Ontine

Early Rough of the palace

The Eldritch imperial palace, in the capital city. Pronounced /ohn TEEN/.

History

The catacombs beneath Ontine have "been in use since the first Queen of the Eldritch had set down from the ship". Before the death of Corel, the capital was at Firilith, and the Eldritch built castles. After Corel's death, the Eldritch switched to building palaces, and the capital moved to Ontine. (Possibly implying that Ontine was built after Corel's death?)

Post-Coup Renovations

Subtly modernized. There are pin lights in the corridors that dim at night to a soft, diffuse amber.

Appearance and Layout

First Floor, Original Draft

The fourth floor is the top floor.

Exterior

It gives an "impression of endless flanks of ghostly pale stone worked with statues and reliefs." The palace is surrounded by great stone walls, and there is a fretwork gate tall enough to drive a cargo loader through. There is also a less-oversized postern gate that's near Jisiensire's townhouse.

Facade

Ontine's grand entrance has 23 steps. The facade has columns reaching up four stories to the pediment, with carvings and statues in every alcove in the walls, elaborate stonework, and reliefs.

Courtyard

More accurately termed a plaza, due to its sheer size.

The dueling circle is forty paces across, and it's drawn in the dirt in the courtyard between the palace and the gates.

Ontine's Pad exits inside the courtyard. It's a single-person model and it is not located inside a building, so the guards have flawless sightlines.

Interior

Ontine is mostly function and guest space. It has "multiple wings" and "several stories", "filled with gracious suites, parlors, receiving rooms, even offices and barracks." The stone floors of the wide halls are inlaid with patterns, and the high ceilings are coffered and painted in deep blues and gold and white. There are tapestries on the walls, and recesses with statues, and oil paintings, and alcoves with delicate painted furniture with embroidered upholstery.

Queen's Wing

The entrance to Liolesa's wing is a set of double doors guarded by two White Swords.

Liolesa's office faces the city; her bedrom, the sea.

Office: chairs and coffee table arranged on the rug before the hearth, desk and cabinet of books on the raised and carpeted dais in the corner between two windows.

Chancellor's Suites

The heir's old apartments are on the ground floor, and the sitting area outside it is known as the Petite Court: it has a painted ceiling and mirrors between the silver and white pilasters on the walls. The Chancellor now keeps his suites here. His office looks like a receiving room, with only a handful of books on a single desk, and several chairs arranged around it. There were cushioned chairs around a fireplace. No windows, so has a chandelier. Walls are painted, and there are carpets, and the colors are ivory, celadon green, delicate yellow. There's a relief running the length of the wall where it meets the ceiling, of a hunt chasing a single basilisk. It smells of sweet beeswax and ink.

The Chancellor's office is on the opposite side of the palace from Nuera's apartments.

Library

Tall ceilings with lancet windows, clear-paned. Shelves are dark, fragrant wood with leather-bound tomes, some as old as Settlement. Here and there, narrow wooden tables for setting out larger books. A dais (a short step up to it) under a half-cupola, lined in more lancet windows topped with cinquefoils.

The library is next to the Queen's wing.

Blue Room

The smaller of the formal receiving rooms is called the Blue Room. An interior room on the first floor, windowless and without skylights. Stone walls and floors, no tapestries, and only two benches pushed against the walls. Raised chair for the Empress at the end. Possibly the same as what's called the throne room in Rose Point: a narrow gallery ending in the Queen's seat, a room small enough for thirty people, meant for petitioners and envoys and the business of governance.

Ballroom

The ballroom is a short distance from the audience chamber, and both are implied to be distant from the wing of the palace where Asaniefa had been housed. It can hold some four hundred people.

Directly above the ballroom on the top floor, there is an oriel window made of clear or faintly-tinted stained glass depicting flowers. It faces the sea.

It is unclear whether the ballroom is the same thing as the throne room described in Farmer's Crown or the Great Hall that's for times when the entirety of the ruling class needs to meet before their Queen, described in Rose Point.

The Office of Muniments

Where legal documents are maintained and filed. Presumably this is one of the places overseen by the little mentioned Senior Registrar of the Home Office. This room is adjacent to the Astronomer's Chamber and shares a wall with what used to be the Chancellor's office.

The Astronomer's Chamber

A round room adjacent to the chapel.

Palace Chapel

There is a chapel in the palace. There is access to the catacombs from its storeroom.

The Swords Salle and Barracks

The salle is a round room floored in wood with clerestory windows. The changing rooms and armory are next to one another at one end of the salle, and a corridor leading to the palace on the other. The barracks is off that corridor, as well as the mess.

During the coup, the White Swords were using a more modest wing of the palace, with lower ceilings and less-expensive furniture. Presumably this was "their" wing, containing the salle and barracks.

Servants' Halls

There are servants' corridors that exit near the postern gate, which is near Jisiensire's townhouse.

The servants' corridors along the exterior wall are a little narrow and very plain, but otherwise unremarkable. The interior ones, on the other hand, are extremely narrow, and no one uses them by choice.

Doors to the servants' halls are painted to look just like the rest of the corridor. The decor is plain, but the walls have moldings and paint. The floors are wood rather than stone.

Catacombs

Presumably, the Vaults where the Families keep their jewels and the various other treasures, like swords, are located below ground in the catacombs?

No one knows who carved them and for what purpose, but there are catacombs under most of the capital, with the most extensive ones under the palace and cathedral, near the sea cliff. They have been in use since Landing, and there are still signs of occupancy even in the most desolate corners.

From the palace, there is access via a narrow stairwell. The palace catacombs can also be accessed from the chapel storeroom. From outside the palace, there is a maze of tunnels, high corridors carved out of the dirt and shored up with wooden beams, which leads to the stone catacombs. There is also access from a hole in the sea cliff, six stories above the beach; the hole opens onto a narrow, craggy cave, which leads to a maze of passages, some so tiny as to scrape those who squirm through them. There is a spot where a climb of half a body-length leads to a space that's directly below the servant's quarters.

The catacombs are cold, damp, and moldy stone, and in every nook, there is the occasional whistle of the sea wind.

The High Priest traditionally kept his office in the catacombs beneath the Cathedral, but Val could not stand to work there.

Grounds

Situation of the palace, 2020 draft

There's a big lake. There are cliffs. Beyond the lake there are woods with copses and things.

Staff

Liolesa's Reign

• Kitchens
  • Maraleith
• Pages
  • Thevenel (needs a family name)
• Guards
  • Palace Guards
  • White Swords