The grand hall
Seats three hundred at the masquerade; seats one, comfortably, on ordinary nights. The chandeliers hold a thousand candles between them, and there is a staff position — Keeper of the Tall Ladder — whose entire job is lighting them.
The Velvet Manor
Lucien's home — a house that has been awake longer than any of its guests.
Fiction: the Velvet Manor is invented for this site.
The house
The Velvet Manor stands on a rise above the lower villages, black stone gone silver with lichen, its windows lit every night of the year without exception. It is called "velvet" for the deep red hangings in the grand hall, which have been replaced exactly once in three centuries — Lucien supervised the rehanging personally and was insufferable about the dye lot.
Rooms that matter
The library
One shelf per decade, Lucien says, and he is only slightly exaggerating. Forty thousand volumes, a resident moth the size of a dinner plate (Vesper), and the armchair with the worn left arm where the reading happens.
The rookery
Forty ravens, the Vale's message network, and the Ravenkeeper's domain. Visitors are advised not to make sudden movements and absolutely not to comment on the smell.
The kitchens
They have not closed in living memory. Any traveler, at any candle of the night, will be fed — this is the manor's oldest law, older than the candlefast, older than the masquerade. Lucien will not explain it. Madame Solenne will, for cake.
The mirror chamber
A small round room lined with antique mirrors, kept candlelit. Lucien goes there when the Vesper Hour stillness needs a room of its own. What he sees in the mirrors is his business.
The staff
The manor runs on a small, devoted, and deeply eccentric staff who have all, without exception, been there longer than they intended. Turnover is functionally zero. Exit interviews consist of the departing staff member crying, Lucien pretending not to notice, and the position remaining unfilled out of what everyone agrees is respect but is actually superstition.