Quoted By:
> SELECTED: [The Imperial Menagerie] It was an even split between this and the Hallway but I’ll exercise my QM discretion to go with this one
> GAINED ‘The Imperial Purple’. When interacting with non-Dragon Guard members, +5DC and +2 Counter-Intrigue Re-Rolls, +1 Counter-Intrigue Save (single use) on Palace Grounds, +5DC and +1 Persuasion Re-Roll. Depending on the situation, there may be additional bonuses.
It is not without some sense of irony that you find your first posting to be less than a stone’s throw away from the direwolf’s enclosure in the Imperial Menagerie. A year and a continent away and yet here you are still having a part in the same monster’s transformation from wild beast to captive pet. Peering cautiously over the raised platform that plummets down into the enclosure within, you note the steep drop and the smooth walls without any hint of foothold. Perhaps not far enough to kill a man foolish enough to fall in, but hopefully too far for anything to scale or jump out.
The attention to detail in the design of the direwolf’s enclosure is nearly as impressive as the beast itself. The pine wood and other deciduous plants reminiscent of Canton’s forests must have been transported here from across the sea, alive and full grown, and no doubt at great expense. A cunning series of vents and wind tunnels above that Father would no doubt appreciate more than you works to keep the direwolf’s pen comparatively cool to the rest of the rooms in the palace. Even the boulders that form the beast’s modest lair look like those you’d find back home rather than plucked from the nearby desert. The price of building this habitat must have been on par with the cost of the expedition to capture the beast itself, in coin if not in lives. Still, for all that the giant apex predator seems no less miserable for its current state of captivity. If you believe Sir Marley and Sir de Camp, who despite their fatalistic death pact strike you as men who enjoy a bit of gossip every much as a fishmonger’s wife, then there are rumours that the Merchanta are on the outlook to secure another direwolf and make of them a breeding pair if possible. The mere notion would have been laughable at home, a monster of this awful speed and ferocity would be the the terror of peasants tending their flocks and a worthy Foe for a daring knight errant to do battle with and slay for God and glory. But here? The beast is in the same category of those strange striped horses further down. A prize for their master, an idle curiosity…
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