Fantasy building materials and the people who use them

I’ve been thinking about towns and cities. Specifically, towns and cities that use the remains of past civilizations…or creatures…as building materials. It was common practice in medieval times to cannibalize old structures for their stone or other reusable material, such as in England after the Roman withdrawal. And we know that some prehistoric humans used mammoth tusks and/or bones as a framework for their shelters.

But since we’re talking about a fantasy world, there are lots of other possibilities. For example, what if a region is an ancient sea-bed, and is littered with giant lightning whelk shells, like the one I’m attaching.

Maybe the people could use their tools to cut the shells apart for use as tiles. But maybe the shells are so thick that only minimal alteration can be done, like punching a few holes for windows. Naturally such a community would look very different from the first glance. But I think that our lightning whelk town would end up having social structures that took advantage of their peculiar living quarters.

For example, maybe certain parts of the shell, let’s say in the middle, would be lower status, because they wouldn’t have as much access to air and light. Maybe the shells would be positioned so that the narrow part stuck into the air and could be used as a chimney. Or maybe individual clans would inhabit each shell.

Or what if there was only one giant shell? Maybe it would be a temple, and pilgrims would come to gawk at the amazing gift of the gods. Or maybe scholars would come to study the shell, and then enterprising folk would come to provide services for the scholars, and maybe bring their families. Or maybe both scholars and priests would lay claim to the shell. Pretty soon, you would have a town. And that town would form a government to protect, and perhaps restrict access to, their most important resource. Maybe mothers would pay to take their infants into the shell, believing that it would impart some special blessing on the child.

So what other ideas can everybody come up with fantasy building materials, and what implications can you imagine for their use?

That is a very interesting idea, will have to think of some new living condition/material/etc. But working with your idea the first thing I think of when I see the image of the shell you posted is that it would made a very interesting tower. I could see a large clan gathering the huge shells, dragging them to the same location. Then preparing special supports and embedding the "stalk" into the prepared foundation.

Not sure how that would work, but maybe using a sand system (this is the old sea botoom) like the ancient Egyptans did to raise their obelisks.

Imagine 10-20 of these things gathered around into a town.

Two things:

1) The whelk thing is cool. If it was an ancient sea-bed, I can imagine that the shells wouldn't just be laying on the surface but rather would be embedded in the earth. Was that what you meant? If so, quite a cool idea as it would provide the structure for various levels. The inner part of a shell like this is essentially a spiralling tube/tunnel which could be further sectioned off.

Due to the tapering, it would be logical to assume that most would either be upright (with the base being the wider part) or on their sides. For those that are upright, I could see just the tip remaining above the surface, creating a sortof iceberg effect where the majority of the object is hidden from view. A tiny little entrance of some obscure material leading to a labyrinth below... sounds like a great dungeon too!

Perhaps, being an ancient sea-bed, some could be near a cliff face out to sea. The ones that landed on their sides near the cliff would have thier tips or maybe bases exposed, creating another neat effect with access points sticking out of the cliff face.

Or, even better, like in Australia, the center of Australia was once a sea-bed and is now a sandy desert. Imagine a race of desert dwellers living in these cool, underground palaces!

Also, underground, you could have tunnels linking to other ones, perhaps ones entirely buried and on their sides, maybe even a few giant conch shells as well!

2) To a certain extent, different and fantastic materials have already been used in fantasy quite a lot. Some for instances I can recall from Greyhawk are the various castles and towers built to avoid a tax placed on stone structures (tax avoidance and magic, who woulda thunk it? ). From memory there is a Sand Castle (haha), a castle of shells, a castle of bones and a castle of adamantine.

There are also some others like Onyxgate and Bloodcrystal (which sprang up overnight and looks like congealed blood) and then there's Dorakaa: City of Skulls and the Road of Skulls (a road literally built of skulls).

Tenser's tower I think was also made of a blue stone although, I'm tired and I can't recall properly. Then there's the Causeway of Fiends, a stone walkway from which Delglath the Undying used a piece of to craft his Talisman of Ultimate Evil (at 13th level no less!), and the Cauldron of Night which is essentially a cavern of black stone that radiates pure evil from which the Malachite Throne was built.

Oh... then there's also Oerthblood... the literal blood of the planet... cool, huh?

Of course, we have the classic Wall of Whatever that mages are going to cast. Maybe a rich home would have a Wall of Ice with Permenancy cast upon it to make central air conditioning.

Purple Worm tunnels are another potential living space, though one may have to look out for the original inhabitants.

A really tough group of Siberian-type nomads may live in White Dragon hide yurts.

Disturbing Thought -- a pack of nomadic Necromancers, riding around in their homes, which are hollowed-out Colossal & Gargantuan Zombies. The 'nobility' of the tribe lives in the best-preserved body, of course.

Use Shades to conjure a wall of stone, but it's shadow stone. Sure it's higher level and only 60% as strong as stone, but it's got a great creepy factor.

Greg

or a Shadow Wall of Ice -- creepy and cold...

I think I remeber seeing on the National Geo channel a documentery about nomadic reindeer herders in the arctic circle using mammoth tusks they had unearthed for hard wearing tools and harness components. There isnt much metal, not a lot of wood so they have to use what they find.

For your sea shells one of the uses I can think of them is to grind them up, combine them with sand, water and maybe something like lime to make a type of concrete. All but the lime should be relatively plentiful near where they are found, or some magical mixture that builders can pour into it.
(Nuke it into a ceramic perhaps in a magical forge?)
Wonderful stuff concrete, you can make tiles, bricks, roads and all manner of long lasting structures with it that only get tougher with age if you mix it properly.
We take it for granted because we walk over it every day and live in it. But, in a fantasy setting the use of it would set a civilisation apart, in a world where most places are made of carved and fitted stone, timber and mud brick if you follow the conventional fantasy dwellings.

Hmm, I guess for other materials the Darksun setting has a whole lot of them.

The shell of a chambered nautilus would work well along similar lines.

What about how barnacles and tube worms carve holes into stone? Maybe massive invertebrates created great caverns in a giant stone that now rises above the desert sands, like Uluru (aka Ayer's Rock) in Australia. The countless holes are now home to a fierce tribe of desert raiders that swarm out of the holes like ants from their hill when called to action.

http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/gallery/uluru.htm

You could also have a great coral reef that was heaved up onto the land.

I'm having trouble thinking of non oceanic ideas though. A city on the island that often forms in the middle of the lake in a crater? A castle carved from the petrified stump of the ancient, primal, ancestor of all trees?

There's a town with buildings made out of shells in the PC game Morrowind. The largest one has a large central chamber with rope bridges, shops, and entrances to multiple 'houses' - well, very large suites - for the different noble families.

I think this link might work (concept sketch):

http://static.elderscrolls.com/images/art/mwind_web76B.jpg