The Topless Tower
Malfeas (Ipithymia) 2-dot Manse
Within the Street of Golden Lanterns is a five storey-tall tower, made from gaudy gold and with its dome studded with amethysts. Enter on the ground floor, climb it, and once again you are on the ground, though the doors and windows open somewhere else in the Street. Climb again and again, and never will you leave the ground. The sixth floor is the one you entered from. Try to climb down the stairs, and you will always find yourself in the basement. Thus, its floors must always be ascended in order.
The Topless Tower was granted to Keris by the demon princess Ipithymia for her service, and it is a place of excess. Each of its floors opens near places of luxury and vice on the Street, and it makes many demonic pleasures available to its maser. The golden automata who staff it and dwell in the basement cook meals fit for kings and keep the secrets of the hearthstone bearer. Each of the floors is distinct, and goes by a given name:
- The Veiled Floor is located near to where the walls of Hell have broken down, and the Street opens up onto the sands of Cecelyne. There is a great market here where desert raiders come to sell plunder and buy the vices of Ipithymia. Their woven carpets and exotic skins decorate the walls, and the windows are thin slats that keep out the desert sands.
- The Pulsing Floor has walls of skin and meat. The air is heavy with the smell of sweat; the curtains here are made of hair; the baths brings mouths to mind. The door here leads to one of the distillery districts. It faces a chained behemoth that Ipithymia crippled long ago and whose blood she takes to make sweet cordials.
- The Painted Floor is lurid in its art and sculpture, with every surface depicting demonic indulgence and wickedness. Many strange devices and mechanisms are kept here. The servants always place burning incense here that leaves the mind unfocussed and blurs the boundaries of the real. It is positioned in one of the main arteries of the Street, and provides access to many of its tributary roads.
- The White Floor is stark and bare. Echoes last longer than they should on the marble floors, and the click of a heel endures like the ticking of a clock - for Ipithymia has little respect for Cecelyne's prohibitions. Those who do not wish to stir up a susurration only speak when they must. The White Floor sits opposite one of the temples Ipithymia has raised to her greater self, and it is never silent from the noise of that grand basalt edifice creeps in.
- The Golden Floor opens near to one of the entrances of the Conventicle Malfeasant, though Lilunu keeps that door sealed at most times of the year. Everything upon this floor is made from gold; even the beds are cloth-of-gold filled with the shining feathers of auric demons. It looks out from one of the Street's strange gardens, where Kimbery surfaces and golden-flowered trees of brass form a pleasant thicket. The Golden Floor leads up into the Veiled Floor once more.
Ipithymia thought perhaps to bribe Keris with the pleasures of her domain and win more of her shows from her. Keris, however, appreciates this manse even more for its use in crossing the Demon City. The Golden Floor and the Veiled Floor can be used to get quickly from the Conventicle to the walls and vice versa, while there are paths from the Painted Floor that lead to the blood-sea where the Nests of Paricehet sit. Above the White Floor, one of the stars overhead is browner than the others - Asarin's domain is located on the layer above.
Manse Powers
- Bound Servant Force (2) - Seventeen eyeless automata of shining gold as supple as flesh serve as perfectly obedient servants within the Topless Tower. They cook, clean, and obey any command of the master of the tower that does not require them to leave the premises - even ones that result in their own destruction. Five days after any of them are destroyed, they reform from the pools of molten gold in the basement.
- Emotional Focus (Indulgence) (1) - The Topless Tower is built for vice, and makes it clearly visible to those who dwell in it. Is it any surprise that those who reside here for extended periods fall for it? Each scene spent in the manse counts as a scene spent building a principle that encourages indulgence for any character whose MDV is 3 or less. One with a MDV of 5 or less treats each day in the manse as a scene spent building the principle. This is a Illusion and Emotion effect. A character whose Dodge MDV is 6 or higher is immune.
- Magical Conveniences (1) - There are many fine things within the Topless Tower - fine food, luxurious beds, and demonic things with all kinds of wicked purposes.
[Ipithymia Favoured Powers - Bound Servitor (2), Bound Servant Force (3), Integrated Utility Artefacts (3), Ability Enlightenment (4), Alternate Locations (5). Note - the Servitor or Bound Servant Force must be primarily be there to bring pleasure or comfort to the inhabitants of the manse to benefit from this discount. Chefs would be valid; factory workers would not.]
