Something I’d been wondering. Obviously there aren’t trees nearby, but wood is depicted as just as cheap a building material as it is on the surface. I doubt it’s imported considering how everything else that’s imported is depicted as rather expensive.
Many settings like FL’s use giant mushrooms as a "wood" source, though I’ve never seen any mention of this in the text. Still possible, I suppose.
Any canon source of wood out there?
[quote=Kaijyuu]Something I’d been wondering. Obviously there aren’t trees nearby, but wood is depicted as just as cheap a building material as it is on the surface. I doubt it’s imported considering how everything else that’s imported is depicted as rather expensive.
Many settings like FL’s use giant mushrooms as a "wood" source, though I’ve never seen any mention of this in the text. Still possible, I suppose.
Any canon source of wood out there?[/quote]
It seems possible they just import it from the Surface or some islands that have it(even mutton island has trees if I recall correctly, and it is right next to London).
The illustration for Mount Palmerston seems to show quite thick woods on the lower slopes (though Lord knows what they do for light up there, something rather important to a tree). Mount Palmerston is (sometimes) not all that far from London. The Elder Continent also has lots of trees, and London has a colony there (and there is more light down that way). The Empire of Hands is a bunch of jungle-covered islands. So it would appear that trees aren’t that rare and precious a commodity down here. They’ve got them just growing out of the ground in a bunch of places.
Edit: Visage too. Palm trees there. :)
edited by Plynkes on 2/15/2017
There’s also a Chytrid Wood in the Labyrinth and there’s at least one Sandalwood tree growing near the Carnival in the Nemesis ambition.
I’m pretty sure mushrooms are used in place of wood for some contexts, given we have Iron and Misery felling giant mushrooms in Sunless Sea.
There are several places in London where a tree is mentioned as “not quite dead,” without any real explanation given for why. As an alternative source of wood, the Revolutionaries say that London continues to shrink. This means there are probably a lot of abandoned houses on the outskirts waiting for somebody to cannibalize.
Hrm, yes perhaps there are just Neathy trees that grow without sunlight. Hadn’t thought about that… though it seems like something that could be expounded upon.
Flint mentions “bolegus-timber shacks” in Apis Meet, so people definitely use mushrooms for building in general.
The Neath apparently has a lot of ‘parasynthetic vegetation,’ something which isn’t found on the surface. It’s what comprises the mangrove forests of the Sea of Autumns and such. Sunless Sea also says more explicitly that the Iron and Misery Company fells ‘giant bolegus shrooms for building material,’ so between the two that should probably cover it.[li][/li][li]
edited by Gul al-Ahlaam on 2/17/2017