Deadlands Manor
The outskirts
A manor stands there, in a hidden valley, it's one of few places with good enough oxygen flow in the Deadlands air. Therefor it comes to no suprise a big and lush garden with what few samples of exotic flora is the first one can see, besides the three towers and two highest floors of the massive manor. The many bushes are green and blue, carrying yellow, black and red berries. Behind the hedgewall trees can also be seen. Similar to willows but with a blue trunk and white leaves, they whistle trough the air and swing gently above the bridge, that may carry a whole cart over the small flow of water, possible by the hot-springs by the hill's steep and the dug canal's mystical runes of heat. Once passing the bridge, one can easily see the massive building in all it's glory. Standing more than two hundered meters tall and eighty wide, with a built in stable by the front door that hosts some weird, wolf-like mounts, that stand guard for the many carts. A small bathhouse can also be spotted in a corner by the hedgewall, but it's dwarfed in the shadow of the largest tower that rises like a spire. What secrets may lie within, there is only one way to find out.Purpose / Function
The Deadlands manor has since long served as the personal estate of the original Champion of Sarak. Several thousand years later and underneath the rule and supervision of Arathon Caras it has turned into a safe haven and base of operations for the Black Bloods.
That the building is also located within the Frozen deadlands has it's purpose as no normal humanoid being can get close too it without dying of cold and, in very rare cases, asphyxiation from the lacking amount of oxygen.
Design
The most of the rooms are square formed, with the exception of circular towers. The most of the rooms are a solid seven square meters, but the large common rooms can be from fifteen to twenty square meters big. Many of these rooms are rectangular corridors.
Entries
There is atleast one window in each and every room of the manor, with the exception of most hallways. There are also several exits. Balconies, doors, courtyard doors and secret exits through the massive basement.
Sensory & Appearance
The first thing one would notice when entering the manor is that climate goes from deadly cold to slightly chilly, which makes it fully possible for other humanoids and most creatures to live there.
The second thing one easily could take notice of are the paintings and idols around shelves and bookcases. They are filled with creatures and nature that does not exist in the known world. Sadly the books don't shed much light on this, as they are all rather modern.
For sound and smell, one could hear several crows chirping happily and flying around within the aviary, but there is also the grand ball room. There is often music comming from here, as a few Black Bloods have taken up music as an art.
The smells variate from the different rooms. Where most have no smell at all, the kitchen often has a pleasant smell of cooking and spices. The common rooms also carry a nice scent of incense. A few of the living residencies even smell of perfume, depending on who lives there.
Denizens
Not a lot of people live within the manor, but the few that do are all Black Bloods or their companion animals. A few dogs and cats with a murder of crow's reside among the nintythree humanoids. Only nine of these are grown adults over their fourties and spend the day taking care of the rest of the Black Bloods, who have mixed age groups from babies to young adults.
There are also a few mechaniced custodians that run on runic power within the manor, that take care of cooking, cleaning and other everyday tasks. These machines have been in the building since time immemorial.
Contents & Furnishings
A lot of different things can be found within the manor. One of the large rooms are dedicated as an armoury. Thus storing many different weapons and armours. It's even connected to a smaller room that stores fire-arms. Both of these rooms are however sealed of by the headmaster for security reasons.
There is also a toolshed within the building, by the gardens, where seeds, shovels and more can be found and used for different purposes. The main tools however are reparation tools that are often used to fix things on the manor.
Along the many common rooms where the Black Bloods can relax and talk, different exotic and expensive furniture decorate the rooms in the different themes of Barrkadian, Diestrian, Empiran and Elven culture to give the residents a feel of their old homes.
One may also find a lot of teaching tools within the three different classrooms, along with large boards and many chairs and benches in fine rows.
Valuables
Within the basement a locked treasury can be found that stories tons of gold, silver and other valuable materials. The material best protected within a smaller vault within the vault is Sarakanium, along with different rune-scrips that should be lost to time.
One can also find different jewelery and stones of power within the vault, along with cultural artifacts and artworks that fill the walls. But there is one set of artifacts that are valued above the other. The frost-blade and ice-armour of Max Isen remain well protected and by runic wards.
Hazards & Traps
There is a regulated hazard zone within the building that demand key access to enter.
This room would be the labouratory which is locked away from people so they can't get their hands on dangerous substances and chemicals, or in some manner ruin the very delicate experiments that are done in there. Afterall, only a fatstain is all that is needed for a result to change drasticly within chemistry.
Special Properties
The rooms with specific properties can be found on the third floor of the building. The four rooms consist of an infirmary for injured Black Bloods as well as a caretaking center for the very young ones, a library and mysticism dampened room for studies and mystical experimentations, an observatortium linked to one of the towers, that carries a massive telescope within, and lastly the operations room, melded with a shrine of Sarak. Here maps and different figurines for tactical planning can be found along with a summoning stone for their god, whom often partace in orchestrating missions.
Alterations
The building has been reparied and reinforced several times as aging itself has taken a slight toll on it. But the building has also been refurnished and had several rooms re-purposed or added. One of the additions have been several living-rooms and a whole corridor repurposed for Black Bloods to reside within.
Architecture
The buildings walls are made out of insulated wood from local frost-willows that carry a dak blue colour for the walls. The wood is also used for the floor interior along with a white wood from snow-oaks that form a magnificent pattern on the floors that seem to symbolise flowing waters.
The base of the building itself is a large plate of ordinary stone, but the many roofs on the three towers and main building have been made out of bluestone, that is as named, blue.
The doors and windowframes of the building have been painted black, with gray and red painted window glass.
History
There is not much history behind the building. It is not known how exactly it was first made and by who. Many believe the first champion of Sarak inhabited the manor, yet the style of materials, curves around roof and carvings in wood look nothing like either ancient humans or ancient elves culture and certain paintings and objects within have been found that depict creatures never seen before, that very well could be connected to some long lost civilization.
Headmasters study
On the fourth and highest floor of the manor, the headmasters study can be found. Here Arathon Caras resides and rules over the Blackbloods. On his mahogany-desk a nice bust of the old Emperor can be found next to a book-holder, ink and quill along with a miniature potential globe on how the world may look. The room itself is divided into different quarters with the entrance being the acctual study and office, however a door leads to a small corridor that connects to a noble's bedroom, a bathroom and a personal vault.Headmasters Log: Entry 69, 1443-7-18
"This blade and armour. The ones used by Lord Max Isen, quite intrigues me. I have conducted close alchemical studies on the wood used for the blade's handle and can say. It's resistant to -everything- I throw at it, but the wood itself I have deduced by smell and looks, to be the same frost-willow's the manor is built with. It's strange, as the wood on the manor, while being around the hardest I've seen, still reacts to a strong arm handling an axe, or burn to the usual alchemical fires. My hypothesis is that, potentialy, it could be some impregnating oil within the handle that hardens it and does not react with other alchemical components, but thats a stretch. Another theory of a student of mine, is that the wood could be a casing to a runed rod, that perhaps can be removed with the pommel. However, I can not get the pommel off nor do I believe that the runes can be powered for such a long time as this blade potentialy has existed."
Type
Manor house / Meeting hall
Parent Location
Related Professions
Owner
Owning Organization
Headmasters Log: Entry 72, 1443-7-26
Three entries back I wrote about the wood and it's potential. Now I have gone into better depth with the metal components within the armour and blade. They are -astonoishing-. The blade is first of all, capable, somehow, of defelecting a cannonball. The armour did not exactly as good. It gave it a large dents, and proved it can be damaged by ordinary means. It should be mentioned, however, that my whispers told me to, instead of check the armour with my ordinary alchemical mixtures that don't seem to affect it at all, try with ice. I did, and I was amazed. The armour started to show white runes as the ice melted over it. I have never seen anything similar and none of Fredwald or Omar's old texts tell anything about white runes. Only runes in colour of existing god's, the ones that also was the birth to our bloods; Thus making me wonder. Are there more deities on Arcathia than we know? I know not for sure and it's not entierly impossible these runes carry no mystical value and are, infact, a product of some old culture's ink that become visible with water, much as some secret ink's in our societies can be visible by certain lights, or by specific alchemical bases. What I do know for sure, this must be studied further!
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