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Latest revision as of 21:40, 8 June 2010

Marin Bay Redoubt

Marin Bay Redoubt is based in a Shogunate-era Level 4 Water Manse. The manse was built just after the Usurpation.

Hearthstone is a Seacalm Gemstone (Exalted, p. 334)

Facilities

Once docked, you can see -- at a distance -- the facility that lets the Lookshy fleet stand against the Realm. By Monkey's count, there are at least five dockyards, two of which are occupied by triremes and a third by a pair of smaller ships. Though you've heard of this redoubt's First Age slips, you can't see them -- they're in the south harbor. Between the two harbors, on a great mound of stone, sits the manse itself, a massive pyramid and tower of jade and sandstone. Built before the Empress, its clean, stark lines speak of an artistic sensibility that the Dragon-Blooded have since lost but which the First Age did not possess.

Unlike Scarlet Fortress, Marin Bay Redoubt is still very much a military fortress. The original fortress, the manse, sets upon an outcropping of rock that thrusts out into the ocean and rises up some five hundred feet above the water. Stretching north and south of this are the redoubt's two harbors. The south harbor is reserved for the exclusive use of the Lookshy navy and other forces, and it's here that the redoubt's four First Age slips are located. In the north harbor, merchants and allies are welcomed warily, and it is here that the redoubt has most of its civilian infrastructure -- not that there's much of it within the redoubt's walls, which stretch in an arc from extreme edges of each harbor. As you learn from the guides assigned you, the redoubt is sustained by supplies from Lookshy, nearby Calin, and from several manors that the redoubt itself maintains in the surrounding countryside.

The civilian section of the redoubt is very small, consisting of a few streets next to the north harbor. Your guides inform you that anything past Fire Street, which divides the north and south sections of the redoubt, is off-limits to visitors. In the civilian section, meanwhile, there are a few bars and a surprisingly large number of eateries and sleeping-houses. Most of these are run by locals, and serve fare that fits the Lookshy attitude.

Walking up Fire Street to the manse's gate, Monkey and Kaizoku are rather grateful for the umbrellas held by their escorts, two mortal yeomen of the Lookshy navy. The bulk of the manse is a pyramid of white sandstone, laced with black jade. Water streams down grooves in it, and you can see windows of adamant on the surface of the pyramid. Rising behind the pyramid -- from your perspective -- is a tower that must reach another two hundred feet in the air. From your approach to the redoubt, you know that the tower is flush with the cliff face over the sea. Atop it is a glowing beacon, calling to ships at sea in this most unfortunate of seasons.

Inside the manse, it is a welcome change from the downpour outside, though the sound of rain mixes with the stream that runs through the antechamber where you dry off. This chamber is just past the gate. Low benches carved with an abstract, watery theme. Now that you are in the manse, you can feel its power thrumming through your own Essence. Unsurpisingly, it's a water-aspected manse, and a powerful one, and you remember the blue stone that adorned Taimyo Hane's daiklave.

The great hall itself is a square in floorplan, with its two exterior walls looking west to the sea. Through the adamant windows that reach up to three times the height of a man, you can see the storm outside, but all you can hear is the quiet mutter of conversation throughout the hall and the gentle music of a single flute, played by a woman standing underneath one of the northern windows. You have entered through the hall's main door in the southeastern wall. Both the eastern walls, the interior ones, are hung with banners, each one recording a scene from the history of the Lookshy and Shogunate navies.

The commandant is Taimyo Hane Namiko, a woman whose bearing tells of years of command.