Locations/CauransHospice

Cauran’s Hospice

by Moxiane

Description

In a small forest, five miles west of Traiter on the Blessed Isle stands Cauran’s Hospice, a powerful Wood-aspected Manse that dates from the Old Realm, and long a centre for the efforts of the Immaculate Order. Constructed largely of glossy white marble, with black and green jade chasing, the Hospice is a two-storey series of long, open halls built around atria with aesthetically-pleasing gardens at the centre. Most of these halls are filled with beds for the injured, peasants come from miles around for treatment of injury, and a high proportion of the locals were born in the wide open halls of the Manse, the properties of Cauran’s Hospice mean that the process of labour is relatively quick and pain-free.

The head of the local Immaculate mission is one Jurren Opilan, a follower of Sextes Jylis and himself born a peasant in this vicinity, who Exalted as a teenager and, when offered the coin or the razor, took service with the Immaculate Order. Highly compassionate and devoted to the cause of healing, Opilan is a master medick himself, and will often be seen wandering the clean dirt floors of the Manse, treating the sick and talking with the wounded. The Hospice is a haven for those Immaculate monks who are becoming disenchanted with the political intrigue that is sweeping the Blessed Isle, always threatening to pull the Order into the internecine battle for control of the Scarlet Throne, and in the last year the Dragon-Blooded contingent at the Manse has risen from two to seven.

Special Features

Regularly spaced along the walls of the Hospice’s halls are small bronze bowls filled with a thick, pale green unguent. This ointment relieves pain, cleanses wounds and promotes fast healing, and is greatly responsible for the relative good health of the local peasantry. Smeared onto cuts and sores, the cool mixture provides a +2 bonus to any Resistance rolls to shrug off infection from injury and reduces healing time by a quarter. While the supply of the liniment, locally referred to as Cauran’s Blessing, is effectively unlimited, when taken from a bowl it retains its effectiveness for an hour at most before becoming inert. This time limit is negated once the unguent has been used, its effects remain with the subject.

Hearthstone Chamber

The long axis of Cauran’s Hospice points directly at the Imperial Mountain, and from that side a small tower rises 40’ above the rest of the Manse proper. At the top of this tower is a small meditation room, eternally filled with the scent of rare incense and the sound of wind chimes, and it is here, in a small niche in the wall, that the Hearthstone, a Surgeon’s Stone forms, cradled gently in a bowl of green jade carved into the semblance of a pair of hands, offering the stone to one who would take it. Jurren Opilan, as head of the Immaculate mission here, currently uses the Hearthstone, which he keeps mounted in Perfect Descant, his jade long powerbow.

Manse Defences

None. As a place of healing and recovery, Cauran’s Hospice was not provided with any magical defences, and its open construction is not conducive to physical defences. However, the contingent of Immaculate monks provides a powerful deterrent to any who would attack it.

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