Garden Guard

## Background

Those entrusted with the Highborn Gardens’ protection are known simply as the “Garden Guard”. Founded early on by the first kings of Granthelia, the Garden Guard’s sole duty was to keep the Highborn Garden’s residence and property in complete security. Recruited from the noble youth and more privileged families of Granthelia, the Garden Guard constitute the best trained and equipped force in the city. Stationed in the Highborn Gardens of course, they patrol and keep watch for interlopers and the occasional petty crime that occurs on its boulevards.

Funded and organized by the Wrenne family, however still apolitical for all intents and purposes. However it is not unknown for the Garden Guard to see brief action as political commissars, enforcing Wrenne law wherever it is questioned in the Gardens. Despite their occasional violent and extreme actions, the Garden Guard in general sees comparatively less fighting than their lower city counterparts. However they also are not so easily corrupted and bribed, as they come from the richest families Granthelia has to offer.

Their supposedly uncompromising status is coupled with a sense of complacency, as they lack the urban violence experienced by lower city guardsmen. Despite such shortcomings, they serve their purpose, and keep the gardens clean for the lordly residents.

## Organization

The Garden Guard is comprised of five cadres that defend their allotted posts. The five posts defended by a cadre are the northern gardens, western gardens, eastern gardens, southern gardens, and the Highborn gate. Self explanatory for the most part, these cadres ensure the security of their regional postings. The various garden cadres are often considered favorable due to their more lax day-to-day patrols.

The Highborn Gate Cadre is composed of men who’ve not earned the privilege to retire to a life of pleasant custodianship in the gardens, or have drawn the ire of their garden cadre officers. Either way, it is known that those who patrol the gate have a considerably more difficult job. Tasked with keeping out the riffraff and ensuring supplies and nobles flowing in and out are properly escorted, the Highborn Gate Cadre see much more “action” in terms of actual guard duty.

Each cadre is made up of roughly fifty men, forty four guardsmen, four officers, and one cadre commandant. These cadres then break down into twelve man patrol groups, one officer for every eleven guardsmen, and thus further break down into pairings to spread out through their allotted postings to guard. However the Highborn Gate Cadre is organized differently, due to its comparably unique duties. Made up of eighty one men, the cadre breaks down into seventy two guardsmen, four officers, four dog handlers, and one cadre commandant.

Thus, each eighteen man patrol group is joined by an officer and a dog handler. They patrol the gate itself, venture into the weaving tunnels of the gatehouse, and are sometimes tasked with ‘protecting’ Winthrop engineers in the depths of the Highborn Garden’s maintenance. catacombs. In command of all these cadres, is the Garden Lord, a leading officer selected from lordly nobility. Still a lord in his own right, he stands separate from his house and forsakes his family name. Thus the Garden Lord oversees the guard from his watchtower, with a staff of auxiliary mages and scribes to administrate.