Dropbox for all your development suggestions and requests.
(This is a thread from Mizahar's fantasy role play forum. Why don't you register today? This message is not shown when you are logged in. Come roleplay with us, it's fun!)
The Diamond of Kalea is located on Kalea's extreme west coast and called as such because its completely made of a crystalline substance called Skyglass. Home of the Alvina of the Stars, cultural mecca of knowledge seekers, and rife with Ethaefal, this remote city shimmers with its own unique light.
Star children! As per request I bring you the Lhavit dropbox. This is where I would love for you to put your awesome ideas. You may suggest anything up to and including:
Locations
NPCs
Organizations
Adventures
Flora/Fauna
Creatures
You may also suggest potential revisions and/or expansions of existing entities within reason. Be warned, your suggestions may very well turn into me bribing you to be the primary author of them. Yes, that means I am happy to work with anyone who wants to contribute.
Well...we didn't have a philtering shop, and I used one in a thread, so here's a writeup . Comments and critique are, of course, very welcome, since this is my first go and I'm sure I've missed something.
The Starry Chalice
The Starry Chalice is a philtering shop, an emporium of elixirs, tucked away in one of the many blue-washed buildings that make up the Azure Market. From the outside, it appears quite small - cramped, even, sandwiched between a clothier's stall and a food vendor. Appearances can be deceptive, however; the shop opens up considerably inside. The Azure Market façade is an eye-catching one - Tian, the redoubtable proprietress of the Chalice, is a great believer in displaying her skill, and so sturdy red lacquer shelves hold rank upon rank of shimmering bottles, phials, vials, flasks and other, more esoteric containers of all shapes, colours and materials, every one carefully stoppered and sealed with lily-imprinted wax. Overhead, strung on brassy chains, there hang ornate braziers, spilling scented smoke as a sort of advertisement for the skills of Chalice employees as well as completely masking the more unpleasant smells of the philtering discipline.
Inside continues the theme of organized clutter; more lacquerwork - in the form of cabinetry, shelves and a vast pigeonhole bureau covering the entire back wall – supports further examples of the philterer's art; elixirs, lotions, oils and unguents of all kinds. Proudly on display amid the finished goods are a plethora of ingredients necessary for the more common preparations – lip balms, sunburn salves and so forth – as well as some truly rare and expensive components for the professional philterer.
Apprentices, looking quite unsettling and alien in their protective gear, frequently bustle amongst the shelves, easily able to interpret the otherwise-impenetrable system of shorthand notation by which almost everything in the shop is labelled, collecting ingredients and philtres for customers or their own brewing tasks. The Chalice frequently sees a procession of couriers bearing the seals of the different Houses of Lhavit come to call; Tian is a major supplier for the Towers and the Koten Temple itself.
Under normal circumstances, naturally, customers do not see beyond the front part of the shop, but the Starry Chalice has several back rooms, too, including a compact but professionally-equipped philtering laboratory, full of spiralling glassware, distillation and reduction apparatus and much else besides, with ingredients hanging on hooks and chains overhead, and a large storeroom that can generally be counted on to be chock-full of supplies and fulfilled orders just waiting to be collected.
Everything is overseen by the magisterial presence of Tian J'net, both the Starry Chalice's owner and its most accomplished philterer, who is reliably to be found either hunched over a piece of glassware, personally supervising the latest philtering, or else reigning from a plush chair in one corner of the Chalice, strategically placed to have the best view of both the shop and the philtering lab.
Having just touched thirty, Tian J'net defies the philterer's stereotype, that of a crabbed man bent under the weight of years, with fingertips stained by unknown chemicals and eyes rheumy from the fumes. A full-figured lady, Tian combines in one body an expert philterer and keen chef both, with masses of lustrous black hair and a booming laugh fit for three people at once. To some, she can come across as rather intimidating; Tian's large frame, loud voice and imperious posture all combine to make her rather larger-than-life. She has, however, been serving the good citizens of Lhavit with their philtering requirements for years, and as such is a well-respected member of the city.
She keeps several apprentices, to ensure demand doesn't outstrip supply, and is known to be a patient yet exacting teacher. Nothing less than perfection will do for any goods put on her shelves or bearing the lily-seal of the Starry Chalice, and she strives to impart a sense of pride in their work to her apprentices. Safety is a common theme; customers will frequently hear the shop ring to Tian's impressive full-bore bellow if a vital piece of safety equipment – gloves, aprons, steel-capped boots and so forth – is neglected by her philterers.
Born in the heart of summer in 482 A.V., Tian came from a family of artists, their work highly regarded in Lhavit, and was initially expected to follow in her parents' footsteps, either painting in a studio or working on the sculptures their family was known for. However, in the event, she quickly found the preparation of the pigments and cleaning fluids, the linseed oil preservatives, the marble and bronze polishes and other such chemical accoutrements to be much more interesting than the actual artworks themselves. As per Lhavitian custom, her interest was encouraged and nurtured with a succession of apprenticeships and, in the fullness of time, when she was judged sufficiently skilled, her parents purchased a stall for her in the Azure Market.
Naturally, her own personal honour, and the values instilled by both her parents and the culture of Lhavit itself, saw that she worked hard to prove her skill and make her business a success, enabling her to pay off her debt to her parents in short order. Despite the expansion in custom over the years as her skill and reputation grew, she has steadfastly refused to move to an establishment in the Surya Plaza, or any other prominent location, preferring the bustle and local flavour of the Market and purchasing unused back space from the shops on either side for the purposes of expansion.
Chiona Dusk is a scion of House Dusk, the eldest daughter of the Patriarch and heir apparent to the Dusk Tower entire. As part of her training to take up the mantle of leadership, she currently serves as the initial instructor for many of the Dusk Tower's apprentices, learning how to handle a wide spectrum of different styles and approaches whilst also honing her own skills in auristics and leadership both.
She is not, it has to be said, the most affable of the family – that title goes to her father without a doubt. Chiona is not exactly unfriendly either, however; 'austere' is the word which would perhaps best fit her manner, at least towards the Tower novices whom she teaches. Serious and mindful of both her duties and the dangers of magic, she can come across as intimidating and authoritarian, and brooks little deviation from her prescribed styles; the djed storm of Spring 512 A.V. and the chaos it wrought only reinforced her strict and discipline-oriented ways, and she's certainly not above being cruel to be kind, as it were.
A mage of the purist school of thought, she makes a fine teacher of the basic tenets of auristics, although novices with a breadth rather than depth of experience may find her insistence on keeping the schools of magic separate somewhat wearing. Fortunately, once an apprentice passes beyond the novitiate stage, she opens up somewhat, showing a freer, kinder side that, out of a sense of duty, she represses when teaching the novices, lest they fail to take her instruction seriously and fall prey to one of the many dangers of magic.
Whilst her personality is quite a forceful one, especially when roused, and continually backed up by the absolute authority and assurance that comes from belonging to one of the finest families of Lhavit, Chiona herself is rather small and delicate-seeming. 'Seeming' is, however, the key word – the vigorous training regimen all Dusks go through with the Dao sword and spear has given her a lean, wiry strength and resilience that can come as something of a shock for those who see no deeper than the silk-swathed skin and perfumed hair.
Regardless, 'pretty' is the word that would be best used to describe her in her natural state, but she is vain and, by dint of a host of cosmetics and three hours skilled labour every morning from her servants, has managed to achieve the manufactured and distant beauty of a porcelain doll. She prefers rich and intricate clothes that emphasise contrasts – pale skin with dark fabric, for instance, which only enhances her doll-like appearance to many.
by Legion on April 28th, 2012, 9:41 pm 
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