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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dlsharrock" data-source="post: 4245662" data-attributes="member: 55833">Places people live (Dr Philip LeGraid):Welcome to the forum Lucean <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />The Southern District, or Rich District, as it is known is a far cry from both Powder Mill and the Church District. Considered by many to be the heart of town life, the Rich District is actually little more than an attractive sanctuary, removed sufficiently from the bustle and jostle of central Arkham to be quiet and clean, while being close enough to allow the fashionable rich easy access to the best facilities. Suffice to say, when the police receive a call from Powder Mill, they take their time to respond. When they receive a call from the Southern District, they try to attend at least two minutes before the call was made.High Street is a typical artery running at a steep gradient down and through the heart of the Rich District from west to east, serving only two blocks, but two blocks whose length and breadth are greater than any in Arkham. A sweeping grandeur of road, asphalt as perfect as the day it was laid, snakes its way steadily downward through the ranks of the rich and famous, lined on either side by rows of trees and sparklingly clean sidewalks. Homes are not so much visible as glimpsed; grandiose rooftops, turrets and chimney stacks rising above the greenery of leylandi and fir, the houses themselves hidden behind walls or great expanses of hedge and set a considerable distance back from the road. Invariably the driveways leading to these houses are inaccessible, barred by wide, electric gates furnished with warnings to 'beware of the dogs'. There are no cars parked by the roadside and it is rare indeed to see anyone moving around the district on foot.Once inside, a visitor will find themselves awed by the overwhelming sense of oppulence and extravagance lavished upon the construction of homes and grounds. The houses are in fact mansions, each with their own far ranging estates containing terraces, swimming pools and car ports. Front doors stand beneath ostentatious porchways of white stone and marble. Multiple paned windows are similarly framed with columns, corbels and stately shutters. Where lights are on inside, chandeliers can be seen hanging from ceilings illuminating the polished grandeur of rich furniture. A visitor to the Rich District will feel a prevailing sense of silence and abandonment. At its highest point, the aptly named High Street affords a spectacular view down and across Arkham and the visitor may feel himself to be standing upon the fringe of reality, gazing down into the rational landscape of a populated world while all around him remains deathly still and deserted.Indeed, behind the high reaching hedgerows and brusque gates of the Rich District live some of the haughtiest citizens of this town, as removed from the rabble they perceive as society as they are from their own community, such as it is. It is perhaps their lack of spirit that gives the area its prevalent sense of emptiness. More likely the sheer untouchable nature of the Rich District intimidates most people who venture there, leaving them with an uncomfortable sense that no matter how hard they work, or how hard they try, they will never possess money enough to live here.--Doctor Philip LeGraid occupies one of the less impressive, but no less expensive, houses near the lower end of High Street. This location is not ideal, but gives his family plenty of privacy, room to breath and, of course, the house is close enough to the hospital that he can get to work each day without travelling too far.His house stands, as many here do, behind a high hedge. The approach is not barred by a gate, but meanders off the road and along a well tended garden before arriving at a large circular drive. In the centre of the drive is a disc of lawn at the heart of which stands a huge oak tree with gnarled trunk and sky-reaching branches. At some point lightning has struck the tree and split the trunk asunder. Though the tree is dead, its ashen bark no longer a lustrous brown and its branches permanently leafless, the previous owners were inexplicably attached to it and included a hidden clause in their side of the house purchase contract stating none should ever try to cut down the tree. Thus the doctor has been forced to keep the ugly thing in situ. The house stands behind the tree and is a large edifice of gothic architecture, baroque by design, florid in aspect and immensely unique. The grand entrance stands in a shrouded arch of white marble with a front door hewn from a solid chunk of wood and engraved with a depiction of the oak tree as it probably looked when flourishing and in full leaf. A metal grill covers a small glass window and a large iron door knocker fashioned to resemble a grimacing dog furnishes the middle of the door.Inside is a large reception with a marble floor and grand, sweeping staircase. Rooms lead off in all directions, including a vast kitchen and dining room through a large set of wooden panelled double doors, a living room to the right and a second living room to the left. A variety of corridors are also accessed from here through a succession of narrow, arched doorways, each marked with a roman numeral (the reason for which the Doctor has never been able to fathom). The rest of the interior is expansive and luxuriously spacious, well decorated by the Doctor's good wife with ornaments tastefully arranged and an abundance of softer furnishings. Rugs and cushions used to diffuse the cold, hard edges of marble and stonework. Being unable to comfortably climb stairs, the Doctor lives largely on the ground floor, with a library and study in the west wing and the bedroom he shares with his wife to the rear of the house overlooking the splendour of the rear garden. Upstairs is well tended by the Doctor's wife and the children have made themselves at home up there with bedrooms and a play room. Guests, when they come, are also granted one of the spare rooms on the second floor. Many of the building's original furnishings live up here, being part and parcel of the purchase detail. As the family are relatively new to the residence, they are yet to search through these furnishings and decide what they should keep and what they should discard, particularly as the Doctor's wife has been actively avoiding the task, preferring not to venture into those rooms where the furniture is stored.The Doctor's wife also prefers to remain on the ground floor, but not because of any problems with the stairs. She has professed an uncommon fear, completely at odds with logic, of the entire second storey. Particularly she feels ill at ease when passing beneath the hatch leading to the attic or the rooms containing the previous owners' furniture. As the Doctor could never ascend the ladder with his bad leg, he never saw fit to go into the attic and readily dismisses his wife's irrational fears as unfounded anyway. Her unease is probably more to do with the emptiness of the second floor rooms and the sheer age of the house than anything spooky or untoward, especially as the children have never professed any misgivings and spend most of their time up there. Throughout the house, the image of the oak tree in the garden is repeated in carved motifs, decorative designs on marble plinths, small emblems on doors or door handles and intricate reliefs on ceiling roses. The reason for this seems fairly straight forward. Presumably the oak tree must once have been an impressive centre-piece at the front of the house and at some point a previous owner grasped this aspect and reproduced it as a common running theme. Most who visit the Doctor and his family notice and comment on the oak tree devices they spot around the house and it has become something of a novelty, even though the Doctor feels little love for the horrible shattered tree.--Again, my vision. The tree, the clause in the purchase contract, etc. should all remain. If you want to change anything it's that he lives only on the ground floor, or general decorations and the way they've been used. It should also be assumed that his family haven't explored the furniture left behind by the previous occupant yet, even if they do all live on both storeys of the house.</blockquote>

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