Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2021 14:24:32 GMT -5
(( With the frequency I RP with friends in Nat's house, Lady Kat had the -ingenious- suggestion (thanks, Lady Kat!) of doing a full description of Nat's home a while back, complete with picture. The blueprint thingy I'm doing remains a lengthy work in progress, because I find I am embarrassingly inept at computerized art-making. It may or may not be quite some time before I finally manage to complete and post it. But, this was fun to write up! I'd love to see some walkthroughs of other characters' homes sometime as well! 
))
Warm firelight can be seen in the windows as you approach Nat’s house from the uphill, eastbound road in Darkshire, walking up the smooth dirt path to the front door. The cozy, warm, homey feeling contrasts sharply with the dark forest of Duskwood increasingly making its presence known the further one walks from the main square of the dark little town. Smoke furls from the twin chimneys positioned one third and two thirds of the way back in the house. Upon approach, one might notice, depending on the day, dark flowers or dark, colorful candles in the windows.
))Warm firelight can be seen in the windows as you approach Nat’s house from the uphill, eastbound road in Darkshire, walking up the smooth dirt path to the front door. The cozy, warm, homey feeling contrasts sharply with the dark forest of Duskwood increasingly making its presence known the further one walks from the main square of the dark little town. Smoke furls from the twin chimneys positioned one third and two thirds of the way back in the house. Upon approach, one might notice, depending on the day, dark flowers or dark, colorful candles in the windows.
After a knock, Nat opens her front door and greets you with a smile. She invites you in happily. Her front room has two high-backed, winged, black armchairs in front of the fireplace that crackles merrily across the room from you, on the far wall, off to your right a bit. In between and to either side of these chairs sit small, round, spindly endtables. A pair of bookshelves stand to the left and right of a writing desk and matching chair. The desk sits under the west-facing window, the one that shows the town square down the hill, the citizens and visitors to the town carrying on with their day or night, watched over confidently by the Night Watch, the little town’s militia. A long, elegant table with slender, curving legs stands to the left of the fireplace, a tassled throw lying across it with corners dangling off the sides and ends. Several pictures of loved ones stand propped up on this table. The wall to the left, the one dividing the living room from the kitchen, holds a few more hanging pictures, and another, much smaller table with matching legs stands in a semi-circle, flat edge against the wall, holding up a vase of duskroses under an ornately-framed oval mirror Nat says she uses to check her appearance one last time before leaving the house. The wall to the front of the house holds a massive bay window with sitting cushions on the sill. The floor has a rectangular red rug in the middle of it. The scent is lavender, goldthorn, and wood smoke, with a hint of black cherry and the damp, earthy scent of Duskwood.
If it’s dinner you’re there for, Nat leads you through that door just inside the front door, to your left, and you find yourself in an immaculate, fully decked-out kitchen. Dark cherrywood cabinets start just a few feet inside the door, on the left wall, running along the wall and angles around the corner to the east-facing window under a smooth, polished granite countertop. A row of cupboards run parallel above the countertop along the same two walls. Where the countertop starts at your immediate left, about halfway down the wall, you spot a little sink that Nat talks about being connected to a gnomish aqueduct system they call “plumbing.” Maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe you haven’t? Across the kitchen, where the countertop ends under the window, you can see a wood-fired cooking stove. Above and to the left of the stove, on the side of the last cupboard, a paint is done onto the wood of Celeste’s murloc-skeleton fishing pole. Along the wall to the immediate right, you’d see shelf after shelf after shelf of various kitchen paraphernalia. The bottom couple of rows have a dizzying array of pots and pans, each one different, each one likely having its own specific use. The middle few shelves are home to plates, bowls, cups, steins, and various cooking or eating utensils in trays designed for them. The top few shelves hold fruits and fresh vegetables, with the topmost shelf, not quite high enough to be out of Nat’s reach, have a startlingly well-stocked row of little clay shakers of spices, the names engraved into them arranged in alphabetical order.
Nat would gesture to a table along the wall around the corner from that, the one you’d face directly if you made a right turn after entering the kitchen. A picture hangs over it, displaying two gnomes in Winter Veil costumes, one with hazel eyes, the other with purple, gamboling around in a seemingly gravity-free life-sized snow globe in what appears to be Ironforge, a towering Winter Veil tree and a series of Winter Veil character statues standing in its center. As you sit, Nat would busy herself around the kitchen, chatting animatedly as she zipped here and there and everywhere, pulling dishes off the shelf, pulling specialty dishes or food from the various cupboards, or perhaps some cleaning supplies from the cabinets below the countertop, or maybe something frozen or held cool from one of enchanted iceboxes under the far right cabinets. The heavenly aroma of whatever meal she’s whipping up pervades the room and makes for a mouth-watering setting when combined with rapid chopping sounds or the slower sounds of this or that being stirred. On occasion, she deposits the skin of a vegetable or some other item into a rubbish bin that hides in the far left cabinet, the one nearest her front door. Surprisingly, no odor, good or bad, comes from it. The plank floor here doesn’t have a rug as her living room does, and the massive, square-cut timber frame shows here as in the front room.
Upon request of a restroom, Nat would gesture down the hallway that starts at the far right corner of the kitchen as you enter from the living room and extends along the west wall of the house. A door halfway down the hall, to the right, is the one she indicates. Before entering, at the narrow end of the hall facing you, you spy another door. But, turning right, you enter the restroom. The room is well-lit, candles in place on the back corners of the sink immediately to the right as you enter, a single cabinet under it. The candles illuminate the mirror brightly from the large flames of their specially-designed tall wicks, and you find you’re able to see every feature of your face and hair quite well. A narrow shelf of cherrywood with ornate black wrought-iron wall fixtures hangs on the wall to the left of the sink. A number of bottles can be spied here, various toiletries common to women’s bathrooms, and Nat’s preference for lavender scents with a hint of minty goldthorn is evidenced. The top shelf also holds an elegant hairbrush of a dark wood that’s nearly black, with bristles that end in tiny, smooth spherical purple beads. To the left of the door, as you enter, you spot an immaculately clean bit of porcelain that Nat would blush a little to mention, no doubt also connected to the house’s plumbing. An inner room containing the major parts of the gnomish plumbing system cuts the porcelain unit off from the high-walled, oval-shaped, smoothly-polished obsidian bathtub that sits parallel to the wall. More plumbing comes from the wall to the left, evidence of how the tub is filled. Small indentions line the top of the four “corners,” if ovals had corners, of the tub, as well as the nearside narrow end. The gaps in these indentions give way to a spot to climb in and out on the nearside, a sort of bench shaped out of the obsidian to sit up and out of the water a bit, and what looks to be a place to lay a thick, folded towel to use as a headrest at the far end.
Looking to the far end of the right-side wall, you spy a rather larger shelf. Linens line the bottom row, some purple or black, some white with various fish embroidered into them. Towels, hand towels, and washcloths each rest in their own designated location. Above that sits a laughably girlish array of bath products: body washes and bar soaps, shampoos and conditioners, bath bombs and loofas and bubbles. The top shelf sports an array of scented candles, and it’s clear from their diameters that these are what the many indentions around the top of the wall of the tub are for.
The far wall sports a window with a pair of candles on the sill. The window is artificially blurred to prevent peeping Toms from getting a show.
As you exit, if it was to stay the night you were visiting for, Nat would guide you to the door you spotted at the end of the hall, the one facing you instead off on the right, like the bathroom door was. You enter. Depending on your personality, a grin, a laugh, a scoff, or a look of disgust would cross your face as you do – Nat’s room is a testament to her girliness. A large, kingside bed with a dark purple down comforter, a glimpse of matching silk sheets where the comforter is folded back, and a few dark purple pillows with silk pillowcases attaches to a headboard on the western wall between a pair of windows hung with blackout curtains. To either side of the headboard stands a bedside table with a tall candle, usually with a bookmarked novel on one or the other. Outside of these rest one small bedside armchair apiece. The room smells much the same as the front room, only more heavily of the fragrances of her various products than of the smells from outside, though a fire crackles merrily here as well from a matching, though somewhat smaller hearth as that of the living room. This fireplace is at the far end of the near right wall, the wall that separates this room from the bathroom. A large, wide black dresser sits directly across the room from the entrance. To the right of that, a black vanity table with a cushioned little stool stands. Upon it, at the back right corner, sits a tiny chest of drawers containing jewelry, hair clips, and hair bands, each in its own organized tray. An assortment of hairbrushes of different kinds neatly lines the back left corner. At this point, one reaches the center of the far wall, where a broad bay window is laden with cushions on the sill when the blackout curtains are pulled back. The rest of the wall along the right hosts a trio of laden bookshelves, much like the walls of the living room. Along the left wall of the bedroom, between a matching pair of windows, stands a massive, handsome mahogany wardrobe with duskroses engraved into it in dark purple. A full-length mirror rests against the wall just to the right of the door, directly opposite the vanity table, allowing the little table’s user to check their hair behind their head in addition to its use in determining outfits for the day. The floor on the near side of the room is plenty enough to allow the top mattress, of the two on the bed, to be pulled to the floor and made up as its own bed, something Nat has done for a few friends before, though, to her embarrassment, she must always ask her guest for help, as she lacks the strength to drag the mattress off on her own. In the meantime, another rug covers most of the floor inside the space left by the rest of the furniture here.
There doesn’t seem to be a wall in the house untouched by at least one picture of friends, family, Cat family, and/or Nat and Celeste, with most of the pictures spaced down either wall of the hallway.
Upon leaving, you’d notice a lock in the door handle, a deadbolt above that, and a chain slide-lock a couple feet higher. Being the house furthest out on the edge of town in any direction in a wood haunted by feral worgen and skittering undead, especially the house nearest Karazhan, you might get the thought that one must take one’s security seriously, Night Watch or no Night Watch. However, it’s the only hint of anything other than comfort and coziness and warmth in the entire home.
Exiting the door, you walk the little dirt trail from the house to the cobblestone road that you walked when first approaching, the firelight twinkling in the windows behind you. If you take off aerially from here, whether on your own flying mount or from the flight master across the cobblestone road and slightly down the hill from Nat’s front door, you see a skillfully shingled roof, and smoke still furling from those twin chimneys. Whether or not you like all the dark colors and girliness of the home, you still get the feeling that Nat lives there in enormous comfort.
Nat’s friendly words of farewell might ring in your head for a moment as you leave, as well as a friendly exclamation – she’d love to see your house next!
Founded April 26, 2005