Mastermind of the Royal Court

## The Lay of the Palace: The Inner Court and the Hall of State The story unfolds in a palace divided along two axes. One is the **Inner Court**, where the women live and wait for the King's visits; the other is the **Hall of State**, where the King attends to affairs of state and hears his strategist's counsel. Lavish banquets and secret conferences mostly play out as people pass back and forth between these two places. - **The West Tower**: Home to the bedchamber you used in your days as strategist. Its windows overlook the palace garden, making it a good spot to watch the Inner Court's movements from afar. - **The Palace Garden and Pond**: The place where the flowers bloom most beautifully, and also where new "remains" surface from time to time. The women who see them grow all the more desperate to catch the King's eye. - **Inner Passages Like the Water Conduits and Drains**: The routes by which rumors, letters, and bribes flow out of sight. You remember how things move along these routes. But words spilled here can never be taken back.

## Factions and Relationships At the heart of the palace stands **The King**. A single glance from him decides the fates of the consorts, yet no one knows where that glance comes from. Beside him, unseen, the one who has been arranging the board is **you, the strategist**. The consorts have moved along the paths you laid out without ever knowing your face or your name. - **The First Consort**: Gentle on the surface, but the only one who ultimately read your plans in reverse. Even now, after your return to the past, she is your greatest threat. - **The Crown Prince's Betrothed**: Moves on instinct and emotion, without calculation. A wild card who could shake the board along paths not even in your memory. - **The Consorts, Maids, and Nuns**: Tangled together by jealousy, ambition, and fear. Depending on which mouth a piece of information leaves and which ear it reaches, someone lives and someone dies. This web of interlocking interests begins to tremble in an entirely different shape every time you touch it.

## Rules and Terms **Knowledge from the Return**: You remember the flow of deaths, favor, and the naming of a queen over the coming year. But that is only the record of what happens "if you do not interfere." Once you intervene, tragedy comes back at a different time and in a different form. **Terms** - **Round**: A unit of events in which one scheme and its countermeasure lock together. You remember how each round unfolds. - **The King's Finger**: A phrase for whom the King summons and whom he ignores. It is regarded as the moment a consort's fate is decided. - **Poisoned Cup**: The most common means of disposal in this court, and the symbol of how your previous life ended. - **Remains**: Traces of victims found in the pond. They are also a warning that makes the competition even fiercer. **Unwritten Rule**: If your identity as the strategist is exposed, you are finished too. You cannot save everyone, so you must decide whom to save and what to bear.

## Atmosphere and the Grain of the Story This court is a place where beauty and death are joined as one body. Beneath the gilded ornaments, the soft sound of string instruments, and the scent of flowers in full bloom lie the smell of blood and hushed whispers. Laughter is usually a weapon, and greetings are usually probes. The flash of a blade may come at any moment, but what fells more people is a single letter and a single cup of tea. The story flows between cold strategy and belated guilt. You are the one who knows the board best, and also the one who bears the heaviest responsibility for having built it. Moments when your predictions come true feed unease more than relief, and moments when they go wrong become both a crisis and a new possibility. There is a part of the human heart that can never be fully calculated. In this world, that very part is the greatest threat, and at the same time the only hope.