Locations/ManseThree
The Vestible of Ten Thousand Bells: Manse ••• (Air Aspect)
The Vestible is a wide open estate, several hundred acres wide. It consists of a series of long, low walls, designed to catch the wind and funnel it through various passages, intermixing the cold wind of the North with the heat of the South, the salt of the West with the life of the East. These winds, so intermixed, are refered to as the blood of Mela by the reverent, refreshes all who smell it, and the final passages are enclosed from the ceiling to prevent this sacred wind from intermixing with common air. It then passes through into a specially designed room, accessible only through an orihalcum and moonsilver mesh window- perfectly trasparent, but it will permit only wind to enter itself. This room, the Heart of the Bell, regularly pumps the wind from itself into the center room of the Manse- where it is pushed upwards and outwards, into the open sky. Along the way, it rings ten thousand seperate bells, each bell just once for each pump, at nearly regular half-hour intervals. The tiny silver bells start first, and then the meledous tone of larger gold and jade bells. At the top, a trio of huge bronze and brass bells, with clappers of solid iron, bang out like the heartbeat of a dying god.
The bells have long fallen silence, and the wind trapped in the Heart whistles madly for release. One of the clappers was removed from one of the great trio of bells, and the Heart's rhtyhm was thrown badly off, until it finally settled into silence. The spirits of the Wind, trapped by the scent of such power and finding themselves unable to leave, beat relentlessly for escape- including the Lesser Elemental Dragon of Air, Hruh, Censor of the Southwest, Second Magistrate of Storms and Lightning, First of the Twelve Companions, known to some as Maolos and to other as the Saphire Sage.
- DS
(The Vestible's inital image comes from the Rhapsody series, the Basicle of Air. Hruh comes from an unrelated source- but he could make either a could ally, if freed, or a terrible foe, if someone leaves him intentionally trapped)
