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 delineation between nobles and commoners. The giebe's mansion 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.

Just like the lower city of the capital before its recent remodeling, the lower city of Groschel is plagued by a lack of sanitation, leading to the area being constantly filthy and foul-smelling.

The class-separation 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 home duchy 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.

The chosen territory was the part of the central district with the largest population outside the capital itself and the best built 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 Groschel family were originally part of the pro-Ahrensbach faction due to Lady Gabriele, this changed soon after her death. The second Count Groschel descended from the Leisegang second wife of first Count Groschel distanced himself clearly from the Veronica faction, and the family became strongly pro-Leisegang ever since. The current Count Groschel even went 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 recently imprisoned Veronica herself.

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.

In the spring after Rozemyne's first term at the Royal Academy she visits Groschel and drops 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 personnel 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 personnel.

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 capital 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 its 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.

Despite numerous issues with the printing and paper-making industry the local scholar reports that no problems are present and that the book the local workshops produced was equal to those printed in other parts of Ehrenfest. When Hartmut points out the various issues reported by the Gutenbergs, Count Haldenzel misinterprets this to mean that the local commoners are incompetent. Rozemyne does her best to protect the commoners from this incorrect and unfair judgement, but isn't able to state her true thoughts for fear of unintentionally insulting the Groschel nobility and potentially even spelling a death sentence over the noble that made the incorrect report without meaning to. Later in private she explains herself in more detail to Brunhilde, who judging by Count Groschel's later actions passed this knowledge on to her father. Later the Count approaches Rozemyne to accept the offer of having some of the local smiths trained by Johann in Ehrenfest over the winter and pay for their expanses.

Count Groschel decides to import metal letter types and paper from other province while they are unable to produce these things to satisfying quality and also considers abondoning white paper entirely in favor of producing coloured paper. He also contemplates remodeling Groschel's lower city to incorporate toilet slime to make his noble scholars less reluctant to visit the workshops directly and get a better grasp of the state of the industry in person and to partially offset the water pollution. At the current time the province can not afford to incorporate and maintain water-cleansing magic tools. At the winter socializing he tells Rozemyne of these measures and tells him that beautifying the city will also make it more attractive to foreign merchants passing through on their way toward the captial, which if handled correctly could bring great profit to the city and province, since a considerable part of the travelers from other duchies comes through the Frenbeltag gate and thus have to pass through Groschel. She also advises him to mention this to Aub Ehrenfest when making his request for casting the Entwickeln.

In the summer after Rozemyne's third academy year, the duchy is finally read to make the alterations to Groschel and Aub Ehrenfest casts the Entwickeln, followed shortly after by Clarissa leading the archnoble retainers of all the archducal family members to join together for a Large-scale Waschen, to clean the unaltered parts of the building back to pristine condition.

At the time a few foreign merchants are lodging in Groschel, resting on their journey back to their home duchies. They express positive surprise about the changes of the city and look forward to trading there come next year. Due to their presence, news of the event will likely reach well beyond Ehrenfest's borders in short order and be a topic in the Royal Academy once the next term begins.