Secrets of Faydwer – Unfolding the Lore: Part 4


Meldrath's Majestic Mansion

Meldrath's Majestic Mansion sits atop the massive flying fortress called Mechanotus. The mansion is a marvel of metal, beautiful yet harsh and hard. There are few concessions to comfort in this place. Steam, oil and water pipes line the walls and act as support pillars for arching galleries and servants quarters alike. Gears and rivets can be seen on the walls and ceilings. The surfaces are metal panels and everything echoes with the sound of metal meeting metal. And yet the place has a powerful beauty to it that even the most conservative Koada'Dal will recognize.

There is more to Meldrath's Mansion than its appearance. There are secrets hidden there, some of which can be discovered by simple exploration. The more interesting secrets are told through stories or legends. It is said that Meldrath built his mansion to be a terrible walking steamwork in its own right. He intended to crush Ak'Anon and then rest his own mansion on the bones of the city where he was born.

Meldrath's plan failed when he brought his mansion up onto its two splayed feet. It stood there for several minutes before collapsing under its own weight. No harm came to the mansion, so strongly was it built and magically protected, but many were crushed under the device or killed inside when it fell. Meldrath eliminated any living servants and slaves that witnessed his failure or so claim the few that escaped.

Today the mansion is again fully staffed with brownie slaves, minotaur slavers and of course a large and frightening variety of steamworks. A steamwork is a modified clockwork. Meldrath, never satisfied with anything that comes from Ak'Anon, has added a steam power source to his clockworks that supplants the wind-up power source (which is used as a backup system). This has made his new steamworks a lot faster and stronger. It has also made them a lot less reliable.

For tasks that his steamworks can't attend to, such as climbing inside dangerous machinery to clean or repair them, Meldrath has enslaved several generations of brownies. Many of these poor creatures have come to believe that the life they live now is the life they were meant for. They dress in patchwork rags and maintain their tribal markings, but use grease to paint themselves rather than berry juice. There is a small rebel faction hiding in the steam tunnels below the mansion, but their lives are constantly at risk from clockworks specifically sent into the small tunnels to hunt them down.

Anyone stepping foot in Meldrath's Magnificent Mansion must be very bold, for death awaits the unwanted visitor, with their last vision being that of glowing red eyes and a feeling of heat mixed with the smell of oil and grease.




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