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I thought it could be useful to compile a list of different businesses & building you may find in a fantasy town. Something that could prove a useful and quick resource for GM's who want to quickly flesh out a hamlet/village/town in a hurry.
1) An Inn
2) A Tavern
3) A Smithy
4) A Bakery
5) A Tailor
6) A Furrier
7) A Shrine
8) An Orphanage
9) A Tannery
10) An old Mill
11) Magorian's magical marvels (magical shop): This small building, with large, clean classical letters opens into what appears to be a waiting room where you are greeted by a fluttering Homonculus. The shop is run by Magorian Abscondita (Wizard 7/Mage of the third eye 6), an elderly gentleman that wears a small hat that expressely hides his forehead. He is generally polite to any customer, and can provide most low-grade magical items, weapons or constructs. He also takes requests.
12) Stables
13) The brothel
14) A herbal shop/apothecary
15) Church/chapel
16) Guard post
17) Prison
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18)warehouses
19)chandlers
20)perfumers
21)confectionery
22)potter
23)glass works
24)delivery service/messengers with associated scribe
25)bank/money changer(loan shark?)
26)wagon/cart wright
27)pawn shops
28)granary
29)bookstore/private library
30)academies/schools
31)hospitals
32)public baths
33)laundry
34)seamstress
35)shoemaker/leather worker
36)jeweler
37)clockmaker
38)barrister/solicitor/lawyer
39)business agent
40)shipping
41)Street vendor
42)pipe/smoke shop
43)brewery
44)distillery
45)glue factory/render-er
46)shipyard
47)slaughter house/stockyards
Running out of power so I gotta stop here. :p
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A shambles.... Outdoor butchers stall with all the meat hanging up and on tables dripping blood and slowly going off in the sun. (That's where we get the word from).
73. Petshop
79)sewers/cesspits/septic fields
80)garbage dumps
81)canals
82)aqueducts
83)shanties
84)docks/piers
85)cannery
86)lumberyard
87)market square
88)commemorative arch/statue
89)observatory
90)race track
91)customs house
92)town/city hall
93)constabulary
94)charnel house
95)graveyards
96)catacombs
97)water towers
98)coopers
99)carpenter/woodworker
100)asylum
22b) the dragon kiln on the edge of town, run by the potter. The potters are Bernard Lich and Herratta Shojin. They have a ridiculous number of foreign apprentices from every corner of the world. Every month in a potter's equivalent to a harvest, the long kiln which snakes uphill is full of two thousand green ware items, mundane bowls tankards plates etc... Which is fired for two straight days at incredible temperatures and all manner of ceremony is followed during this important event. New babies are walked around the kiln, X marks are made on potters wheels and nothing is thrown on these days, ceremonial songs are sung and when the kiln is cooled and unloaded there is a party in the kiln.
There are sheds full of curing off cuts from the forest and any wood from a shed that is not used in the kiln for that month is bidded on to be burned in someone's fireplace as lucky wood. People often buy it as a wedding gift and pay ridiculous amounts for it, and the potters often throw in a magical bowl for the couple.
After the kiln is unloaded, the party held and the wood auctioned, then the kiln is loaded again over the first two weeks of the month with the bounty of the potters treadle wheels. The pots made after this sit aside in a curing barn made of stone which is the same size as the kiln and found downhill of its mouth.
There in the middle is the kiln like an exclamation mark, the jot a sideways rectangle of a stone barn, and all around it a circle of wood drying kilns, one per month of the year, each slightly different, the winter ones are bigger and summer heat smaller, and there is a little bunk house for the kiln apprentices to sleep off awaiting their watch. And just inside the kiln is a huge stone called the dragon's door, and when the kiln is cool a cot a table and games are there for the apprentices to guard the slowly accumulating work from mischievous teens.
The potters make some very special items and travellers from very far away come to request certain pieces for their collections, and any potter worth his sodium glaze comes to do apprenticeships at the wheel, and if the do two thousand acceptable pieces they get a brand on their wrist, if they do ten thousand acceptable pieces they get the other wrist, and if they do the full apprenticeship ( with some extra teachings.....) then they get a tattooed collar of thirty three symbols which is below the neck and hidden under their smock.
22c) the pottery wagons. Everyday once the day is begun and the workers are all in place, the potters wagons leave the pottery with services of wares. They can be bought by the piece or bought by the service, and happy indeed in the warewaif who sells you a full set of twelve or sixteen services. The straw and pottery filled boxes are loaded with greatest sets in the middle and the singulars on the sides, and they are pulled by a donkey or a runt cow. They are each travelling shops with a chipped wareboard painted up with pictures and prices in drawings of coins.
The staff are usually a young teen who hopes to apprentice, two young waifs who run to doors trying to coax the housekeeper to replace her old crockery with new, take in old shattered wares in to a barrel by the drivers side for grinding into grog, and sometimes an old man who was obviously a potter but his hands have gone stiff.
His name is Yitshach Button, and he smokes a pipe while he begins to tell of life at the pottery and teaches the mystical seven steps of throwing a cylinder on the wheel. His smock is quite worn and there is a tattoo peeking through every hole, with the lines oriented around his neck like a yoke.
The warewaifs are provisioned with water and bread and a crock of last nights vegetables and roast this has its own hole cut into the tailboard of the wagon and sits down in cushioned in a felted belt. The cart moves slowly allowing the beast to graze on weeds as the waifs make sales. When a proper service or full set is sold the teen helps to haul it over with use of a dolly art that the waifs sit in on the back on streets without homes.
They stop for proper lunch on different days at different inns in exchange for two pitchers or their equivalent. They lay out a wooden map with a peg hole for each home and look at who has bought what recently, debating what that means, and then they make small wagers and dares " I,ll carry you up to the masters door if you can sell mrs. Jones a soother" I can tell the joneses have a plan to toilet train their baby because they just bought a broad rimmed general purpose bowl, remind me not to take candy from that bowl on st. Pirans day!
Much of the gossip about upcoming marriages and feasts and illnesses and journeys is known or deduced by the warewaifs and the old man. They are legalistically discreet if they think you are up to no good, but if you seem neighbourly or about to teach a lesson to troublesome folks they will not even ask a bribe to spill their knowledge. Smart sheriffs have an abundance of crockery on their homes and even give it away as gifts to encourage students who are good or pull up their marks.
The children are fed and housed and the potters partners care for them as their own adoptees in the potters house, and from their labour they contribute to the general coffer of the commune. If they decide to leave they are paid out based on current surplus cut into their share based on their years worked and the level of their work. If they turn prodigal son and want back in they must work off their removed share before they can be counted on again.
The waifs do not collect the money at the time of sale but rather once a month a pair of apprentices come around with their book and purse, and fresh picked flowers and go just to the doors that placed orders and set the accounts right, the streets of the city ore divided into 20 zones and they have a weekend off each week so the month of twenty remaining days keeps them on a predictable pattern. If you miss payment twice then the waifs put a black peg in your spot on the map and they skip you over. If you are poor and can't pay they will arrange some service in exchange such as
22d) the potter's field. This is a land that is poor soil for farming near the river banks on the edge of town. It serves two purposes. First of all it holds clay deposits for use by the pottery in town, secondly sections which have been dug empty of clay are used to bury strangers, refugees and the dispossessed.
The potters field is often dug each day to come up with the three types of clay they need. And there are stations with a water trough fed by a pair of shadoufs. The water is poured with the raw clay to be mixed into a slurry which is screened to remove the impurities. The finer and finer meshes yield to a canvas which holds the clay like a canvas bag, these are hung in a low stack stone barn to season for six weeks and it smells like rotting mud.
The barn is emptied to a plaster floor covered in the rain open in the dry, and the clay that is at the right moisture is brought to a huge shallow bowl of stone ten feet across which apprentices tread on to wedge the clay, while an older potter dusts the wedging clay with various dry powdery materials , this is then rolled up and sent to be weighed up and spiral wedged by still more apprentices.
A sturdy cart with six wheels is then loaded up and takes the ready clay to the pottery. There is a kitchen in the field where the snacks are made for the breaks. The workers at each station have a turn refreshing and working.
A very ancient potter named Wroebel Archambeault is taking an apprentice to the bodies of the foreign and discarded dead and is bathing them in slurry and then performing ceremonies over them while they encase them in the impure clay screened off from the slurry. The digging is already done for them so they shift more slag to cover them eight feet deep and perform final rituals to ensure that they cannot be raised up as undead.
Old broken pottery is being ground up into powder to be mixed in with new clay and discarded unfired clay is being added to water and vinegar to season before rewedging.
The interesting and unexpected thing is that the grinding is being done by draconian wizards, hooked up to the push bars of the grinding wheel and putting the shards in the middle so they will be powdered by the time the shards work their way out through the wheels. A very ancient draconic wizard and his apprentice sweep up the powder into barrels decorated with archaic symbols.
106. Sawyer
107. Midwives guild
108. Cider press
109 leather workers and dyers with their pools of urine treading servants, and puss boys gathering their main ingredient.
110. Ballet and fencing school.
111. StoneMasons guild.
112. Brickyard
113. Spinsters near the dyers
114. Millers
115. Fishmongers
116. Paintbrush and hairbrush makers, Monday is horsehair day, Tuesday is wolf and dog hair, Wednesday is badger hair brushes, Thursday is sable brushes, Friday is owlbear brushes, Saturday is a day of first aid...
117. Herbalist and parfumerie
118. Tattoo parlour
119. Vomitorium
120. Artists ateliers.
121. Soap maker
122. Fortune teller and lye maker.
Potter, herbalist, barber, tattoo parlor, pet shop, mill(ers) & perfumers all mentioned multiple times.
123. Ratters/Exterminators
124. Courthouse
125. Gibbet/Stocks/Gallows
126. Slums
127. Rag man's
128. Lamplighter's Guild
129. Embassy
130. Porter
131. Carriage house
132. Dentist
133. Slave pens
134. Auction house
135. Workhouse/ Debtor's prison
136. Navy/Army recruitment center
137. Private club
138. Banquet hall
139. Tax collector/assayers office
140. Mammoth/mastodon pens
141. Town Hall
142. Execution Chamber
143. Millinery (and Millinery Shop)
144. Torture Chamber.
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145. Little Seizure's Evilria! Now selling products for all of your evil needs!
146. Haunted house.
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147. indoor marketplace
148. crematorium
149. teahouse
150. opera house
151. honest-to-Goodness faerie ring
152. foreign embassy
153. seminary
154. locksmith
155. apiary
156. greenhouse
157. florist
158. mint
159. scrapheap
160. monastery
161. idol-maker
162. archery range
163. greengrocer
164. acupuncture parlor
165. sand garden
166. youth hostel
167. tenement building
168. bridge with a troll under it
169. cathedral
170. stonehenge
171. clock tower
172. toymaker
173. aviary
174. opium den
175. pyramid
176. golem foundry
177. archeological dig site
178. kennels
179. headquarters of an order of knighthood
180. labyrinth
181. Beekeepers & associated Mead house.
182. Geode/ Crystal shop, "We sell real healing crystals"
183. Ye Olde Oddities Shoppe & Emporium
184. Taxidermists "Stuff your animal companions here", "Familiars Fixed For a Dollar"
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185. Greengrocer
186. Cobbler
187. Cartwright
188. Cabinetmaker
189. Fishmonger
190. Fletcher
191. Armorer (because the blacksmith doesn't make armor - he makes horseshoes and tongs and hammers)
192. Weaver
193. Wheelwright
194. Saddlery
195. Leatherworker
196. Hairstylist (not the same as the barber - ladies don't go to barbers, and barbers don't style hair)
197. Constabulary
198. Guildhalls
199. Goldsmith
200. Silversmith
145. Little Seizure's Evilria! Now selling products for all of your evil needs!
146. Haunted house.
.
..?does he sell seizures by the sea shore?
145. Little Seizure's Evilria! Now selling products for all of your evil needs!
146. Haunted house.
.
..?does he sell seizures by the sea shore?
No, but in our world, he might sell pizza.
201. Souvenir shop.
153. If they keep relics in a reliquary, what do they keep in this?
201. A dairy making many cheeses. Ripening, selling whey and curds to children.
202. Whittling supplies.
203. Rope makers yard( long lots in the French style with piles of hemp and other fibrous materials, and turning jigs.
204. Nets and hammocks, riggers and gaffers yard.
205. Archives. Old documents kept dry and safe.
206. Boat builders and menders sheds
207. Piano and pipe organ repair shop.
208. DabbaWallas http://youtu.be/fTkGDXRnR9I
209. Hayloft and stables
210. Silo for grains
211. Storm cellar , root cellar
212. Well house, kept by mrs. Cholera feverfew
213. Fora
214. Convent
215. Asylum
216. Consulate, embassy, guesthouse for officials.
217. Moot hall, parlay-ment
218. Water/wind/horse/ox/tide mill
219.imambargah
220. Signal tower
221. Stall in market, booths
222. Wet market
223. Menders.
224. Sporting clubs
225. Poorhouse/workhouse
226. Folly
227. Bear baiting pit.
228. Minaret
229. Pillary and stockade
230. Pawn and storage.
231. Coach house
232. Coach makers and decorative painters.
232. Bath house/ public bath.
233. Dance Studio
234. So-Not-A-Front Thieves Guild Front
235. Bay city rollers fan clubhouse
236. Sacred bathing temple
237. Wine cellar, grinding pit and cold holes.
238. Absurdly-spacious sewer.
239. Sphere of Annihilation pit at bottom of sewer.
240. Drow guardhouse that connects to sewer.
241. Rose Garden, a beautiful place of contemplation amongst the bustle of the town.
242. Village Green, perfect for picnics, meetings and tarring/feathering.
243. Boating Lake, where courting couples can get away from prying eyes - until the saughin attack (or a smaller pond where children (of all ages) come to sail model boats)
244. Paper Mill
245. Duck Pond
246. Kennel
247. Sculptor
248. Painter
249. Thatcher
250. Brick Maker
251. Quarry
252. Lye pit
253. General Store
254. Sages or Scriveners
255. Tannery
256. Poultry Butcher
257. Book Bindery
258. Potion dealer
259. Pesh Den
260. Harbormaster's Office
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261. beanstalk
262. ditch
263. community compost heap
264. pixie tree-house
265. gazebo
266. sweat lodge
267. pigpen
268. observatory
269. magical altar of weather control
270. necromantic laboratory
271. military mess hall
272. shipwreck
273. rookery
274. natural cavern used for aging cheese and wine
275. extraplanar gate with customs house and gift shop
276. Astrologer / Astronomer / Telescope / Dominion of the Black (future?) Minion
277. Cartographer
278. Stationer/Illuminator
279. Vintner
280. Farrier / Vet
281. Massage parlor
282. Gunsmith (likely only in/near Alkenstar on Golarion)
283. Burned out building
284. Collapsed building
285. Broken / excessively aged statue
286. Ice house
287. Windmill
288. Armory
289. random wall / dome (created by a wall of stone, wall of iron, etc)
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Okay, this list needed a little cleaning up:
2) A Tavern
3) A Smithy
4) A Bakery
5) A Tailor
6) A Furrier
7) A Shrine
8) An Orphanage
9) A Tannery
10) An old Mill
11) Magorian's magical marvels (magical shop): This small building, with large, clean classical letters opens into what appears to be a waiting room where you are greeted by a fluttering Homonculus. The shop is run by Magorian Abscondita (Wizard 7/Mage of the third eye 6), an elderly gentleman that wears a small hat that expressly hides his forehead. He is generally polite to any customer, and can provide most low-grade magical items, weapons or constructs. He also takes requests.
12) Stables
13) The brothel
14) A herbal shop/apothecary
15) Church/chapel
16) Guard post
17) Prison
18) Warehouses
19) Chandlers
20) Perfumers
21) Confectionery
22) Potter
23) Glass works
24) Delivery service/messengers with associated scribe
25) bank/money changer (loan shark?)
26) wagon/cart wright
27) Pawn shops
28) Granary
29) bookstore/private library
30) academies/schools
31) Hospitals
32) Public baths
33) Laundry
34) Seamstress
35) shoemaker/leather worker
36) Jeweler
37) Clockmaker
38) barrister/solicitor/lawyer
39) Business agent
40) Shipping
41) Street vendor
42) pipe/smoke shop
43) Brewery
44) Distillery
45) Glue factory/renderer
46) Shipyard
47) Slaughter house/stockyards
48) A shambles.... Outdoor butchers stall with all the meat hanging up and on tables dripping blood and slowly going off in the sun. (That's where we get the word from).
49) A teleport circle in the public plaza allowing travelers to teleport to the magic school in the capital.
50) The ol' mill
51) The ol' mine
52) saloon/casino
53) The natural cavern at the bottom of the town well
54) Tattoo parlor
55) Crypt of a local noble family
56) Mausoleum
57) Gymnasium
58) Monument
59) Mage's guild
60) Thieves' guild the fantasy-world concept so crazy it just might be worth trying in real life!
61. A school of magic, divided into seven buildings.
62. Watchtower
63. Wishing well
64. Wishing well that works
65. Wax museum Smells like CE....
66. Mission of suspiciously-friendly new religion
67. Coliseum
68. Hippodrome
69. Public garden
70. Alchemist's workshop Liable to explode at narratively-appropriate moments.
71. Cheese shop "We PROMISE We Have Cheese!"
72. How could we forget? THE CASTLE!
73. Pet shop Beware possessed exotic animals.
74. Homes. Actual homes that NPCs live in.
75. Barber shop / Chirurgeon's office (commonly the same thing, strangely)
76. Theater
77. School / Orphanage (yes orphanage was mentioned, but not a basic schoolhouse)
78. Outhouse (How did it take us this long to build this? The castle got mentioned before the privy did.)
79) sewers/cesspits/septic fields
80) Garbage dumps
81) Canals
82) Aqueducts
83) Shanties
84) docks/piers
85) Cannery
86) Lumberyard
87) Market square
88) Commemorative arch/statue
89) Observatory: Astrologer / Astronomer / Telescope / Dominion of the Black (future?) Minion
90) Race track
91) Customs house
92) town/city hall
93) Constabulary
94) Charnel house
95) Graveyards
96) Catacombs
97) Water towers
98) Coopers
99) carpenter/woodworker
100) asylum
101.) A Barber Shop located above a Meat-pie Shop.
102.) A Cheese Shop that seems to be out of cheese.
103.) A Book Shop with every book except the ones you want.
104.) A pet shop that sells dead birds.
105. The silt-strider stables.
106. Sawyer
107. Midwives guild
108. Cider press
109 leather workers and dyers with their pools of urine treading servants, and puss boys gathering their main ingredient.
110. Ballet and fencing school.
111. Stone Masons guild.
112. Brickyard
113. Spinsters near the dyers
114. Millers
115. Fishmongers
116. Paintbrush and hairbrush makers, Monday is horsehair day, Tuesday is wolf and dog hair, Wednesday is badger hair brushes, Thursday is sable brushes, Friday is owlbear brushes, Saturday is a day of first aid...
117. Herbalist and perfumeries
118. Vomitorium
119. Artists ateliers.
120. Soap maker
121. Fortune teller and lye maker.
122. Ratters/Exterminators
123. Courthouse
124. Gibbet/Stocks/Gallows
125. Slums
126. Rag man's
127. Lamplighter's Guild
128. Consulate, foreign embassy, guesthouse for officials.
129. Porter
130. Carriage house
131. Dentist
132. Slave pens
133. Auction house
134. Workhouse/ Debtor's prison
135. Navy/Army recruitment center
136. Private club
137. Banquet hall
138. Tax collector/assayers office
139. Mammoth/mastodon pens
140. Execution Chamber
141. Millinery (and Millinery Shop)
142. Torture Chamber.
143. Little Seizure's Evilria! Now selling products for all of your evil needs!
144. Haunted house.
145. Indoor marketplace
146. Crematorium
147. Teahouse
148. Opera house
149. Honest-to-Goodness faerie ring
150. Seminary
151. Locksmith
152. Apiary
153. Greenhouse
154. Florist
155. Mint
156. Scrapheap
157. Monastery Seriously? It took us this long to get to this?
158. idol-maker
159. Archery range
160. Greengrocer
161. Acupuncture parlor
162. Sand garden
163. Youth hostel
164. Tenement building
165. Bridge with a troll under it
166. Cathedral
167. Stonehenge
168. Clock tower
169. Toymaker
170. Aviary
171. Opium den
172. Pyramid
173. Golem foundry
174. Archeological dig site
175. Kennels
176. Headquarters of an order of knighthood
177. Labyrinth
178. Beekeepers & associated Mead house.
179. Geode/ Crystal shop, "We sell real healing crystals"
180. Ye Olde Oddities Shoppe & Emporium
181. Taxidermists "Stuff your animal companions here", "Familiars Fixed for a Dollar"
182. Greengrocer
183. Cobbler
184. Cartwright
185. Cabinetmaker
186. Fishmonger
187. Fletcher
188. Armorer (because the blacksmith doesn't make armor - he makes horseshoes and tongs and hammers)
189. Weaver
190. Wheelwright
191. Saddlery
192. Leatherworker
193. Hairstylist (not the same as the barber - ladies don't go to barbers, and barbers don't style hair)
194. Guildhalls
195. Goldsmith
196. Silversmith
197. Souvenir shop.
198. A dairy making many cheeses. Ripening, selling whey and curds to children.
199. Whittling supplies.
200. Rope makers yard (long lots in the French style with piles of hemp and other fibrous materials, and turning jigs.
201. Nets and hammocks, riggers and gaffers yard.
202. Archives. Old documents kept dry and safe.
203. Boat builders and menders sheds
204. Piano and pipe organ repair shop.
205. DabbaWallas http://youtu.be/fTkGDXRnR9I
206. Hayloft and stables
207. Silo for grains
208. Storm cellar, root cellar
209. Well house, kept by Mrs. Cholera feverfew
210. Fora
211. Convent
212. Asylum
213. Moot hall, parlay-ment
214. Water/wind/horse/ox/tide mill
215. Imambargah
216. Signal tower
217. Stall in market, booths
218. Wet market
219. Menders.
220. Sporting clubs
221. Poorhouse/workhouse
222. Folly
223. Bear baiting pit.
224. Minaret
225. Pillory and stockade
226. Pawn and storage.
227. Coach house
228. Coach makers and decorative painters.
229. Dance Studio
230. So-Not-A-Front Thieves Guild Front
231. Bay city rollers fan clubhouse
232. Sacred bathing temple
233. Wine cellar, grinding pit and cold holes.
234. Absurdly-spacious sewer.
235. Sphere of Annihilation pit at bottom of sewer.
236. Drow guardhouse that connects to sewer.
237. Rose Garden, a beautiful place of contemplation amongst the bustle of the town.
238. Village Green, perfect for picnics, meetings and tarring/feathering.
239. Boating Lake, where courting couples can get away from prying eyes - until the saughin attack (or a smaller pond where children (of all ages) come to sail model boats)
240. Paper Mill
241. Duck Pond
242. Kennel
243. Sculptor
244. Painter
245. Thatcher
246. Brick Maker
247. Quarry
248. Lye pit
249. General Store
250. Sages or Scriveners
251. Poultry Butcher
252. Book Bindery
253. Potion dealer
254. Pesh Den
255. Harbormaster's Office
256. Beanstalk. Because giants commute, too!
257. Ditch. That's a structure....
258. Community compost heap
259. Pixie tree-house
260. Gazebo *gasp*
261. Sweat lodge
262. Pigpen
263. Magical altar of weather control
264. Necromantic laboratory
265. Military mess hall
266. Shipwreck
267. Rookery
268. Natural cavern used for aging cheese and wine
268. Extra-planar gate with customs house and gift shop
270.
271. Cartographer
272. Stationer/Illuminator
273. Vintner
274. Farrier / Vet
275. Massage parlor
276. Gunsmith (likely only in/near Alkenstar on Golarion)
277. Burned out building
278. Collapsed building
279. Broken / excessively aged statue
280. Ice house
281. Windmill
282. Armory
283. Random wall / dome (created by a wall of stone, wall of iron, etc.)
Took out the duplicates. Last number is now 283.
I separated out the extensive Potter's description for those that want it.
22b) the dragon kiln on the edge of town, run by the potter. The potters are Bernard Lich and Herratta Shojin. They have a ridiculous number of foreign apprentices from every corner of the world. Every month in a potter's equivalent to a harvest, the long kiln which snakes uphill is full of two thousand green ware items; mundane bowls tankards plates etc... Which is fired for two straight days at incredible temperatures and all manner of ceremony is followed during this important event. New babies are walked around the kiln, X marks are made on potter’s wheels and nothing is thrown on these days, ceremonial songs are sung and when the kiln is cooled and unloaded there is a party in the kiln.
There are sheds full of curing off cuts from the forest and any wood from a shed that is not used in the kiln for that month is bided on to be burned in someone's fireplace as lucky wood. People often buy it as a wedding gift and pay ridiculous amounts for it, and the potters often throw in a magical bowl for the couple.
After the kiln is unloaded, the party held and the wood auctioned, then the kiln is loaded again over the first two weeks of the month with the bounty of the potters treadle wheels. The pots made after this sit aside in a curing barn made of stone which is the same size as the kiln and found downhill of its mouth.
There in the middle is the kiln like an exclamation mark, the jot a sideways rectangle of a stone barn, and all around it a circle of wood drying kilns, one per month of the year, each slightly different, the winter ones are bigger and summer heat smaller, and there is a little bunk house for the kiln apprentices to sleep off awaiting their watch. And just inside the kiln is a huge stone called the dragon's door, and when the kiln is cool a cot a table and games are there for the apprentices to guard the slowly accumulating work from mischievous teens.
The potters make some very special items and travelers from very far away come to request certain pieces for their collections, and any potter worth his sodium glaze comes to do apprenticeships at the wheel, and if they do two thousand acceptable pieces they get a brand on their wrist, if they do ten thousand acceptable pieces they get the other wrist, and if they do the full apprenticeship ( with some extra teachings.....) then they get a tattooed collar of thirty three symbols which is below the neck and hidden under their smock.
22c) the pottery wagons. Everyday once the day is begun and the workers are all in place, the potter’s wagons leave the pottery with services of wares. They can be bought by the piece or bought by the service, and happy indeed in the warewaif who sells you a full set of twelve or sixteen services. The straw and pottery filled boxes are loaded with greatest sets in the middle and the singulars on the sides, and they are pulled by a donkey or a runt cow. They are each travelling shops with a chipped wareboard painted up with pictures and prices in drawings of coins.
The staff are usually a young teen who hopes to apprentice, two young waifs who run to doors trying to coax the housekeeper to replace her old crockery with new, take in old shattered wares in to a barrel by the driver’s side for grinding into grog, and sometimes an old man who was obviously a potter but his hands have gone stiff.
His name is Yitshach Button, and he smokes a pipe while he begins to tell of life at the pottery and teaches the mystical seven steps of throwing a cylinder on the wheel. His smock is quite worn and there is a tattoo peeking through every hole, with the lines oriented around his neck like a yoke.
The warewaifs are provisioned with water and bread and a crock of last night’s vegetables and roast this has its own hole cut into the tailboard of the wagon and sits down in cushioned in a felted belt. The cart moves slowly allowing the beast to graze on weeds as the waifs make sales. When a proper service or full set is sold the teen helps to haul it over with use of a dolly art that the waifs sit in on the back on streets without homes.
They stop for proper lunch on different days at different inns in exchange for two pitchers or their equivalent. They lay out a wooden map with a peg hole for each home and look at who has bought what recently, debating what that means, and then they make small wagers and dares " I’ll carry you up to the masters door if you can sell Mrs. Jones a soother" I can tell the joneses have a plan to toilet train their baby because they just bought a broad rimmed general purpose bowl, remind me not to take candy from that bowl on St. Pirans day!
Much of the gossip about upcoming marriages and feasts and illnesses and journeys is known or deduced by the warewaifs and the old man. They are legalistically discreet if they think you are up to no good, but if you seem neighborly or about to teach a lesson to troublesome folks they will not even ask a bribe to spill their knowledge. Smart sheriffs have an abundance of crockery on their homes and even give it away as gifts to encourage students who are good or pull up their marks.
The children are fed and housed and the potter’s partners care for them as their own adoptees in the potter’s house, and from their labor they contribute to the general coffer of the commune. If they decide to leave they are paid out based on current surplus cut into their share based on their years worked and the level of their work. If they turn prodigal son and want back in they must work off their removed share before they can be counted on again.
The waifs do not collect the money at the time of sale but rather once a month a pair of apprentices come around with their book and purse, and fresh picked flowers and go just to the doors that placed orders and set the accounts right, the streets of the city ore divided into 20 zones and they have a weekend off each week so the month of twenty remaining days keeps them on a predictable pattern. If you miss payment twice then the waifs put a black peg in your spot on the map and they skip you over. If you are poor and can't pay they will arrange some service in exchange such as
22d) The potter's field. This is a land that is poor soil for farming near the river banks on the edge of town. It serves two purposes. First of all it holds clay deposits for use by the pottery in town, secondly sections which have been dug empty of clay are used to bury strangers, refugees and the dispossessed.
The potter’s field is often dug each day to come up with the three types of clay they need. And there are stations with a water trough fed by a pair of shadoufs. The water is poured with the raw clay to be mixed into a slurry which is screened to remove the impurities. The finer and finer meshes yield to a canvas which holds the clay like a canvas bag, these are hung in a low stack stone barn to season for six weeks and it smells like rotting mud.
The barn is emptied to a plaster floor covered in the rain open in the dry, and the clay that is at the right moisture is brought to a huge shallow bowl of stone ten feet across which apprentices tread on to wedge the clay, while an older potter dusts the wedging clay with various dry powdery materials, this is then rolled up and sent to be weighed up and spiral wedged by still more apprentices.
A sturdy cart with six wheels is then loaded up and takes the ready clay to the pottery. There is a kitchen in the field where the snacks are made for the breaks. The workers at each station have a turn refreshing and working.
A very ancient potter named Wroebel Archambeault is taking an apprentice to the bodies of the foreign and discarded dead and is bathing them in slurry and then performing ceremonies over them while they encase them in the impure clay screened off from the slurry. The digging is already done for them so they shift more slag to cover them eight feet deep and perform final rituals to ensure that they cannot be raised up as undead.
Old broken pottery is being ground up into powder to be mixed in with new clay and discarded unfired clay is being added to water and vinegar to season before rewedging.
The interesting and unexpected thing is that the grinding is being done by draconian wizards, hooked up to the push bars of the grinding wheel and putting the shards in the middle so they will be powdered by the time the shards work their way out through the wheels. A very ancient draconic wizard and his apprentice sweep up the powder into barrels decorated with archaic symbols.
284. Debtors' prison - pony up the cash or stay here. Longer visiting hours and less torture than regular prisons.
285. Joiner's
286. Large barrel housing a philosopher (who is often found at the lawyer and/or the prison)
287. Brickmaker
288. Megalith delivery service (staffed by people who fell in a druid's cauldron full of potion of bull's strength when they were young).
289. Broadsheet writers' office and print shop. (often doubles as hidden shrine to Milani in Golarion)
290. Travellers' campsite
291. Wrecker's yard for dealing with ships that are beyond repair.
285. Joiner's - Gotta be a lot of carpenters in a town for someone that specialised to have their own building/shop.
286. Bowyer/Fletcher's shop
287. Crop fields
288. Pasture/grazeland
289. Fallow field
290. Feasthall
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286. Large barrel housing a philosopher (who is often found at the lawyer and/or the prison)
288. Megalith delivery service (staffed by people who fell in a druid's cauldron full of potion of bull's strength when they were young).
289. Broadsheet writers' office and print shop. (often doubles as hidden shrine to Milani in Golarion)
Diogenes, Obelix, and Scofflaw Penn - now THERE'S an adventuring party!
291. coach company
292. golem rental outlet
293. specialized inn that caters to the Huge and larger and/or Tiny and smaller tenants
294. garum factory
295. Mysterious hole in the ground.
296. Abandoned guard post
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297. Muster point sign and shelter for workers, boot rental here too. visitors can meet guides here too to take them further up or in to other lands.
298. bodger's bench for Greenwood items made to order while you wait.
299. middleman's office- your one stop shop, tell us what you want and we will find them, for a marginal fee.
300. fish trading house- the fishermen bring in a cloth with an ink print of their fish with a tally from the dock and purchasers bid and carters deliver straight of the ships holds to their salt Coopers.
301. Tool Library, hammers weapons etc... buy a membership and we will sign you out up to five items, a small fee for every day beyond use for five days helps to repair, replace and upgrade items thereby improving our selection. Usufructian property rights (uses and fructis), but not the rights of abusis. Larger items might require leaving collateral.
302. Old section of city wall, now imbedded in the city.
303. Fast food shop/thermopolium.
304. University; lecture theatres or halls of residence.