Garden District
From Thirdexalt
The Garden District is the heart of Gethamane. It lies directly below the Guild District, with the Outer Ring equidistant from the pair
Truly rich families have small cave complexes here, and the Guardhall is located next to the Gardens themselves. Any outsiders seen in this area are questioned by passing Guards as to where they’re going and what they’re doing — doubly so if they seem poor or shabby. The Gardens themselves are the most heavily guarded area in all Gethamane - more so than the Council Chambers.
This district also holds most of the known entrances down into the underways. These are all protected by groups of 6-10 Guards, and each group carries a drum to signal the alarm in the event of any incursions from below.
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[edit] THE GARDENS
This complex of long, dark caves lacks the lighting of the rest of the city. A few light crystals burn in the entrances, enough to make it easy for people to enter and leave, but most of the space is shadowy, lit only by faint glimmers of luminescence from particular fungi that mark the boundaries of the caves or the edges of growing fields.
Other than the long trays of black obsidian mirrors set along the floor, briming with varieties of fungi in varying shades, the Gardens are spotlessly clean - scrubbed and swept daily with ritual precision. Some trays have been cracked or damaged, but most are still whole.
Narrow paths between the trays allow the farmers to care for, and collect, the vegetation - piling it in barrows as they pass. The rooms themselves are quiet, with the distant seeping of water from the springs that feed the caves whispering in the background and the farmers only breaking silence to make necessary conversation.
The walls are composed of the same substance as the rest of Gethamane but traced with ancient writings and diagrams. Centuries ago, Bethan Redeye’s people to deduce the basic functioning of the Gardens from these diagrams and, with a lot of trial and error, grew the fungi that now feed the city. These days, no farmer would dare tamper with the ancient procedures or do anything that might risk the regular crops.
The harvest goes to depots where the farmers issue the Dole. Minor administrators check the identity of each claimant and issue the requisite amount of food for the
citizen’s family. Several Guards stand watch at every depot.
These parts of the Garden District stay constantly busy, with queues of people waiting for the Dole and actors, musicians and other entertainers hoping to make a bit of silver by amusing them. The core of the Gardens holds a knot of small, oddly shaped caves with a pedestal in the center. The fungi overflow the trays here to cover the floor and walls, though never the pedestal. Glyphs engraved on the pedestal make the Garden’s basic operation obvious to anyone who studies them. Back in the first Age, a Dragon-Blooded manager of the Gardens wrote these instructions using the Craft Icon Charm (see The Manual of Exalted Power—The Dragon-Blooded, p. 130). Advanced procedures (involving alchemical treatments, special lighting conditions and the like) enable the Gardens to produce any sort of vegetable matter, but these are scribed on the walls in ordinary Old Realm script—and bioengineering jargon that few people in the Second Age could possibly understand.
Over the centuries, the Gethamanians figured out that this cave is a powerful manse (Earth ••••), whose power is entirely devoted to fueling the Gardens’ magical fecundity. It has no known hearthstone.
At the opening of this set of caves is a side passage to a set of warehouses that store most of the city’s fungus supplies. (Small caves elsewhere in Gethamane hold separate emergency caches, in case of sabotage or disaster.) This is where the Dole is issued, and a detachment of the Guard is always on duty there together with several of the administration to check the identity of each citizen and issue her with the supplies for herself and her family. This area and the corridors leading to it are always busy and often full of citizens queuing and entertainers (flautists or actors) and cooks diverting the citizens’ attention.
[edit] OTHER FOOD
The previous inhabitants of Gethamane managed to grow a wide variety of vegetables in the Gardens. However, this process required specific spells, treatments, densities of light, particular handling and other things that Bethan’s people could not possibly translate from the instructions on the walls. Bethan’s people were lucky to be able to grow mushrooms from the pitiful stock of food that they had left. Fortunately, mushrooms were some of the easiest foodstuffs for the Gardens to reproduce.
A Twilight Caste with appropriate lore in sorcerous bioengineering and First Age architecture might be able to translate the inscriptions, understand the instructions and arrange the Gardens so that other vegetables and fruits could be produced. However, it would take a miracle for the citizens of Gethamane to allow anyone other than the farmers or other highly trusted citizens inside the Gardens.
[edit] THE FUNGUS DEMESNE
Hidden in a knot of caves at the center of the Gardens is a field of undulating fungi, ivory sheets of mushrooms and yellow tendrils that curve inward toward a dark pedestal at the center. This is where the cultist farmers come to sacrifice their victims, unaware that it is actually the center of a broken Manse (Earth-aspected, currently Demesne ••••). Shattered by Vodak’s emergence and has never been repaired, the energies it Demesne emits have made it easier for the farmers to keep the Gardens flourishing.
This Demesne is one of the greatest secrets of Gethamane: only the inner circle of farmers, the Mistress and her Head Intelligencer know. Even though they don’t know that it is a Demesne, they do know that it is a place of power. A restoration program costing Resources 4+, organized by an expert of Lore 4+ or higher, could recap the Demesne, restoring it to Manse 4.
CHARACTER CONCEPTS FOR THE GARDEN DISTRICT
Warrior: Council Bodyguard, Guard, Guild Assassin
Holy Man: Cultist Farmer, Priest Adopted Into Guard
Savant: Librarian, Mapmaker, Teacher
Criminal: Dole Thief, Garden Saboteur, Spy
Entertainer: Actor, Flautist, Poet
Bureaucrat: Administrator, Court Assistant, Records Savant
[edit] THE ADMINISTRATION
The Council Chambers, the Courthouse, the Hall of Records, the Hall of Maps and the City Library are all clustered into one large cave complex, which backs onto Guardhall. This area is where the courts try cases, where citizens can come to check on property records and maps of Gethamane (outsiders must pay a small fee to check the maps), where the city keeps the Dole lists and records of visiting outsiders and where children go to receive any education beyond the most basic reading and writing.
Bethanites provide much of the staffing and organization here, but there is a healthy leavening of citizens from other families.
These caves are incredibly busy round the clock, with clerical and administrative staff taking advantage of Gethamane’s lighting system to keep on working throughout the day, simply changing desks with their replacements when the next shift comes in. Likewise, children are schooled and drilled in shifts, resulting in mobs pelting through the tunnels at each shift change. The only group that doesn’t work round the clock is the Council, though it may spend several days in constant session debating a particularly knotty problem.
Katrin Jadehand, Mistress of Gethamane, has her rooms and offices at the heart of this group of caves. These
rooms are the hereditary quarters and workrooms of the Master of Gethamane, and it is a matter of pride to change
as little as possible from Bethan Redeye’s original sparse furniture and belongings (or at least to rebuild and replace in the same style). Katrin is in her 50s and has been Mistress for 10 years now, having been both the previous Master’s choice and a popular favorite. Her primary concern is Gethamane’s survival and stability, and she is prepared to ally with a stronger force if absolutely necessary.
[edit] THE GUARDHALL
This set of caves is the central headquarters for the City Guard of Gethamane, combining the functions of training area, staging depot, holding cells and emergency marshalling point. Although much of the rest of the city lacks color, the entrances to the Guardhall are clearly marked by bright red pennants and the doors are all high-quality iron or ironstudded wood. Driven by the need to combat the creatures from the underways, Guards are much better physically trained than most of the rest of the city and have the statistics of elite troops.
The Guard always wants to recruit thaumaturges. They are not necessarily trusted, but their use in combating the creatures of the underways is undeniable. However, few in Gethamane have the talent, and fewer of those have the education. If any thaumaturge from outside Gethamane shows an interest in joining the Guard and seems of reasonable character (or at least, doesn’t sacrifice small animals in public) then a rapid adoption into one of the more Guard-centric families of Gethamane can be arranged to make him a citizen.
Dragon-Blooded outcastes are similarly welcome however Deathknights and necromancers are NOT, as even the most enlightened member of the Guard finds them too uncomfortably close to the creatures of the underways.
