House Jorasco
The halflings of House Jorasco hold the Mark of Healing, and their good works have saved countless lives. They heal the sick and the dying, and provide comfort and respite for those whom even magic cannot cure. They often work hand in hand with House Ghallanda, giving travelers access to healing and aid even in remote areas. By those who owe their health or life to the Mark of Healing, Jorasco’s name is praised.
At the same time, Jorasco is not a charity institution. As a dragonmarked house, it is an economic stronghold of epic proportions, offering its services to all who need them—and are able to pay. This mercenary approach to succor rubs many people the wrong way, however, particularly the poor and indigent who cannot afford a healer’s services regardless of need.
Structure
House Jorasco is a dragonmarked house of halfl ings who carry the Mark of Healing in their bloodlines. The house provides care for the sick and injured across Khorvaire, and it is a rare adventurer who does not come under Jorasco care at some point in her career.
When entering an enclave of House Jorasco, one quickly notices the dearth of nonhalflings there. Though house ranks are primarily fi lled by those born of Jorasco blood, halflings of any family can seek employment as hirelings and can easily rise to positions of power. Though its connections to the Talenta Plains are long severed (to the point where many plains halflings openly distrust the house), Jorasco has an open policy of accepting fosterlings from the Talenta tribes, offering them the opportunity to become a member of the house upon reaching adulthood.
Jorasco’s presence in all the major centers of Khorvaire provides house members with a safety net. A member of House Jorasco can always find temporary room and board at a house healing center or hospital, but is expected to work while in residence.
Culture
As a member of House Jorasco, the duties of your birthright were impressed upon you early on—doubly so if you developed the Mark of Healing. Injury and illness are ghosts stalking the living, robbing them of health and youth. You have been given the ability to combat these scourges, and even to pull someone back from the brink of death. Jorasco trains you to use these skills in the service of others, but it also reminds you that everything has a price. As much as you might like to spread your healing prowess for free, you have a responsibility to keep your house healthy as well.
Public Agenda
Inevitably, adventurers get hurt. When they do, they almost as inevitably seek a healer of House Jorasco. Even in a group that includes a cleric, PCs often come up against diseases, curses, and mortal wounds beyond the ability of low-level healers to remedy. In such situations, Jorasco is always waiting with open arms—and an eye to its purse. Officially, House Jorasco never accepts services in kind, but for adventurers who cannot afford to pay, the house will sometimes “loan” the required fee and set an exchange of services as repayment.
Service to a Jorasco healer might involve retrieving a certain medicinal herb from the Shadow Marches, seeking out a beholder’s tongue for a rare alchemical cure, or helping to keep anyone from entering or leaving a quarantined village. In many cases, making good on their debt might well place adventurers in need of a healer again.
House Jorasco was originally a tribe of Talenta halfl ings renowned for its steadfast nature and healing gifts. With the appearance of the Mark of Healing (and the subsequent appearance of emissaries from House Cannith and House Sivis to explain its significance), the Jorasco halflings accepted that their fate was larger than the plains of their birth. When House Jorasco settled in Karrnath and the lands beyond, the halflings gave up their nomadic ways.
The legacy of the plains lives on only in the house’s leadership structure, which bears little more than a superficial resemblance to the other dragonmarked houses. Groups within the house remain structured along family lines. Ulara d’Jorasco rules the house as matriarch, but all house members hold the right to advise the leadership as they see fit. The matriarch is chosen by the house membership and directs the activities of the house until she dies or loses the respect and confi dence of the house. As a result, Jorasco changes leadership more often than any other house, but such changes have yet to disrupt the house’s operations. Ulara spends almost all her time at the Jorasco enclave in Vedykar, and is greatly beloved by her house.
Assets
Though House Jorasco’s healing touch can be found across Khorvaire, the house’s main seat of power is the city of Vedykar, in Karrnath. The enclave there is known within the house as Resthold, and is the home of the matriarch, Ulara d’Jorasco.
Within Resthold, one can find the finest healing facilities in all Khorvaire, in addition to a training hospital, a spa for long-term convalescence, and an asylum for those who suffer from madness even magic cannot cure. Desperate individuals have been known to cross Khorvaire to seek help there; it is said that if you cannot be cured in Resthold, then nothing can save you.
Aside from Vedykar, Jorasco maintains large healing enclaves in Fairhaven, Sharn, and Gatherhold in the Talenta Plains. The house also has holdings and Healers Guild facilities in Flamekeep, Korth, Newthrone, Taer Valaestas, Trolanport, Pylas Talaear, and Stormreach, in addition to small offices and clinics across Khorvaire.
History
Like its sibling House Ghallanda, House Jorasco was born on the Talenta Plains. Unlike the Ghallanda halflings, House Jorasco long ago shifted its focus from the ways of tribal life to the cosmopolitan traditions of central Khorvaire. Today, Jorasco halflings have little or no connection to the ways of their nomadic ancestors, and are firmly entrenched in the lifestyle of the Five Nations. Initially, House Jorasco was the Jorasco tribe, a collection of related family lines. Eschewing the battle-hardened traditions of the Talenta tribes, Jorasco halfl ings earned their keep through their skills at healing: from mid-wifery, to patching up wounded warriors, to helping ease the dying along their way. Their skill would be paid for by the recovering individual’s family or tribe, an exchange of gifts and services that was the expected convention of Talenta culture.
When the tribe became a house, the dynamic changed. In founding the house and establishing its headquarters in Karrnath, Jorasco soon found itself in debt to House Cannith and House Sivis—debt that called for Jorasco’s services to be repaid in coin, not kind. In time, the healers of Jorasco were operating on a set schedule of fees and asking for payment in advance.
House Jorasco has long been established as the pre-eminent source of healing in Khorvaire, having skillfully pushed the temples of the Sovereign Host and the Silver Flame out of the healing business centuries ago. The advent of the Last War saw Jorasco healers spread across the length and breadth of the continent. Remaining steadfastly neutral allowed the house to serve all sides in that confl ict, providing mundane care for soldiers and magical healing for the officers who directed the war. Jorasco healers assisted in important military operations and engaged in joint missions with House Ghallanda, offering respite and healing for the wounded—away from the front lines.
Their initial fee schedule was designed to support the healers of Jorasco in return for the time they spent caring for others. As the house became more successful, however, payment became less about survival and more about profit. The Korth Edicts codified this situation in a way, preventing the houses from owning land and forcing them to focus their fortunes in gold alone. Since that time, Jorasco’s mission of healing has always been balanced by the house’s passion for profi t, a reality that angers those most in need of Jorasco’s gifts. Even after the Last War’s end, Jorasco still reaps the benefits of that dark conflict. Those who were broken in battle require a lifetime’s care now that the war is over—and such care is House Jorasco’s specialty. Since the end of the war, the house has expanded the number of enclaves and healing houses it runs by nearly a third, including opening state-financed centers for veterans of the Last War in each nation.
Type
Geopolitical, Great house
Alternative Names
Halfling House of Healing
Subsidiary Organizations
Location
Controlled Territories
Related Species
