Groschel



Groschel is a province at the western reaches of Ehrenfest.


 * Ehrenfest Central District to the East and South.
 * Province of Reunwalt to the North and West.


 * Duchy of Frenbeltag to the West.
 * Contains border-gate to Frenbeltag.

Groschel is the home-province of Brunhilde, who is the daughter of Giebe Groschel and currently serves Lady Rozemyne as an apprentice attendant.

Unlike in the outer provinces like Illgner and Haldenzel, Groschel is organized very similarly to the central district with strict deliniation between nobles and commoners. The giebes castle is like a smaller version of the capital's noble's quarter with the commoner part of the city even being called lower city like in the capital.

Spoiler from Part 4 Volume 5 Just like the lower city of the capital before it's recent remodeling, the lower city of Groschel is plagued by a lack of sanitation, leading to the area being constantly filthy and a bad smell hanging in the air.

The class-seperation also holds true for the harvest festival. The tax officials handle their work entirely within the giebe's mansion, while the combined ceremonies of the year are held on the central plaza of the lower city in the absence of all local nobles.

Originally what is Groschel today used to be part of the central district.

During the rule of the fourth Aub Ehrenfest, Lady Gabriele used the authority of her homeduchy Ahrensbach to force through a marriage between herself and one of his sons she had fallen in love with at the Royal Academy.

To minimize the political upheaval in Ehrenfest, the Aub turned part of the central district into a new province and granted the territory to his son as the first Count Groschel.

Spoiler from Part 4 Volume 5 The chosen territory was the part of the central district with the largest population outside the captial itself and the best built up road-system. Under the guidance of the first Count Groschel and Lady Gabriele, the largest village of the area was rebuilt to be a smaller mirror of the capital itself.

While the Groschels originally were part of the pro-Ahrensbach faction due to Lady Gloria, in recent times this changed. The current Count Groschel married a wife of the Leisegang family and distanced himself clearly from the Veronica faction, even going so far as to refuse to take any of Bezewanst's belongings after his execution, despite them being his only living family other than the new imprisoned Veronica herself.

Spoiler from Part 4 Volume 5 Groschel was one of the provinces that was part of the third wave of printing industry expansion, after the creation of paper-making workshops in Illgner before and the establishment of a printing workshop in Haldenzel during Lady Rozemyne's sleep.

Spoiler from Part 4 Volume 5 In the spring after Rozemyne's first term at the Royal Academy she visits Groschel and dropps off a team of members of the Plantin Company and grey priests to work with the locals to establish both paper-making and printing workshops. Rozemyne also uses this as an opportunity to teach and train her team of scholars to properly interact with commoners, without ignoring their informed opinions and lording their status as nobles over them.

Shortly after the plantin personel and grey priests petitioned the giebe for permission to move from the side-building in the giebe's mansion to lodgings in the lower city, so they wouldn't have to commute every day, which Giebe Groschal granted.

In the following autumn, Lady Rozemyne returns to perform the Harvest Festival in her capacity of high bishop, wrap up the business of the printing industry and retrieve the priests and plantin company personell.

At the start of the harvest festival, Rozemyne is surprised about the low number of people present, but quickly realizes that without any harvest to celebrate in the city, only the commoners participating in the ceremonies and their families are present. This quickly changes however the moment she blesses the newly baptized children. While the people of the captial and central district have become used to seeing true blessings, this is an absolute novelty for the people of Groschel. The colourful spectacle quickly draws onlookers from all over the place and by the time all the ceremonies are finished, the central plaza where they are being held is packed. Though with the lack of a city-wide feast, the crowd equally quickly disperses, with the newly baptized and wed people going off to celebrate with their families and neighbors, while the onlookers go back to their regular activities.

Unfortunately it turns out that currently Groschel is not well suited for making paper. The only water-source sufficient to feed the workshops is the river, but it's pollution negatively affects the quality of the paper made with it. Unless they find a way to cleanse the water, find alternate water sources or import clean water, Groschel will have to concentrate purely on printing and import the necessary paper from other provinces, like Haldenzel does.