The story of the Citadel of Rosepetals begins in 1124. The armistice between the Diamond Isle and the Perfected Empire’s alliance meant that the Prefect of that era – Cenno III, seventh of the line – could concentrate on the many internal struggles of Perfection.

We who possess hindsight are familiar with that regrettable stage of Perfect history, but this was nine years before Cenno’s assassination and the First Dissolution of the Empire. No one, least of all Cenno himself, believed the Imperial government would ever exist in anything but a position of unalloyed strength. To distance this newly empowered central government, still bloated from the Last War, from provincial viceroys and intranational politicking, the prescient Prefect believed it would be necessary to create a new fortress-capital, the Citadel of Rosepetals.

In actual fact the Citadel was not built from scratch in 1124; the government moved into, renovated, and expanded an existing minor keep built sometime before 1000 to police the south. The site was selected due its unique location, at the confluence of the Southerly Rivers Converging, Nine Open Gates, First Steadfast Plantation, and Homefires Searing regions, four of the seven Perfected provinces.

I have been so fortunate as to enjoy a tour of much of the Citadel’s grounds. The five-cornered design is representative of the Last War era, providing a large central courtyard permitting aerial landings, and the pink granite of its construction gives the structure its name. While it appears quite shabby compared to the far superior architecture here in Ka-Rone, within the Perfected Empire it is as famous as our own Tower of Tongues.

The Citadel withstood thirty days of worddeath during the Spice Wars. Iacathe’s Bronze Men could not breach its walls, nor did any one provincial faction ever succeed in holding it for any length of time during the First Dissolution.

Today the Citadel is once again occupied by the Perfect Empire’s national government, and the humans in particular often make the romantic claim that the Citadel has been uninterrupted a seat of power for the three and a half centuries since its dedication. Given that most of the Perfect Empire’s leadership is Undying, and remember firsthand the Dissolution, recovery, and Integration, this claim may be considered accurate.

It has been scant months since the abdication of Prefect Osri I. Only time shall reveal whether the aristocracy of the Perfect Empire will successfully put its past of internecine violence behind it, or whether the absence of a Prefect leader will lead inevitably to a Second Dissolution.

— Lord Ge-Milesoma, instructor of Perfect history, assistant to the Undying Professor-Viscount Systematic Analysis of Flaws

SEE ALSO: the Bronze Men, the Empire of Perfection, the Last War