House of Bamboo and Chrysanthemum

On the White Coast of the Blessed Isle, at the foot of a range of green and pleasant hills in Yatosin Prefecture, there sprawls a vast manse-garden, five miles on a side, encircled by walls and towers of living Bamboo. Ancient trees blossom and give fruit in every Season; beds of azalea and roses frame elegant reflecting pools where black and scarlet fish trace the patterns of their lives. At the center of the garden, a First Age palace of red Cedar and Ivory opens like a flower to the heavens.

Maintained by the Nine Jade Bureau for the Preservation of Immortal Works at the behest of the Scarlet Empress, the palace brims with a thousand years of artistic treasures: glistening porcelain, graceful calligraphy, and lacquerwork of impossible depth. An elliptical courtyard nestles at the heart of the palace’s labyrinthine halls. There, among thickets of bamboo and beds of scarlet and yellow Chrysanthemums, stands a willow tree twisted into the semblance of a slender woman. Some say that this tree was once an Exalt, bound forever into the heart of the Manse by an ancient sorcery. The Hearthstone forms between her cupped hands.

Source: Slightly adapted from original by Quendalon on the unOfficial Exalted Wiki