The Lavender Hills
Perfumed Veil Over Silent Struggles
In the heart of the Magistracy of Canopus, rising from the coastal lowlands and brushing the southern sky, stretch the Lavender Hills—a region of haunting beauty, old blood, and subtle ambition. Beneath their endless violet fields and mist-shrouded terraces lies the quiet pulse of Canopian life: resilient, patient, and sharper than it first appears.
The Lavender Hills are a place where the seasons roll gently, marked by tides of blossoming flowers and slow-harvested vineyards. The air is heavy with the scent of lavender and ripening grapes, and every road winds through a dreamscape of color. Yet for all their beauty, the Hills are not a land of luxury for most. Life here is built on labor and tradition, not spells.
Peasants till rocky soils and tend sprawling orchards by hand. Artisans cut pale stone from ancient quarries to craft the marble that adorns the courts of Canopus. Shepherds drive their flocks across terraces carved into the slopes long before House Centrella’s star first rose.
Magic, though it glimmers faintly in noble courts and ancient places, is rare beyond the painted banners of the great estates. Only the richest landholders—or the oldest bloodlines—can afford to keep a Runewright in service, and even then, the most enduring harvests are born from patient toil, not miracles.
The noble estates of the Lavender Hills stand proud atop ridges and river valleys, their stone halls adorned with flowering gardens and silver-tipped spires. Among the old houses and newly risen merchant princes, politics is a quieter, deadlier game than on any battlefield. Rivalries seep through marriages, feast tables, and vineyard boundaries, masked by silk smiles and courtly manners. Oaths to House Centrella bind the Hills to Canopus, but ancient grudges simmer in the shaded halls of provincial manors, waiting for their time to rise.
Beyond the cultivated heartlands, the Lavender Hills blur into the rugged wilds of the Thorn Marches and the misted woods of the Emberwood. Travelers speak of old tombs hidden among the heather, barrows sealed with forgotten magics, and ruins left from the time when the League of Stars still ruled the world. Few dare disturb these relics, for it is said the hills remember those who tread too boldly on the bones of the past.
The Lavender Hills endure as they always have—resilient, secretive, and watching. Beneath the perfume of flowers and the laughter of vineyard festivals lies a quiet tension. Change whispers on the southern winds, and those who rule the hills know: in the Magistracy, beauty is armor, and memory is a blade as the Lavender Hills are a land of veiled ambition and timeless patience—a garden where loyalty and betrayal are grown side by side.
“Tread softly in the Hills. Not all flowers sleep easy.” — Old proverb among the hill clans of Canopus
