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Rules • Themes • Bestiary • Religion • Races • Guilds • Families • Arlinac City • Maps • Adventures • Stories |
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Noble Families Table of Contents
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The noble families serve two purposes in the Guilddom Adventures Made Easy setting. Foremost, the provide a simple explanation for who maintains the city's general infrastructure. For the sake of adventuring it is useful (although unrealistic) for the city to be divided into almost autonomous districts. But then who maintains the main roads, city wall, and storm drains? Second, they allow very traditional types of political intrigue: rival siblings fighting over succession, class struggles between nobility and laborers, criminal motivations rooted in deeds done generations ago, theft of heirlooms that are considered sources of family honor, etc. |
Gara Gara recruited the aid of four armies when he liberated Arlinac Mountain from the Undead. These armies represented the races of Therions, Dweorgs, Pixies, and Bergtrolls.
When planning his conquest, Gara Gara realized that his rule would only be briefly tolerated. He promised the generals of those four armies that their families, after changing their names, would become Arlinac's nobility. Those families would receive taxes in exchange for providing Arlinac with its public services, thus enjoying a secure income and a political influence balancing the rule of the guilds.
The Therion family was named Field and oversees the Caravan Grounds and Tournament Grounds. The Dweorg family was named Grate and runs the city's Postal Service and its Department of Public Works. The Pixy family was named Hall and manages the inns and gambling clubs. The Bergtroll family was named Block and maintains the main road, city walls, and the two toll gates.
Gara Gara tricked the four generals, cursing them. He trapped them in four evil, enchanted paintings created through Bergtroll musing. The generals are still alive, and can weakly communicate with their descendants. Each general has been affected by the curse in a slightly different manner.
The noble families own all of the land in Arlinac outside of the guild districts, the Fortress, and the Spire. They also own most of the farmland outside the city walls. This farmland is rented to farmers who pay the noble family 5% of their income. The noble families also offer any farmer, whether a renter or an independent land owner, protection from bandits and monsters for a fee of 5% of their income; this is especially popular on the land west of the mountain which is more frequently attacked by Kobalts.
The city's charter requires the current Patriarch of each noble family to live in a manor near the mountain's summit, just south of the Fortress. In that manor the family's cursed painting is kept so that the current Patriarch may communicate with his or her ancestor. Other family members supported by city taxes may live in that same manor or elsewhere inside the city.
Most of the guild-folk of Arlinac view the nobility with mixed emotions. Many in the noble families are self-serving and hungry for power. A few are heartless or cruel. Yet all the noble families remain faithful to their calling of providing public services. The wealth of the nobles is envied but is also seen as tasteful: the nobility define the city's trends in art and fashion.
The city charter forbids the noble families, like the guilds, from building or using jails. Only economic fines, exile from the city, and execution are viable punishments for those who commit criminal acts against the nobility, their property, or their public services.
All noble families employ three kinds of legal officers. First are the Inspectors, which are (often undercover) accountants, detectives and spies who ensure fees, tolls, and taxes are paid and that laws are obeyed. Second are the Enforcers, who carry out verdicts of fines, exile or capital punishment. Third are the Sentinels, who guard people or messages, including threatened witness of crimes who are making their way to a trial.
The oldest and most famous Therion clan is the descendants of the ancient heroic couple Nietha and Nerb. From within this clan Gara Gara recruited as a Therion general the most charismatic yet reckless leader of that generation, Fearless Forz.
During the Conquest of Gara Gara the Therion army was the least effective in combat against the hordes of Undead, but using the shapes of flying or quick-footed animals was invaluable in reconnaissance and bringing wounded allies back from the battle.
General Forz Field now communicates with his descendants by causing any of them in the same manor as his painting to hear voices. However, the voices say little more than frequent, nagging commands to try to conquer the city by force, which the family ignores.
The Field family is responsible for maintaining the Caravan Grounds, Tournament Grounds, Public Square, and Zoo. It has also decided to be in charge of mercenaries seeking employment in or near the city, using the few buildings on the Tournament Grounds for this purpose.
The Caravan Grounds are where hundreds of merchants set up tents and booths during trade festivals. The Tournament Grounds are where warriors do their drills and practice skirmishes, horses and other large animals are exercised, and on special festival days large tournaments are held, funded by one or more noble families seeking to increase public appreciation.
This family has many children who are encouraged to struggle for supremacy at the tournament events of fencing, staff fighting, and jousting. The role of family Patriarch is not hereditary. When the current Patriarch decides to retire (or dies) the new Patriarch is the current family tournament champion.
The Field family's land is beside either the Caravan Grounds or the Tournament Grounds. It is divided up into manorial estates whose large lawns are also used for training that manor's guard in combat both on foot and mounted: the only mounted combat regularly practiced within the city.
Even among those members of the Field family with no desire to become Patriarch, status in the family is based more on reknown in sparring than on age.
The Field family does not directly employ adventurers. However, many adventurers had their early training and employment among the gladiators and showmen whom the Field family oversees.
The most famous Dweorg clan is the descendants of Vryrsidd the Smith who forged the Six Splendid Blades from the rock Pillory. Within this clan two families are most respected. Most famous are the descendants of Dreldak Forearm, lords of Arlinac Mountain. Recently notable are the descendants of the inventor Fraklon who have earned high esteem as the guardians of potent machinery techniques that Fraklon, the genius Father of Machinery, kept as family secrets.
Arlinac Mountain was Dweorg territory for most of the Age of Dragons and fifty years afterwards. During all those years the families of Dreldak Forearm and Zrothab Barrelbelly both claimed and fought for the mountain. For generations foritifications were built then repeatedly wrested away as the tide of war shifted. When rumors of Gara Gara's plans to reconquer the mountain surfaced both families rallied and mustered as an army. Gara Gara chose the descendants of Dreldak Forearm, led by Dweldin Vicegrip. The kin of Zrothab Barrelbelly view this choice as an eternal insult to their family honor, and have vowed that some day they will be the only Dweorgs on the mountain.
General Dweldin Vicegrip Grate communicates with his descendants by making lights flicker and pipes creak anywhere in the city. This allows him to alert both descendants and adopted family members to weak infrastructure and to crime against their property.
The Grate family is responsible for maintaining the city's Postal Service and its Department of Public Works. The Department of Public Works maintains the city's public lanterns, wells, and sewers. It also provides electricity, plumbing for drinkable water, and/or sewer service to the buindings of those who can afford such luxuries.
This Grate family has very few children. It is the only Noble Family that adopts children. This helps protect the scores of Therions and Bergtrolls who are employed by the Grate family as civil engineers: someone considering criminal action against a probable employee of the family risks vengeance from the Grate family if the potential victim is actually nobility.
Most of the Grate Family land is a long, thin plot along the lower southwest of the mountain, touching the city walls. The edge of this land closest to the river is taken up by ponderous and busy mechanical plants and factories, or is currently used for warehouses which are rented to the Navigators. The edge of the family land closest to the eastern city gate has the family's many manors and houses.
The Grate Family has also purchased many small plots of land throughout city, which it uses for utility buildings.
The Grate Family values reliability, loyalty, and integrity in its members as well as the wisdom and engineering experience that comes through age. Many of its members also vie for status by "cultivating" basement gem gardens which ideally use tricks of the light to give the impression of a huge expanse lit by the radiance of gems and candlelight.
The Grate family often employs adventurers to patrol the city's storm drains and sewers. Most of these passages are the ruins of ancient Dweorg fortifications, on top of which time and construction have built the modern city. Sometimes Undead from the city's Fortress and monsters from the mountain's caverns wander into these passages, and the Grate Family prefers "clean house" with mercenaries than risk the lives of family members.
Anemone the Pixie was the first person to meet Mart-Marta, during the Trooping War. Her descendents remain highly respected among Pixies for their hospitality and care-giving. Gara Gara recruited Anemone's great-great-grandson, Hornbeam, to lead an army of Pixies.
General Hornbeam Hall communicates with his descendants while sleeping, providing dreams that provide both true and false information about people (usually other Hall family). This encourages entertaining gossip but the frequent lack of truthfulness means the dreams are not actually useful.
The Hall family is responsible for maintaining the city's taverns, inns, baths and gambling halls. It also runs the theatre, puppet theatre, stadium, arena, bardic Hall, trophy hall, university, and art museum. Finally, it is required to oversee the slum housing on the mountain's northwestern face, high up near the Spire and Fortress.
The taverns and inns are more than restaurants and hotels. Visitors, through the purchase of food and drink, spread out the cost of heating the buildings so they become social centers during cold weather. The inns also have public stables and garages so travelers can store riding animals, machines, and golems.
The slums are small, frail, wooden buildings leaning against each other on land too rocky and steep to be desirable, inhabited by those who are too poor or apathetic to leave Arlinac after the city somehow disappointed them.
The Hall family is burdened with having many young female children. Over the past 160 years the male family members that have died and become nut trees have each produced dozens of young female Pixies. Nearly all the young Pixies born in the city, especially among the nobility, have no desire to ever leave the city and begin aging. Thus the majority of the Hall Family remain young female children who spend their days playing silly games in the many recreational buildings the family runs.
The Hall Family land is a large, rectangular plot along the main road, near most of its halls and the western city gate. The family land is divided up into mansions with small private, walled, covered gardens which may be visited for a small fee.
Perhaps because the Hall Family has more land along the main road than any other Noble Family it sometimes leases out unused family land to vendors and proselytizers, creating sporadic roadside mini-markets of which the Field Family disapproves.
Prestige within the Hall Family is mainly earned from a well planned and maintained private garden.
The Hall family often employs adventurers to patrol the slums, or during festivals as extra guards for taverns, inns and gambling halls.
The Glorious General claims to be from the Snowspire division of Bergtroll families. Gara Gara recruited Arkred Snowspire to be his Bergtroll General.
Arkred Block communicates with his descendants by giving them visions while they are resting in the main Block family manor. His family has learned to follow their ancestor's guidance for planning roads, walls, and parks.
The Block family's primary responsiblity is to maintain the main road, city walls, and the two toll gates where the main road passes through the city walls. The family also must maintain any other roads, walls and parks that lie outside of guild districts.
Recently the family has built a clerk, printing press, and mint on property purchased close to its family land. These new buildings are so useful that the other Noble Families have barely protested the expansion of Block authority.
Rumors claim that the Block family employs "secret agents" who do scouting and espionage in and around the city to keep the city safe. These work of these agents are a defensive compliment the physical city walls.
Many of the guards employed by the Block family to police the city walls are so loyal to Arlinac that they refuse and report bribes, and devotedly perform their duties. This is important (but less surprising) because the threat of Ogres and Kobalts sneaking into the city is very real. However, a few of the toll gate guards will accept a small bribe to bring someone to the front of the line of people waiting to be inspected and taxed before entering the city.
The Block family employs dozens of Therions who fly as birds around the city's perimeter to assist the city wall patrol. At least three are on duty at all times, day or night.
This family has few children. Since the Block Family is a Bergtroll family and nobility too, its adults treat the family's children as if they are obviously superior to any other children.
The Block Family land is a comparatively small plot of land along the southeast city wall.
The Block Family values private collections of artwork. With circular reasoning they believe having a collection demonstrates the worth of a person and that the most visible indication of an individual's worth is the person's artistic collection.
The Block Family often employs adventurers as guards within the city or as scouts doing reconnaissance around the city.