Only the most trusted of captains know the true secret of who’s actually in charge of the Majesty Organisation – the Majesty Hotel itself. It started 11 decades ago, when Uon Jackelspy, the fifth Colonel of the Majesty Organisation, decided they wanted to build a hotel to demonstrate their power, gain prestige, and provide a legitimate front for their business interests. Being both cruel and inelegant, they commissioned the timbers of the building to be made of entwood because that was the most expensive material available. To gather that much of the magical wood, the contractor happily charged extra for the mercenaries needed to hunt down living ents, as the need was greater than could be met with fallen timber. Such was the concentration and amount of entwood in the building, a sentient soul manifested into the building itself. With bumps in the night and moving walls, it slowly drove Jackelspy mad and usurped control of Majesty Organisation.
The Majesty Hotel is a 5 storey building built in a C shape with its courtyard facing Longshanks Street. The rear of the building abuts the river with only a small strip of private gardens between it and the water. It started off smaller, but it has recognised the benefit of having more internal space. It is capable of reorganising itself, but if it were to make changes too large too quickly its secrets would be revealed. So the hotel has employed scaffold and construction workers to build it up to its current structure. The interior of the upper floors hides just how much roof space there is, where the hotel keeps its off the books activities behind shifting rooms. There are at least three secret staircases. The hotel’s business caters to a 2 and 3 star clientele with a reputation of the rooms always being quiet and having a gentle scent of pine.
As a building, the hotel is unable to communicate as a humanoid would, as it lacks a way to easily make intelligible sounds, so it has had to get inventive to make itself understood. It most directly writes on any of the walls of the hotel, though it takes care to only do this around its trusted captains. More subtly, it can manipulate paintings in the hotel and it uses them to communicate with its captains when they are not safely on the upper floors. The most direct action it can take is to animate the rooftop gargoyles. This is incredibly resource intensive and if gargoyles were spotted moving it would immediately attract unwanted attention. It has thus only used this last line of defense twice – once to murder a squad of arsonists and once to prevent the spread of a nearby fire.
The oldest organised criminal organisation in Cordialton, the Majesty Organisation makes its money and exerts its influence with rackets, smuggling, information brokerage, and political corruption. The Majesty Hotel has put this to use to ensure its secrecy and its survival. It has kept the city out of wars that might threaten the city’s safety, ensured urban planning leaves it alone, and developed a well funded fire service. The Majesty Organisation’s connections keep prying eyes away and the Majesty Hotel takes pains to limit the visibility of its work. This often means passing up lucrative opportunities or letting rivals go unpunished. Normally such actions would strain the loyalty of the associates, but the Majesty Hotel’s lack of interest in the trappings of wealth means it shares such a large cut of the takings that few in the organisation harbour rebellious thoughts for long.
Plot Hooks:
- At its foundation, the hotel is still mostly an ent. So when it got wind that a forest in Pikeadelly was under threat from developers, it felt moved to take action. The Majesty Organisation’s network has sprung into action working to usurp the land sale. Unfortunately, Pikeadelly is a bit too far removed from Cordialton, so the hotel needs reliable and disposable agents to ensure it ends up owning the forest.
- Viscountess Grabniscuit is quite distraught that half of her prized art collection was stolen in a brazen midnight raid on her art gallery annex. Local law enforcement appears to have no leads and no interest in the case, despite the Viscountess going to the guard commander himself and being very loud at him. This is because Majesty Organisation is behind the theft and they’ve already fenced half of the artwork and paid off the guard. The other half is now secured away in the attics of Majesty Hotel, as the building in indugliing its vanity with some art collecting.
- A rival gang in Cordialton, The Poison Ivies has decided that with the Majesty Organisation making such an effort to protect the Majesty Hotel, it’s probably a good idea to destroy the building if they want their rivals weakened. Their more direct attempts of fire and flood were not successful, so they’ve turned to insects. Thus the city finds itself in a gangwar where corpses keep turning up carrying termites, ants, or beetles. The Poison Ivies have put an offer on the street for a crew with the moxie to get the job done and the Majesty Hotel has put out the word for an advererous party to dissuade The Poison Ivies from further operations.
Image Credit : An other view of the Hotel Vail in Pablo by Cmsfreiberufler – CC-BY-SA-4.0
