Plans of a Senetha Village

A Senetha village is generally circular; it’s planned that way, with the tribal council chamber in the center and everything radiating from there. Some villages or towns are arranged on the grid system, others are haphazard without any system, and people build anywhere. The village in which Tenashar was born was circular and well-organized. Several circles spanned out and made the village. As said before, the center is the council chamber; the next ring is where all the important buildings are, the schools, libraries, and study places for scholars, scientists, and engineers of high caliber. There are the warriors, large stores for the powerful merchants, and other prominent people. Within the circle, hills and low mountains seem to be a symbolic separation from the other people. This symbolism was created centuries before when this kind of separation was or seemed important. The buildings in that circle are more significant and taller. There are also heavy forests along the mountains and hills that create a more significant separation.

The third circle or ring is where the so-called moderately well-to-do people reside, aquafarmers that work in the large rivers, but most of these farmers live where they work far outside the village. The same is for the farmers and people that raise animals. Some small merchants run small shops, people who sell food, and civil servants also reside in the third circle. They walk to work along the wide roads from the center. People that worked in the village in all kinds of occupations lived in the third circle; these were people that maintained the streets and buildings, constructors, craftspeople, artists, and everyone else. The people in this area were once considered part of the lower class, but their power had grown in the tribal council. The once dominant voices of the warriors had been waning for a long time.

The outer circles are a mixture of scientists, engineers, tree shapers, tree farmers, scholars, writers, people that work with pipes, underground workers, small land farmers, merchants of every description, and all other people that work with their hands. The scientists and scholars in the outer circles are mainly teachers; they are predominantly solitary and were never highly regarded by the council.

As the village spans beyond the center, buildings become sparse, but large groups of people live outside. The forest people lived not too far outside the town; they lived all over the forest, maintained it, and planted new trees. Most of the Aura-Laei-I lived outside the village in isolated places where no one was around. Other isolated people work on small farms and raise horses and pigs. The people outside the town always come there to sell, buy and trade things to sustain their lives, so in truth, these people who don’t live in the city are never actually isolated. The people don’t have to go too far to be with nature because each circle has park areas with forests and streams.