Night Island, Sonoma Compound and
The Talamasca Motherhouse
NIGHT ISLAND, a pleasure complex just off the shores of Miami in the state of Florida. The island is five glass stories of shops, theaters, restaurants, lounges and clubs. A wide variety of items are available in the boutiques, including diamonds, Oriental rugs, porcelain dolls and designer fashions. Five films play nightly in the cinemas, and the restaurants represent crusine from numerous countries. The public areas are ornamented by sparkling fountains and flower beds, and are serviced by glass elevators and silver escalators. The island is accessible by boat from Miami and is only open from sunset to sunrise.
The complex was designed and built by the vampire Armand as a way to mingle among mortal folk. A private three-story villa exists alongside the public mall, accessible through a steel door discreetly wedged between two shops. The villa is filled with broad rectangular rooms adorned with medieval tapestries, antique chandeliers, Renaissance paintings, and electronic equipment. Floor-length windows, broad balconies and terraces offer excellent views of the harbor. A private stairway leads down to the cellar, where a steel-lined crypt awaits, sheltering a coffin in which a vampire may sleep.
The villa was briefly inhabited in 1985 by a coven of the eldest and most powerful vampires, such as the infamous Lestat de Lioncourt.
(Anne Rice, Queen of the Damned, New York, 1988)
SONOMA COMPOUND, an immense complex outside the town of Santa Rosa, California. The compound is the home of the ancient vampire Maharet, serving as a library from which she maintains meticulous records of the Great Family, her mortal descendants.
The compound is buried deep within the California redwood forest, accessible by a single treacherous unpaved road. The building itself is constructed of adobe with redwood roof timbers measuring some twelve feet in girth. Round iron hearths are scattered throughout the compound, warming the large rooms filled with animal-skin rugs, hanging quilts and ancient artifacts. The back end of the complex is carved into the mountain, housing libraries, a movie theater, and a crude observatory with a brass telescope. A secret room deep within the rock shelters a computer display of the complete six-thousand year lineage of the Great Family, tracing back to Maharet herself.
A conference room rests at the very top of the complex, the walls entirely glass with a distant iron chimney at the furthest end. An oval table rests in the middle of the room. Here the final confrontation between Akasha and the surviving vampires occurred. Akasha was the Queen of the Damned, home to the demonic lifeforce that sustained all vampires. In 1985 she killed the majority of immortals on earth, leaving a select few who gathered in this room to prepare for her arrival. Akasha was killed by Maharet's sister Mekare, who then became the new Queen.
(Anne Rice, Queen of the Damned, New York, 1988)
TALAMASCA MOTHERHOUSE, a large stone structure four miles outside London, England. The Talamasca is an organization responsible for documenting paranormal activity, and have set up a number of headquarters around the world in which its members may live and work comfortably. The London Motherhouse has been in the possession of the Talamasca for the past two hundred years, though constructed in the 1500's. There are four stories to the building, encompassing a variety of reading rooms, libraries, and living quarters. The libraries were constructed during the 18th century, while the dining room and many of the bedchambers date back to the Elizabethan period. All of the rooms are warmly lighted, with stone fireplaces and gleaming oak floors.
Beneath the building are a number of museums in which the Talamasca house a substantial collection of artifacts, all connected with the supernatural in some way. Vaults accessible only by the eldest members of the order house paraphernalia connected with vampires. One of these items is a magnificent painting by the elder vampire Marius, a work titled The Temptation of Amadeo.
Deeper than these treasures is a place rarely visited, a deep pit into which traitors to the order are thrown and then left to die. The lucky ones die on impact, others survive the fall only to dehydrate and starve amongst the corpses of previous occupants.
(Anne Rice, Queen of the Damned, New York, 1988; Anne Rice, The Tale of the Body Thief, New York, 1992; Anne Rice, Taltos, New York, 1994)
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