Rose of Astolat

Overview

Once the seat of the Dawnish Kings and Queens, the Castle of Thorns has presided over Astolat since before there was an Empire. What were once royal estates are now given over to beautiful parks, and the castle itself is almost completely engulfed in rose bushes. It is considered by many to be a wonder of the modern Empire, and at dawn or dusk when the sky catches fire, it is enough to make the poet sing, or the sensitive soul weep at the beauty of it all.

Today, the castle serves as an academy for the training of Civil Service, but it is also where much of the day-to-day business of maintaining the nation of Dawn takes place. Each Dawnish Senator has apartments there, decorated with the produce and imagery of the territory they represent - although they are rarely used. The proximity of so many quiet, studious civil servants has traditionally made many Dawnish senators uneasy.

The castle is a symbol of the glory and beauty of Dawn, sure enough; and also a symbol for the Civil Service that undertakes the burden of overseeing so many aspects of modern life in the Empire. It is by no means cheap to maintain, month after month. The castle is old, and the grounds are extensive, and the academy uses an absolutely astonishing amount of paper and ink.

Over the last three months, however, those costs have increased... and increased dramatically.

The most obvious problem is the structure itself. Stone surveyed to be strong and reliable has begun to crumble. Part of the eastern rampart actually comes smashing down into the inner courtyard, very narrowly missing a civil servant lecturer and her class. All of the flying buttresses supporting the Hall of Ten Nations - the old throne room - have apparently developed cracks at the same time. The old wine cellars - where sufficient food to feed two hundred people is collected and stored - have become infested with vicious black rats the size of cats, and the terriers the porters keep to control their population are too scared to go down the stairs after them.

At the same time, the roses that shroud the castle, that give it its name, are beginning to die in record numbers. As they die, they peel away from the walls - in some cases their great weight inflicts additional damage to the integrity of the structure itself. Worse, the death of these roses is seen by the superstitious across the Empire as an omen - a sign of some hidden rot at the heart of the Empire.

The physical damage to the castle is bad enough, but there is worse to come. Paperwork begins going astray. Senior civil servants lecturing the academy become lost, or absent-minded; a plague of aches and pains and brittle bones leaves students and teachers alike in the infirmary. Tempers flare. Old grudges come to light.

The civil service attempts to maintain its dignity, but that is proving increasingly difficult.

Significance

It is clear almost immediately that something unnatural is afoot. Divination quickly reveals that the castle is under the effect of a potent Winter curse. The magic is attacking the integrity not only of the castle itself, but of the people who live and work there.

The immediate effect is that the cost to the Empire to maintain the Castle of Thorns has increased significantly - at this time only the Auditor of the Imperial Treasury, Gerard La Salle, will know by how much. If the curse continues to increase in virulence however, there is every chance that the castle will become too much of a burden on the treasury, and may have to be decommissioned. The potential impact this will have on the people of Dawn, and on the civil service in general, is difficult to predict but consequences of the destruction of such a potent symbol of Dawnish glory may well be significant.

Investigation of the curse on the castle will be hampered by the distances involved. One possible solution would be for a magician versed in the lore of the winter realm to prepare an arcane projection which would allow an effect similar to Wisdom of the Balanced Blade to be performed at the imperial regio to at least get some idea of what exactly the curse is doing. No doubt other possibilities will suggest themselves.