Lore Post - The Gardens

The Gardens, Vengeance, and the Sanguine Rose

If one were so fortunate as to receive an invitation to the home of the High General Carmen Valentine, and then further led through the East Wing of Crescent Hall - the wing ordinarily reserved for guests of high prestige - one may arrive at a cosy study. Unlike many of the rooms within the manor, the study is tall rather than wide. Tall enough, in fact, to accommodate one mezzanine floor right above another, each adorned with dark wooden bookshelves and black marble busts of contorted figures. The room is scarcely lit by the outside world. The only natural light permitted to enter is through two thin windows placed above the second floor. When Carmen first moved in, she had the windows swapped for stained glass depictions of the Sanguine Rose House coat of arms. The rest of the room is lit by an assortment of candles, and the ground floor by a roaring black granite fireplace, polished to a mirror-like sheen. Above the fireplace, towering over all three floors of the study, a portrait featuring the general naked, standing resolutely upon the ash of The Gardens. In her hand she holds the banner of the Sanguine Rose. Lady Valentine titled the painting herself. Carved on a plaque in the gilt frame: Vengeance.

The field depicted in the painting is one of the thousands burned prior to Carmen's birth, during the previous war between Greater Hirane and Amarinthia. The Gardens, once the food source for most of Amarinthia, was razed in the waning years of the war, and the resulting starvation brought about the swift conclusion to a conflict which had already claimed tens of thousands of lives. The Cardinals of Greater Hirane disbanded the Amarinthian monarchy and set up their own body of officials to govern each of the kingdom's former territories. House Sanguine Rose, the only noble house of the gardens to succeed in defending their fields and food stores from the attack, struck a deal with their would-be oppressors. In exchange for aiding with the food shortage, they were granted governance over The Gardens. Trading valuable crop for scorched land seemed a foolish move at the time, but the Lord of the house was planting the seeds for his revenge, and his daughter Anastasia would bring them to fruition.