Post by VINCENT SILVER-MOON on May 6, 2017 17:03:22 GMT -5
In Scotland near Inverness is a frith of water known as the Beauly frith (Known for it's active sea life). High enough north for the aurora and some wonderful sunsets, it's a mix of rural and urban with most of the rural higher up in the hills above. Hidden in those upper lands, there is a small lake at the foot of fairly inaccessible areas that is listed as private property for several hundred years. On that lake with it's back against the mountain and it's feet in the water is a rather remarkable house sticking out into the lake itself. This is the home of the Moon family (currently known as the Silver Moons through a rather complex naming situation in the current generation), an old family with it's roots in the Magic world's commerce since the twelfth century.
While the house is Chinese in looks, the family curiously has no Asian blood in it, but it's history in the orient is steep in trading, dealing, importation, and privateering. An early on pirate family, their success at dealing out destruction and raiding in the Scottish waters was helped by this lake in particular. Using a magic which connected the lake and the frith together for passage, they were able to disappear frequently from the local ocean and unload their ill-gotten goods in safety. As the knowledge about places in the world expanded, one of the family ancestors found a way to expand this magic into other areas allowing them to skirt overland to the Gulf of Aiden from the Mediterranean (A very deep under-channel provided a perfect access for the magic to use). Using these shortcuts (long before anyone else had thought of making a passage) the family wealth (spices) increased suddenly in multiples.
Over time, this turned from pirating to privateering, then added trading and importation into the mix as a cover for darker pursuits. Over the centuries, investment in their home and spending their wealth carefully (hoarders in a way) meant long influence in Scottish government and in the eventual Ministry of Magic to keep their family and its interests safe. Never interested in being in the news, they became quietly known as background operators and in the nineteenth century this has translated into political power and more wealth. With heavy investments in shipping, commerce, and international connections, movers and shakers in the Ministry find them a puzzle for their non-social stance keeps them out of the limelight often. The current generations marriage to an Egyptian trading company has given them further lands and better routes.
The house sticks fully three-fourths of the way out into the lake with only the back garden entrance attached to the land. Hidden from muggle sight as well as unplottable, long founded enchantments prevent anyone but from the family itself from being able to penetrate to the inside of the home. With several ships available off Scottish waters, the very few business dealings done in private are almost always on a ship elsewhere. The exterior reflects their long term interests and family connection to the exotic of the time and has another very important trait. The rooms of the house are not fixed nor in the same place like a mapped out home plan. Stepping through a hallway in one part of the house can lead into six overlapping hallways and six different sets of destinations.
Controlled and built with early and much more primitive (and often more powerful) magics, this sort of house could no longer be built today but it does allow the several hundred rooms to fit into a thirty room home. A set of wizarding ghosts (Bound from shipwrecks and other places to this site in addition to their own haunting) has also added to the unusual here as well as giving the house a certain amount of control. The most powerful of these is a ghost named Abraham (13 century head butler) who is able to close off parts of the house to certain individuals and allow the Head of the House to be the only one able to access everything. Rooms can be thus moved next to each other, children can be kept from perceiving dangerous things, and whole rooms can be devoted to storage on a grand scale. With their old history, this is a considerable deal making the space livable (maybe twenty rooms) and not packed to the gills with stashed treasures from many lands. There are a total of eight wizarding ghosts in the house and the water surrounding it.
It also means a place to explore which feels limitless with so many possibilities for the kids!
Physically, the house interior is a courtyard of half water and half garden with underwater gates preventing lake fish (and anything else) from swimming inside the house interior. The majority of rooms are around the wall edged interior in a non-traditional courtyard, nearly a five sided shape. There are three entrances into this middle part of the house from which access to the rest is then given in multiple points. From the garden gate on the land side leading through an outside wall hall into the main courtyard is the main one. Others include by small boat through a small grotto gate and by flying in to a landing pad on the roof. A small rooftop stair leads down into a corner of the side court though it is well concealed as is the pad. Only those who know where it is can land on it easily.