Tagka Architecture

As befitting their semi-mobile and harsh lifestyle, Tagka dwellings are extremely utilitarian and sturdy. They use natural materials to build alternatively mobile tents and squat stone hovels. Larger public architecture is unknown except for ritual sites, which are more megalithic than true buildings.

## Dwellings:

The Tagka migrate between two different sets of dwelling based on the season, centralized winter settlements and mobile summer camps.

### Summer Dwellings:

In the summer season family groups move from breeding ground to breeding ground, requiring quickly dismantled and carried dwellings. Sheep-cow hides are piled atop tightly tied sticks bound in a cup shape, with a bent wicker ring around a central fire-hole. leather chimney caps are molded and decorated, each one being a prized family possession. Entrance is gained through a rectangular hole raised several inches off the ground, covered by a hide or cloth flap when not in use. The interior is lined with blankets and carpets with strings strung along the roofing branches to hang up various items. A central fire pit is dug and lined with stones with a pottery firedog often seen in the coals. Furniture is restricted to simple stools and leather pillows stuffed with grass. Each tent is large enough to accommodate a single family group with separate individual tents being made when wanted. These dwellings can also be stripped of hides and carried on a cart in a single piece to a new site.

### Winter Dwellings:

During the long southern winters the Tagka cease their nomadic herding activities and withdraw to fortified settlements. Surrounded by log stockades or simply located in rugged terrain, they serve as trading and political hubs in summer and population and storage centers in winter. They are located in lower altitude areas where the winter temperatures don’t dip as low as the interior. The herds are kept in nearby pastures or close to the settlement during highly inclement weather. Inside these settlements houses are made of piled dry stone with timber lined roofs, thatched with layers of grassses.These houses are meant to be permanent, and thus are more elaborate affairs, with stone furniture and underground cellars. Many have attached stables accessed by underground tunnels to keep the most prized breeding pairs close to the family, while the majority of the herd is kept in pens nearby.

During the summer while the majority of people are out roaming the tundra groups periodically return to check on these settlements and store food in wintering pits. Guard duty is often traded among individual sub-groups, with each posting a few warriors for a month or two. Besides the obvious advantages of having highly resilient insulated settlements for the brutal southern winters, they are  major regional hubs. In the rare occasion a clan endeavors to take one and the inevitably massive haul of resources that entails hundreds of clansmen will gather together and attack en masse, one of the rare times a entire clan might gather in the same place.

Often one of the most common materials is the ground itself. The ground becomes frozen rock solid during winter, although only on the more southerly islands is there extensive and deep permafrost year-round. During the summers pits are dug near wintering villages and lined stones. These pits are filled with highly resilient foods and during the winter the ground freezes, crunching the stones together to seal the pits tight. These provide a steady food-supply until the winter passes, vital for maintaining the highly caloric Tagka diet.. Subterranean pits can store large quantities of goods far better and for more cheaply than any above-ground constructions, and are more immune to enemy scavengers.

### Construction Methods:

For summer tents, first a appropriately flat area will be located and cleared of rocks. A frame will then be erected, made either out of driftwood or tightly bundled reeds. Hides, carried from year to year, will be draped in layers over the frame. Rope will be drawn over the outside of the tent and tied off to tighten the hides together, and as a place for things such as textiles to be draped over the outside for drying.

The last step is always the chimney cap, placed over the firehole in the center of the tent. Interior furniture and possessions are placed inside, having survived the journey from the last living site in the back of a cart or in sacks stuffed with cloth.

Winter dwellings are understandably more complex. They are not intended to be torn down and some houses are passed down for centuries without much change at all. In the case a new building is being built, the first step is deciding on a basic plan and digging down into the permafrost. By sinking these buildings slightly into the ground, the Tagka not only insulate the interiors but also allow the roofs to be lower to make construction easier. A low roof lain over the ground is sturdier than one piled atop high walls. The roof itself is logs that are braced against the ground, thatched and slicked with tar. These roofs are also coated with dirt to encourage native grasses to grow, further strengthening them. The walls are native stones piled without mortar and lined with hides or reed blankets.

Each house has a hearth, as well as sometimes a internal root cellar for a private supply of food. The Tagka also dig tunnels between houses for use during the coldest blizzards, or as escape routes during a raid.

One unique method of construction is common among the Sea Tagka of the Gull Islands. Living in terrain even more rugged and windswept than the main Tagka territory, they have developed a type of dwelling that utilizes the mats of seaweed ubiquitous at low tide. One native variety of seaweed is extremely stiff, almost treelike. The women of these tribes having gathered great quantities of it will weave what are basically giant cone baskets, which can be covered with hides and slept in almost like sleeping bags. Light enough to be carried by one man, they are yet sturdy enough when weighed with stones and draped in hides to withstand the brutal winds that scour the eastern shores of these islands.

## Engineering:

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### Enclosures and Fences:

A society that relies on the ability to move its herds to more favorable locations relies on open terrain. This makes fences a potent tool of direction migrational patterns and carving up territories. Winter settlements are walled and guarded within tall log stockades, sometimes reinforced with dry stone ramparts. This is a type of fortification forced by the endemic warfare that predominates among the Tagka. Logs will be stripped and carved into stakes, then driven deep into raised earthen banks. Given the scarcity of quality timber on the islands these walls are studiously maintained and protected.  Outside these walls  driftwood will be strung with hide and rope to form livestock pens, sometimes thatched and roofed with grasses.

Natural landscape features are also enhanced to form borders between different grazing areas and tribal territories. Low stone walls will be erected along creeks and marked at intermittent points with cairns, or groves of bushes will be strung with cord to prevent stray animals from moving through them.

### Waterworks:

There is no type of public sanitation in Tagka settlements. Individual families will dig deep waste holes with a bottom layer of gravel inside small wooden or hide shacks. The soil of the southern islands is variable by both climate and season, but usually it is a thin layer of moist fertile soil above a deep layer of more permanently frozen soil. This lends well to the integrity of underground pits provided one can break through to the colder ground, and the low temperatures work to lessen bacterial buildup.

The Tagka also take advantage of natural hot-water springs as bathing sites, scrubbing themselves with volcanic rock. Many springs have religious significance and are said to grant healing power through their water. Otherwise, the Tagka do not bath or wash themselves to any significant artificial extent.