I was flipping through a book on Finnish architecture today and came across a cool aerial of a fortified town. I said "I'm so nicking that for Offwhite", because whenever I read more-or-less anything nonfiction it only spawns worldbuilding ideas in my brain instead of actually educating me or anything, and then naturally I went and forgot the name of the place and so am left with just a fuzzy mental image. Ah well. It was cool regardless; concentric octagons and starry-shaped fortifications. So Offwhite's administration district, the part at the top of the hill, will probably look like that.

I haven't a bodkinning clue about town planning, needles to say. Or geography or aqueductery or any useful details remembered from my astrophysics courses or any of the other things you'd need to get a decent picture of this really quite interesting hill city and surrounding civilisation. Most of these subjects I haven't the faintest interest in and won't until I start learning a bit about them, which is part of the problem (other part: huge backlog of books to read already, no time to read 'em).

The only other impressions I got from aforementioned architecture book skim were "towers got interesting in the C18th" and "damn, Greco-nicked shit is ugly". (Which is bad news for Soprone region, because the only architectural note I have for them is basically 'Mediterranean poss Greco/Roman flavour'... but then, creating marginally realistic things one oneself finds ugly is a good skill to develop, I reckon. Besides, with all the buildings I find ugly, which is most buildings in most styles to be honest, I'd be likely to give up and make everyone live in mud flats. Mud and reed flats perhaps. Lath and plaster for the posh ones.)

Summer Shore is mine, bitchez. Must own. Yessss. (What do you mean, "prime minister"? Bah. Details, Leslie.)

P.S. If I may ask a dumb question, is it true that Finns are fussy about whether food - eg fish and so on - is domestic? If so, any idea why? Snobbery? Concern about freshness? Concern for the environment because of shipping? Yes, this is a completely random question. Excuse my total lack of knowledge about meat.

Edit2: just noticed Gneil linked to this reading list of stuff for culturebuilders (to "shame [his students] out of concocting another pseudo-medieval non-society peopled by folks like themselves (and a few dragons and vampires, also much like themselves)."), much of which looks awesome. A few more suggestions in the comments here.