Hall of Lambent Flames
Aspect: Fire Rating: •••• Hearthstone: Original Unknown, currently producing between one and four Bursting Embers Bearers: ? Attuned: Peleps Kaizoku, Mnemon Kuvon, Peleps Oiwa, ? .
The Hall of Lambent Flames is a fire-aspected manse located in a small valley in the Ahbrem Mountains, a half-day’s ride east of the Eye of Creation in Ayreon Prefecture.
The manse has its origins in the First Age, raised as one of several military academies for the training of armies in service to the Solar Deliberative. Innumerable mortals were drilled with fire lance and Ashigaru Armour within the walled valley that was home to Hall, and many Dragonblooded of the Threshold gens traveled to learn tactics and battlefield leadership. The Hall specialized in battle against the monstrosities of the Wyld, where its focus on unrelenting assault and clear mind ensured the thoughts of its soldiers were not addled by the chaos beyond Creation. It was this specialization that made the units from the Lambent Flames so valuable when the Dragonblooded turned against their Solar masters and soldiers were ordered into battle against the chaos and monstrosity of the Celestial Exalted.
The fate of the Hall during the Usurpation is unclear. The histories of the Bronze Faction Sidereals speak that the vile Solar master of the place had engineered it to destroy itself and the lands surrounding it should he be felled, and only the sacrifice of Usurping armies saved vast swathes of the Blessed Isle from being engulfed in flames. Such an account is derided by Ayesha Ura and her Gold Faction peers, who speak tales of a noble Chosen of Sol and her Lunar mate turning it into a redoubt for their last stand, destroyed along with Hall and many of its troops when the Usurpers brought their full might to bear and devastated the geomancy of the place in their wicked treason. But, in the alleys of Yu-shan, other tales are sometimes told, of Dragonblood turning sword against Dragonblood in struggle for dominion before the battle against the Solars had even been brought to a close, the Hall a casualty of rivalry and politics.
Regardless, a great battle and a great disaster unfolded within the Hall during the days of the Usurpation. Adamant suits of armour, once bound to fight tirelessly in training the Deliberative’s formations, turned their blades to draw blood in true battle. Weapons of flame and essence shook the earth and transformed sky to inferno. And, in the end, the manse itself shuddered, the essence it channeled bursting free with violent force that consumed all it touched and burned away the structures that had once confined it.
Today, the Hall of Lambent Flames is a ruin scattered across the length of its valley, broken walls and pillars of red marble and jade, long-cooled rivers of brass and rock melted to black glass. At the centre of the valley, within what was once a large inner chamber whose walls still stand firm but whose roof is open to the sky, stands a hand cast of a single piece of Orichalcum, holding a torch crafted of white and red jade. Once, this torch glowed with a bright red flame, that flickered and pulsed as a beating heart, within which formed the hearthstone of the Hall. This stone was never sought for its powers, the energies channeled back into the manse itself, but neither flame nor stone has formed since the manse was broken in the Usurpation.
In the present Age, the ruins of the Hall remain a dangerous place. The goatherds of the Ahbrem Mountains do not approach the manse… indeed almost no mortals would willingly come within a quarter mile of the House - jets of white fire will sometimes spurt from the ground, so hot they will melt flesh from bone, so brief they will leave the chest unburned and the wound perfectly closed and cauterized. Sometimes it will rain chunks of fiery hail over areas of the valley - remains of a lost training program for soldiers who are no longer there. Great statues, features lost to time and fire, still stand guard along the rim of the valley, serving as a warning for those who would have dared its grounds over the millenia. Shogunate records speak of monstrosities rising from within: the ghosts of the slain, automatons driven by its power, demons bound in its service, Fae escaping bonds of containment that have lasted millennia… the Immaculate Order has for centuries used a pilgrimage to ensure the Hall was clear of dangers as penance for Dragonblooded monks who have slipped in their vows, though few have encountered more than solitary contemplation. The Scarlet Empress declined to grant the manse to the Order so it might be transformed into a monastery, nor to assign it to any of her Great Houses, and so it remained unrepaired for centuries.
The Hall's place in the Realm, broken and largely ignored, was suddenly changed in RY735 by writ of the Scarlet Empress, who gifted the Hall of Lambent Flames to Peleps Kaizoku and his household, 'a reward for my beloved descendant and his offspring, earned through their loyal service to Creation as Princes of the Earth, so they might turn their efforts to rekindling lost glories'. As further reward, and in reply to the complaints of House Peleps that the Merchant Marine had been gifted to House V'neef, the household’s former headquarters, the port-manse at the Cove of Calm Waters, was transferred to House V'neef for use by the Imperial Merchant Navy along with its ‘onerous and demanding costs’. Many in diplomatic circles twittered that this was a sign of the Throne's displeasure, rather than a gift, Guild and Coral emissaries pleased that the Kaizoku were at last being penalized for their long-suspected involvement with piracy.
The Kaizoku household has, in the decades since, been unable to develop the Hall from its current status as a ruin. The foundations of the site were determined to still be geomantically sound, but raising the barracks and towers of the original design has proven beyond the household’s limited resources. Metal roof tiles and stonework have been moved in to repair some buildings, and tents & stables have been established outside the valley rim. The household has been able to gather occasional Bursting Ember hearthstones from the grounds, where wayward essence has pooled and concentrated, but the stones are difficult to find safe use for in a House of seafaring mariners.
Source: House of Lambant Flames by DariusSolluman on the unofficial Exalted Wiki, with some changes and editing, incorporating the Hot Potato suggestion there from Ikselam, adapted to the (inland and unimportant) Eye of Creation being mentioned as a canon home of the Kaizoku household of House Peleps in MoEP:DB pp.41.
