Prytaneum House

Prytaneum House

The **Prytaneum House** is a haven within the City for those who need it. The building itself is an extensive brick and terra cotta edifice with a small coach house off the side located in Uptown. Owned and managed by Hester Casella, it is a busy center of civic projects, causes of all stripes, and excruciatingly localized information distribution. It is also home to any and all who need a safe place to rest their head and find shelter. It is always warm in Prytaneum House, always a small fire going in the numerous fireplaces, tended by fierce-eyed girls, shadow-quiet youths, and grim-serious women. It is only quiet in the deep reaches of the night, and never quite still.

## Main Building

The **main building** of Prytaneum House is an extensive brick and terra cotta edifice on the now less-fashionable side of Uptown, with a small coach house off the side and just enough greenery to give it breathing room from neighbors. While the whole effect is an elegant one, it has a sort of grown-and-changed quality that makes it more approachable than many of the other mansions in the area. There is no grand entrance, just a short flight of steps up to a small portico, crowned with acanthus leaves and the figuration of an oil lamp on the pediment. Soft cream mosaic floors with wreaths and laurels open into a wide wood-paneled foyer with coffered ceilings, passages and stairs off to the various wings.

Prytaneum House is also a busy center of civic projects, causes of all stripes, and excruciatingly localized information distribution. It's classes and mentors, and skills learned through hard work. It's the centering that comes from kneading bread, and knowing the precise arc of an effective hammer strike to a nail.

It's a long table set with excellent, hearty repasts, prepared with great care and concerted effort. It's dinner parties where rivals come together to oil the complex machinery of the City over good wine, sharp conversation, and multiple courses. Prytaneum House gets things done.

It is a haven for those who have left their homes far away, or have never found a home to hold them. A sanctum for those haunted, hunted, harrowed by the cruelties of the world. A place to heal, rest, and reconnect with the elemental stuff of life - food, fire, shelter. It's a sanctum. It's the Hearth.

### Hester's Rooms

**Hester's Rooms** are down the hall is a simple, unmarked white door. Inside is a small parlor, clearly not used at all in the fashion of the upstairs rooms for entertaining. This is a private space, a sanctum in warm ash gray and white, lightly finished wooden board floor and a few rugs, one small leather sofa, a velvet-covered armchair draped in a crocheted blanket. A few small paintings and drawings are framed on the wall next to one massive, nearly-full bookshelf. Of course, the fireplace is central, and on the mantelpiece a fascinating collection of oddments, trinkets, small sculptures, a large seashell, a carven owl, a silver feather, a bird's skull, an antler, and a small armillary sphere in gold and silver. It's a space made to retreat to.

Through a set of French doors, is a simple, just-shy-of austere white bedroom and a small but elegant full bath done in white marble. There's another door in the parlor, made in unfinished, rough-hewn wood, with an old bronze handle. It's closed, and not quite out of place. While the rooms are comfortable, they are hardly the sort of place one would imagine for the mistress of the house.

* Prytaneum House
* Entryway of Prytaneum House
* Hestia Private parlor.jpgHester's private parlor
* Prytaneumfoyer.jpgThe foyer of Prytaneum House
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## Associated NPCs

* **Agata Sokolowska** was Hestia's first acolyte in America and Viktor's mother. Her son, Viktor, continues to serve in a similar capacity. Deceased.
* **Andrea** is a young transgender woman with a street gang background and a serious dedication to keeping secrets. She's a better cook than housekeeper.
* **Angelo Martinelli** is an Italian man in his thirties, worked as Hestia's driver until he moved out to San Francisco with his girl.
* **Aristide Norton** is a 17-year-old runaway living at Prytaneum House. The highly charismatic African-American teenager needs a job and loves baseball. He has a real talent for showing up everywhere.
* **Babe Ruth** is one of the Baseball Kittens that were born under Gale's bed in the Boy's Main Dormitory. Babe Ruth's siblings have since been adopted out, but Aristide took a shine to the tortoiseshell and persuaded Hester to keep her around. She's about a year old now and very full of mischief, prone to tumbling off of tables and zooming off across various rooms when she gets spooked by her own tail. She really likes Khadija, and it's good she's not great at jumping up on counters or the kitchen would have a real problem. She sleeps on Aristide's head, or on Nora's feet, depending on who closed their door latest.
* **Berlioz** is a musically inclined, somewhat portly tuxedo cat. Very devoted to Oz, and enjoys snoozing on him while he plays piano. Duchess' kitten.
* **D'Artagnan** is a well-groomed long-haired tuxedo cat who comes and goes, and nobody quite knows whether he lives at the House, or somewhere else and just strolls by now and then to take a nap, score some snacks, and bestow a little affection. He tends to gravitate to new people, and really small kids. D'Artagnan is a wizard. *Dai sti'ho, Cousins.*
* **Dascha Belsky** is a Russian immigrant in her late 20s who fled her abusive husband and is now a resident of Prytaneum House who helps as kitchen staff. Her English is steadily improving and, like Khadija, she has nice flowered headscarves. Her sister lives near Daisy Duke's Diner.
* **Dmitri Belsky** is 7-year-old Dascha's child with tight, dark curls and green eyes; is absolutely trouble at the House.
* **Dorothy Morton** is a young black woman in her early 20s learning to be a housekeeper and cook, though better at the former than the latter. It's unknown whether she is deaf or has selective mutism, but it's unquestionable that she is wildly competent and has had a rough time finding work.
* **Duchess** is a perfectly ladylike fluffy white cat with a fantastic tail. Former denizen of Argyle-Hughes Manor, then Prytaneum House, now Chez Harper-Prince.
* **Eleni Stefanidis** is a young Greek woman doesn't speak much English, though she is a quick study and not easily fazed by anything on top of good training in *relevant history* from her grandmother. She's an exceptional cook with a little too much attention to detail for a position in a large house. With beginnings at Prytaneum House, she has since accepted a position as Athena's housekeeper.
* **Estelle Sanders** was a piano teacher in her twenties at Prytaneum House until she up and left last year who dated and then ghosted Oz Harper.
* **Gregory** is a ginger tabby with fantastic timing and reigning queen of Prytaneum House. Named after a ginger-haired milkman who possibly found her.
* **Ivan Máselník** is a 20-something veteran of Slavic descent living at Prytaneum House who was injured in the War. His mother is poorly and they've had a falling out over Ivan's romantic preferences.
* **Karolina Máselník** is a Slavic immigrant in her mid-50s from a military family whose her estranged son, Ivan, was injured in the war. Though brusque and taciturn, she is efficient, with reliable and plain cooking.
* **Khadija Ahmad** is the main cook at Prytaneum House and an immigrant from the Middle East, she's been with the House at least 10 years. Khadija has lovely headscarves and likely knows the truth of Hester Casella and her family. There's family troubles in the widow's background. She's in her late 50s.
* **Mariana Olivetti** is an immensely-opinionated widow in her mid-sixties, a former resident of Prytaneum House, and now the main housekeeper. She does 'the rounds' checking on folks in the care network and her shopping at the same market as Lucia Agosti.
* **Marzipan** is a lazy baby and professional lap cat. Gregory's kitten, mostly lives in the Prytaneum House sunroom.
* **Mrs. Feng** is a totally terrifying tiny Chinese woman in her late sixties teaches ladies' self-defense at Prytaneum House, size be damned.
* **Nora Greenberg** is a stressed twenty-six-year-old who teaches piano at Prytaneum House. She's a member of the housekeeping staff and the girls' dormitory captain.
* **Pip** is the carriage house's silver tabby and is good at sitting on fellas who are having a tough moment and falling off tables humorously.
* **Raymond Powell** is a mixed race man in his forties who works as a handyman and groundskeeper at Prytaneum House.
* **Siobhan O'Connor** is Khadija's sixteen-year-old assistant cook of Irish descent who has been at the House a year or so. Her family is no longer in the picture and though she wants to be a flapper, she is quite bad at wearing heels.
* **Viola** is a fancy-looking lavender point Siamese who hates most men and belonged to one of Hester's Society Lady friends, until her daughter developed an allergy.

#### Viktor Sokolowski

   **Viktor Sokolowski** is **Hester's** driver, and knows the City and its people incredibly well. The sort of guy who runs errands for old ladies and does odd maintenance jobs for shopkeeper friends on his days off, when he's not going to the library. Born and raised in Prytaneum House, where his mother (deceased) was housekeeper. Sworn acolyte of Hestia. Hobbies include book repair and binding, baking, rescuing lost kittens and kids, and fixing cars.

### NPC Gallery

* Aristide Norton
* Babe Ruth
* Berlioz
* D'Artagnan
* Dascha and Dmitri Belsky
* Duchess
* Gregory, Boss Cat of Prytaneum House
* Khadija Ahmad
* Marzipan
* Nora Greenberg
* Percival Ignatius Pipsqueak (Pip)
* Siobhan O'Connor
* Viktor Sokolowski
* Viola
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