BujiThorn/Garden
The Garden of Thorns
Despite what the name depicts this is not an overgrown or malshapen rose garden. It is the center of what once was the artisan center of Thorns. Its current resident artists still contribute to the garden although many of Thorns living residents wish they would stop.
The Garden of Thorns is a lavish and beautiful place in the light. Tall romanesque columns extend towards the Maidens capped by a large marble trellis. Some of the rarest and most captivating flora from the east can be found here. Large hanging plants and ivy run throughout all of the stone lattice work seemingly holding all of these large amssive stones together with its leafy strands. Thorns has some of the most extensive collections of flora in Creation as it was customary for visitors to present a start of a plant as tribute to the House Cynis. Through the large fanatical devotion to the house from regular patrons, vast and glorious plants and flowers still flourish to this day in the garden.
Since the massacre that fell upon Thorns the garden has taken on a duality. Though a small pocket of the garden remains as it was, a larger part of it lies in a slowly growing shadowland. In the dark recesses of the garden strage and allurid flowers grow from the Underworld, wrapping and twisting around the skeletal remains of what was Thorns elite soldiers, now nailed to the stone columns of the garden. The plantlife seemingly fades from one sense of reality to the next, as many tributes were hosted in the garden for fallen friends and loved ones where it was customary to give flowers as tribute. These contributions have flourished in the darkness creating a mirror image of undead beauty.
The Garden of Thorns was also known for its majestic sculptures from the foremost artist of the Realm depicting the Immaculates, the Dragons and the Empress herself. Though many of these statues fell in the initial raid a few still remain in the prestine condition. Newer statues now rise up from the rubble they are grotesque, twisted and sickening. These newer additions are from the artisans trapped within the city. They create these statues to express their sorrow, maddening anguish and torment. Local rumors say that the spirits of certain house dignitaries and Terrestrial Exalted have been trapped within the statues and mangled forms that adorn the garden's courtyard. Although there have been no scholars who back this rumor, many claim to hear cries of despair and pleas for mercy wafting from the garden on restless nights.
