The Houses

The Houses

There are Five Hundred Houses. Some of the Houses may be called Circles or Sects, Coteries or Clans, Halls or Tribes, but they are always and constantly a collection of families linked at great remove and possibly little more than a traditional alliance, and those Houses can generally be found everywhere among all the many realms, the homelands of each being a new branch of that House, but always tracing back to the Founding House.

This applies to the vast majority of people within the Imperial World. The 25 Tribes of the Kahokian peoples are part of this, and the Seven Sects of the Hyborian peoples are as well. The Five Hundred, in its most specific application, is a link to those who emerged from the Bitter Road and had become forged anew by that trial, but the way of organizing is far older.

A House is a linkage of people at scale, usually through the thin bonds of kinship in all its forms, and this is what gives them strength. Complex chains of relation exist, but all Houses keep great ledgers in which all marriages, birth, and deaths are recorded, and the House Count is kept. This is, in turn, reported to the Realms, whose Scribes and Heralds keep the great Red Books. It is also said that anyone can found a House, a rule that many do not realize is present, by petitioning the Ruler of the realm in which it is to be founded and being granted a Writ.

The tradition holds that the Head of a House or branch of a House, has the ability to call upon all those within the House to work to aid the House as a whole, and to contribute to its fortunes. A House can call upon the Family to defend its interests and come to the aid of other members of the House, provided the head of the Branch or the House as a whole deems it so. While the limit is applied to what the House needs, and there are neither dues nor tithes nor monetary linkages, it is a bond of duty to family that connects them, and being cast out of your House has significant drawbacks, for anyone can also request the aid of the House – and with a good basis, are likely granted it. Houses do not generally field armies or soldiers – but they may take up a levy and employ soldiers, although, truly, the most common and likely request is a place to sleep, food to eat, and place to bathe. Even beggars do not go hungry or cold if they have a house – so those who are still out are Estranged and Unwelcome.

Houses operate slightly differently from realm to realm – the House of Hoar, for example, is only led by women in Aztlan and only led by men in Sibola – but the core underlying concept remains the same; they trace back down through the seasons to a core ancestor, tracked in each realm’s Great Codex. Houses can be split among the entirety of the Empire, each branch linking towards a given nation, and given the complexity of linkages and alliances, it can create a sense of disunity, even though it has long lost the direct linkage of kinship.

The Head is always selected by the oldest members of that house in a general vote held annually or seven days after the death of the previous head of house. The youngest known Head of a House is Dolay, head of House Partos, who is 72 years old.

Houses are the strongest opposition to the power of the Guilds, far more so than the Courts themselves, as they have significant power to oppose a Guld or Guild Member through boycott and the ever present gossips.

Every noble on Wyrlde belongs to one of the Houses or Circles, even when it is just a tracing of lineage back to one of the original families from the Age of Fable.

While several have fallen aside over the many, many seasons since then, there are still many Great Houses that trace back, as well as new ones that have arisen in the years since. It is said that for a thousand years there have been Five Hundred Houses, and they will stand for a thousand more, though the names will change. In most cases, a Circle is also a House, not merely a guild.

The House of Usher is legendary, for its members have held the throne of the Emperor for generations, and many are still related to the rulers of other Realms.

There are Five Hundred Houses, but only 60 of them are currently considered Great Houses.

The myth of Landing speaks about how there were thirty thousand families that celebrated the first full year of the Wyrlde, as an example.

However, there are very few that have enduring or current influence and power. Houses are key players in Durango, Sibola, and Lemuria.

The Great Houses of The Empire

Among the best-known Houses are Usher (Sibola), Ford (Durango), Skye (Akadia, Lyonese), and the Circle of Lanterns, which is powerful everywhere, as they operate as a House and as a Guild and are not afraid of blackmail used judiciously.

The Great Houses are marked by two factors: First, a significant number of titled Nobility lies within their ranks. Second, they tend to be tightly controlled and politically active across multiple Realms, using tools such as Envoys and employing even Adventurers.