Perdurance

"You approach Perdurance, where the brightest and most beautiful of London's youth are conserved like jewels in a glass case."

"I've heard no one grows old in Perdurance," a crewman says.
"Nor hungers, nor sorrows," says another.
"Nor leaves," your signaller adds.

Perdurance is a magnificent shuttered palace in Albion.

A Perfect Day

"Perdurance is a jewel in the Empire's crown; where its favourite sons and daughters are pampered, protected, and preserved."

The jewel of the Albion empire, Perdurance is the place where the offsprings of it's most accomplished individuals reside, living a single perfect day for all of time thanks to to a stable supply of hours.

The rooms of The Half-Light Masque are reflective of this idea and are named after the time of day during which the inhabitants of the Masque stay there. Those are, in order:

• The Morning Room, presided over by many different dowagers of noble birth, is the room in which Perdurance's golden youth, the Debutantes, write letters to the outside world while their chaperones and servants see to the palace's household accounts.
• The Afternoon Room, a giant dining hall in which Debutantes and their chaperones eat to their heart's content.
• The Evening Room, a grand ballroom, where the people dance and listen to the music and everyone wears a mask, even the servants.
• The Parlour of Dusk(or perhaps Dawn), where the day's journey ends and very quickly starts again.

Not all that glitters is Gold

"Can the debutantes leave?

Why on earth would they want to do that? To do so would seem remarkably ungrateful."

While the Debutantes's life at Perdurance is opulent and safe it's definitely not happy- constrained to single, never changing day, and under almost constant surveilance, their stay at The Half-Light Masque more akin to a prison sentence, a fact exemplified by the Governesses- the empress's agents who wear featureless masks of polished obsidian. These individuals stalk the passages between the Masque's rooms using a system of hidden hatches called the Doors of Night- their job being the re-education and disposal of the Debutantes whose family's have displeased her Majesty. Not that having your child be at Perdurance is a great reward either- in fact, some of the Debutantes's parents feel that their children are being held hostage at the Masque as a form of punishment.