Xenoverse origins / R-013
Aubrey RosalesOrigin story
A garden too proud to survive
Every flower was in its proper place. That made the destruction wonderfully efficient.
Read the origin ↓
Placeholder artworkAubrey Rosales could make a courtyard bloom in coordinated misery. Her gardens obeyed strict lines, approved colours, and an unwritten rule that nothing interesting should happen without her permission. Patrons called the results immaculate. The gardeners called them fragile, but only when she was sufficiently far away to remain immaculate herself.
Her dark fantasy origin begins with a ceremonial rose garden prepared for a public unveiling. It becomes a story about rot, snobbery, and the rude persistence of things too ordinary to invite. Aubrey wanted to create a lasting monument. The soil had other editorial intentions.
Nature does not care what the invitation says about the colour scheme.
From the dossier
Chapter 01
The opening she arranged to the inch
The garden’s central beds held roses grown from a single prized stock. Aubrey valued their uniformity. Every bloom would open at nearly the same time and present nearly the same face to the viewing balcony. A gardener suggested mixing the beds to protect against disease. She replied that irregularity belonged in meadows and badly organized lives.
She replaced the border herbs with imported white gravel. They had looked untidy and attracted insects. Their roots had also helped drain the ground, a fact that would become relevant after the first rain. The gravel made a beautiful surface over increasingly sour soil. Aubrey inspected the garden each morning from the balcony, the position from which it had been designed to look perfect. Anyone kneeling among the stems could smell the trouble. She regarded complaints about smell as a failure to appreciate the flowers. The invitation described the unveiling as a triumph over disorder.
Placeholder artworkChapter 02
Something small beneath the beds
Goblins had opened a passage beneath the old wall, using the damp earth to store sacks of scavenged mushrooms. Their crop spread into the roots. It was not a carefully planned attack. The garden was warm, sheltered, and watered with lavish regularity. Aubrey had accidentally constructed an excellent nursery for something she had not selected.
The first affected rose darkened at its centre. She ordered it removed. Then three more collapsed. She replaced them overnight with cut flowers supported in hidden water tubes. From the balcony the effect remained flawless. Below, the gardeners worked around spreading decay and a network of stems that no longer belonged entirely to the roses. Aubrey kept moving the inspection route away from the damaged beds. Her garden was becoming a map of the things she did not want witnesses to notice. The unveiling remained scheduled. Cancelling would require an explanation, and explanations were less photogenic than flowers.
Placeholder artworkChapter 03
The ceremony goes underground
The guests assembled under a clear sky. Aubrey delivered a speech about discipline, patience, and the rewards of refusing compromise. Halfway through, the central path sagged. White gravel slid into the hidden passage, exposing mushroom sacks and a goblin who had been eating lunch beneath the centrepiece.
He looked up at the gathering and offered a mushroom. The gesture was widely misunderstood as part of the exhibition. A patron leaned forward, the wet edging gave way, and the first row of ceremonial chairs tilted toward the roses. Nobody was seriously hurt. Several very expensive outfits acquired a botanical education. Aubrey stood beside the ruined path while her gardeners pulled guests clear using the border plants she had discarded into a heap. The unwanted roots held. The approved design did not. Photographs of the opening preserved both facts with an accuracy she found vindictive. The goblin continued offering refreshments until someone asked him to leave.
Placeholder artworkChapter 04
The weeds that stayed employed
Aubrey wanted to clear everything and begin again. The gardeners refused to repeat the same design. Their insistence was infuriating, especially because they had just rescued her patrons and could no longer be dismissed as insufficiently invested. She agreed to walk the beds at ground level.
There she saw the surviving plants: mixed herbs beyond the gravel, a stubborn vine beside the drain, small flowers she had never bothered to name. Their irregular roots and competing habits had interrupted the spread. Nothing had survived by being perfect. It had survived by being different from its neighbour. The goblins, persuaded to move their crop in exchange for a dry storage alcove, helped clear the damaged passage. Aubrey spent the week muddy, corrected, and unable to escape the sound of people finding useful things to do without consulting her colour chart. The revised garden began as an argument. It grew better for it.
Placeholder artworkChapter 05
An arrangement with room for damage
Aubrey Rosales kept designing, but the next garden contained mixed beds, drainage channels, and enough untidy corners for a living place to remain alive. She did not suddenly love weeds. She learned their names before deciding whether to remove them. The distinction improved both her work and her manners, though the latter remained seasonal.
In the Xenoverse, her origin makes her an expert in beauty that has survived contact with actual conditions. She can still be vain, exacting, and offensively particular about a vase. She is harder to deceive with a perfect surface because she remembers how diligently she once deceived herself.
At the rebuilt garden’s entrance, she kept a photograph of the failed unveiling. The goblin offering lunch was clearly visible. Visitors assumed it represented a whimsical foundation legend. Aubrey allowed the interpretation. There were limits to honesty, and she still had an eye for presentation. Behind the frame, the border herbs grew in whichever direction pleased them.
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