The underlying terrain of the city defines it. It is a large, broad mound. This cluster is as strange to the Kerrenese as Venice or a sunken city is to most Westerners.
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The underlying terrain of the city defines it. It is a large, broad mound. It is 30 meters tall, and 120 meters in radius. It was carved out by iceflows millennia ago. The rest of the area is fairly flat and somewhat marshy.
The cluster is not perfectly Kerrenese, not being against a cliff or rocky outcropping. It does hold the highest ground for a good kilometer or two. The city wall extends beyond and around the base of the mound. It is fairly thick, five meters tall, and curved as it rises to prevent certain climbing saurians.
The buildings are plastered adobe, with the traditional square shape and extending beams. They are all built out from the mound. They are of one to two stories in height, asymmetrical in roof height (one side is one story, the other is two or one and a half). There are ladders on the roofways, to facilitate travel up and down the roofs. The buildings are washed a brilliant blue white. The logs that are used as roof support jet out from the plaster as a decorative touch. Mounders tend to hang colorful streamers from these posts. There is a complicated code of colors and lengths that communicate the achievements of the occupants of the house.
Many of the buildings above the top of the wall have large ballista like crossbows on their roofs. Just to deter the very persistent jumper or saurian.
Broadmound actually builds into the hill as well. There is a warren like area inside the hill for clusterfolk. It is where most of the economics of the city are held.
The path up the mound is a spiral. Enterprising people who don't mind being rude, can go straight up by climbing up and over people's homes. The spiral road is narrow by western standards, but there is very little space on this mound.
The Warren occupies the top three spirals of the mound (and all the hill inside there). It is a small warren but BroadMound is not a big place. It only supports 1 full wing and two broken wings. The broken wings are made up of people who have no place of their own, being between assignments from wings that have dissolved for one reason or another.
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A decent design, the only thing that struck me odd was the use of the phrase, "large ballista like crossbows," which strikes me as being either too vague or excessively redundant in usage.
Ballistas have a different design than a crossbow. Given that the Kerrenese have access to "hi-tech" designs, even if they can not fabricate most of it, they have a exceedingly efficient design. (Follow the freetext to Kerren).
In this case, it is something by its size would be called a ballista, but its design is more like a high tech compound bow with gearing, and a geared level winch. Thus it is something inbetween what people would think between a crossobow and a balista.
Not bad, though I'd have a hard time considering a mound that small - 11 acres - a city. Maybe add a 0 or two :)