The Blue Manse is a guest house located at the edge of shang territory in Bin-Er. It is made entirely of ice, a grand polar residence that fails to mimick Agna Qel'a's architectural traditions.[1]
History
When Avatar Yangchen was seventeen, she and Boma, her guardian, visited Bin-Er on the Avatar's first official visit to one of the shang cities, and picked the Blue Manse to stay in.
One day, Kavik, an errand runner, broke into the Blue Manse looking for information for Qiu, an information broker. He stepped into one of the manse's thick ice walls, which he waterbent and reshaped in order to form a solid floor underneath to elevate himself and thus reach the third floor. Though he realized there were soldiers in one of the outer hallways patrolling around the place, his way up became slower and his body started to freeze in the process. When he managed to reach to a room in the third floor, ignoring it was the Avatar's chambers, Yangchen came in and caught him with a scroll in his hands. The Air Nomad screamed[1] and a pair of guards came running down the hallway to block the exit.[2]
Kavik hid behind Yangchen before he attempted to escape by breaking his fall with a liquefied section of the Blue Manse, plunging to a lower level. However, he got stuck in the first-floor ceiling, as the water solidified around one of his ankles while he tried to make his way down, leaving him dangling upside down in a reception area. When Kavik managed to free his ankle, he managed to subdue two guards, but was later captured by other four. Yangchen ordered her guards not to hurt the boy and take him to the basement as she wished to speak with him.[2]
Disobeying the Avatar's orders, the guards beat Kavik in the basement until they heard Yangchen coming down the stairs. Noticing the blood leaking from the corner of the waterbender's mouth, she fired the guards and asked them to leave. Once alone with the Yangchen, Kavik begged for forgiveness, claiming not to know he had broke into the the Avatar's chambers, but she knelt down in front of him to heal the frostbite on his hands. She then deduced the boy was an errand runner and decided to give him money, hoping to make him "less keen a burglar", before she let him go.[3]
After Kavik's intrusion, Masters Sidao and Boma decided to relocate with Yangchen to a new guest house.[4]
Layout and description
The Blue Manse is located at the edge of Bin-Er, next to a vast open field, bisected by the border of the Earth Kingdom proper. With a least three floors plus a basement, the Blue Manse is a square and chunky house built without consideration of the natural movements of melt and snowpack, and thus requires the regular employ of waterbenders to reshape and refreeze the walls. The icy walls are thick and intentionally opaque for privacy. One of the chambers, where Avatar Yangchen stayed at some point during her adolescence, is equipped with rich wooden furniture harvested and shaped from continental trees and its walls are insulated with foreign wool rugs. On a desk topped with a giant slab of polished obsidian, the Avatar kept her correspondence and a pile of books and scrolls that she studied.[1]
Known residents
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Yee, F. C. (author). (July 19, 2022). Chapter Two, "Voices of the Present". The Dawn of Yangchen. Amulet Books.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Yee, F. C. (author). (July 19, 2022). Chapter Three, "Flight". The Dawn of Yangchen. Amulet Books.
- ↑ Yee, F. C. (author). (July 19, 2022). Chapter Four, "Forgiveness". The Dawn of Yangchen. Amulet Books.
- ↑ Yee, F. C. (author). (July 19, 2022). Chapter Eight, "The Parade". The Dawn of Yangchen. Amulet Books.