The Great Pavilion of the Joint Consortiums

The flags of the Joint Consortiums were hanging limp from their masts. It was a humid and windless day, and Kyris had already taken off her fitted jacket in the heat. The conditions had affected the Pavilion traffic as well; the crowds that normally came to gawk at the office fronts and run their hands on the gilt-inlaid statues were absent. The steak skewer stand was usually packed at this time, but instead there was only a familiar face chewing on chunks of beef flank.
"Glad you could make it." Toreo finished his skewer and tossed it into a bin. "Do you have the paperwork?"
Kyris nodded, handing over a small folio. It had been a chore to find the trail of the missing power-wagon, and even more of a chore to find the stolen papers, but the hired bandits had been sloppy, and they had given up quickly once the ranger found them. "This makes us even, right?"
"Yeah." Marshal Toreo flipped through the folio quickly. "Good, looks like it's all here. The arbitrator will have a field day now that the proof of the default is plain to see."
"A question, Toreo. What are you doing? You're a Marshal, right? I thought the Pavilion was all private-party only, no Principality officers allowed?" Kyris adjusted her hat to try to keep her face in shade; this sun was the kind where she would be redder than a cherry if she exposed skin for more than a few minutes. "Why aren't you with Cara?"
"Magistrate Caranda told me explicitly to 'go away', so I decided to take up a side job until she calls me back." Toreo had a half-grin on his face. "Cara got a little upset about me being flippant, and even more upset when I happily agreed to go away. I figure she'll cool off after a couple of weeks."
"Or she'll be on the warpath. Well, it's your funeral." Kyris glanced around; the consortium office displays here were as tacky and gaudy as ever. "Blech. Someday there will be a company here that has taste."
A snort. "Good taste isn't profitable."

Purpose / Function

The Great Pavilion is, formally, a dispute resolution center and arbitration venue for the major consortiums of Etoile. It is headquarters to the 'Joint Consortiums', a meta-organization that is composed of forty companies that are signatories to a mutual negotiation pact. With dedicated offices for its forty pact members and a number of meeting halls and chambers, it is an optimized venue for commercial negotiations and resolution, with full-time arbitrators and research staff keeping disputes moving in the case queue.
Upon it's construction, however, the Pavilion quickly gained a secondary function as a showcase of prestige. The forty offices in the Pavilion are assigned to the forty wealthiest member trading companies of the Principality of Etoile; the very presence of a consortium's flag on the upper parapets, their membership in the Joint Consortiums of the Pavilion, is a sign of that group's wealth and influence. By agreement with the Principality, the Pavilion grounds themselves are open to the public. This has resulted in each office being a mini-showroom for each consortium, not only showcasing their specialties and trade goods, but also as a public show of wealth in competition with the other offices. The Pavilion is a grand testament to the wealth generated by the major trade companies, as well as the Progress of the Principality.

Architecture

The Pavilion is composed of three buildings - two wings of the Arcade, which hold the offices of the member consortium groups, and the Hall of Resolution, which is staffed by neutral arbitrators of the 'Joint Consortiums' organization. The layout is that of an inverted 'T', with the two wings flanking and defining a pathway through the Pavilion to the Hall of Resolution.
The Arcade wings are shaped like nothing so much as brick-and-plaster amphitheatre steps, with four stories of offices, each layer pushed back from the layer beneath it, with plenty of space on each floor for pedestrian traffic, resembling a shopping promenade. The facade of each office resembles a shop or store, but nothing in each office is for sale; the public area of each office is a mixture of gallery and museum, dedicated to the tenant Consortium interest. For example, the Copperheads keep the relics of their order at their Pavilion office, samples of ore from their first mining interest, as well as copper sculptures richly inlaid with gold and iridescent pearl. At the very top of the wing, flags of each tenant office are flown, visible from the street below the Pavilion and for many city blocks (as the Pavilion is the largest structure in this district of the Capital).
The Hall of Resolution is built in mimickry of the Magistrate's Longhall, though built with grey granite stoneworks instead of the famous black obsidian of Ebensberg. The Hall itself has four general areas - the dispute resolution halls, the research libraries, the record halls, and the arbitration staff offices.

History

The consortiums of Etoile are in fierce competition across virtually all industries, as they vie for market share and profits. Disputes between such entities are inevitable, but as the scope of each dispute delved into more arcane minutae, the costs of settling disputes grew exponentially. The Magistrates are obligated to hear and settle disputes brought to them, but in non criminal cases the fees charged are hefty, depending on the duration. Famously, a major mining rights dispute between the Copper and Ironworker's Brotherhood and the Anvileers of Red Mountain resulted in a one and a half million Florin payment from the Anvileers to the Copperheads, and a fee charged of sixteen million Florins split between both parties as a cost of a twenty-nine week dispute resolution.
As a result, the major consortiums mutually agreed that another dispute resolution body needed to be used, one that would be focused purely on the technicalities of consortium operations, that all would agree to mutually abide by, with costs split between all members, and with escalation to the Magistrates as a final resort. With this pact sealed (and approved by the Principality of Etoile, which had grown irritated with the Magistrate resources being consumed by these matters), the Great Pavilion broke ground in the Etoile Capital City in 695, in a commercial block east of the Grand Canal, and became headquarters to the Joint Consortiums interest.
While the exact consortiums that compose the Joint Consortiums have come and gone over the years, the Pavilion itself remains a towering edifice to commerce and industry.

Tourism

The Pavilion is on the 'wrong' side of the Grand Canal in the Capital, as most attractions and Principality offices are in the western districts; nevertheless, it attracts a large amount of visitors as an unbridled and unrestrained display of wealth and fabulous relics. This was factored into the design of the Pavilion, with wide walkways, shallow stairs, and a central promenade with hawkers and food sellers. Though the consortiums are forbidden from selling any wares on Pavilion grounds, guides in each office showroom will gladly escort serious buyers to retail stores in nearby parts of the Capital.

Founding Date

695

Alternative Names

The Pavilion

Type

Great hall

Parent Location

Etoile Capital City