Barbarian
Decor
The Warlord's
Guide to Decorating
By Eric Butler
Throughout the centuries men with too much testosterone, a few weapons,
and a drive to conquer the world have made great contributions to horseback
riding, archery, swordsmanship, tactics, and universal criticism of art. Despite this, the contributions that
barbarians have made to decorating has been largely ignored. In this volume I will attempt to explain
the basics of decorating the barbarian way. Each section will describe a dwelling
and its attendant subsections will explain each area of the dwelling in further
detail.
Hovel
Rating - Attila the Who?
Effort to obtain - Threatening
display of weapons
The hovel is the absolute pits as far as decorating goes. Lacking the mobile majesty of a tent or
the splendor of a palace, a hovel must be decorated in such a way as to proclaim
to the world, "I'm living here because I don't care." A truly well decorated hovel appears to
be only a temporary shelter, a rest stop before you go on to greater things,
even if you live there for twenty consecutive years. A good way to accomplish this is to rip
out the plaster, if any, on the walls and let the roof fall apart. Thatching is the best roofing, as it can
be replaced from underneath to create a solid roof that looks like it's
rotting.
Lighting: Lighting a hovel is a delicate balance
between appearing too cheap to light the place and allowing enough light to see
detail. A good lighting system
should allow vague shapes to be seen, but no more. Not only does this prevent visitors from
seeing the actual state of the dwelling, but it also allows a good decorator to
create a setting where the visitor feels inclined to leave before they actually
step inside. A careful placement of
well-polished weapons along the walls works wonders, as all the can be seen is
flashes of reflected light.
Furthermore, the visitor will be unnerved by your ability to navigate
(from memory) the area which appears to them to be impossibly dark. Given all these considerations a smoky
fire is the best lighting system, as it provides low, irregular lighting, with
occasional clouds of smoke to obscure the view more.
Cooking Area: Separating the cooking area from the
rest of the hovel is a bad idea, as it will completely ruin the temporary
shelter look. Instead, the cooking
area should be shoved off into a corner and made to look as haphazard as
possible. A fire pit will do
nicely, as it can be set up in under an hour, and therefore provides no clues as
to how long one intends to stay.
The one problem with this is wood and ash, both of which must be placed a
good distance away from the hovel, or, in the case of ash, buried. Another advantage of a fire pit is that
it can be moved out of the corner on the pretext that it is, in fact, the
lighting and heating system as well.
If one intends to place a spit over the fire the fire must remain in the
corner, however.
Main Room: There shouldn't be one. Main rooms are for welcoming people, and
that's exactly what the owner of a hovel should avoid.
Sleeping Area: Like the cooking area, the sleeping area
should be no more complex than what one would use in a campsite. The one exception to this is if a bed is
already present, preferably decaying, in the hovel, in which case a sleeping bag
may be placed over it.
Outdoors: Outside should be, if anything, less
hospitable than the inside. After
all, you have to live on the inside, so scaring visitors away early allows you
to cheat and improve the inside.
The outside of the hovel must appear close to total collapse, with any
renovations made crudely, preferably by knocking holes in the walls. This creates the impression that you
don't plan on staying. Obviously,
too much external decoration can ruin this effect, so a careful balance between
menace and permanence must be sought.
A few spiked heads, however, can deter all but the most foolish of
visitors. Just take care to make
the heads appear carelessly placed, preferably in a random pattern with the
spikes at funny angles. A cheaper
alternative is to toss a bale of hay into the yard and shoot a few arrows into
it.
Spouse's Quarters: Get her a second hovel, cheapskate! Then she can decorate her way. Anyway, it's not like they take much
effort to obtain.
Tent
Rating - Horseman from Hell
Effort to obtain - Fatal
"accident"
The tent is a great step up in the world. A tent is a true barbarian dwelling,
aloof from civilization and highly mobile.
The one problem with decorating a tent is that nobody else in their right
mind lives in one. A good decorator
can use this to their advantage, creating a tent that fairly drips scorn for
society. The perfect tent should be
easy to pack yet comfortable, and, most importantly, reflecting a mindset that
cares nothing for civilization - unless the civilization has unguarded
cash.
Lighting: Lighting a tent is a great
challenge. During the day a
well-made tent can be opened enough to be lit by the sun, and on rainy days a
few oil lamps can provide sufficient light. The problem comes when darkness
falls. A good lighting system
provides light to the inside of the tent without silhouetting the occupants
against the tent fabric. This means that the most important part of the lighting
system is the tent wall itself, which needs to be thickened if it lets light
through. Imbedding a few small
pieces of metal in the fabric to stop arrows never hurts, either.
Cooking Area: The cooking area in a tent should be
slightly separated from the rest of the tent if a sectioned tent is used, or
directly in the center if an unsectioned tent is used. The cooking area should consist of a
bucket of water and a fire. The
fire can be "upgraded" as much as possible without limiting its ability to be
rapidly disassembled and moved, a stove is bad, a spit is fine. Plates, if you use them, and utensils
(knives only, please) can be stored in a separate area. An unsectioned tent should allow smoke
to vent straight out the top. The
fire can be used for heat and light in an unsectioned tent as well.
Main Room: No longer a temporary resident but a
full-fledged warrior you should expect visitors. Be they fellow warriors or groveling
diplomats the intent of a main room is the same - display your power. To a fellow barbarian the main room
should be a display of competence, proving to him that you are his equal, if not
his better. To a diplomat the main
room should be a final testament to your power and another reason to give you
tribute. If a diplomat pees in his
pants when he crosses the threshold you did well. The proper way to display power is a mix
of trophies and weapons. Weapons
should be in stands, easy to reach for, all around the room. The more weapons displayed the better,
but only if you know how to use them.
Another useful tip is to include weapons that are hard to use
properly. A rack of swords in
impressive, but even more so if one slot contains a 25 pound ax. Similarly, a few bows around the room
look good, but a 90 pound draw longbow can be as impressive as a few smaller
bows. Trophies, be they human or
animal, are also good. Human
trophies should be used in moderation, as appearing to be too bloodthirsty can
make one appear unfit to be a leader of men. The best use of human trophies are ones
with a well known story, a drinking cup made out of a particularly troublesome
general's skull, or his spiked head, are both good. A dozen unknown corpses are just
messy. The one exception is scalps,
which can be used everywhere without being more than a gentle reminder of one's
skill. Animal trophies similarly
should be used in moderation, but only because too many makes one appear to be a
hunter and not a warrior. A few
rugs and a head or two is good.
Sleeping Area: The sleeping area of a sectioned tent
should never be seen by outsiders.
A good idea is to cover the entrance to the sleeping area with an animal
skin (preferably one from a large, dangerous animal, with the skin still showing
clear spear marks), and to keep the lighting to a minimum. Concealing the existence of a sleeping
area is good. After all, civilized
people sleep, so you should make them labor under the impression you don’t. If the tent is un-sectioned, the floor
cover should double as a sleeping mat.
Fur rugs are good, as they can be spread out to be rugs, and then
recollected to make a bed at night, without revealing that you sleep.
Outdoors: The area surrounding a tent is easy to
customize, as the tent can be moved.
Huge, sweeping vistas, the kind that make people feel about four inches
tall, are good. If the area is an
open plain makes sure to have your herd of horses nearby, preferably tended by
sullen-looking men with large knives and spears. An open display of horsemanship
(“forgetting” that diplomats where coming and being astride a charger firing
arrows when they arrive) is easier to arrange this way. Another good idea is to allow the tent
to overlook a city that is held by the enemy. This makes enemy diplomats nervous both
when they visit you and when they look at your tent from the city. If you catch them doing this, step
outside the tent and glare at them with the same look a hawk uses on a
mouse. Any area that the tent
overlooks should be strewn with haphazard targets – arrow-filled hay bales,
saplings with the tops clearly cut off by a man on horseback, and possibly a
severely mauled log, especially if it can be made to look vaguely like a human
silhouette.
Spouse’s Quarters: These should be separated from the main
tent if possible, if not they should be moved slightly off to the side of the
tent. The key to designing this
area of a tent is to make sure that visitors will not be able to recognize
anything in it. Sleeping mats are
OK, but cooking knives should look like instruments of torture, and lighting
fixtures should look like dead animals with a candle inside. One’s spouse can help with this
impression of strangeness by pretending that he or she does not speak any
language spoken to him or her and glaring at visitors without blinking.
Great Hall
Rating – Let’s see
if Russia’s inflammable
Effort to Obtain –
Ask politely - with 500 armed men and a column of smoke rising from the town
behind you.
The great hall is the mark of a settled warrior, one whose empire is vast
and provides enough tribute to settle back and enjoy the finer things in life –
shooting arrows at trespassers, commanding armies, and farting loudly at
diplomats. The great hall should
project power like a visible aura.
Anyone looking at a great hall should immediately wonder if there’s a
vacancy in a hotel in Singapore.
Lighting: A great hall should be well lit, to
better display the fact that it is enormously large. A good lighting system is a huge fire,
large enough to roast an entire ox in, in the middle of one wall and torches
liberally sprinkled across the walls.
Visitors should be constantly wondering where all the wood to burn comes
from.
Cooking Area: The cooking area should be a vast
kitchen, centered around an enormous fire.
A good way to decide if the fire is big enough is to look at it and say,
“This isn’t big enough,” until someone risks death to tell you that it can’t be
made bigger. As a general rule,
roasting an entire ox and side dishes simultaneously is a must. The kitchen should be filled with
strange food items hanging from the ceiling. Visitors should be alternately bumping
their heads on something and screaming as they realize what it is. The cooks should all look funny, have
weird names, glare at strangers, and have a disconcerting ability to slice
entire dishes with one hand while making drinks with the other.
Main Room: The main room should be so large that
someone at one end cannot recognize his best friend at the other. Not only is this useful when you
want to kill his best friend without him knowing, but it also serves to make
visitors feel very small. Your seat
should be huge, making you appear to be the size of a gorilla. Everything in the room should point to
you. As a general policy, have at
least 10 armed guards hanging about the throne. These guards should be ugly, scarred,
and apparently unable to speak in anything more complex than grunts. This inhibits the foolish notion that
merciful treatment can be expected from them. The walls of the main room should be
studded with weapons. The stranger
the weapons, the better. The
impression one wants to give is that the room is doubling as an arsenal for the
main body of the army. Dead animals
are also good, especially fierce ones.
The roof and higher parts of the walls can be decorated with vaguely
sinister items, so that the visitor on the ground can’t quite tell what you have
up there. Visitors are much easier
to deal with when mildly panicked.
Sleeping Area: The sleeping area should be the size of
an entire small house. The bed
should be the size of an Olympic pool.
The dresser should double as a weapons rack. There should be secret passages. The walls should have swords and shields
all over them. The occasional
casually placed drinking cup made from a skull should be left about. But then again, nobody should ever see
this room.
Outdoors: The outdoors should be scary. Huge towers filled with arrow slits and
ramparts should loom over the hapless visitor. Bodies hanging from the battlements
should remind the careless that errors are not tolerated. Spiked heads should line the paths. Sweeping vistas crowded with armed
horsemen practicing the arts of war help provide the visitor with another
opportunity to wet his pants. The
great hall should dominate all around it.
Spouse’s Quarters: These should be palatial rooms covered
in the wealth of plundered nations.
The design of the room should suggest that there is little that cannot be
accomplished for one’s spouse, and that it would be a very bad idea to try and
show them up. Strange-looking
guards armed with glinting weapons should complete the picture.
Citadel
Rating – Yes, Mr.
Khan.
Effort to Obtain –
Conquer the world. Every other
Tuesday.
One can get no higher in the world than a citadel. The citadel is the ultimate pinnacle of
power, a fortress, barracks, palace, and arsenal all in one. A citadel should allow one to project
power over entire continents.
Visiting dignitaries should try to hide under rocks. Visiting warriors should try and sign up
three miles outside town. Make an
impact (use the war hammer).
Lighting: The citadel should be lit by
approximately 3,000 torches. The
city should alternate between strips of light and dark at night, creating the
impression that the warriors one sees are only the careless ones, and that the
back alleys are unsafe in the extreme.
The sun shining by day should glint off of spires and turrets that show
up miles out.
Cooking Area: An entire castle should be devoted to
food. Enormous slaughterhouses
filled with cattle, sheep, chickens, pigs, and anything else remotely edible
should feed into a huge room, soaked in blood and filled with weirdoes. It is best to either hire all dwarfs or
all giants for the slaughter house and teach them a new language. They should all be given knives over 14”
in length. This will impress
visitors to the point where they follow you so closely that they are sometimes
walking in front of you.
Main Room: The main room should be an entire empty
castle. Balconies filled with
bow-toting warriors should line the walls.
A massive throne surrounded by a force sufficient to occupy China should
be centered along the rear wall.
Having a weapons rack the size of a small horse near one hand is not a
bad idea either. It should take
approximately ten minutes to walk from one end to the other, and yet the
acoustics should be good enough to allow the visitor to hear you tapping your
feet all the way across the room.
Sleeping Area: A castle. Do whatever you want.
Outdoors: Much of a citadel is outdoors, so this
is important. Every main road in
should be lined with heads and bodies of people you don’t like. The walls of the city should be high
enough that any attempt to look at the top from the ground causes neck
injuries. The interior roads should be large enough so that a dozen armed
horsemen can charge down them side by side. Having this happen occasionally helps
keep everyone’s spirits up and reflexes sharp. Basically, the outside of the citadel
should be really, really cool.
Spouse’s Quarters: Take a castle. Make it weird. Never let anyone in alive.