Fantastic amount of detail in that post
@Scalenex . I want to key in on a few things:
It's too orderly. Itza is the "first city." Old cities are not orderly. I never seen City Hall in a reasonable place in an old city. Itza existed before Sotek. Everything in the city diagram is based around the temple and altar of Sotek, the Old Ones are off to the side. If all the Old Ones Temples were in one central cluster, the Temple of Sotek would have to be on the edge of town. I can't imagine all the ruins being in one place too. It's conceivable but not efficient to put all/most of the Skink housing in their own location. I figure clusters of barrios and other housing would be near the Skink's work whenever possible.
Itza especially would be dynamic (at least dynamic over centuries). The population would rise and swell during times of peace and war. Buildings would fall into disuse and fall to ruins, only to be rebuilt or built over later.
I agree, the old map is old. I imagine the city of Itza to be a sprawling city of old and new architectural styles, made over several millennia, some repainted and refurbished constantly, others left to disrepair and ruin. Kind of like Rome in Assassin's Creed brotherhood: lots of nooks and crannies to explore.
Ruins, beast stables, insect hatcheries, training fields, storage areas would probably be fairly even spread out. If the
Cool ideas I had not thought of before this post. Pardon the rambling...
Beast Stables. At first glance I would think this conjures to mind a regular horse stable, with large lizards replacing horses tethered to the stable edges. But wait a second... we are talking about razor-toothed dinosaurs here; whether they are massive stegadons, bastiladons, or cold-ones, these things are dangerous. How would the Lizardmen keep them under control? Would they keep them in big, stone-walled pits like in that new Jurassic park movie? Instead of electricity, keeping them fenced in with magic? I have a feeling a lot of skink handlers get eaten during feeding time when things go wrong.
Training Fields. For the saurus, I would assume they don't train too much, BUT that is only if they are envisioned like mindless automaton-lizards. If that is the case they would probably stoically hand out in temple barracks all day. If we were to imagine them as being more "human" they might train more often; wonder what the training areas would look like? Something like a medieval jousting tournament? Would the scar veterans be in charge of training? Maybe the saurus chiefs; or maybe they appoint saurus drill sergeants, who knows? Wonder if they have tournaments, more likely gladiator-style single combat, rather than jousts on cold-ones. Or maybe mass-melee fights with non-lethal clubs? OR better yet, maybe the saurus spend their time around a Mayan-esque ball-court (possibly called the 'blood bowl' by less enlightened species)?
Insect Hatcheries. I always wondered what the Lizardmen ate. It makes sense meat or fish would get boring, and Lizards/frogs love insects in the real world. Aside from bee hives (to make honey and/or be used in battle as dangerous bombs of bee-fury, like in Medival Total War 2 America Campaign), they could potentially have vast hatcheries dedicated to producing vast quantities of grubs, worms, or other crawling delacacies loved by the priest class, or the Slann. Lizardmen might not see vast swarms of flies as a nuisance, but a symbol of prosperity (kind of like when a human looks at a field of wheat or rows of apple trees, a ton of insects could make a Lizard's mouth water with anticipation). Also itxi grubs!!!!; grown in special magically-protected hatcheries guarded closely by the skink priests, so that no one can learn their secrets.
Temples started in a cluster, you'd probably have one original cluster and a new cluster built around the Temple of Sotek. Originally the Sotek temple was it's own building but as original temples fell into disuse, they could have been rebuilt near the more trafficked Sotek temple district. But I don't see temples being clustered.
Geomancy seems to be a big part of Lizardmen mysticism. Uxmac's temple would be at the main crossroads. Huanchi the night god's temple should be in the west with the setting sun. Chotecs temple would be in the East. Tzunki's temple would be near the most important water source. There's probably monuments, temples, and shrines set up in locations built to geomantic principles for reasons beyond human understanding. The Lizardmen would put the religious buildings and monuments whereever the Slann command. Housing and utilitarian buildings would cluster around in the space left over. Skinks would try to make buildings convenient for their user but over time space issues would result in subpar placements. These Skinks have to walk farther to work because we don't want to displace the apothecary etc.
The prime real estate would be near the temples of Sotek. If you get an obscure Old One that is not widely worshipped like Potec, the temple would probably be kept up well by the Skink priests and their support staff, but the buildings around it would fall into disrepair because they are rarely used. The support buildings around the Sotek temples would be the most well-kept because with daily use their is an incentive to keep them usable.
Itza's city overview probably shouldn't fit on one page easily.
I like this quick list; it makes sense that each Old One, which its own individual theme/quirks, would have a unique set of temple structures that are relatively common throughout all temple cities, with variations of course from temple-city to temple-city.
Here is your list, just broken down a bit more:
Uxmac- temple at the main crossroads of the temple city, the waystation for travelers and lizard-merchants
Huanchi- temple of the Night, always aligned on the west of the city, in the direction of the setting sun
Chotec- temple of the Sun, always aligned on the east of the city, in the direction of the rising sun. Temple often is covered in gold or contains a trove of gold artifacts, befitting its status as the holy metal of Chotec.
Tzunki- temple of Water, always near the most important water feature/source, whether that is a river, well, cenyote, stream, swamp, or waterfall. In many cases the temple can only be entered by use of watercraft, or in some cases must be accessed from under water.
Sotek- in recent years, Sotek has become the prime Old One of the Lizardmen. The temple is often the best located in the city (save only for the city's patron deity temple), and is located on a prime geomantic line of power. Many snakes lurk in the temple, often in deep pits, and are regularly fed sacrifices to appease the Old One's fury.
On another note, where do the Slann live? Do they cluster in the central Temple of the city, or does each Slann live and work/meditate in its own temple?
I was thinking if they're not going to bother solidifying the layout of other places perhaps we should try to as a community
