[center][h2][colour=gainsboro]Ea Nebel[/colour][/h2][/center]

[i]Some earlier time.[/i]

When Ea Nebel built her house, she built it on the beach, at the north shore of the Tlacan sea where the water is smooth and shallow and without colour. She built it herself, without any help at all. And she was happy when she built it, because she had nowhere to be, and nothing on her mind. It's important to build a house this way. You must always come home to happy memories. 

When Ea Nebel built her house, she built it from smooth ashlar, and it was both tall and wide. She built for it arches and buttresses and colonnades, and she made sure that every part of it was both beautiful and useful, so that it would be just the right size: not too small and not too big. It had one face for the land and also one face for the sea, looming into the banks of mist. They were not the same face, so if the fog of dying rivers that hovered over the dead water were ever to part, a hidden facade may be revealed on Galbar’s final day. She pulled down a low-hanging fragment of obsidian from the sky, which was curved into strange orbits, such that it could be turned one way to look like the sleek skull of the fox, and another an eel, and another a flame. From it she chipped and ground twelve high pillars of pure black glass to hold up its highest domes and halls. When she was done she ground the remains of it smooth again, and set atop it a flat, circular stone dais. This she sent back to float nearby, for when she wished to meditate.

When Ea Nebel built her house, she gave it a wide courtyard, and filled it with trees planted in soil from the Eternal Wildlands, because the mud around the Sea was just no good for growing. This way it would always be a little different, but not very different, but different enough that it had moods, and the birds were often slightly different birds, and the song they sang would always be the right mood for her. Ea Nebel appointed the Iron Boar as watcher over this shrine-forest, which would be its home, and it delighted in the roots and the trees and the streams with their frogs. Outside she laid gravel and chalk in the draining mud, and so built a long road leading to that house, with milestones and resting-places.

When Ea Nebel built her house, she built inside it a museum and a library, and made sure that they would always be full of beautiful flotsam washed up by the Flow from every corner of Galbar. There was Nalusan pottery and Bjork woodcuts and Shennic paintings on rice-paper, and many remains of living things, from the lava-crab to the god-orca, and every kind of exotic creature from the jungles of Orsus: ceratopsian skulls and araucaria cones and cabinets full of many insects that had once glowed with their own power in the Moonlit Gardens, and now glowed on, with hers. And in her house she dug an aquarium, which was a little piece of reef from nowhere in particular, and filled it with all the fish and coral she liked the most, and set windows into it and under it, so she could see everything that went on with her fish by day and by night without ever needing to wet her feet. And when she felt like a closer look, she became a mermaid, and didn’t have to wet her feet that way either.

When Ea Nebel built her house, she built it with a guest wing and an office and a lounge with a roaring fire and chairs so comfortable one could easily die in them. She built a kitchen where the food was always hot, and a porcelain golem would come out to serve it anywhere in the house, and she made sure the golem was dressed well, in white and black. Between domes she built the glass roof of her conservatory and within one she set the glass lens of her observatory, which she would have liked to use more, had the dark between stars not sent shivers over her skin, and the lunar eye not ever been trying to peer down the brass scope. Under the widest dome she erected a throne of swirling onyx, and behind it rings of gold, such that she could sit in the center of an enormous halo. There she would brood, or nap, or lounge around eating fruit as it suited her.

When Ea Nebel built her house, she consecrated a chapel with twelve hundred candles and fractal mosaics in many colours, into which the sun would spill from tall windows and alight on the dancing smoke of censers. She engraved no image of man or beast in that chapel, and gave its altar over to any god to which a mortal guest might wish to pray. For herself, Ea Nebel consecrated a second chapel, a private chapel of black and white ablaq, which is layered stone. There she hung the black silks marked with white, which were the symbol of the babiruš, and the death’s head, and the Three Eyes and One. On its altar were many boars and moths and flowers laid in amber and jet, lit by a crystal set inside a shell, and it was for the receiving of prayers. For when the children of dust pray, they hope that God will listen; and when the God of Nebel prayed, she hoped to hear them speak.

When Ea Nebel built her house, she built for herself a bedchamber, which was a small outgrowth of the much larger room that was her wardrobe. This she filled with black hats, black coats, black jackets, black gowns, black trousers, black skirts (modest), black gloves, black boots, black socks, black glasses, black scarves, and a variety of other accessories, which were black. The secondary section of her wardrobe was reserved for more ostentatious costumes, which had highlights of red, silver, white, and gold, and were otherwise black. In the back corner of this section she stored eight additional dresses, one for every colour that wasn’t black. She had no intention to wear any of them but she felt that it was important to have a little variety.

When Ea Nebel built her house, she displayed all her weapons in a large armory, which were in every way alike to those she conjured. On its racks there were many pole-arms, such things as quarterstaves and glaives and pole-hammers, and her swords she displayed on stands, half-sheathed. There were lined cases, which contained many knives, and the hacking weapons hung from the wall, a selection of machetes among them. Of the missile weapons, the most room was dedicated to her crossbows, slurbows, arbalests and pistol-bows, and room also was left for the javelin, dart, bolas, and the stockless bow, of both the simple and compound kind. The smallest section was reserved for the incendiary weapons: the long, sleek musket with its filigree underbarrel, the fire lance and arrow, and the [i]chòng[/i], or pole-cannon. The only weapon not displayed was the doom-claw, which had no equal, and never left her side.

When Ea Nebel built her house, she dug beneath it an extensive basement. Most of it was unfilled catacombs, where the remains of the faithful, exotic, and worthy could be interred in sarcophagi as Ea Nebel deemed fit. Hidden among these empty and ghostless halls were the secret rooms. One of them was a vault where she might hide her secret treasures, were she ever trusted with any. For now she heaped it with a pile of shining gold, just so that it wouldn’t feel too empty. The other secret room was her dungeon, where sealed cells were arranged around a central workroom built around an oubliette. There she assembled the rack, the wheel, the chair, the horse, and all the other apparatus of torturing.

When Ea Nebel built her house, her own room stood in the sunniest corner. There she had a big bed, and a fire, and a cello, and a shelf for all her treasures: her gold rune-ring of jade and her iron ring with its blood diamond, a stand for the doom-claw and a hook for her grandfather’s scarf, a little haematite warthog, a spindle and whorl, and the turquoise amulet of Yolyamanitzin, who was architect to the Granite Emperor. She had a plush boar and a plush skull and a plush whale and a plush wasp also, and an entire hot spring for her bath. And in this corner she spent most of her time.

All this came to be, when Ea Nebel built her house.

[hr]
[hider=Yes, there's a ball pit.]
Remember that house Ea Nebel wanted to build? Well, now she's built it! Of course, it's a house fit for a teenage goddess, so it's more like a cathedral-mansion-palace. It's on the shore of the Tlacan Sea and it cost [b]1x2=2 Vigour.[/b] There's no particular magical effect on it, but it's very big and cool and has a lot of stuff in it, including a personal hot spring, which is magical enough, I think.

It's very big for just one person though. Maybe she's lonely...
[/hider]