House Marnise

Among the original Beourjen aristocratic Houses, that of the Marnise family is perhaps the most fraught with contention. Their beginnings obscurely divine, their treasury lined with blood, and their ending as tragic as it is sinister, House Marnise is infamous even in its death. And like many things so reliant on arcana and divinity, there is always the possibility that death is not truly the end-all of such power.

History

In the Wake of the Last Godstorm

The original Lord of House Marnise is attributed to Siran Marnise, the last High Arcanist of the First Aveaan Empire and a close ally of the Empress, though he secretly began harboring doubts as to her competency long before even the Inner Council began conspiring against her.

Siran was a blood arcanist—the first of many throughout the line of the Marnise family—and he used his abilities in favor of the Empress earlier on before being persuaded to ink the divine bond between Phaedrus Balassar and Minos Tiergarn in the months leading up to the coup. When the last godstorm occured, Siran escaped with Minos and later reconvened with the rest of the Inner Council, who led the Aveaas fugitives south along the Blood Route. When the two halves split, the majority of the Inner Council for what would later be Beourjen and Minos for what would soon be Ethana, Siran followed the Inner Council southeast and carrying with him a generous wealth that he would use to start his noble House with.

Siran was granted a position on the new Beourjen council and, along with several of the other council members, established his estate in the city proper. He soonafter courted and married a young native sovrik woman who happened to be a blood arcanist as well, and much of the theorized unyielding 'strength' of House Marnise is thought to come from this initial pairing and 'conspiring' of blood arcanists to integrate themselves in with the nobility.

Type

Family

Family Leader

Ruskov Marnise

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The idea that the members of House Marnise were superior arcanists, and that amongst their kin were sired some of the most powerful blood arcanists to date is not entirely false, seeing as arcanist traits are passed down genetically, and tend to be stronger variants in the case of homozygotic parents. Because the founders of the Marnise family were both blood arcanists, their children had stronger blood arcanist phenotypes, and through this along with other members of the family who helped to establish their name, a sort of renown was established.

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Through the Rise of the Confederacy

House Marnise contended steadily with the other noble Houses throughout the following century, with a number of members finding lucrative positions among both the Triadic as well as in economic and academic spheres, and to the best of their abilities, they found ways for their status as blood arcanists to prove crucial within the new confederacy. Siran's children stood behind Gwyneth Duxtour when she took the title of High Commander shortly after the Fall of the Imperium, and much later Petrev Marnise played an integral role in ending the Northwestern Trades.

Ruskov Marnise

Perhaps the most infamous of House Marnise, and for still-controversial reasons, Ruskov Marnise was the last patriarch of House Marnise until the family's abrupt end in 1493. Ruskov was a brilliant physician, and a close friend of High Commander Andrei Duxtour—two facts that would eventually land him at the executioner's block in the Loched Quarter in the spring of that last fateful year. Despite his close relations with Duxtour in the earlier periods of their lives, their friendship grew turbulent upon both men starting their own respective careers and families, and by the early 1490s there was a strain between them evident even to the public.

It was around this time that Duxtour's son became fatally ill, and so Duxtour brought the boy to Ruskov in a desperate hope that Marnise would save him. However Marnise, having used his skills as an arcanist extensively throughout the past several decades of his adulthood, had begun to suffer from the middling stages of arcana poisoning. There is some debate about the exact details of Duxtour pleading to Ruskov for help, as well as about the events carried out during the rest of the night, but regardless Ruskov ended up agreeing to try and help the boy.

Duxtour left that night, for unknown reasons, and supposedly returned to House Marnise to find his son completely butchered—he claimed that the boy had been drained dry, that there were strips of his flesh simply missing. Marnise attested that he hadn't meant any harm, and that he had no recollection of committing such cruelty upon the child; still, Duxtour had him arrested and immediately brought to trial.

The trial itself was supposedly somewhat of an empty formality, and while the proceedings were ongoing, Duxtour had the rest of the Marnise family executed, using his son's murder as a public warning against all arcanists, and of the atrocities they could potentially commit. By the time the first day of the trial drew to a close, Ruskov was the only Marnise left, and Duxtour dragged him across the city and executed him himself in a bloody and dramatic spectacle.

The End of House Marnise

The Marnise Trials as they became known, and the onset of the Arcanic Purges, marked the end of House Marnise. Much of Beourjen was astounded at the very possibility of a House as strong as the Marnises being cut down so swiftly, and by nearly one man. However, there are some who posit that perhaps House Marnise is not truly gone. High Commander Duxtour was persistent in his aim to chase out or cut down all the arcanists within eastern Beourjen, however he did not rid the confederacy of them entirely, and many escaped to other corners of the globe. It is sometimes whispered that a stray member of House Marnise has since tucked themself away, biding their time.