Reknowned and reviled throughout the West, and known as far off as New York, London, and Paris, by 1875 the Mansion was a popular destination for those who could pay the price. Businessmen, politicians, generals and drug lords all spent some time in the original Den of Iniquity. By this time, Sandforth had left this house to Moira O'Shea, a firey redhead wench he had "acquired" from a competitor back in Ireland, who had proven herself an effective administrator and Headmistress.
Moira was also Awakened only three years before her assumption of ownership of the Mansion, and inducted into the Cult of Ecstacy. Her vices and tastes were considered by some to be extreme at the time, and under her leadership one of the main basement rooms, once used for "group frolics," as she facetiously termed them, was converted into a "dungeon," a playspace to satiate the dark, ssadistic and masochistic urges of some of the more rarified clientelle.
Moira and the reputation of the Mansion grew, until one fateful day in 1907, when it all came tumbling down, quite literally. Of the people in the Mansion on the day of the quake, only Moira and two of her apprentices survived. Fearing ruin, she began working to rebuild the Mansion, hoping to return it to the glory days when she held one of the most influential positions in the New World.
As it happens, her fame had travelled far. An Ancestral Chantry of the Cult of Ecstacy in Marseilles had forseen the darkness of the coming wars, and were looking for a new home. Seeing this as a golden opportunity, they offered to assist Moira in rebuilding the Mansion, with one price: That they be allowed to relocate their Chantry to San Francisco. She would, of course, be retained as Headmistress and would be a full member of the Chantry. Desperate, she agreed.
Within two years the Scarlet Mansion had been rebuilt, even more splendorous than before. The entire building had been expanded, to become an opulent center of the most jaded desires. Everything from loud, raucous music to drugs to sex were practiced in generous amounts here, though the neighbors had no ideas, given the extensive planning put into the layout and design of the place.
The Mansion quickly attracted the attention of the Chantry of the Gold Coast, and quickly struck an uneasy truce. The quiet front was really a fascade, however, as the two struggled for dominion over the lands by the Bay. It became obvious that the mages of the Scarlet Mansion would control San Franciscso, though the Chantry of the Gold Coast fought them at every turn.
The 1940s brought an increased power and influence to San Francisco, and after the end of World War II, the mages of the Scarlet Mansion began a wild plan they thought would totally subvert the paradigm of the Technocracy. Over the next twenty years, they worked on their plan, and in the early 1960s, they unleashed it.
Beginning with an assault on the restrictive, traditional cultural mores, they began reinforcing the revolutionary ideas of the 1960s with their own magic, slowly pushing the paradigm. Several of the bands and leadfers of the time, at least on the West Coast, though some back east as well, were either members of the Chantry (or contained members), or were closely manipulated by a member of the Chantry.
The Chantry of the Gold Coast, seeing the paradigm push that was going on, decided to work on manipulating the paradigm in their own way, with the large Dreamspeaker and Order of Hermes components of that Chantry beginning to introduce a "new" spirutality, linking in a new spiritual value set in with the "free love" movement of the Scarlet Mansion magi.
Then the two decided the views were incompatible, and began to push their message harder, faster than the paradigm would bend. Siezing the opportunity, the Technocracy pretty much dissolved most of the influence of the two chantries within a few years, though their mark was left on the dominant paradigm.
Having tasted victory, only to be driven back through their own overzealousness, the two Chantries agreed to a full and lasting truce, and a pact of cooperation. Since then, with their increasing focus on the media and on slowly influencing the paradigm, they have achieved some remarkable successes, though nothing near the speed they had moved in the 1960s.
Recently they have come across some difficulties posed by an odd coalition of Celestial Choristers and Technocrats, who have been attempting to close the Scarlet Mansion and imprison its owners and operators for "moral impropriety." So far they have successfully fought off these attempts, though they are becoming increasingly more difficult to defend against.
The mansion itself is a huge affair, done in a Victorian style, with great columns and red brick, iron exterior light fixtures and cobblestone paths. The interior is all mahagony, teak, and ebony, kept polished to perfection (with aging slowed using a coincidental Time effect).
The Mansion has three stories above-ground, and the same below. On the top floor are the living quarters for the Chantry members, at least those who choose to live in the mansion itself, as well as offices for the major Chantry officials. The second aboveground story is for the clients of the prostitutes employed by the Scarlet Mansion. The main floor consists of the offices of Bay City Escorts, a male and female escort service providing to clients of both genders and all sexual persuasions. The rest of the main floor is devoted to a small museum and art gallery, focussing on the less mainstream works that concern sexual expression.
The lower floors take on a much different character. On the first lower floor are several places for engaging in more "deviant" sexual explorations, too numerous (and possibly disturbing) to name here. The basement below this contains mostly storage areas, and the drug den, which is actually linked by Correspondence (and carefully hidden) to a house in the Tenderloin district. The lowest floor is the center of the Mansion's drug processing and trading facilities, where many of the final procudts are manufactured nd then distributed, via a tunnel that connects to a secluded launch in Pacifica.
The drug den in the Tenderloin is another story. About twenty years ago, a young mage at the Mansion had the idea of using Corespondence tomake an "unbustable" drug den. When clients would show up at the door, they would be scanned using a Mind effect to see if they were law enforcement or clients. Clients would then activate the Correspondence efefct, which to all intents and purposes would link them to a single large room in the basement of the Mansion itself, though sealed off by a hidden door behind the wallpaper of the "house" from the rest of the Mansion. Law enforcement and simple non-clients would find themselves in a run-down, shabby looking room with no drug users, and no signs of drug use (or habitation for that matter). This rote has proved remarkably successful, and there has been discussion of using it in a house in Oakland as well, though some are worried about the potential danger of discovery in establishing a new house.
The chantry membership is exclusively Cultists of Ecstacy, though there are a few Virtual Adepts who do freelance work for the Chantry for a price. Within the cultists, however, there are four factions:
The dominant feature of this place is the great altar, where there is an odd structure, designed to secure the priestess in position for the long and arduous rites performed here. Carved into the marble of the temple are many scenes of a very risque and often bizarre nature, allegedly all depictions of actual events here at the temple. The energy of sexual desire and lust is strong here, though the height of perversion also hangs to taint the area.
This site produces tass, but in the oddest of manners. After a rite is held here, the priestess (or priest) becomes suffused with the energy of the node. The most common method of hrvesting Tass from the node at this time is to remove a lock of the priest(ess)'s hair, though other methods have been employed.
One of these is the so-called White Mountain Springs, a small cave complex with deep pools of hot, volcanically heated water. Bathers would often come to enjoy the heat of the water, to bask and relax in the mineral springs.
But the volcano that provides the hot waters also provides an odd mix of gasses that has often been known to bring on a state of near-delirium in the bathers, similar to the trances of the Oracle of Delphi. These visions are more often than not prophetic in nature, though through use of a Mind rote, visitors to these springs who are not magi will forget these visions as soon as they cease.
Tass from this node is harvested in the form of the large salt-like crystals that form from the dissolved minerals. Only crystals from pools that have not been bathed in for over a year may be harvested, however, so the Cultists are careful to keep some of the pools "in reserve".