Manor of Tumbling Stones
Rating: • Aspect: Earth. Hearthstone: Stone of Humble Glory Powers: Habitability (-1); Vulnerability (-3); Attunement Recognition (0); Basic Senses (0); Archive (2) – Occult: Sorcery specialty; Archive (2) – Lore: Immaculate Texts specialty; Bound Servitor (2) – Baidak. Attuned: Mnemon, Mnemon Caras, Mnemon Debagrai, Mnemon Icheka, ?
The Manor of Tumbling Stones is a Mnemon-controlled estate overlooking the northwestern entrance into the Qutang Gorge, in the Scarlet Prefecture. The Manor cannot be accessed from the main road due to the cliffs, and the terrain is broken and difficult in the area, leaving it isolated from the main transit routes and having no villages in close proximity.
The property is a minor manse, centered on a fortified manor house. Thick stone walls look to have fallen away in places, but this is in fact intentional geomantic design, holes allowing the essence of air and water to pass through without pause. The upper floors of the manor contain two large barracks chambers (currently occupied by the black-armoured troops of the Mnemon House Guard) along with firing galleries to bombard approaching formations. The ground floor is a large vaulted chamber strewn with stone benches and tables around a raised dias and altar against the western wall. The altar bears an Immaculate shrine to Pasiap, and the chamber is used for dining and religious ceremonies. Arched doorways towards the north, south, and west are blocked not with doors but with small rectangular panels of polished granite along the length of carved-stone chains.
Spiral staircases at each corner of the ground floor chamber lead up and down. The lower floor contains perhaps a dozen small rooms with carved stone bed alcoves, tables, and benches, akin to Immaculate study cells, along with a quartet of larger chambers: one containing a well, one troughs for mushrooms, one a library (extensively provisioned with Immaculate and sorcerous texts), and one a sitting room containing the place’s only luxurious furnishing: in addition to basic stone furniture, it houses a large ornate chair of carved marble with a white silk cushion on the back… but the seat has been removed, as have the supporting components to keep the chair together while bearing weight: any attempt to sit in it, and the hinges attaching it to the floor cause it to fall apart and then spring back into its previous unusable position. This act disrupts the geomancy of the manse, and so this chamber’s stone door (the only door in the entire edifice) is usually kept closed (though it lacks a lock). Aside from this, furnishings are very basic: woolen bedclothes rather than linens, the upper barracks rooms exposed to the elements and demanding troops pitch their tents indoors to render the place liveable.
The hearthstone chamber in the middle, below the altar above, features a large, low basin of polished marble sunk into the floor, a cup at the very bottom formed of white jade. When the hearthstone begins to form, a grain of dust starts to circle the basin, growing larger and larger to become a marble and then a proper stone, the echoes of its rolling reverberating through the whole of the underground level. At last, it finishes its circuit and drops into the jade cup at the bottom, from which it can be removed now in the completed shape of the hearthstone.
The Manor is permanently staffed by a single guardian automaton, carved entirely of yellowed ivory. It is carved wearing heavy armour marked with a checker-pattern sigil on the gorget, over which hangs a white silk tabard emblazoned with the mon of House Mnemon in gold. It carries a halberd of polished brass and a bow of yellowed ivory. The servitor is unresponsive to commands (even from the hearthstone bearer), but patrols in irregular patterns through the whole of the manse, the lack of doors meaning residents are always at risk of interruption by its appearance. When hostile forces enter the grounds, the servitor opens fire with its bow, and if they breach the manor building it will attack with its halberd.
Those versed in the ancient histories and politics of the Scarlet Dynasty may know that the Manor was restored and gifted to Princess Mnemon by the Scarlet Empress herself, when Mnemon took the lover who would father her first child, for use as a lovers’ retreat away from the tensions of the Imperial Court.
