Cave of Twisting Shadows (Fan-Created)

Climbing up the Alpine mountainside, you reach a stone building built directly into the rock, appearing perhaps like a gatehouse to large cave entrance. It is of a strange (Tibetan) design. Before it are a few houses, a meagre excuse for a village, enclosed by a low wooden fence.

The village, and the cave, are entirely mundane, bearing no supernatural aura.

Entering the cave, one finds it narrows and twists until it opens into a vast cavern. Several small passages extend out of it, winding through the mountain, forming a maze of tunnels, many of which loop back into the main chamber. The entire cave system is silent, empty, and lifeless – a dark, cold, labyrinth of rock, bearing no sign of human habitation.

The main chamber harbors all the covenant's major communal places – its main hall, its library, its council chamber, and more. It does it at different regio levels, however. By going into the right tunnel, you can loop back into the main hall at another regio level, if you perform the right rituals or have Second Sight, and if the regio allows it (it is semi-sentient).

At higher levels, the caves and hall teem with hundreds of dead covenfolk. They form extended families governed by their living members, who often reside in the village. The caves also function as catacombs, where these families bury their dead. Hundreds of ghosts rest in their ashes, kept in urns within each family's alcove, or wander through the covenant's caves. These spirits believe that, once the Enigma is solved, they will be able to enter a refuge outside time, and they await the call for their final journey. Many of them are spectres, meaning that they doggedly continue the roles they had in life (see RoP:M), serving in the covenant even in death and forming the bulk of its many servants.

Many smaller chambers exist in the cave complex at various levels of the regio, including the sancta of its resident magi.

At one regio level, the main hall serves as the covenant's library. For a covenant as old and important as The Cave of Twisting Shadows, the collection of books is surprisingly small, though there are still many books and scriptoria. Instead, the library largely consists of realia, cryptic obelisks covered in mystical glyphs, and myriad other strange items. And there are ghosts. Specters of former library staff, other wandering ghosts, and occasionally even one of the spectral magi, the former Primi of the House. Many still study books or copy them, not realizing they no longer learn, or that their spectral quills leave no mark on parchment.

These ghosts also include highly-skilled covenfolk who, in their afterlife, serve as teachers, and form much of the library's true content. Unlike most ghosts, they retain enough of their memory to remember past study sessions, and so can teach effectively. They typically have one Ability at 6 and +1 Communication, providing a Teaching Quality of 10 (1 Com + 3 + 6 single student). The spectral primi can also teach in a similar manner, and are even able teach inner Mysteries to those Criamon who are ready for such instruction.

The covenant's external gatehouse and village serve as its interface with the mundane world. The villagers prepare food (preparing it in the cave complex would be unhealthy), and a small contingent of flesh-and-blood grogs is stationed at the gatehouse. The gatehouse also holds guest quarters for magi and other visitors who cannot or prefer not to enter the cave, and the village has similar lodging for their companions and horses. Most living covenfolk reside in the village, though much of their time is spent within the cave complex.

This description combines what is said in Sanctuary of Ice and Houses of Hermes: Mystery Cults, with some artistic freedom.