Vandagan Architecture
Due to the Vandagan national enthusiasm for architecture, a house is perhaps a man or woman's single biggest status object. An interesting consequence of this is that far fewer people tend to be homeless in Vandago, even if their homes are truly crafted of crude materials- it's a shame far greater than most anything but being branded a heretic. Homes are most fiercely fought over in inheritance disputes than any other possessions, especially prior to the days of the Decree of Sodality.
The richest members of Vandagan society have quite sound homes framed with supporting steel, around which and within which stones are placed. Thicker walls mean deeper pockets, and are yet another point of pride, as are the stones with which one manages to have the structure filled. Granite is fairly common, due to a natural abundance of the rock- the richest might decorate their inside walls with alabaster, some types of marble, and multiple windows. The grandiosity of homes in Vandago tends to be difficult to match outside of the duchy, nobles and rich stonemasons or wool producers vying with each other for the tallest, most sumptuously decorated, most expensively crafted domiciles possible.
Far more average in Vandago than these towering and heavy manors are the much smaller, wood-framed houses of the middle and lower classes. Although many of these wood-frames houses of the middle class do manage at times to approximate the luxuries of the steel-framed, using carpeting and interior decoration standards that are quite similar, they're usually constructed on a much smaller scale and from cheaper stones, a fact most Vandagans can recognize simply by looking at them. This trend of attempting to imitate with poorer materials has even spawned a saying in Vandago- to 'gild one's stones' is to try and appear of far greater status than one actually is.
The more numerous poor will also be able to avail themselves of wood frameworks, but often simply fill them in with mud or various less salubrious pastes they can throw together. The luckiest poor may manage to either steal enough stone from a quarry they work for to shore up the house for Vandago's bitterest winters; however, it's more common for them to simply layer on as many mud casings as they can. The poor in Vandago never tend to stop working on their houses, both out of stubborn pride and out of the simple necessity to stay warm.
