crowschild | Thorn Hall

Description

The entire estate: The driveway/road is flanked by a grove of blackthorn trees full of ravens, crows and magpies all of them watching people coming down. To the left of the driveway is an orchard of various fruit trees, including apples and peaches and nuts. To the right are fields. The Hall itself is in a large yard with a chicken coop on the right side of the building and across the yard is a large barn with fenced in areas for sheep, cows and horses. Continuing past the barn is a pond. Continuing beyond the yard to the left is the Rose Maze, the whiskey still and well. Beyond that is the Watching Woods where deep inside are the Watchers. Further to the left is the pastures.

Scattered hidden about the edges of the estate are markers that mark the ends of the land and its wards.

Thorn Hall - the building - is a ramshackle looking, two story building made out of stone and looks like it should have fallen down ages ago. Any sort of safety inspectors would have condemned it years ago. The inside of the house is much better looking and also much bigger.

Upon entering the Hall on the person's direct right is a staircase that leads up for three stories (despite there only being two stories on the outside) and the living area spreads out before the entrance. Beyond that is a dinning room (both rooms taking up what should be the entire bottom of the house) but there's a third room, the kitchen, beyond the dinning room. To the left is the entrance to the library and then another closed door - the way into the armory. Inside the armory is another that leads to the Vault where all the dangerous magical Things are kept. Only a few people have the key to the Vault.

The library tends to shift around depending on random factors. Book shelves vanishing and reappearing, as well as books doing the same thing. Most of the books are written in Gaelic and they tend to fall into magic, monsters, history and strategy guides. As well as genealogies of the McCallums.

The kitchen is pretty large, with a rough wooden table big enough for a family of thirteen right on the inside. The rest of the kitchen is a mix of modern and old. The sink and counters are old, the fridge is new. Herbs, dried meat, pots and pans hung over a long center islands. The windows open out and look into the yard, in the distance the rose maze and Whiskey still.

On the second and third floor are bedrooms and on top of that the attic. The attic, much like the library, has things that come and go as they please. There are enough bedrooms for each McCallum as well as a few guest rooms. The joys of having a magical house.

Some of the windows don't actually look out into the outside but instead into different parts of fairy.

the Rose Maze The rose maze holds the heart of the Hall, where the altar to the Morrigan is and the spirit of the Hall is located. The altar is covered with dried hand prints made of blood and an ancient knife coated in dried blood. The rose maze is the sort that eats people. If the wrong person goes into the maze they will be attacked and eaten. Only the McCallum can go into the maze with relative safety.

Watching Woods Deep within these woods are the Watchers, the standing stones that the McCallums watch. The stones lead into fairy and it's the McCallums job (among other things) to make sure that things that shouldn't get in, get in and things that shouldn't get out, get out.