I had to work all of this out first for my Mirt stories as early as 1967 (his foes had a habit of attacking him while he was answering nature's call), but then the moment D&D play began, PCs started using sewers, garderobes, and nightsoil wagons as travel routes!#Realmslore
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) April 13, 2020
1)
All of the above. Sanitation in the Realms depends on where you are, and your wealth/social class.
If you’re traveling and stay at a way-inn, you’ll be like most middle-class city folk: chamberpots under every bed, typically 2)
…emptied by the youngest non-toddler family member, with accompanying mugs of leaves for wiping and flowerpetal- or lime-scented water for washing and diluting the pee or covering the poo (as well as the chamberpot lid) to keep…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) April 12, 2020
3)
…the smell down. Emptied into a backyard covered bucket, which gets taken to a cesspool/pit or (copper a dump) to the local nightsoil wagon (as shown in a scene in ELMINSTER’S DAUGHTER, one of the very few sanitation details 4)
…not edited out of my manuscripts).
Some cities have sewers, usually because they’re coastal (tidal flushes) and/or have streams/rivers running through them that can be diverted to flush out the sewers. In most cities, there…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) April 12, 2020
5)
…are indoor rooms, known as garderobes or less formally as “jakes,” consisting of a seat, a gravity drop pipe descending from underneath it, and large jugs of water for washing and flushing (down the pipe to a cess-cistern in 6)
…the cellars, which has a turn-the-balun/open the board sluice connection to the sewers—so the sewers can’t readily back up into your cellar). Some homes have wiping cloths, washed by servants or family members, some have…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) April 12, 2020
7)
…“bumsticks” (scrap cloth tacked to a branch, used like a backscrubber, only lower down ;} ), some have wiping leaves, and many have scented water to purge smells, and potpourri (“crushscent bowls” or pomanders, in the Realms) 8)
In rural areas, most farms, homes, taverns, and inns all have outdoor privies (outhouses), with under an open-walled roof, to keep water out) handy heaps of sand and lime and shovels large and small. You use it, with the…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) April 12, 2020
9)
…aforementioned leaves or bumstick, there’s an ewer and basin for washing, and when you’re done, a sprinkle of lime and a shovel-full of sand go down the hole. When the hole’s full, the outhouse gets moved, and the hole gets 10)
…limed heavily, or a fire lit atop it, and then (after fire dies to ashes; no fires are ever lit in forest loam locales) covered over with earth and left. (Successive outhouse moves causes the ‘ring garden’ around some homes.)#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) April 12, 2020
No wait. Not costal. No sewer for Silverymoon?
— Lou Anders is Staying Home (@LouAnders) April 12, 2020
1)
Northbank Silverymoon has sewers flushed by three now-totally-buried streams (like London, England’s many long-ago-roofed-over streams that became open sewers and so were ‘buried’ without controversy; see the classic reference work “The Common Stream” by Rowland 2)
…Parker) that flush into the Rauvin. Southbank Silverymoon has no sewers, and uses the nightsoil wagon system ("leavings" taken far south and spread on open wilderlands to rot down).
Any large-city freshwater flush system uses weir-grids to collect solid filth…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) April 13, 2020
3)
… (“muck”) that gets taken away by wagon and dumped far from noses in the city (Waterdeep’s goes from the harbor grids to the Rat Hills, S along the coast). Gulguthra (otyughs and neo-otyughs) devour human waste in such dumping-grounds, and serve the same.. 4)
…function in some castle, monastery, abbey, and isolated inn middens.#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) April 13, 2020