A city-within-a-city, the abode of The Scarlet Empress is The Realm in microcosm; a locus of power, culture, excess, intrigue, and wonder. In Creation, it is surpassed in grandeur only by the now-ruined abodes of the First Age god-kings. One could spend a lifetime in its walls and still not know everything about it, and the many beings, human or otherwise, who inhabit its precincts. Here are but a few of its myriad residents:
Even in the Imperial Palace, floors need to be scrubbed, kitchens must be staffed, and clothes must be laundered. For this and other menial tasks, the palace employs The Ostiarii, a small army of servants. Culled from slave children taken very young or born within the palace, they are indoctrinated to serve the Queen of All Creation with utmost discretion and obedience, each marked with a coiling dragon tattoo around their necks as well as submitting to certain sorcerous procedures to ensure their loyalty. It is popularly rumored that some Ostiarii are the Empress' personal assassins, spies, or lovers, but most display no special skills beyond being particularly well trained servants. According to the Realm's legal code, the Ostiarii are not precisely slaves, they have rights and draw a salary, but to leave the Imperial City they require special dispensation and are only eligible for retirement after years of indenture and a lengthy approval process. Having known little else, many remain in the palace and Imperial City their entire lives, forming a small caste of professional attendants who know the Imperial Palace better than most Dynasts. With the Scarlet Empress missing, the Great Houses have attempted to suborn the Ostiarii corps or insert their own agents into its ranks, with varying degrees of success.
Tokay-Of-The-Morning is the Ostiarios in charge of the southwest kitchens. A steel-eyed matron of far eastern extraction, she was born in the Palace and only leaves its walls to oversee food shipment deliveries. Her dour disposition belies a student of the culinary arts with a flair for exotic ingredients and flamboyant presentation. While she may be a mere servant, within her kitchens, she is god, and brooks disrespect from none save the Empress. Tokay is allowed to freely speak her mind in front of dynasts without fear of reprisal, a special privilege granted to her years ago by the Scarlet Empress after Tokay nearly died while foiling a poisoning attempt. More than one neophyte courtier has found themselves upbraided by the iron-willed head chef for attempting to rush her art or being rude to the other staff.
The soldier known only as Vanguard Captain Nine is one of the highest ranking Silent Legionnaires, currently assigned to guard the Empress's now sealed personal apartments. Distinguishable from the rank and file Silent Legionnaires only by a single red feather that adorns the crest of her helm, Vanguard Captain Nine has been known to deliver sealed scrolls, evidently written by the Empress before her departure, to various personages within the palace. She has a habit of doing this at times and places that seemingly enhances the dramatic effect, but her granite-faced expression displays no hint of the humor that lies beneath, if it indeed exists
Musicaa Daxandrios was the Empress's latest paramour, a foreign princess who visited the Imperial City shortly after her homeland became a satrapy and caught the Empress' eye. Their affair was a torrid melange of transactional politicking, carnal desire, and odd mutual understanding, at least that's Musicaa's read of the situation. Without the Empress however, the Threshold princess is without allies in a strange land, seen at best as inconsequential and at worst as a potential rival or pawn by the ambitious scions of the Scarlet Dynasty. Now, whatever promises Musicaa received from the Empress, genuine or otherwise, have gone up in smoke and she desperately seeks help extricating herself from the viper's nest of the capital.
The tea master Gregarious Starling is a monk who pursues one of the few indulgences allowed to him to its utmost. One of the leading experts on all things tea, his personal collection of blends and teaware is decadent enough to earn him censure if he didn't have imperial favor, and an ear to some of the most important meetings on the continent. The Immaculate Order tolerates his minor corruption in exchange for him spying on those who partake of his tea, and lobbying for the Palace Sublime under the guise of imparting wise aphorisms during tea ceremonies.
The savant Cathak Eveden was kept by the Empress as an artificer and amusement. Known for his ingenious clockwork, Eveden largely limits his ambitions to fantastical timepieces and windup toys which grace the sitting rooms of the Imperial Palace and the estates of particularly wealthy dynasts. A devotee of an obscure craft deity he calls The Great Maker, most think him a harmless eccentric whose only talent lies in making entertaining gadgets, a misconception for which he is eminently grateful. The last time the Empress commissioned Eveden to build a weapon, he did not speak for three months after its completion and subsequent interment in one of the sealed vaults beneath the palace.
At the age of 362, the retired outcaste general Yuda of Tumed is kept alive only by anagathic medicines and spite, confined to an artifact wheelchair by terrible war wounds. A self-admitted dog of war, in her youth Yuda spilled oceans of blood in the Empress's name and would spill oceans more if her ruined body were still capable of campaigning. As things stand she's been relegated to the role of imperial advisor and general curmudgeon to the other palace residents. The decrepit fire aspect speaks of the Empress with a bizarre mixture of worshipful adoration and barely disguised hatred, viewing her residence in the Imperial Palace as both reward for years of loyal service and an insult to her wish to die drowning in the blood of her enemies.
The seemingly nocturnal Stratus Amadha is thought by most to be a patrician doctor who happens to keep very odd hours. In truth she is one of the rare Dragon-Blooded to be born with an aptitude for necromancy, kept on retainer by the Empress as a personal consultant regarding matters of deathly aspect. Much of the air aspect's time at the palace has been spent researching ways to cheat death. Amahda's odd hours aren't just a matter of preference, but a side effect of a longevity ritual she performed upon herself; the sun makes her skin quite literally crawl. In recent years, she's been sometimes glimpsed heading down to the docks to make sacrifices to strange powers and names unknown to more orthodox occultists.
Sesus Yanan is the keeper of the imperial koi ponds. An introverted soul wholly unsuited for his family's cutthroat politicking and warmongering, he's more comfortable around animals than people, and enjoys his office for the opportunities it gives him to isolate himself from high society. Ornamental fish and waterfowl are one of the few subjects that will get the water aspect out of his shell, and if asked about them he'll talk for hours on end about their numerous positive qualities. Averse to politics, he hardly notices the Great Houses positioning themselves for war.
For generations, the door to the Plum-Snow-Pheasant Chamber has been guarded by the mysterious duo known as The Nashtarim. Towering figures clad in obscuring greathelms and black armor, wielding long-hafted warhammers of alien design, each Nashtari serves a twelve hour shift standing absolutely motionless in front of their guard post, exchanging places with their counterpart only at midnight. Where they go during their breaks isn't commonly known, they exhibit the uncanny ability to shake anybody attempting to tail them. Some mistake them for Silent Legionnaires from a distance, but the Nashtarim stand a head taller than even those mute giants and have been known to issue terse, monosyllabic warnings to those attempting to enter the Plum-Snow-Pheasant Chamber unauthorized.
A devil bound by sorceries and jade bands, The Leucrotine wanders the palace freely in the form of a striped hyena. It was the Empress's habit to keep the beast as an oracle, for it possesses the gift of clairvoyance and issues prophecies in dactylic hexameter. Long leashed by spells and forbidden to do physical harm to anybody, the palace staff keep it well fed with zebra meat and mead to prevent it from causing too much mischief. When bored, it has been known to deliver false prophecies, issued in the wrong poetic verse, that can lead naive visitors astray.
Got another commission of my Infernal :>
