Apex' Memorial[]
Air Manse 3
Drawbacks: 1-point Fragility drawback
Powers: Mela's Sweet Whispers 1 (2; Air Favored), Zone of Influence 3, Control Room (2), Comfort Zone (1)
Hearthstone: Gemstone of Spoken Language (Set in: Irreproachable Gauntlet of the Unconquered Sun
Attuned by: Ceril Tesus
Hearthstone Bearer: Ceril Tesus
During the height of the First Age, there were a number of legendary explorers, those who pushed back the boundaries of the Wyld, expanding Creation in all directions. One such explorer was Ayris, of the Eclipse Caste of the Solar Exalted, a very far traveler, who had been born, lived her life as a mortal, and Exalted in the territory known in the Age of Sorrows as the far reaches of the East. Ayris plied the high seas to the southwest, exploring, cataloging, and pushing back the Wyld, making new and fascinating discoveries.
Her companions were few; her Lunar mate Adoi, and a long-time friend from her homeland, who had Exalted as an Air-Aspected Terrestrial, by the name of Apex.
Eventually, as it always seems to, disaster struck the trio; whilst sailing very far south indeed, they were beset by a monster, as deep from the depths as it was from the Wyld, a true Leviathan, a primordial creature from times best left forgotten. Their vessel was shattered, and they did battle on the wreckage and in the sea. Adoi was slain in his bravery, having transformed into the form of a great, serrated whale to do battle with the beast, but the wounded beast was forced to surface, even as it crunched the last of the life from Adoi's body. Enraged at the sight of their companion's demise, and with their foe now an open target, Ayris and Apex tore into the great beast as the Exalted are wont to do, shooting arrows like harpoons into it, and finishing the beast with blade or Oricalcum and Jade. But they were stranded, their vessel's remains sinking fast. An island was within sight, barely, on the southerly horizon, and the pair managed to find a piece of floating debris that bore them there within a day.
Things looked bleak for the duo, for they soon discovered the island was uninhabited by people. Ayris fell into a deep depression at her lover's loss, and even her old friend's attendance seldom could console her. Their days on the island turned to weeks, as wreckage from their vessel washed ashore, and then to months and years. Life on the island was not so bad, it seemed, and in a strange and bizarre way, they had found something that it seemed the Exalted were destined not to know; peace.
Their world was shattered by the island's mountain erupted; fortunately, by that time, they had learned sufficient crafting skills to have partially repaired their old vessel, and they sailed out to sea. For months they remained there, returning when the isle had cooled, to a remarkable sight; the eruption had spilled forth a flow of perfect bronze and nothing but. The island's topography had been changed radically, but in time, the full, lush vegetation returned, and the two hatched a plan. They could build another vessel, one to carry them home; no mere raft, but to produce another vessel entirely.
Their audacious plan took a very long time indeed; during which old friends grew close, with the emotional scars of the past behind them, and, as decades passed, lovers. Eventually, they found a comfortable routine; Apex would wake Ayris by singing from a magnificently acoustic twist of the island's mountain, where the wind itself seemed to convey her voice; they would work all day, and Ayris would sing her lover to sleep. Decades eventually gave way to centuries, as they laid more and more into the leviathan vessel, preserving food and water for the voyage, producing increasingly-elaborate, mechanical and magical safeguards against various hazards their journeys had seen.
Eventually, they set out, sailing northeast, towards the Blessed Isle and the rest of Creation's land. However, their time on the island had taken it's toll; the effects of the Demense, which had otherwise suspended their age, proved harsh when they left, accelerating the process of their aging, such that a year's time passed in their bodies in the span of a day. Ayris was not terribly effected; as one of the Chosen of the Sun, her natural lifespan was measured in millennia, and Integrity-Protecting Prana ceased the effect altogether; Apex was not so fortunate. She expired, of accelerated age, as they just came within sight of the Blessed Isle where they had hoped to find treatment for her condition; stricken with grief, Ayris sailed the leviathan vessel, it's once-bright bronze tarnished uniform, beautiful green, around the Island, and up the massive River Yanaze, to their homeland.
The Solar wandered the lands of their homeland, and set her sights on a mountain known as the Whistling Mountain, which was customarily avoided by local superstition. She discovered that a fellow Solar had purchased the lands, and was planning to survey the Mountain as possible Demense sight; she convinced him to render the lands unto her, in return for all the remaining artifacts and pieces of her original vessel he wished to have. Using the remains of the fortunes she had amassed exploring, she undertook the Whispering Mountain's survey, found it to be suitable, and, whilst standing at the top, realized how perfect it was, that the wind was being channeled from all directions up the mountain.
She had her vessel of bronze disassembled, and hired many geomancers and musicians to help her create a fitting memorial to her second, lost love. She created what would be known in later times as the Air Dragon's Lung, inspired by the similar properties of the Whispering Mountain and the mountain on the isle which she and Apex had known as home for well over two centuries. A towering, domed complex of bronze, tarnished beautifully green from it's time in the sea, sits astride a wonderful confluence of Air-Aspected energies, which were used to fuel the heart of it. From the ground up, the location was designed for music, of many kinds; of all kinds. Expert musicians exploited wires of metals, and the properties of the air which charges the location with both powerful winds and energetic discharges of lightning, harnessed carefully. The towering structure rises hundreds of feet above the leveled-off mountaintop it occupies. There is no subtlety to it's purpose or design; it is instantly recognizable as a gathering place, with a massive, open floor as soon as one walks through the looming doors, stairways winding away, around the tower, give way to balconies ringing it; suspended most of the way up the tower is the hearthstone chamber itself; balanced delicately on arching spires and strung from chains, magically held together, the circular platform contains the heart of the Manse; a truly leviathan pipe organ, fed from massive pipes which draw air from below, whispering up through the mountain and sneaking out, under the platform, thrusting rapidly into it's bottom. No mere organ, the massive instrument of wind and air has rows upon rows of keys, in all hundreds of thousands of them and thousands of pedals; it can be played by as few as one, or as many as twenty, and is capable of producing virtually any imaginable sound that can be linked to a key-played instrument; some of the pipes even conduct electrical discharges along them, offering a dramatic, powerful and unique sound. Above the keyboard, suspended from a chain which electricity visibly runs down and illuminating the main playing floor when inset, is the Hearthstone itself.
The organ is hardly the only sound in the hall, however; opposite the massive keyboard is a hanging series of pipes, which seem open-ended; these do not transmit sound, but receive it, they are for singers; there are pipes which magnify (or shrink) the sound of one's voice, pipes which creatively distort the sound which goes in, any and every imaginable effect one might want to put a singer's voice through, including simply not changing it at all. Around are side-rooms, accessable by loosely-hanging bridges of metal planks and chains, which contain many more instriments; strings, percussion – an entire room devoted to drums – harmonic, rythymic, distorted, and so forth and so on...
The number of sounds that Apex' Memorial can produce is staggering, and it seems likely that it has only been equaled or surpassed in Yu-Shan itself.
Most impressively, however, is the range with which the Manse can throw it's sound – one can, simply, play for those inside, or even inside one room, if one so wishes; however, the true beauty is that the music within can be shared by all within miles of the Mountain, blasting forth from massive exits in the top of the dome, pipes towering above the top of the Manse, sharing the sound with all and sundry. Magically, nobody is ever deafened by the sound; no matter the volume, all who hear the music (provided they could hear to start with) will hear perfectly well the next day, and can hear every subtle nuance of the performance.
It's not all music, however; above even the hearthstone room, one will find side rooms, separate towers themselves, hanging over the sky and the towers below; rooms for living in, training in, composing in, and generally to occupy.
After the creation of Apex Memorial, Ayris lived in it for some time, having retreated into a shell of loneliness, playing loud, mournful music long and low. Eventually, she left, having stopped invoking Integrity-Protecting Prana. She sold the Manse, and bought a vessel which could be crewed by one; alone, she sailed off to the South-West, never to be seen again. The Manse passed through a few owners after that; eventually, it's owner was a soul-searching warrior of the Dawn-Caste, who was legendary for never having killed a person in battle for centuries, wielding a magical sword which could refuse to do harm, at the end of the First Age.
That warrior did not attend the final banquet, as he had become bittered with his fellows for killing in combat. News traveled fast, however, and he realized soon his time was nigh, watching an army begin to climb the mountain. He did not wish to fight an ignoble battle where he might be forced again to kill, so he hid his sword inside his manse, denying it to the Terrestrials; realizing his time was come, he ran towards the oncoming hordes, and defied them to murder him in cold blood, for he would not dignify their heretical insurrection by fighting them.
They did, but even though Apex' Memorial, which would come to be known as the Lung of the Air Dragon to the coming Shogunate era, was occupied by the Dragon-Blooded for millennia later, they never found the sword, hidden amongst the pipes as it was. Eventually, with the fall of the Shogunates during the Great Contagion, even they, too, forgot it's location, pushed to the Blessed Isle, leaving the Manse alone and unclaimed into the Age of Sorrows...