Vernal Manor
From Dogcraft Wiki
| Vernal Manor | |
|---|---|
| Survival 4 Husky | |
| Base | |
| World | Survival 4 (Husky) |
| Builder(s) |  ThEquinox2 |
| Founded | April 3rd, 2020 |
| Location | X= -5960 Y= 70 Z= -8760 |
Vernal Manor is the Husky base of ThEquinox2 on the Survival 4 iteration of the Dogcraft Server. Often just called "The Mansion," it has been in progress since April 5th of 2020.
About
The Vernal Manor area is situated between a birch forest, swamp, and ocean on northwestern Husky, and features a large restyled and refurbished Woodland Mansion. It is comprised mainly of dark oak, spruce, and birch wood along with stone bricks and cyan terracotta, with a more varied selection of blocks in the interior rooms. Great leaps of inspiration in the design process were taken from a similar build of Grian's - so much so that Equinox is rather ashamed of her early lack of creativity - but much of the base was actually freestyled, or built without planning.
Aside from the main structure, the base has a few developed periphery areas. One such is a small, sprawling village to either side covered almost entirely in a custom-built roofed forest that is tall enough to shroud whole houses up to their roofs. Out front, there is an orchard and historic park square, and the rear contains an industrial area with a creeper farm and several varied manual and automatic tree farms, along with a giant, accessorized statue of Equinox added through the course of several pranks by her friends. There are just a few other decorated features such as campsites, training areas, and market squares dotted around in between the others.
Mansion Layout
The main structure's layout is similar to vanilla mansions but different in many ways: first, there are much fewer rooms in total, but said rooms encompass more space than before. The corridors are symmetrical instead of haphazard, and are featured much more on the first and third floors than the second floor. The familiar red carpets with white borders make appearances, but no longer run throughout the floors entirely.
Ground Floor
Most of the first floor's area is taken up by halls and corridors, which have miscellaneous decorations lining them. It features access to four patios and the main staircases right at the entrance. There are a total of four rooms here: a map room, one to house the nether portal, a dining room, and a kitchen.
Middle Floor
A central staircase leads into a large library that takes up the most relative space on the the middle floor. There are technically no halls on this floor, and every room leads to another room. Two residents(pillagers) wander the library, kept from hurting themselves with hidden pathfinding blockades. In the library's main room, two staircases lead to the top floor, and a doorway leads to the laboratory, which is fit with redcoder potion brewing and plenty of secret experiments. On either side of the library are entrances to four more rooms: the forge, office, guest room, and vault.
Top Floor
Stairs to the top floor lead into a commons area with lots of tables. Further in, one hall cuts down the middle of six bedrooms, each designated for a mansion resident - and of course one for Equinox herself. A back exit provides a great takeoff spot with elytra to the industrial backyard.
Basement
The mansion's basement is accessible from a staircase on the ground floor, and is less than pretty; but it leads both to Equinox's storage and to the underground Dragontooth Arena.
Dragontooth Arena
A winding cave-like tunnel that begins in the mansion's basement brings the player nose-to-nose with a giant dragon skeleton resting in a spacious cavern. Even as a group effort, the excavation and construction of Dragontooth Arena took upwards of a month. Major contributors were 
Hippo1418, who turned the giant boxy hole into a flushed-out cavern, and 
TekBot0507, who helped liven the cave with colorful features on the sides.
The arena itself is quite large and suited very well for battles with many combatants. There is natural cover and height differences, along with certain hazards like slowing water, hot lava, and the unfortunate fact that it is not fully spawnproofed yet. It is equipped with a countdown system that uses a beacon to flash three shades of blue, then green to start the match; but only when two players press a button at the same time.
History
Server-Side
ThEquinox2 discovered the original vanilla woodland mansion on April 3rd, after growing tired of her crowded jungle home. Construction on the remodel began on the 5th, and the outer structure was completed on the 28th; the interior became a slow work in progress since. The excavation of the basement space began shortly before then, and was completed about half a week later. The space was then transformed from a boxy hole into Dragontooth Arena, with most work having been completed around the end of May; though many details and afterthoughts have been added since.
Decoration of the grounds, especially the roofed forest section of the village, picked up in speed in November of 2020, and ran through December and into the new year. Most interior decoration of the mansion was completed around this time as well. Details and small structures have been added steadily around the back industrial area and the sides since then, and up to the present.
Lore-Side
Many, many years before the mansion's founding inhabitants were around, a dragon inhabited and protected the forest where it now stands. When the beast met the end of its time, it was buried and fossilized in its home; then its skeleton was discovered when the mansion's foundation was dug. Now, the manor's tradition is to pay special homage to the dragon every spring, so that even in death it may ensure the fertility of the lands.
Several generations passed on through the manor, before the wonderfully temperamental Player was introduced to the world. Though often using their power to transform to bring unimagined beauty to the lands they traverse, players may also use their potential to bring destruction for their own gain. A few such players challenged Vernal Manor with the help of neighboring villages and razed it for loot. Its inhabitants at that time were either killed or driven into hiding, unable to return to the now dilapidated and bare structure.
Equinox was one such player brought into the world at that time. She found the broken down mansion, and decided that she would restore it into something to be proud of. Both during and after construction, it became a refuge for illagers that could not hold out against the overwhelming speed of player advancement. The Manor is now ever-expanding and has accepted residents of all kinds.
Gallery
Trivia
- The base was featured on the official Dogcraft Twitter on December 3rd, 2020.
- The area's claim is a total of 67704 blocks.
- Two of the server Admins
bBrain and 
Ironboundred have caused public chaos at this base upwards of four times. - Nearly all of the mansion's residents were naturally spawned within the vanilla structure, with the obvious exception of the pillagers.
