Rose Quarter
Ervenian Era, 1051 AB
A crescent of gardens, galleries, and lantern-lit rivers set within the Feywild’s endless twilight, the Rose Quarter is Helena’s seat: a realm where love, art, and delight reshape the land as quickly as a blush. Paths curve like calligraphy, music rides the breeze, and every mirror holds the chance of a whispered boon.
In Helena’s demesne, beauty isn’t passive, it’s participatory. Dance mends quarrels, color speaks, and kindness is the surest glamour. Delight flourishes; cruelty wilts.
Customs
Consent is the cornerstone
No enchantment without willing heart or ritual mask; violators are doused in rose-salt (see Hazards).Giftward Economy
Beauty circulates: borrow, uplift, return with a story or improvement. Hoarding beauty withholds blessing.Mask of Courtesy
Guests don courtesy masks at feasts; they may flirt boldly, but must unmask to speak hard truths.Rivalries by Art
Grudges escalate only on the Masquerade Green, duet, design, or deed before witnesses; victory must include an uplift (mentorship, tool, or safe-conduct).Rites and Festivals
Reflections in the Mirror
Every day, scented-water prayers before dawn; visions show how to become the beauty you seek.The Blooming Ball
Every month, there are open salons, lantern choreographies, and matchmaking ledgers kept by blue jays. Outsiders are wooed into the dance.Feast of Joining
As it is cloistered, there are reclining courses, solo dances, and vow-whispering; couples (or projects) receive a shared boon.The Unveiling Bloom
During Summer High Fest, there are playful chases in orchards, masquerades unmask at sunset, and a thousand confessions turn to laughter.Geography
The Petal City
Marble loggias, rose-brick lanes, and silk-canopied squares climb a low amphitheater hill around the Hall of Mirrors.Lantern Rivers
Slow, clear streams ring the city; stepping-stones appear for duets, bridges for parades.The Roselight Vales
Orchard meadows and rehearsal glades sprawl outward, dotted with pavilion-temples and sculpture courts.Hall of Mirrors
Helena’s throne-salon of living glass. Mirrors answer questions with images of your best self—and the work to reach it.Evergold Baths
A terraced spring (gate-linked to Evergold) where weariness, scars, and stage-fright dissolve. Perform a stanza or a sketch: gain short, gentle blessings (temp hp/Advantage/+1 morale).The Crimson Arcade
Galleries of mortal and fey craft; curators practice silent patronage, seeding commissions and rescuing endangered art.Blue Jay Walks
Arcades where jewel-feathered blue jays (Helena’s heralds) carry notes, invitations, and teasing dares between would-be lovers.The Rose Vault
A sanctum for relics of love kept freely (never seized): lockets, letters, promise-blades, broken masks that learned the truth.Masquerade Green
A lawn of festivals and judgments-by-art: disputes resolved by duet, design, or deed under lanterns and watchful azatas.Travel and Access
Fey Crossroads
Enter by singing, sketching, or dancing a key at twilight in a fragrant place; exit by fulfilling a small, witnessed kindness.Evergold Gate
Aquifer-arches in the Baths cycle with the moon; festival nights open both ways.Ribbon Roads
Silk ribbons tied to waystones thread to Astrazalian, Mithrendain, and Shinaelestra; follow the color that matches your vow.Inhabitants
Helena (often in radiant mortal guise; always the cascading red hair), attended by Azatas (lillends as maestro-judges, bralani as duel-referees), Fey courtiers, Eladrin impresarios, and the Sisters & Brothers of the Ruby Rose (knightly order guarding shrines and processions). Petitioners are artists, lovers, hospitable hosts, and reformed charmers now sworn to consent-first glamours.Localized Phenomena
Blush-Winds
Honest compliments conjure warm breezes, granting small morale boons to allies who heard them.Roseglass
Sunlight through petals creates harmless glamours; performers can paint the air with choreography or song (minor image-like effects for the scene).Mirror-Mercy
Confess a vanity or cruelty to a consecrated mirror and it will show one graceful way to amend it—then open a short mirror-gate to where that grace is needed.Petalfall
When partings are kind, a soft petalfall mutes the ache.Blue Jay Post
Whisper a letter to a blue jay with a drop of perfume/ink and in the next dawn it arrives ribbon-sealed at its addressee (cannot carry maledictions).Trait Type |
Description |
|---|---|
| Gravity | Normal; leaps feel lightly buoyant on lawns and stages (treat as advantage/+2 on Acrobatics checks to jump/dance). |
| Time | Erratic; Moments of performance, courtship, or heartfelt confession stretch slightly; idle loitering compresses. |
| Shape & Size | Infinite inside, finite from the outside; It is elastic. A great city-garden and surrounding vales that “breathe” wider during festivals. |
| Morphic Traits | Divinely morphic, emotion-tuned. Sincere affection and art subtly shape lighting, scent, and backdrop; spite dulls color and hushes echoes. |
| Elemental Energy | None Dominant. |
| Alignment | Good, Mildly Chaotic. |
| Magic | Enchantment (charm without coercion), emotion, figment/pattern illusions, healing that restores appearance or spirit, travel keyed to vow or performance. While fear-dominance, compulsion that overrides consent, necromancy that mars the body, spells that disfigure against the target’s will are impeded. |
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