Midnight was founded by Jeshickah, with help from her sisters Katama and Acise, and her four hand-picked trainers: Taro, Varick, Gabriel Donovan, and Jaguar de Fiaro. "Midnight" refers to the physical building that was the heart of the vampiric slave trade and to the empire it embodied. This empire ruled Nyeusigrube- the vampires, shapeshifters and witches- with a set laws that revolved around the concepts of ownership and free trade, property and territory.
A physical description of the original Midnight was given by Jaguar de Fiaro in the Ask the Residents section of the message boards:
The central building of Midnight was not designed for entertainment, but for business, and as such it has no grand ballrooms or arching stairways.
Like the modern Midnight, the old one was divided into four wings. The north wing contained conference and meeting rooms, and some guest rooms for visitors who had travelled far. The west wing was the grandest, with suites belonging to the trainers, and a handful of rooms for visitors with Jeshickah's favor, though most of those rather stayed at the manor.
Both the north and west wings included rich and often imported decor, including thick, hand-woven Oriental carpeting, which was replaced occasionally but tended to be in shades of either deep blue and black or red and black, according to Jeshickah's preference of the time. In the north wing, dark oak paneling covered the walls only to waist-high, then broke for a chair-rail and eggshell-cream walls; in the west wing, the walls were black. The hall was lit by hand-shaped wall candle-scones, each one unique. The wood paneling and doors were all hand-carved.
The southern and eastern wings were not nearly so comfortable as I attempted to make them when I remade the building, though their uses were mostly the same- cells for the broken slaves in the eastern wings, and necessary areas like a kitchen, bathing area, and infirmary in the southern wing.
And, of course, the lower cells- which in the original Midnight were actually underneath the southern wing- were larger and more often occupied.
