Worldbuilding

Worldbuilding is hard when it feels like you're trying to turn yourself inside out and create a whole world from what you know. Just to get me out of my own head I like to use Wikipedia's random page function, and see if I can write my own version of what turns up. Today I got:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahnapee_Brewery

It's a brewhouse that spent some time as a net factory during prohibition. That makes me think about how laws affect businesses and real estate. For instance, in Orchalannon there is a law against the use of magic which has existed for several hundred years in order to suppress certain state secrets. Maybe there is a building that used to be a magical institution, which has now been repurposed...

Bartolo Mews

Once a country club for gentleman sorcerers, Bartolo was a genteel resort for a particular sort of leisurely scholarship. Though no formal schooling took place, it hosted the leading exponents of magical thought in the country during a time of expansion and wealth. It was unseemly to appear to seek riches or political power overtly, so these distinguished men and women affected the practice of magic as a hobby, though they did so at a professional level. The cellar was filled with unmarked potions, the stableyard hosted a rotating menagerie of wild chimerae, and the parlours were abuzz with smoke, brandy, and vituperous yet exacting theoretical debates.

When the Department of Occult Licensure came into effect following the Squash Plague of RP 124, Bartolo was decommissioned after so many of its patrons declined to seek licensure. Maerlyn D'Ambrosio knew that merely requiring an official application from such august personages would be too much for their dignity to bear, and the open study of magic largely went out of fashion in the years that followed.

The stables remained however, as some of the phasic abominations that lived there had certain abilities that made it impractical to force eviction; the stables would occasionally blink in and out of existence. Twice the landlord felt sure that the stables were gone for good after months and years of their absence, but both times proved catastrophic, resulting in the loss of a brewery and a net factory. Nowadays the stables are used as a sort of absentee oubliette, a long-term storage unit that is infrequently accessible. In vaults that were installed there during a 'blink-in', the crown has stored some of its gold reserves. Whenever Bartolo Mews is blinked in, it is guarded. When it is blinked out, long expiry treasury bills are sold against the value of the bullion within.