Seven Fold Palace (TCG)



The Seven Fold Palace was a forge of the Crane Clan in which the finest Rokugani smiths were tested.

Appearance
The Seven Fold Palace was an architectural marvel. Every detail of the campus was an experiment in crafting excellence. Study at the Seven Fold Palace was punishing and nerve-racking, a gauntlet of constant judgment from peers and superiors alike. It was not well fortified, as its primary defense was its location deep within Crane lands, low in the foothills beside the Cranes most productive iron mines in the mountains.

Forge
The palace's smithing facilities were meant primarily for teaching and learning. An apprentice smith must travel to the mines, living and working alongside miners for a portion of the year. Many Seven Fold Palace rooms were crammed wall to wall and floor to ceiling with students' works of beauty, which most were destroyed by teachers and staff after a short period of display and critique. Due to the punishing lifestyle at the Seven Fold Palace, about a third of the apprentices did not make it to journeyman level, and about a third of the journeymen did not become masters.

Temple and Shrine
The palace had an on-site Shinseist temple, but the adjoining Fortunist shrine, large and handsomely appointed, was the major focus of religious life. The shintai was a single coal that glowed eternally without need for fire, heat, or tending. It was the earthly form of Kagutsuchi, a kami of fire and patron of ceramics and metallurgy. While in centuries past, Kagutsuchi's high priest was also the Seven Fold Palace's master swordsmith or potter, the positions were later separate.

Known Kagutsuchi's High Priest

 * Ezui