Panarch's Palace
A similar entry appears in the Wheel of Time Companion confirming the information available in the main story arc.
The Panarch's palace is the home of the Panarch in Tanchico. It is located on the Verana Peninsular in the eastern part of the city. Straight, wide streets on one of the Verana's higher hills lead to either side of a great square in front of the white marble Palace, with its snowy domes capped with gold and topped by golden spires, or weather vanes and slender towers banded with lacy stonework. Supposedly, a part of the palace that is open to the public has been built during the Age of Legends (TEotW, Ch. 24).
At the rear of the palace is a much smaller square, like the one in the front with broad paving stones. Inside, the walls of the broad hallways are painted with friezes and the ceilings set with golden arabesques. Long, bright carpets run along the white-tiled floors, lined by ornate golden stand-lamps filled with perfumed oil. Courtyards with large fountains in their center and rounded by walks with slim, fluted columns are overlooked by balconies with filigreed stonework. The Panarch's apartments can be found on the second floor, where double-pointed arches give onto stone-latticed balconies almost as often as onto a chamber. Wide, tree-carved doors set in a double-peaked frame lead into a room six times as big as any in a good inn with plaster walls worked in painted friezes and golden lamps hanging from the ceiling (TSR, Ch. 52; Ch. 54).
The main exhibition hall of the palace displays artifacts of Ages long past three days a month and on feastdays. Rows of thin white columns and a thick rope of white silk run along the length of a huge chamber perhaps two hundred paces long and nearly half as wide, except where there are doorways, with double-pointed arches. Gilded plaster bosses cover the ceiling fifty feet up and below, an elaborate pattern of tiny carvings pierce the walls. Waist-high posts of dark polished wood stand atop the smooth white floorstones also encircled by a rope, stands and open cabinets with more displays line the walls. During the troubles in Tanchico, a part of the exhibition hall was destroyed by balefire (TSR, Ch. 11; Ch. 54).
The exhibitions include:
- A silvery, three-pointed star inside a circle of some unknown material softer than metal
- A broken female access keys
- A male a'dam
- One of the seals of the Dark One's prison
- Six priceless cuendillar figurines in a glass-sided case in the center of the hall, always watched by four of the Panarch's personal guards when people are allowed in
- The skeleton of a bear-like creature with front teeth the length of a forearm
- The skeleton of a toothy lizard ten paces long
- The massive skeleton of a four-legged beast at least two spans high with a rounded skull set on low shoulders
- A slender, four-footed skeleton with a neck halfway to the ceiling
- A weathered stone figurine of a seemingly unclothed woman - an angreal
