Houses

BACK to GATH

A core part of what makes Gath strong is the internecine struggle between houses, and the Emperor's ability to deftly play each house against the other, maintaining a fragile balance that always results in a kind of stability to the Empire as a whole. While it may seem counterintuitive to most outsiders, it somehow works. Due to these internecine struggles, the fortunes of Houses rise and fall, and they are always hungrily seeking to expand their influence, power, and territories in an effort to elevate their position in the royal court as much as to get an edge over their rivals.

Major Houses

House Cadogan	House Chellus	House Grynne
House Lund	House Pryde

Minor Houses

House Beavon	House Bryce	House Dacey
House Floddir	House Geldren	House Gwilt
House Prothero	House Rees (Reez)	House Rowland

Establishing a new House

The Empire has changed much over the years, and has grown. Not only because of the inclusion of the Thedar into The Empire, as well as the fact that Thedar houses, some 80 years past, have finally been given the recognition and voice they deserve, but also by the occasional recognition of a new house being established. The establishment of these new houses is rare, and is typically the result of exceptional service to the crown. Generally, new houses are considered Minor, simply by virtue of the fact that they usually cannot bring the kind of martial or economic resources to the Crown that their better established counterparts can.

The Creation of new Houses is a relatively new thing for The Empire, and not without its share of controversy and strife, particularly between members of new Houses and members of any of the established houses that have been in existence for centuries. This substrata of Houses, primarily among the Minor Houses, has occasionally resulted in the eruption of open hostilities between those of the New Houses, and those of the Old Houses. Oddly, the friction between the two factions are rarely about whether or not the New Houses are any more or less deserving of their recognition of being a House, and has more to do with ideological and philosophical differences born out of two very different paradigms.

The Battle of Ideas

This battle of ideas has not gone unnoticed by the Major Houses, nor has it gone unnoticed by the Emperor. Instead, both have watched this with great interest, seeing this as a proving grounds for what may some day decide the course The Empire may take in the future.

One the one hand, you have the New Houses, who believe that the empire is far too concerned with diplomacy, and that the wilds surrounding the empire should be aggressively explored and expanded into, and any losses sustained through such efforts are acceptable. These aggressive expansion tendencies often translate into the hiring of scouts and explorers en masse, offering to pay for new information and accurate maps of the wilder parts of Melemar that still remain as much a mystery to even the elder races as they have been to anyone else.

Meanwhile the Old Houses are interested in building and expanding upon their already established power bases. While they expand, they do so at a slower, more cautious rate. Their approach is more deliberate, funding expeditions of comprised of personnel from their own House. While they may still pay for scouts and explorers to accompany the expeditions, more often they provide their own from the House garrison.

While both ideas have merit, both approaches have met with mixed success. In general, the New Houses have expanded quickly, but often find themselves overextended whereas the Old Houses that have expanded more deliberately have rarely lost outposts or new settlements to be reclaimed by the mysteries of the wilds.