The light-bearers along the main streets dim at first light, when the licensed lighters begin their morning circuit in reverse. In an
People collect from their
The morning market opens when the morning opens. Fish from the night boats, bread from the district ovens, Bao flour goods, seasonal produce from the Roof Gardens — the elevated roof gardens on the outer-district rooftops. The people who run them tend to be up before everyone else. They will mention this if given the opportunity.
Not everyone has an
Work in the outer districts is physical and varied: guards on rotation, dock workers, tradespeople,
The middle caste works in institutions — relay stations, administrative offices, channeling services. Their days are more structured, more indoors, and considerably more involved with paperwork. The city generates paper in quantities that suggest it may have found a way to farm it.
Inner-caste households have staff who manage what the outer districts manages for itself: food, maintenance, the movement of resources. Whether this is a good use of everyone’s time is not a question the inner castes find particularly interesting.
The working day ends when the work ends — which is not a consistent hour. The city does not close at dusk. Markets shift inventory rather than packing it away.
The outer-district staple is Bao flour: seeds of the Bao fruit ground down and baked into flatbreads, dense loaves, and anything else you can construct with enough flour and enough time. Fish is cheap, available, and present on most tables. Several generations of outer-district cooks have developed considerable skill at making it taste like something other than fish. This talent is not universally appreciated by visitors.
Bao beer is the common beverage — brewed from seeds and husks, inexpensive, and regarded with the affection people reserve for things they have had every day since childhood. Bao wine exists for those who want something sweeter. Beon wine — the distilled version — is a luxury in most of the outer districts and a regular feature of inner-district gatherings where the point is partly the wine and partly the price.
Chicken is a status marker. To carry chickens in baskets through the outer districts is to communicate that you can afford fine meat and would like people to notice. Whether people notice in the intended direction varies by district.
The inner districts eat differently: the same basic ingredients, processed and presented in ways that communicate something other than nutrition. The same fish that costs two Bits in a bowl at a market stall appears on inner-district menus under a different name at a different hour.
The Soltherran week is six days long. Each day runs for thirty hours. The first five are working days; the sixth is not.
Each day has a name, and each name officially honours a different category of labour. Whether anyone actually honours the relevant workers on the relevant day is a question the workers themselves find amusing. A builder on Stone Day has been building on every other day too. The name does not change the schedule. It does give people something to say to each other.
Bastion Day opens the week. The city’s defence and maintenance workers are honoured, which they appreciate in the abstract. The streets are ordinary.
Stone Day honours construction and infrastructure: the walls, the viaducts, the underground passages. The builders work regardless.
Earth Day honours the Roof Gardens and the Bao growers. It is, in the outer districts, treated as a useful excuse to buy particularly good bread.
Iron Day honours the industrial heart of the city — the heavy forges and manufacturing yards in the middle districts. The noise is the same as any other day.
Order Day closes the working week. It honours law enforcement and public order, which the law enforcement officers find correctly ironic — it is also the day the Arena holds public punishments, the day the streets become loudest after dark, and the day most commonly associated with getting drunk and starting an argument about something that stopped mattering before midnight. The Arena draws its crowds in the afternoon. By evening, those crowds are in the drinking houses. The outer districts are lively on Order Day nights. Lively and, in certain streets, best navigated with some awareness of your surroundings.
Full details on how Order Day functions: see The Arena.
In the inner districts, Arena attendance is more often social obligation than personal choice. Being seen in the stands communicates civic alignment, which is never a bad communication to make if you have something to lose. Attending the evening’s social events afterward carries the same logic at a higher price point.
Silence Day is the day of rest. Shops close or run reduced hours. The streets quiet down by midmorning. People spend it as they prefer: family time, communal gathering in the Oios, a walk somewhere not crowded. Those who were out on Order Day evening often spend Silence Day horizontal.
The six-day structure has one practical effect on daily experience: the week is short enough that the next Order Day is never far away, and everyone knows it.
Evenings in the outer districts return to the communal pattern. The Oios reassembles — people come back from work, the communal kitchen resumes, the common room fills. Decisions are made about tomorrow. Arguments are had and mostly resolved. The communal bath, which sees heavy use in the evenings, functions as informal social space for much of the outer districts.
The light-bearers come on at dusk. White in the inner districts. Amber in the outer. A budgetary decision, those who know better say. The outer districts have never asked for clarification.
In the inner-caste households near the center, evenings are managed. Formal meals. Considered guest lists. Conversations with awareness of who is present and what they might be reporting to whom. Whether the people sustaining this performance find it exhausting is not a question they answer directly. Those who know better say they were simply never told it could be any other way.
See also: Culture Overview · Roles and Expectations · Architecture · The Arena · Economy
© Soltherra RPG System