You enter a high-roofed hall, hewn from the living stone, its midnight-blue barrel-vaulted ceiling spangled with softly shining silver stars. Columns carved to resemble living trees march the length of the chamber, screening aisles to the north and south. Among the branches supporting the vault of the roof are hung cunning crystal fruits of many jewel-like colors which light the entire hall with a soft, shimmering radiance as they glow in response to the balefire's blaze.
Tapestries line the long walls with scenes of a woodland hunt. The huntsmen are kithain, their quarry a milk-white stag with branching antlers. As you look away and then look back, it seems that events have unfolded in the mean time. If one watches for long enough, at the right time, the tapestries take on life and motion, the woven figures endlessly playing at hide and seek with the stag as bright as the moon.
The main part of the room is clear and open, its floor is entirely covered by a rich green carpet as soft as moss. The aisles to either side are appointed with comfortable chairs and low tables arranged in informal conversational groupings. In the south aisle, a cabinet carved with songbirds and tenrdrils of ivy contains a well-stocked bar. Books, games, and bowls of fruit, fresh bread and cheese are set out on the tables.
At the far end of the room a low, round hillock rises as a natural dais covered in soft green turf. On its crown is a simple bench of white marble with scrolled armrests and a cushion of red velvet. Behind this simple seat rises one living tree amongst the glade of carven stone, a slender rowan robust of growth and thick of foliage. Its bark and leaves are as ghostly white as the spring blossoms that open with each sunrise. It's berries, ripe by nightfall, are as red as rubies. It is from this enchanted tree that the count's seat of rulership takes its name: Cathaoir Caorainn, the Rowan Throne.
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Suspended from the rowan's branches and hanging against the trunk is an enormous, two-handed sword in a battered sheath of black leather. A faint murmuring may be heard from it at times as though some distant voice mumbles in sleep. Thouse who attempt to touch the blade feel a malevolent aura about them, but are prevented from laying hold of the blade by the guardian of the rowan, a strange chimera who goes by the name Pythia
From the carven branches of the pillared trees to either side hang banners which show the silver lion of House Fiona on crimson and the device of the Barony of Ben Bison: Azure, a mountain Vert irradiated Or from which issue two drops Argent, on a base wavy per fess Vert three drops Argent, and wavy Argent and Azure (a green mountain surrounded by golden rays on a blue field, from which drops of water seep. Below, a silver and blue river flows).
Beyond this mound in the far wall of the Great Room is a deep inglenook or alcove fashioned in the likeness of a sylvan grotto. To either side curtains conceal passages which to the private regions of the Brugh. Within the seeming cavern are deep stone settles, softly cushioned. Amidmost, a fountain plays endless circular ripples into a broad, shallow reflecting pool to catch and scatter the irridescent glow of the balefire which blazes at the furthest end of the grotto in a broad, baronial hearth.
As you step into the room, a lop-eared pooka in Fiona livery
bows in welcome, offering what you take to be
a compliment
before grinning and darting off down a side passage. In spite of this odd greeting, you relax with
the thought that you are both safe and welcome here, under the terms of the Escheat.
