HALFLING HOMES AND HOME LIFE IN FAERÛN (Patreon)

Halfling homes vary due to local terrain and climate, but they all have at least root cellar tunnels, if not the entire home dug into a hillside, or inside a halfling-made artificial hill. A constant in all halfling built or remodeled housing is that windows and doors are halfling-sized, not larger (big pieces of furniture are fashioned in pieces that fit through doorways, and are then assembled, usually by means of pegs and hook-and-eye fastenings, inside).

When living in human cities, halflings often inhabit narrow, low-ceilinged lodgings within human homes (they subdivide human buildings between several halfling families, or an owning family and renters who are also halflings, and inside the built-for-humans living spaces, construct smaller, halfling-scale interior partition walls, ceilings, and doors).

Forest-dwelling hin often construct log homes by joining living trees with felled trunks of other trees to make a “ringwall,” then weave a net of living and dead branches net for the roof, then cover this webwork with a thatch of grasses, then cover this thatch with earth, and plant the layer of earth with herbs, flowers, and greenleaf plants (all edible). Bramble and berry bushes will be planted in a surrounding maze if hin feel the need to keep goblins, humans, or other unwanted intruders at bay—and if they known such foes are in the habit of using fire to burn away undergrowth, the halflings will dig moats, or divert streams and springs to fill dug basins and make ponds or bogs that they’ll then plant to “look natural.” If intrusions become a problem, trapped tunnel entrances (often flanked by deadly false entrances—tunnels that lead only to traps, not to a way in) will be fashioned, and barriers made to block off all easy walking access to the hin dwellings.

In mountainous regions, halflings usually use caves but fit them with weir-like (wattle) walls and traps and “runs” to make them too small for anything larger than a halfling; these sharpened-stake constructions will be sturdy enough to stop (and kill, if persistent) a bear, an owlbear, and the like. They will dig and even mine if they must, and hin lore contains many explosive concoctions and naturally-derived acids for destroying or shaping stone.

Racial stereotypes may be odious, but in the main halflings are less stubbornly persistent than either dwarves or gnomes (“lazy” to some), and are therefore less doggedly wedded to particular forms and features in their homes. They are instead opportunistic. For example, on an island in the Nelanther, a towns-worth of halflings dwelt in the tunneled-through and joined-together hulks of many wrecked ships that had run aground on a notorious “Wreck Beach.” The hin ambushed the pirates and adventurers who came to plunder the wrecks, over the years, and gleaned gear, food, and goods from them.

Many halflings favor hammocks or “hung from the ceiling on ropes” beds, and barrels and casks repurposed as tables (but kept watertight, so they can be used as containers to shift household goods elsewhere in a hurry, if need be). Halflings like to hang many things from ceilings on ropes or in rope netting, from onions and apples to lanterns and chiming wind-sculptures. As the hin saying has it, “Your ceiling’s your storage, unless you live in an empty warehouse—and if you do, why aren’t you filling it? Humans are bad at storing things and anticipating their wants, so if you store the right things, your sales will be high.”

Many hin love miniature scenes (dioramas of castles or quaint ramshackle taverns or homes, populated with tiny figurines) as part of their décor. Large him dwellings often sport sliding-tube and inside-cupboard shafts with rope ladder connections between rooms on different levels, as well as open ramps or stairs.

Halflings don’t mind dirt floors (though they will always be hard-packed, smooth, and usually dyed to a fairly uniform hue), and prefer ramps or slopes to any sort of steps, but will readily construct steps (and scoop hand- and foot-holds out of mud or stone walls. The process of concocting special mud “glazes” (like cement) to coat walls and then “firing” (baking with carefully-sited and -sized fires) them to seal them into durable hardness is widely known among hin. Halfling dwellings in damp areas will have smooth-sided stones worked into the floor to provide a surface underfoot that won’t become entirely a mud morass when water wells in.

Hin children often keep spiders, worms, and voles as pets, because halflings are used to sharing their homes with wildlife common to caves and holes in the ground (no halfling cook will shriek or throw things at scurrying mice, and traps are set only by hungry hin wanting ready food), but most hin draw the line at rats, raccoons or other persistent “thieving” animals such as “tree rats” (squirrels), and poisonous snakes and spiders (mild spider venoms that merely cause swellings and discolourations excepted). If hin homes and their immediate surroundings can grow herbs and edibles that don’t require a lot of tending, and can “look wild” (tomatoes or marrows on vines, for instance), hin will always plant such. Halflings are gardeners, and will establish many small, shared plots in which to grow vegetables (flowers are a frill to most hin, unless edible), but unless commercial farming is the aim, the halfling way is for small plots carved up by gardeners’ trails, not large fields—big cleared fields are a human thing, and evidence of the human need to tame the landscape, something most hin wince at (“live WITH, don’t impose UPON”).

Many hin love onions, leeks, garlic, radishes, and other strong vegetable tastes, use such edibles heavily in their cookery, and enjoy dishes that most humans find too strong. Most halflings hate food that’s too highly-spiced (both too salty and especially too fiery-“hot”), whereas to human tastes, hin food tends to be too bland. Hin love stews and soups—and to many halflings, parsnips and carrots and yams and even potatoes are eat-raw snack food that can be carried along, held in the hand, and munched while working. Eggs, both raw and cooked, are quick meals to many halflings, and hin cuisine features many aged cheeses that incorporate ingredients that make most humans gag (such as dew-worms, centipedes, snails, and slugs). Every halfling home will have larders that store such things on dome-covered trays that double as cutting-boards (both tray and dome smooth-carved from wood), and in small hand-kegs; typical hin larders are waist-height (for halflings) “cupboards” hollowed out of the walls of rooms, and left open (that is, no doors or hangings concealing their contents) so anything burrowing into a larder through its walls can readily be noticed and thwarted.