Nine families rule the deepest floors of the city. They sit the Pagos - the High Council - and they own the guilds in everything but name. Between them, they've divided up most of what really matters in Deshret.
You don't have to play a noble to interact with the Great Houses. They employ guards, stewards, doctors, pilots, spies and servants. They meddle in pretty much everything. But if you want to be part of one, sworn to one, or just want to know whose ring you're kissing, here are some lore drops:
House Vesalius
Vesalius has run Mythos - bioengineering, splicing, cyberware, medicine - as long as the guild has existed. They rule through a strange arrangement: three living incarnations of the same genestock at once. A child is tutored into the seat, an adult holds the seat, and an elder advises the seat. When the elder dies, the cycle moves up one.
Members of House Vesalius tend to be ancient - though many don't look it - bioengineered to be gorgeous, and unfailingly polite. They also tend to be composed and cold in a clinical way; they are interested in people either as specimens or based on how useful they might be to the House, rather than the person themselves. Vesalius don't fear age, pain or death - they've conquered those, in their eyes.
The ruling family has adopted a striking look of extremely pale skin and platinum blond hair. They eschew splicing with any obviously animalistic traits, though some offshoots beyond the ruling line might embrace them.
Everyone in the city knows about the infamous Vesalius gallery: preserved human bodies flayed and split open, curated from the once-enemies of the House. This is not the same thing as the famed Mythos zoo. But the inspiration of where that came from is clear.
House Rook
This is the only House that came to be after the Founding, rather than as part of it. While other Great Houses already had established themselves from the start as influential families and groups, Rook did not exist.
Rook was instead made a Great House a couple decades after Deshret came to be, composed of the leaders of the citizen's militia and the neighbourhood watches that had formed to keep the city safe. These would also eventually be formalised as the guardsmen.
Rook show up to the Council in plain grey cotton jumpsuits while others remain surrounded by silk. With a chip on their shoulder the size of the city itself, Rook children may be noble by birth but nobody cares until they've actually served - a Rook who has never worked or stood a post remains eating at the low end of the family table at any age. Their children and the children of their servants are born and raised in the same quarters, which are very spartan. They grow up together and train together, as equals.
Most Rooks end up as officers of the Lictorate (the everyday guardsmen) or serve as Dragoons (the elite division of the guardsmen). They put value on honor and earning one's worth: and it is not so rare that House Rook adopts commoners who display their values formally into their House.
House Drepane
The executives of Symphony - or gods, as they call themselves - are very much real. While they mostly reside in the digital world, they appear where they please. Each have their own distinct department; Apollo runs the broadcasts, Aphrodite the fashion and pleasure lines, Ares the violence and so on.
Drepane is the House that serves them and has ever since the pantheon has come to be. Borderline heretical in their worship of the pantheon, they're the most fanatical of the bunch when it comes to serving these digital beings: and have also fully bought into the delusion. Their halls look straight out of the Odyssey, and they keep dead arts alive: theatre, rhetoric, verse, philosophy in a city that wouldn't need it otherwise. Their symposia are famous, and every children born to Drepane is raised to be worthy of at least one god's attention.
They're obsessed with beauty, spectacle, the drama, the pleasure. If a life is not witnessed, to Drepane, it did not happen. So a Drepane is usually the most vibrant in the room, the one that makes the biggest grand entrance. They always stand out. They throw the best parties.
Performers, duelists, orators, and beautiful disasters will be right at home with Drepane. Also the crazy deckers who want to worship digital gods.
House Varga
While Mythos may own genesplicing, there's one problem: where -does- the genestock come from for the splicing to happen? The answer is Varga. While every other House may keep estates or gardens, what Varga keeps is a hunting ground: the largest private holding in Deshret, sealed and stocked with beasts of their own breeding. Some of these are licensed and sold to Mythos for use in their work, while the others are hunted and bred for sport.
The coarsest of the nine, Varga are fierce and feral, more comfortable with animals and their pens than at the table. The other Houses have an inside joke that you'll always know if a Varga is nearby by their smell. They're the savage nobles who believe civilisation is just a costume. Many Varga serve as gladiators, bounty hunters or trackers for the Outriders where they feel right at home hunting the next quarry. They can track anything, find anything and potentially breed anything.
Outwardly suspicious and inwardly loyal, once you're part of the pack, you're part of the pack. The closest thing to an ally they have in Deshret among the other Houses are the Rooks as neither tend to play the games the rest tend to play.
House Valcora
While the other Houses prefer to be deep down, Valcora is the only one that prefers to go up. House Valcora owns the largest aviation fleet Deshret has. While Valcora wings hold monopoly over transit charters for when Guilds need transport - be it in the city or outside - such also means air superiority and power over any other organization in Deshret.
For Valcora, pilots outrank everyone else regardless of titles. They're restless, nomadic, clanish, and very superstitous with their own beliefs and ways. Valcora also boast some of the highest noble death rates due to the nature of their work.
Their wanderlust and curiosity tends to put them at odds with Sepulchre, and many find homes with the Outriders, with a significant portion of their higher ranked (and experienced) members being Valcora stock.
House Qamarat
The Pneumatikon engine that powers the city of Deshret runs on crystals, a byproduct of the catastrophe that befell the world. Qamarat owns the lion's share of those crystals, mined and stored in their warehouses. While no House can be said to govern Deshret, Qamarat as the richest comes close. Every lamp in Deshret burns on their ledger; when the other Houses throw feasts and parties late into the night, it's Qamarat's light that they do it by.
They believe themselves the rightful rulers of everything the city has to offer, and they're as close to aristocracy as you can get. Many Qamarat have massive egos with this unshakeable assumption that they were born and raised to preside over others, and tend to be assholes.
That being said, they unfortunately have the means to back their attitude up, and so the other Houses (including Great Houses) tend to play nice with Qamarat out of necessity.
House Morcant
Nobody really knows what a Morcant looks like. This isn't a figure of speech; once a Morcant comes of age, the members of House Morcant give up their names and faces. Wearing masks or even faces that aren't theirs, one Morcant is indistungishable from another by design.
The city associates them with death, and there are some strange rumors about the Coterie (the syndicate) and their association with Morcant, as both factions like their masks. They're kept at an arms length by other Houses as weirdos and outcasts, and Morcants themselves tend to be antisocial. One usually feels like they are speaking to a role, not a person, when interacting with them.
Aside from the connection with death, there isn't actually much public knowledge on what Morcant does or why they're a Great House.
House Amari
One could say that everything in Deshret is a copy of something. The food is paste shaped like food. The bodies are copies of their originals. The sky is a ceiling. Not for the Amari; the Amari have the real deal. Their estate is a living garden: actual soil, actual water, orchards and vines. The fruit served at an Amari table is said to be the closest thing to the world before, and their feasts are famous, often thrown in close association with Drepane, who supply the spectacle while Amari supply the food and drink.
That same principle has put them on a collision course with Mythos. Amari has moved into the drug trade, and they've done it the Amari way: where Mythos sells synthetic marijuana-derivatives and research chemicals, Amari sells the real thing, grown. It costs a premium and people pay it. Mythos still owns the synthetic and pharmaceutical end of the market, but the naturals are going to Amari, one convert at a time, which Mythos has noticed.
House Kadesh
Everyone in Deshret is, on paper, faithful. They tithe, they wear their seals, they pray and nod along at the sermons. For most, that's the whole of it.
Not for House Kadesh, the truest believers in the city. If Sepulchre is the body of the faith, Kadesh considers itself the blood. A Kadesh is easily recognized on sight because they literally wear their faith on their flesh. The seals other people may prefer to ink or tattoo are carved onto Kadesh skin. Every act of devotion is marked from brands to ritual scars cut deep. When a Kadesh splinters, it is tradition to grab their athame and carve every single inch of it back onto their flawless skin, painstakingly over hours, during the first day of their rebirth - and these marks only increase in number the longer a Kadesh remains alive, the imperfect lines piling up. It's for that reason the oldest members of House Kadesh tend to be grotesque, scarred beings that resemble something that was once human but not so much anymore.
Kadesh have historically served Sepulchre, as clergy and inquisitors both. They fast where others feast. They walk unarmored and unarmed in the worst parts of the city to preach. They are the crusaders, the flagellants. Also likely masochists and sadists, obsessed with pain and suffering for their beliefs. Yet, in a city like Deshret, being part of a House this devout certainly has its perks.
FAQS
Are there specific titles used by the Great Houses?
Yes, the below are generally used across Houses, though Houses may have other specific titles as well:
- Magnate for the Head of the House;
- Scion for the heir;
- Kin for direct family of any degree;
- Sworn for servants, guards, etc.
Is there any gender preference in the Houses?
No, gender and sex are irrelevant to inheritance.
How are bastards of Great Houses treated?
Think Game of Thrones; no real rights or legal status.
However, there are surnames for each house that indicate bastard descent:
- Vesalius: Vane
- Qamarat: Sable
- Rook: March
- Morcant: Harrow
- Drepane: Bell
- Valcora: Gale
- Varga: Wilder
- Amari: Thorne
- Kadesh: Creed
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