The Berhássid family are the main characters in the fantasy novel I'm currently writing. Most of the action takes place in the city of Gaendyr (an old map of which you can find here. Back then I still called it "Ganador", but then I discovered that that actually means "winner" in Spanish, which seemed a bit too tacky for my taste!), specifically in their townhouse on Kvandru Island, one of the islands in the south eastern island cluster called Castraeni.

Since I wanted the house to "feel" realistic, I decided to map it out. Turns out that several of the corridors, hallways and rooms that I had initially thought up, were impossible to draw without major design flaws. So I redesigned it in such a way that the key rooms still fit what I have in mind, and the less important places have been shuffled around.

So. The family at this point consists of:
  • Erska Berhássid, the old master. Still in name the head of the household, but quite old and possibly no longer very lucid. Lives alone in the appartment on the top floor. His wife died years ago.
  • Cubrin Berhássid. Effectively the new master, and ruler of the family. Oldest son of Erska.
  • Irani Berhássid-Ezgavi: wife of Cubrin.
  • Their Children: Abrion, Ernos, Maira, Nomin, Niris. Niris' room has a direct connection to her parents' room. She's only 11 moons old at the time my story starts, so her mother can use a quick connection without having to go out on the cold corridor at night.
  • Bastwin Berhássid, Cubrin's younger brother. He's a military man, so most of the time he's out to sea, but his wife Mishya and their children Meslé and Corhé each have their own rooms in the house. The Bastwin branch of the Berhássid family also has their own drawing room on the top floor.


Cubrin has two more brothers who don't live in the house — Margidion, who is a man of Faith, and Druzzin, a man of no faith at all but travelling the world on the back of his brother's trade empire — but whenever they come over, they have a guest room waiting for them on the top floor. Cubrin's two younger sisters live with their husbands: Giddis has married another Gaendyr merchant and lives across town; Mazari hooked a Faltornian tradesman and lives with him in Faltorn. They visit as often as they can.

If there's ever more than one guest staying at the house, Bastwin's drawing room can be converted to another apartment in a pinch. During house parties, when several guest stay over but just for one night, the kids are "pooled together" in a handful rooms so the vacated rooms can be used for guests. The kids usually like this a lot, except for Abrion, the oldest, who demands his privacy. The Gods only know what he does when no one's looking (it's eating a heap of salted chocolate and reading romance novels. Don't tell!)

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Okay, enough jibber jabber! Here's the floor plans!
Click image for larger version.  Name: 2021.05.18 - House Berhássid.jpg  Views: 220  Size: 970.1 KB  ID: 129824

The idea is to use these to create a sort of cutaway plan, similar in style to this example. No idea how I'm going to do that yet, but that's my ambition at least!