4826 Maple Dew

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4826 Maple Dew, not to be confused with the nearby Maple Dew Lane or Maple Dew Court, is the address in the north-western quadrant of New Arindell, and eventual home of Scarlet Jusenkyou. It was acquired in N.D. 501 by Royland and Annaria Jusenkyou, who purchased a lien on it to gain legal ownership since the exact nature of of the deed was a bit murky. The house was in need of much work, which Roy bartered for mostly using his fanancial know-how. Scarlet was two years old when the family moved in, and has no memory of ever living anywhere else.

History

Despite it's presence on a common suburban lot in a well-defined neighborhood, 4826 Maple Dew has quite a fabulous history of which it's later occupants knew nothing about. The home, or at least parts of it, date clear back to the Age of the Dragon when the first building was constructed on the site. This was a three-story, heavy-duty brick edifice, designed to appear on the outside as a mid-range mansion, while the inside was constructed more as a fortress. It was made on the order of the Paladins, who had it linked to the network of tunnels that ran beneath the city. It was part of a series of in-depth defenses built around Valley Gail Keep, and intended as a staging area for a possible battle to be fought over the city of Arindell.

Through the Long Night, it was alternately used as a guard post and cache for the Library of Arindell, with controll passed between Paladins, Rangers, and eventually the Craftsmen who watched over the valley. Eventually it was mostly buried in a series of mudslides. Only the top floor remained visible, but the insides were kept clear to provide valuable access to the tunnel system. The upper floor was used as an observation post, as it had a good view of the valley floor but looked like any other innocuous scrap of ruins.

Later in the Long Night era as the counters of the valley changed, it's use as an observation hut was rendered nill, and the top floor was painstakingly demolished. It had stood up so well that it appeared to be an anomaly, a single standing building in a long-ruined valley. The top floor was destroyed to give it a much better "ruined" look, and it remained in service as an entry and exist point.

When the new city was founded in N.D. 51, the first modern structure was built on the site. The old walls of the third story were turned into a foundation. The building was called a "rest house" for the workers clearing the entryway for the library to be reopened, but in truth the Craftsmen were eager to keep anyone from excavating the site. It was among the view visible remnants of the ancient city on the surface.

Initially, the entrance into the tunnel network was not sealed, but it did fall into disuse. The house had not been built with tunnel access in mind, and was mainly a placeholder. When real work got underway in restoring the old library, many craftsmen did live there, and quite a bit of work was done on the home. The buried two floors of the old house and original basement were used as private workshops(as craftsmen did prefer a life underground), but the entrance into the deeper reaches was closed due to continuing issues with undead.

Eventually, the land around the home was parceled off into lots. Rather than demolish a much beloved relic of the city's restoration, the work to lay out the suburb was done around the house, with steps taken to ensure it fit neatly on a lot. At that time it went to it's first private owner, the son of a craftsmen who wished to leave the cult. He saw to the house's first modernization, finally closing off the subterranean portions to make more room for his life above ground.

He lived there until his death in N.D. 101, when the house passed to his son, who sold it off. The new owner converted the above-ground workshop into a garage, attaching it to the house, and adding a second story. He was aware that a basement existed, but was said to have done further work to close it off as he saw no use for it. The next owner did build an in-house entrance to the basement, but is said to have bricked up the door leading to access bellow the uppermost level.

When the house was next sold around N.D. 200, city ordnance dictated that any house with a basement must include certain safety features, of which 4826 did not have. The basement was again sealed, this time supposedly permanently, and all traces removed. It's presence was disclosed to the next owner, but not the one after that.

Then, in around the early 300s, the house was bought by a group of necromancers. Working in secret, they constructed new entrances into the basement, and converted the house into a temple. 4826 became the center of worship for the cult of the dracolitches, and was home to many a dark ritual. The cultists eventually took over the neighborhood, buying up most of the homes until by N.D 399 it was known locally as "that necromancer neighborhood".

In N.D. 401, the activities of the cult finally came to be known to the main Necromancer temple and the more main-stream necromancer community, who viewed the cult's activities as an anathema. Several high-ranking necromancers infiltrated the cult in secret, and brought proof of their activities to the authorities. Hundreds of cultists were arrested, and nine of them(including the present owner of the house) were executed for their crimes. Since all of the necromancers living in the neighborhood were part of the cult, their property was ceased and re-sold, with the remaining inhabitants developing a decidedly anti-necromancer slant. It slowly gentrified into a nice, upper-middle-class neighborhood.

The house itself again had it's basement closed off. it was bought, sold, rented out, until the latter part of the century. By then, a descendant of the cult leader named Charles Drew had begun legal actions against the Alliance government. He claimed the property had been ceased illegally, and while his ancestor was most certainly guilty, said ancestor's legitimate heirs still had a legal right to the property so long as they themselves had committed no crimes(the leader of the cultists, from whom Drew was descended, had had a son just two years old at the time).

Fearing the property would be taken, the then-owner(a woman by the name of Eliza Franklin) defaulted on her mortgage and left the city in N.D. 490. In addition to the unpaid loan, she had commissioned tens of thousands of wingbeats in construction work to renovate and modernize the home, much of which was complete but not paid for. Meanwhile, the Drew disappeared rather mysteriously, leaving his case unsolved. The house was finally foreclosed on by High Mountain Bank and Trust in 497, though the foreclosure was regarded as "shakey".

Purchase by Jusenkyou Family

The legal ownership of the house was murky at best. The construction company had a lien on it but had not been able to claim possession. The last owner had left a clause in his mortgage giving him the legal right to take ownership of the home at any time during the thirty-year term by paying the balance in full in cash, though he could not be reached. The bank had hesitated to foreclose due to uncertainty of the legality of it, and there was still the pending question of Charles Drew. His case was open, but he had not files paperwork to progress it to the next stage before he disappeared.

Enter Royland Jusenkyou, who wanted a house quite badly, could not afford one. He found out about the property through his contacts at the bank. He'd asked them to look for a foreclosure that might be undesirable for various reasons, and thereby undesirable to the myraid of house-flippers running the city. He first learned about the 4826 Maple Dew property because it was in foreclosure, did not require a great deal of work, and was listed as a "red" property(sell immediately under-cost) by the bank. He did some research and discovered the myraid of problems with the property, but realized it was worth the risk.

First, Roy tracked down the construction company. Ten years earlier it had been a partnership, and one partner had since died. Now a soul proprietorship, the owner(who went by the name Bernie) was in rather dire financial straights. He had never been particularly good at managing his finances, and had never recovered from the blow a decade before. Roy struck up a friendship with the man, and helped him work out his books, and then assisted with selling off the remaining equity in the company so Bernie could retire. In exchange, Bernie sold the lien to Roy for about a third of it's estimated value.

Next, Roy had Eliza Franklin declared legally dead in Arindell, on the grounds she had not set foot in the city or filed taxes in over ten years. Her whereabouts were unknown, but as she no longer had any accounts open with HNMB, the bank considered this reasonable cause to terminate the agreement of her mortgage, allowing them to sell the house. Since it was still a legal grey-area(and he did not qualify for a mortgage at the time) they bank allowed Roy to assume the responsibility. He bought the house for 1 wingbeat in exchange for taking out a sizable personal loan to pay the balance of the mortgage in cash. He was then able to convert the loan into a mortgage as the legal owner of the house.

As for the mysterious Charles Drew, who had never been a resident of Arindell and also could not be located, Roy had him declared dead as well. While both of these declarations were a questionable legal tactic, it had the fortunate side-effect of creating an extra snarl. If either claiment ever resurfaced, they would first need to prove themselves "alive" before they could begin any action. Given that no one besides the bank(who was happy to be rid of the property) had made any attempts to claim it in over ten years, Roy figured the risk was worthwhile. To further cement his claim, he moved his family in immediately(despite conditioning being initially uncomfortable) and filed paperwork renting the property out to himself. This gave him short-term protection while he worked to improve the property, which would further cement his claim. Over the next few years, he filed every piece of paperwork he could find to prove he owned the house, bartering accounting work for legal work, to ensure that if anyone else did come forward, he would at least create enough roadblocks to make it difficult.

The end result was that Roy took possession of the house for a reasonable percentage of it's value and at a fantastic interest rate, none of which should have been possible for a 21-year-old junior accountant with two dependants.