Pagoda of Infinite Strategy

The Pagoda of Infinite Strategy is a Solar Manse 10 miles south of Mishaka. Built on the site of The Vitreous Fulcrum, the demense here formed in an explosion of First Age weaponry during the war with Thorns. The Pagoda sits in a valley of the rolling Marukani hills, open to the plains on the west, and a solid stone road leads deeper into the hills and to the Plum Blossom Retreat some 70 miles to the east.

A nine-story pagoda with swooping eaves of lacquered red, the nearly 70-meter tall building stands in the middle of a wide lake of smooth, polished glass. The glass reflects the sun's light up into the burnished gold plates that line the undersides of the eaves, lighting the Pagoda's interior in rich, natural light. "Floating" as an island on the glass is a small, open-walled shrine with the same swooping red eaves, supported by eight pillars, as the Pagoda itself. A series of smooth stones are set into the lake as a walkway from the Pagoda's door, and members of the The Qinglong Alliance regularly walk the path to light incense to the shrine's patron (and theirs), Sweet Voice of Brass and Glory.

A tall stone rampart circles the lake, broken only by a gatehouse, almost identical in design to the shrine, standing on the shore. The gatehouse has no guards, only a red jade statue of a lion dog, nearly six feet high, in the center. Crossing through the gatehouse brings one to a thin stone walkway that spans the glass lake like a bridge and leads to the Pagoda's main gate.

Just inside the Pagoda's gate is a screened foyer for discrete entrance, but the rest of the first story is given over to an open-chambered audience hall. A banner for each member of the circle hangs on its own wall, as well as a banner for the circle united and one for the Unconquered Sun, and a series of tables can be linked into different configurations - either in a circle to meet with equals or as a platform to meet with lessers. The Pagoda's kitchen is kept discretely out of sight on the second floor, like any good logistical center.

The third and fourth floors are set aside as a school of war, with a wide array of maps and strategic and tactical treatises contained in its library. This includes not only The Thousand Correct Actions of the Upright Soldier and The Military Methods of Tepet Arada, but also extensive descriptions of the formations of every military fielded in the Scavenger Lands. Meanwhile, the fifth and sixth floors are barracks for the the Qinglong Alliance and The Zhuque Brotherhood - though not grand, they're better appointed than an average unit's space - and the seventh floor serves as an apartment and office for Cathak Nekuto.

The manse's eighth floor is Storm of Amber's suite of rooms. The Zenith has decorated his home in Marukani fashion, with thick, wool blankets draped over the floor, caligraphied landscapes on the walls and a variety of instruments and trophies of past battles on stands, including:

• the great warclub of Shouting With Iron.
• the blue jade direlance of Peleps Deled
• the red jade daiklaive of Mayhiros Ruja

The ninth, top floor is home to the main war room, which commands a masterful view of the surrounding country and a Lookshy-inspired heliograph capable of transmitting messages as far as the Plum Blossom Retreat or God Crossing. Lookouts, trained to use the heliograph, are always stationed here. Though the floor also contains Storm of Amber's personally-penned books of strategy, the war room's prize is a perfectly detailed 1:64 scale model of the surrounding 15 miles; the manse's hearthstone forms floating in the air above the model, as if it were the sun.

The Brass Lady's Home

The model of the Marukan hills that rests in the topmost story of the Pagoda of Infinite Strategy is perfect in every detail, including its miniature copy of the Pagoda itself, standing two inches high. This tiny replica is the doorway to the spiritual sanctum of Sweet Voice of Brass and Glory; those who wish to enter the sanctum, whether by invitation or force, must touch one of the miniature's gabled eaves, whereupon they find themselves shrinking down into the model until they stand at the Pagoda's gatehouse; the Pagoda of Infinite Strategy and Sweet Brass' sanctum are the same building.

As expected, the sanctum's interior is identical to the original Pagoda in almost every way. The first four floors house the same audience hall and training rooms and are decorated with the same banners, maps, weapons and armor. The ninth floor, with its racks of detailed maps of Creation and its council table, is likewise the same, and its windows scry out onto the fields of Creation, not those of a model.

It's only the middle floors that differ from the manse Rivers Between Us made. The barracks of the Qinglong Alliance and Zhuque Brotherhood, as well as the suite reserved for Cathak Nekuto, stand empty and waiting for visitors or an expected staff. The eighth story, where Storm of Amber's suite should be, is an apartment for Sweet Brass.

A visitor leaves the sanctum the same way he entered it: by ascending to the top floor of the Pagoda and touching the minature building contained there. The leaving comes with the same sense of shrinking until the visitor is again standing at the gatehouse. The implications should be obvious: once a person enters Sweet Brass' sanctum, he never leaves. He only wraps himself further in the folds of infinite strategy.

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Heaven's Mandate