Raitutra: Home Drainers

To the outside world, houses dug from the ground (known as kavegrei) seem insane. What about all the water that falls after a downpour? What about the debris that falls in during a particularly blustery day? The smells will stay down there forever, and the warmth will simply float away!

The Keyrit-Welokyi people know these issues all too well, and they answered them decades before their neighbors asked them. They have techniques and technologies to keep the undesirable elements out and rein the desirable elements in. Few people understand just how complex this task has been made from its simple roots. Most Keyrit-Welokyi could seal their house up quite nicely. The biggest houses and the best jobs, though, require a professional. They require a raitutra.

Career

Qualifications

In the early days of Keyrit's kavegrei, frontiersmen had broad enough skillsets to take care of all elements surrounding their small homes on the frontier. With enough time, effort, trial, and error, any house could technically be managed by a layman of the past. However, a job done efficiently required months of experience, and preferably shared knowledge with similarly-qualified individuals. Further, as society began to stratify, the average citizen lost the knowledge of home care. As a result, knowledge of home draining is unreachable to most of Keyrit's population. Further, because Keyrit is the only known home of kavegrei, the migrants who choose to be kavegrei (of which there have only been a handful throughout history) often have trouble getting business.

In lieu of personal home experience, the quickest way to become a professional raitutra is to become an apprentice of another raitutra. Raitutra duties combine engineering with dirty work. Those who prefer the engineering side would love to keep their hands clean. For bright-eyed recruits looking to get their hands dirty, there is no shortage of job openings. Engineer hopefuls have more trouble, but there's always opportunity to learn engineering theory on the side.

Payment & Reimbursement

Raitutra play a vital role in Keyrit housing, an industry that citizens literally can't live without. They (or their apprentices) get their hands dirty when most stratified citizens would rather not bother. What's more is that raitutra are usually hired from proximity or word of mouth, meaning that the pool for such talent is remarkably small. Small supply and high demand mean that Raitutra are paid very well, even in competitive environments like growing cities. Because of their high pay, raitutra form no guilds or unions, though they occasionally form loose associations to gather and share trade secrets.

Other Benefits

Generally speaking, raitutra handle all their business on their own, responsible not only for the job but also for their pay and its collection. Any benefits they desire have to be paid out of their own pockets. Most opt out of services like dentistry, saving their money or growing their business with their newly-acquired funds. They retire with what funds they've saved, though many don't ever retire, dying suddenly after a lifetime of hard work. Such is often the case in the Keyrityi economy.

Perception

Social Status

Despite being in high demand in a key industry, the only reward of the raitutra is the pay. They work largely to prevent rainwater but still have to deal with muck around the bottoms of people's houses. Such acts are disgusting to most of the well-to-do in Keyrit, and handshaking with them is often unthinkable. The feeling is mutual. Raitutras live rather isolated lives, interacting only with their apprentices or their fellow raitutras. Such a hard day's work either thinking or thinking and working requires an evening of relaxation, rather than a raucous social event. As a result, raitutras don't generally mingle with the rest of society.

History

Technically speaking, everyone on the continent of Keyrit was a Raitutra in some manner or other. Nearly everyone lived in a hole, and they had to prepare their own for all manner of weather. Structures that demanded larger amounts of space and complexity were simply built above ground. After the Welokyi Wars, though, soldiers and citizens alike didn't appreciate their small residences in a growing economy and wanted to expand. They needed help managing their structural growth, and so they recruited the local handymen for support. It became such a burgeoning industry that those that specialized in hole maintenance split off from the handyman profession entirely.

Operations

Tools

The arsenal of shovels employed by the raitutra is staggering. Every type of shovel invented in Wouraiya is included, usually in at least a couple different sizes apiece. The shovels of preference are the soil scoop and the trowel, by which the raitutra clears the way for laying pipe from the bottom of the floor. Still, the raitutra is well-versed in the bigger, broader, blunter shovels that can indiscriminately remove large swaths of soil. Sometimes the biggest projects require brute force.

An overlooked, often unexpected tool at the raitutra's disposal is the knife. Sharp enough to scratch and pierce tubing, yet strong enough to punch a hole through, the knife helps connect new houses to existing pipe works, or to amend pipes to optimal length or ending shape.

Materials

Raitutra maintain a steady supply of pitch to fix cracked piping and to connect pipe pieces together.

Workplace

Hilariously enough, many raitutra, masters of constructing homes, have no homes of their own. Most of their equipment needs a cart large enough to carry it, and a cart large enough to carry it can carry most of an average man's worldly possessions. To sleep, many raitutras live in homes still under construction. They're currently unowned and unoccupied, so there's no one to mind the presence of the raitutra! Permanent homes are for the retired, anyways.

For those who prefer a safer, more conservative lifestyle without owning their own homes, the larger cities often have lodges for keeping tradespeople safe and warm. Tradespeople come in even from the local suburbs, storing their equipment in warehouses and paying for in-house meals.

Type

Engineering

Related Locations

• Kavegrei: Under Houses

Used By

• Keyrit, Iathoya Takalarkyi: Daskalarch Order of Keyrit