Magpie Manor

A solid and ornate building of marble and tile, Magpie Manor is a popular gathering place for the wealthy and cultured of the Petals. Run by a pair of retired actors, the manor allows anyone with decent manners and formal attire to become a patron for the princely sum of 250gp a month. A patron may bring small parties of guests to the manor at any time, lounge in its many dens and gardens, eat light fare, and listen to young performers work to perfect their art. The manor also serves as a kind of retirement for many older performers, who can no longer stand the rigors of a wandering minstrel or formal stage performer but have the fame, talent, or notoriety to amuse the indolent rich with a few choice lines or favored song. The retired performers, called "domos," share share the profit of the manor and do very little actual work. They do, however, take on a few students each, who in return work very hard to amuse patrons in return for receiving free educations in the arts from many of the great masters of Absalom. Most revered of all the performers is Qia Xin, the Flawless Poet. A blind man from Tian Xia, Qia Xin is known throughout the Inner Sea as the greatest of all living poets. Well more than a century old, he sets from time to time in the Lotus Garden behind Magpie Manor and plays his odd 5-string lap harp and composes poems about every imaginable subject. He never copies down or repeats his poems, and may be struck to create them at any hour day or night. Patrons often enjoy sitting and listening to him, but even when no one else is around, younger performers at the manor listen and record his stanzas on life, death, love, magic, and the death of gods. It is said the best works of Qia Xin have made dragons forgo treasure, assassins give up killing, wizards turn to farming, and tears come to Primarch Gyr.