EDIT, 10/29/2016: Please note that the information in this thread is no longer current.

The following is a list of locations, businesses and the like, associated with House DeMuer.

(The following location description, the italicized portion, is no longer current as of mid-July 2008.)

The West End was a natural choice for S.P.I.'s office. It was rife with corruption, blossoming with crime, poverty... and growth. Word would take time to get out, but once it did, D'Mourir felt confident the business would never stop. Still, he took a night security job to make ends meet until the winds changed. One did what one had to.

If the building were American, it would have been placed at the height of the Industrial Revolution. It was basic and efficient, the shop windows on the sides of the front half of the first floor a recent addition, the bricks around them more recently laid than all the rest... mortar a brighter white. In the absence of concrete and steel, neatly laid bricks were the next best thing, two stories of them. "Province Plaza," was printed in a gold-trimmed red cursive on the window above the revolving door. A black sign with white plastic letters showed more curious passerby what stores were inside:

Inkwell Used & Rare Books 1A
Giorgio's Bistro 1B
Austen Tea & Accessories 1C
Sentinel Private Investigation 2A

It had its charm, and while the locals came in a trickle, Inkwell, Giorgio's and Austen's all had their loyal fanbases, small but dedicated, coming in periodically from all over Rhy'Din. It was private enough for their clientele to feel comfortable conducting their business at S.P.I., but public enough to gain attention. That was D'Mourir's thinking, anyway.

The upstairs hallway consisted of storage rooms, a couple of offices for the owner and his small staff, and the headquarters of D'Mourir and De Vernon at the end of the hallway, their door only ten feet from the ugly metal door of the emergency exit. Their door was wooden, the large window on it frosted glass, the shapes beyond it mere blurs. Printed in black lettering on the window was,

SENTINEL PRIVATE INVESTIGATION
Security & Investigation Contracts

Alain D'Mourir
Cassandra De Vernon

The interior was dark, with varnished wood paneled walls and two big wooden desks, ceiling lights with broad green cone-shaped shades and green carpet the same shade as a pool table?s felt, black filing cabinets in one corner, and a table with a coffee maker and the remains of whatever D?Mourir and De Vernon had been eating that day at the other end of the room. A door was behind each of their desks, one room for weapons, the other for more private meetings. Several wooden chairs, though only the investigators? swiveled.

His first day on the job, his first shift, D?Mourir knew would be boring? but he savored it. He sat his black telephone on one corner of his desk, crossed his legs, propped his feet at the edge of his desk, and enjoyed silence that was complete but for the ticking of a clock on the wall. After some minutes? meditation, he stretched, sighed, and reached for the telephone. Even if no one came to him, he would conduct business on the first day.

Province Plaza has burned. The SPI offices are completely burned out, and while fire damage to the first floor is being repaired, slowly but surely, an entire wall is missing from the tea shop downstairs due to the handywork of a pair of Truebloods, a certain ex-Marine, and an old Soviet tank. "Sentinel Private Investigation" has been removed from the black sign with white lettering, as the other businesses in the building do their best to return to normal.

A few posters direct potential SPI clientele to the business's new address, also in the West End.

The Silver Mark Pub & Brewery

The Silver Mark is a pub located in Dragon's Gate, near the edge of Old Market. It has the look of and old British or Irish pub - two stories of old bricks, many of them glazed, that was at one point a home, and it presumably functioned only as a house until Alain bought it. The colors are dark but cozy inside and out, with hunter green shutters and doors, a side yard on the left (when facing the building from the road) with a low brick fence and two old willow trees, and a fire escape on the other side that skirts around the chimney. The front door is on the right half of the building with a simple but handsomely painted wooden sign over it - "The Silver Mark."

Going in through the front door, the right-most quarter of the room is the most open, extending all the way to the back wall of the building. There is a fireplace with a few chairs, though they are most often turned to face the pool table and the dart board - a place for people to sit and be warm while they take a moment to watch their friends play. On the front wall several feet to the right of the door, inside the "Corner" (as that quarter of the bar is called), is a chalkboard with various results and rankings from pug, pegasi races, the duels, and occasionally other sports.

Close to the bar, in the back left of the Corner, is the cellar door. It is almost always locked. The only things seen coming out of there during business hours are kegs and bottles, when they are needed.

Running most of the other three quarters of the floor, against the back wall, is the bar. It is heavy and wooden, and a bit darker than the counter in the Red Dragon, matching the similarly shaded floorboards, tables and chairs. The bar's antique but refurbished, as are the Vienna swivel bar stools. A mirror runs the length of the back bar, interrupted by a couple of doors and another smaller chalkboard, this one reserved for current games and matches - a single radio sits on the back bar to keep the bartender or whoever's in charge of the chalk updated.

Several ales are kept on tap, and as long as Badsider keeps brewing and selling, there's always Badsider to be had at the Silver Mark. The liquor selection does not have anything the imagination can conjure by a long shot, but the selection of rum, vodka, bourbon and scotch is impressive, as well as numerous red wines, and only a few token white wines kept in small supply.

The doors behind the bar lead into the kitchen, supply room, and the brewery, three attractively antique (or at least antique-looking) copper machines that produce Silver Mark Pale, Amber, and Black Lager.

Along the front wall across from the bar are several booths, and near the left wall some larger tables. The left wall is more recently built than the rest of the building and has a single door on the front corner, most often kept locked. It leads to the stairwell to the second floor where Alain lives, and also the small hallway to the side door.

Kaldi Gourmet Coffee Imports is a small shop at the edge of the RhyDin Marketplace, a narrow two-story white brick building with two stories and a large glass window on the first floor, showing burlap sacks of coffee lined up, open to allow the aromas to waft out through the front door which is left open in nicer weather. Over the window is a long rectangular sign, painted black with white lettering - Kaldi Gourmet Coffee Imports - and to the left and right side, the silhouettes of goats dancing on their hind legs.

The front room is crowded, a single counter with a register, a stool, and all the appliances for making a cup of coffee behind it, and much of the rest of the floorspace is occupied with coffee, each sack labeled in a different language with its own distinct scent, and posted on the counter on a long poster is the selection with prices.

Kaldi offers coffee from this world and others, cheap and exorbitant, focused most of all on variety. While one can go in for a cup of coffee, a latte, an espresso, or any of a number of other drinks, the shop's primary goal is to sell coffee in bulk.

(Cross posted from the thread in Kitty's folder.)

Sainte-Ouen

Sainte-Ouen is a small fishing village about ten or fifteen miles from the village of Esp?rance, nearly as hilly as her sister village and located on the eastern edge of a cove, with the sea to the west. Navigating there by land or sea is nearly as difficult as reaching Esp?rance itself, but if one is told the way, he could theoretically sail back and forth between Sainte-Ouen and RhyDin City, which is what the small village's economy thrives on. Lobsters are fished from their plentiful habitats in the rocky cove and the sea beyond, and many are sent by boat to be sold in RhyDin City.

The village is home to only a dozen wooden houses, one of which doubles as a schoolhouse, and an abbey, a mix of old brick and new, rebuilt from ruins found on the site by settlers from Esp?rance. The beach is narrow and rather rocky, but stretches of sand are ideal for lounging on when the weather permits. House DeMuer owns a beach-house here towards the southern end of the cove, modest but large enough to entertain guests, with a large deck facing the water.

On the northern end of the cove, not far from the abbey, is another house nestled into the hills, a large cabin that serves as a retreat for the Knights of the Holy Order of Saint Aldwin, responsible for protecting the Barony of Saint Aldwin and House DeMuer itself.

The springs are cool and the summers are mild, but the autumns and winters are chilly, rarely freezing.

Greyshott Place is a rather upscale old townhouse located in the West End, legally owned neither by Alain himself nor S.P.I. nor DeMuer Exports, but by House DeMuer itself. It is a handsome brick building with a walled-and-gated courtyard in the front, and like an increasing number of House properties it is protected by various enchantments to help ward off surveillance and destruction.

The house is named for the Greyshott family that used to own it, a very powerful West End family long ago, and long since broken and scattered. It was aquired in the "proto-history" of House DeMuer, when Alain was gathering and organizing his resources to prepare for his betrayal of the DCH law firm, but arguably also setting up for the formation of the House in the anticipated aftermath of the conflict. Given the numerous rooms in the tall, skinny building, it served as a home for Amir Wong's sniper teams among others and also as a safehouse the night that what was to become House DeMuer betrayed and confronted DCH.

Since then it has served as a nice West End location for political meetings and both temporary and permanent housing for House DeMuer members. It is rumored to have a basement and even a sub-basement, but these remain unconfirmed.

The Barony of Saint Aldwin is located on the island of Teodin, approximately forty miles from east to west at the widest point, and fifty miles from north to south at the longest point. It is a heavily forested, mountainous island with a rather cool climate, and there are several others like it in this stretch of the ocean on the world of Drasill.

A derivative of the Norse Yggdrasil, Drasill is slightly smaller than most parallel Earths accessible from RhyDin. According to the Atren Council it has been rated a Class IV Cross-Realms World, with Class I having very few rifts and only limited access to subparallel worlds, and Class VI being equated with places such as RhyDin. As a Class IV, Drasill has access to between ten and fifty worlds, and "the stability of 90% or more of the rifts is projected to last upwards of 104.8 Standard years."

The planet is a growing trade hub, and the only formal state present (the Barony of Saint Aldwin) has no formal alliances but has established numerous trade connections offworld, with traffic passing through the planet's stable rifts and gates. To date there remains no evidence of sentient life on the planet outside the Barony's jurisdiction.