Great Tetzcotzinco Garden

Purpose / Function

The gardens serve two contradictory functions. One, the circumferential loop is to provide a recreational area for families on picnic, outside school classes or simply as a lounge area. Second, the inner area is grimly maintained as a tortuous prison to the highest lawbreakers.

Design

There are two sections to the Great Garden: the outer gardens and the inner maze. The areas most visible to the public are clipped neatly and tastefully adorned with pretty flowers and sweet fruits for all to experience.
Inside the maze, however, was several avenues of parallel, crisscrossing and impenetrable thorn hedges thrice the height of a man. By design, the inner areas are sectioned off and made to look sinister, especially by night.

Entries

The entrance into the garden's inner maze is heavily guarded and the knowledge of its location kept to the sole Head Gardener of Tetzcotzinco.
The outer gardens, by contrast, is open to all with many stone archways, grass pathways and twin fruit trees marking entry ways for the public to visit.

Sensory & Appearance

While it looks spectacular on the outside. On the inside, those sentenced to die in the maze are overcome by its stink and the shadowy blackness remains in the day as it is at night. The run and wander for anyway out for days until they are driven mad by hunger and lack of human contact. For the screams and crying heard by the garden keepers going about their work, is the garden also called the "Maze of Madness".

Denizens

Garden Keepers

There are gardeners and landscape professionals employed by the state who tend to small parks for the city's beautification through most of the districts and provinces. The Garden Keepers are specially nominated by three Teiks and Teek families to work in the garden.

Plants

A rich variety of flora primarily grown through the lands of the Triple Alignment and a few carefully cultivated ones originating from the Cold Swamp and Brine Marshes.

Pests

Rodents and small birds rush within, above and below the expanse of fruits and hedges; of which the Garden Keepers deploy dogs, cats and larger birds of prey to control them.

Hazards & Traps

In its many phases of expansion, all consideration was given to minimizing the environmental effects such a large artificial change would have on the land. However, the most controversial phase had to do with the optimization of the city's waste management.
Under the reign of Emperor Zelhua, the covered waterways beneath the chinampas of the central garden were turned into a hidden reserve that collected human wastes to fertilize the hedges above. The roots of these plants grew long and deep, and their branches and leaves turned black. When the worst of the worst are released into the maze, gases that have been fermenting in the waste water under them, rises into the prisoners' breath which alters their perception of their environment and themselves, making their slow degradation even more harrowing.

Alterations

Chinampas

With a growing maze overtaking the available and former noble lands, the Great Speaker Huecui the Second arrayed multiple chinampas into the open waters until it reached the shores of another island.

Statues

Stone and mortar and hedge figures are a common sight in the public gardens. In the prison garden, there are small clearings set aside where the macabre, tortured bodies of past criminals are propped to remind the new, living and wandering criminals on their fates.

History

When Teiks reigned

Initially planted by a long-age royal ancestor of the Narin line on a piece of island land to retreat to for relaxation. Following rulers of the independent nation expanded the gardens further inland and built specialized chinampas for the garden to grow over the water.

Annexation

As devastating as it was for Texicot, the garden would see its wildest growth ever. Where temples, palaces and manses were torn down to show Sang's new dominance and for the materials to build their own projects. New plants were then planted in the empty space that added to the maze to entertain the population.

Alternative Names

• Great Garden
• Tetzcotzinco Gardens
• Maze of Madness

Type

Room, Outdoors, Garden

Parent Location

Tetzcotzinco

Related Professions

• Auianime

Owning Organization

Triple Alignment

Related Plots

• Under the Floating Manse