[Battle Arena] Victor's Arena and Player Home
On the borders of Smith's Gambit closest to Tempest Bay rests an isolated, but otherwise regular cabin.
Upon closer approach, details reveal themselves: It is a small, clean-cut cabin made from a handful of large pine logs, with a sloped roof placed overtop the flat ceiling to prevent snow from piling up. This leaves an inhospitable attic space that is inaccessible. The entrance faces away from the bay to avoid the cold winds that ride off from the ocean. The entryway is designated by a simple wooden door with an iron lock. The door has a simple phrase written in Primordial carved on it "Sylvan Abode" and it seems to hold a tiny bit of magic of the Universal school and with a Druidic nature, causing it to glow a very faint green hue.
To approach the door, you must take two standard-sized steps, which are each built from inexpensive gneiss from a local quarry. The stairs are built in to the foundation which is made from the same material from the same source.
The foundation is not tall, because the proximity to the bay has resulted in erosion and flattening of the land, leaving plenty of spaces where a home could be built with but a minor foundation of stone. Additionally, the stone foundation is just over a foot tall, it is completely solid, and built from one block of stone, leaving no room for invasive creatures to nest below.
Upon entering the home, you would find yourself facing a barebones living space with a maple hardwood floor and a ceiling that is merely six feet high. It has a square footage of 500 ft, and it's longer dimension stretches towards the bay, away from the entrance.
Additionally, the maple floor is covered in an uncountably numerous assortment of densely-scrawled passages written in Primordial. Upon further inspection, they all reveal Sylvan lore which inherently reflects the 'ultimate truth' of this universe.
- Opposite of the front is a smoldering hearth which is mostly charcoal, rather than fresh hickory firewood. It is encased in a ceramic mantle. The flue is purposefully left unfinished, and simply pokes upwards and out the back wall of the home, causing the smoke to be rebuffed by the bay winds, slowly staining the backside of the home with thick layers of soot, but also causing the home to appear cloaked in a menacing black smoke when viewed during the right circumstances. Hung above this fireplace is the cracked tusk of a Giant Boar, stained with the dried blood of the home's owner.
- On the left-hand side of an observer who enters the home through the front door, there is an assortment of miscellaneous things:
1. An emptied but unclean chamber pot.
2. A basic healing potion in the middle of being brewed.
- On the right-hand side, there is a bedroll and two waist-high cedar dressers, each with three drawers. These are closed, but not locked, and contain smaller personal possessions.
1. The top drawer contains a belaying pin (functions as a club) and a small wooden statuette of a smug halfling that seems to be severely worn through constant rubbing
2. The middle drawer contains an unsealed herbalism kit and a set of unwashed common clothes that reek of sweat and blood
3. The bottom drawer contains a gnarled and spiraling quarterstaff made from Timberloft Elm wood
4. The top drawer of the second dresser contains a sledgehammer which has had the handle shaved down so that it can fit tightly in this space. It cannot be removed except by taking out the whole drawer first.
5. The middle drawer of the second dresser contains a bedroll.
6. The bottom drawer of the second dresser is empty.
Adjacent to the personal homestead of the resident genasi druid, is a 2500 sq ft. arena, surrounded by 5-ft-tall maple poles connected by equal lengths of silk rope. The perma-frosted soil on the ground inside has been manually melted by four large, but rusted cast iron braziers located in the four corners of the arena, though there is 10 ft between the impromptu fence and the large light and heat sources, leaving 40 ft between a brazier and each other. It has also been packed by hours of manual stomping, and all grass has been killed off with salt, leaving a very dead, aesthetic interior.
Surrounding the arena, are eight large slabs of marble, which are each cut into singular rectangular shapes, with the dimensions of 5 by 25 ft. They are six inches thick. All marble in this secondary construction is sourced from a quarry in a nearby city.
The first four lay on the cold ground 15 ft outside the edges of the four sides of the arena, and the other four sit 10 ft behind the former slabs, raised 10 ft above the ground by undecorated pillars of marble. There are no stairs to access this higher platform, yet.
Beyond both the arena and the bleachers (80 ft), there are four copies of a large maple column, that is about as thick as an average tree. Resting on it is a thick tarp of cheap, waterproof material (most likely some kind of treated animal hide), that is stretches to the four corners. It doesn't bow in the middle, since it is stretched tightly across the 80 ft by 80 ft plane. To avoid snow weighing on the whole thing and eventually crushing and ripping through the mediocre tarp, the two corners that are further from the bay's winds are 5 ft lower, creating a slope that allows, rain, snow and sleet to slide off the protective covering, and not blow through the construction, but continue along with the wind currents away from it. The trunk-like pillars are each 15 ft tall, though the further ones are only 10 ft tall. The pillars are mostly hollow to reduce the material costs.
This message was last edited by the player at 06:30, Fri 17 June 2022.
