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. Following a kender tradition --
or building tendency -- each floor was less finished than the one
below it, so that the top floor looked as if it were still under
construction. The first floor -- two grand ballrooms -- were intact
though had long ago been stripped of anything valuable. The second
floor was basically complete, except for the missing exterior wall in
the council chamber. The third floor had all the necessary outside
walls, but was without a number of crucial doors: kender builders
preferred to complete a room before allowing for doorways, so that
openings might be located for the convenience of the occupant rather
than arbitrarily placed. (More than one kender builder has found
himself trapped inside a room with no doors!) The fourth floor was
mostly exposed beams, window frames, and the occasional interior wall.
Not surprisingly, a problem arose with the design of the
building shortly after its completion. The original builders had
forgotten to include a stairway linking the four floors. Occupants of
the upper floors were forced to scale the stone walls and climb in
through tiny windows, which made the missing wall in the council room
something of an asset. Complaints of deaths, though, particularly
among mayors, brought about the construction, some ten years later, of
a very elegant, polished wood central staircase that spiraled upward
in an everdecreasing circle (things got pretty tight up on the third
floor).
Kender were a very political people, but they were dedicated to
no cause as stridently as their need for constant change
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