TheNexusProject/RainbowSpire
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The Rainbow Spire
by MelWong
- "As for your new gown, my lady, I would recommend this lovely amethyst silk new from the Rainbow Spire. Its drape would be most becoming against your lovely complexion."
- Coral Lark, seamstress, to Bastion socialite Icefire Jasmine.
- "It can't be denied that the Rainbow Spire's a good draw for the cloth-merchants and tailors' silver, but couldn't they do something about that awful reek of dye and vinegar?"
- Ginger Torch of The Twisted Cane.
On the east side of the Crookneck's Row is a tall, sandy-colored building with a steepled roof and an empty bell tower. A low fence surrounds a mostly-barren packed-earth yard filled with wooden scaffoldings and clay-brick pits filled with various strong-smelling dyes. The walls and roof are dappled with faint, ghostly swathes of color like what is left after a painting has been bleached by the sun. It bears no sign or token (and has not for the past five generations), as those who know not of what it sells obviously have no business being there. On sunny days, yards upon yards of fine dyed cloth are draped over the roof to dry after having been soaked in vinegar to fix the dyes.
The Rainbow Spire has been owned by the Sakers, a Guild-affiliated family, for over a century. The ultimate matriach of the family, Saker Plum, claimed squatters' rights in the Nexus district and started her own dyeworks in an abandoned building - one which the family wound up using as a shopfront up until now. Having risen above their fairly humble beginnings, they now live in the rarefied neighborhood of Bastion, and most of the work in their shop is tended to by employees. The Sakers buy raw, undyed bolts of cloth from various sources, among them Catullino's Millners in Nighthammer, and puts the fabric through their secret dying processes to give them color and clarity beyond that which can be bought elsewhere. Their dyestuffs are imported from the furthest corners of Creation, with vivid green vegetable dyes from the Far East, and conch violet from Alom Vilag.
The current heir to the family is Saker Marlin, a young man in his early 20s. Something of an artistic prodigy, Marlin attended the prestigious Orinas Colors Academy before inheriting the family business from his mother. His impeccable color sense and talent for painting has only aided his management of the family dyeworks, and it is with him that a Saker has finally returned to the dying vats (after a gap of three generations!). An original bolt of silk hand-dyed by Marlin can fetch up to thrice the normal price in the Little Market, and he has of late brokered an exclusive distribution deal with Yeskanero River of the Yeskanero Merchanting Family. Now nine-tenths of the Rainbow Spire's output goes to the holds of the Yeskanero family.
Rumours
- Saker Marlin is due to be betrothed to one of the younger granddaughters (possibly Almond or her sister Lapis) of the Yeskanero Merchanting Family so as to promote Guild contacts with them.
- The clarity of their dying process is due to an alchemical ritual which requires the blood of a virgin child to be shed - that is why little children keep going missing on Crookneck's Row.
Secret
- Saker Marlin is having an affair with Mirraca Catullino, youngest son of the Catullino milling family. They keep their trysts in the dyeworks' basement a secret, as Mirraca is to wed the daughter of a rival milling family so as to seal a merger; breaking the betrothal, no matter how unwished-for, would ruin his family's financial prospects.
