside of the city itself.
- It is stylistically different from the city; wood is a much more common material.
- It is primarily heavy and large industry, which in turn are described to have large workyards. There are few residences, and those present are extremely poor.
- It is focussed on ship building and repairs, especially around the harbour.
In the current setup, I do not really recognise any of these aspects apart from some boatbuilding facilities and a number of warehouses and factories.
- It’s more of an extension of the city rather than sprawl, with heavy land and coastal defences as well as large gatehouses and a dry moat. There are two subdistricts planned as sprawl, even though the whole district was intended to be sprawl.
- It’s stylistically the same as a district within the city would be. None of the buildings are made of wood (chapter 4. Architecture; Styles & block usage explains OT and Reach timber frame are regarded as stone).
- Although there is some heavy and large industry, large workyards are rare. There is quite a focus on residency within the district; more than half the buildings are residential, there is a sept, several market halls (I think) and numerous shops.
- Most of the harbour features warehouses and generic industry, despite this harbour being specifically mentioned to be intended for building and repairing boats and ships. I think it’s vastly underestimated just how large the industry supporting naval trade really should be, and how polluting these industries were. You’re not going to get even mediocre garum from a factory right next to the place where they are retarring the hull of a ship.
For some background information, Caulkburn is based on historical wharves of maritime cities such as Venice, Genoa, Amalfi, Ostia, Barcelona, Marseille, Istanbul/Constantinople and many more, as well as London and Amsterdam. These wharves were often outside city limits and had laws in place to allow, or disallow, specific developments, professions and buildings within the district. In Amsterdam for example, the “Lastage” was outside the city walls and residency within the area was specifically prohibited. Ropewalks at Amsterdam were roughly as long as half of the width of the city itself. Wharves were often different from the harbours for trade; there had to be sufficient space to scuttle ships for repairs in the harbour, as well as to build or repair ships on land. They were far from desirable places to offload trade wares.
The Lastage in Amsterdam. The ropewalks are several city blocks long.
Trade would have been conducted elsewhere, and Oldtown has been planned similarly. There are harbours intended for trade along the honeywine at AG-D, SK-D, CH-G and even on Battle Island. Smaller vessels can also enter BB-G and BB-H. CU-A on the other side of the Whispering Sound is intended as a fishing harbour. These harbours are all closer to the markets where the goods transported on the ships would come from or go to.
As for the sprawl, Oldtown is designed to have experienced stagnated growth in stark contrast to Kingslanding, which has already outgrown its defences. For this reason, most of the sprawl we usually make at our cities and towns will be within the city’s defences at Oldtown, simply because the city has not grown as much as expected when they build the walls. We planned hints to earlier walls around the districts of Auldwall and Seven Shrines to indicate the city was once smaller and has grown during dedicated expansions, as well as villages that have grown into the expanding city such as Mearley, Arl’s Quarter and Millnthorpe. There is no reason to expand the city in the manner it is now by building the walls around Caulkburn, simply because there is plenty of space within the defences already existing; it’s like building an extra bedroom while you already have an empty bedroom elsewhere in the house.
The footprint we have given to (walled) Oldtown is slightly larger than Kingslanding, despite the city being less populous than the latter by canon; another intentional hint to the stagnated growth of the city. Further expanding the city by converting planned sprawl or even adding sprawl will quickly result in Oldtown becoming more populous than our Kingslanding, especially with Oldtown’s use of insulae.
Building materials at Oldtown are primarily stone as per canon. This is not uncommon for (late) medieval towns and cities. I think most of us have heard of the great fire of London, or other huge fires in towns or cities in their own environment. Fire was a massive threat to towns and cities, and many implemented laws prohibiting people to build with materials that are susceptible to fire such as wood, wattle and thatch within the city walls. Our assumption is that similar laws exist at Oldtown. However, since Caulkburn is designed to be outside of the city, these laws would not apply for buildings there. Extensive use of timber and thatch in Caulkburn (and other sprawl areas) would have not only made for an interesting feature by portraying the use of stone within Oldtown as not simply a regional thing, it would also give these areas a unique and refreshing aesthetic to set them apart from the city itself.
Again, I don’t think the district looks necessarily bad (it looks quite good) nor do I expect major changes to be made. I just want to point out and explain that there is quite a lot of thought behind the handful of sentences used to describe the many aspects of Oldtown in the document, and that most of the descriptions are related to other facets of the city that might not be immediately noticeable.
Although I’m no longer part of the team in charge of Oldtown, as the main author of the Oldtown document I am still more than willing and capable to advise on its contests and the course of this project if aspects remain unclear or if there are desires to deviate from the plans.
Kind Regards,
EStoop
