Melshimber House Estate

The estate villa of House Melshimber consists of a trio of buildings, with extensively landscaped gardens between them. The whole is surrounded by a fine white-washed wall, decorated with carved interwoven grape vines around quills across the top of it. The buildings themselves are likewise a mist-grey (almost white) stone, and they are fond of decorative stained glass windows - even the regular windows often have a frame of stained glass across their tops and bottoms, usually depicting grape leaves and clusters, books, scrolls, writing utensils and the like. Wine's Wisdom Hall: A five-story structure, Wine's Wisdom's best-known feature is the Tasting Room, a large rounded room that sticks out into the gardens. It is four stories in height, and its garden-facing walls are all fine glass windows. It is a fine party chamber that is the envy of many nobles, and rightly so - many of the finest social events in Waterdhavian histories have taken place there. The rest of the building is made up of private living spaces, for the most part: the ground floor features sumptuous chambers for entertaining guests, including a massive banquet hall with a stage on one end that is sometimes used to host theatrical events or musical performances. The upper floors are all wings of private suites for household members. Lady Gholsetha's immediate family maintain rooms here. The Vintage House: This five-story house has extensive rooms, including two floors of guesting housing for friends of the family visiting Waterdeep. The street-front face of the building features a massive set of oaken double-doors all entwined with grape vines and closed books in the center of the doors emblazoned with the Melshimber heraldry. There is also a small gate in the wall directly north of the house, allowing delivery wagons access to the house's extensive wine cellars. The cellars themselves are the size of the whole of the building, and entirely made up of row-after-row of ceiling-height wineracks. Half the servants of the Vintage House are directly under the Master Sommelier Denaren Izira, and employed to keep the wines in fine shape and inventoried properly. These servants also deliver wines to the houses of the estate and see to its proper service. The House of Parchments: Before the House maintained separate offices for such, the Parchments House provided them with a base for their sages to do their work from. Now friends of the family (and other Waterdhavian nobles) still occasionally visit for that purpose. The ground floor is made up of a handful of reading rooms and parlors which line the outer walls of the building. The southern edge of the building juts out in the gardens - this is the House library, a massive four-story construction, with literal walls of books. The upper second through fourth floors of the northern portion of the building is divided into a variety of suites. The Great Cellars: Beneath the villa grounds is an extensive warren of cellars. These cellars can be accessed from the cellars of any of the houses, although only a few heads of house (generally those of Rank 7+) have keys to them. The family maintains a massive wine cellar down here somewhere, in which they store ancient and extremely valuable vintages, including some wines magically restored or preserved garnered from ancient historical sites (a neat cross of the House's interests). It is also said that the House's vaults are down here somewhere, hidden away behind traps and locked doors. Family rumor maintains that one passage also extends out into the sewers. The Garden Chapel: A small private family chapel, situated in the northwest corner of the gardens, shrouded by trees.