House Vadalis plays an important role in daily life throughout Khorvaire, by working with animals in every conceivable sense. House Vadalis provides meat, mounts, work animals, and more. It's one of the weaker dragonmarked houses, and is generally content not to get involved in politics. The current baron,
Dalin d'Vadalis has no interest in a title, and no aspirations of grandeur for himself or the house.
House Vadalis breeds, and trains, animals for a wide range of purposes. They maintain gigantic cattle ranches to rear livestock, stables and kennels for the training and raising of horses and hounds. The Mark of Handling also allows them to work with more exotic creatures, and they have commonly breed and train Griffons, Hippogriffs and even Bulettes. The Mark of Handling makes this possible, but it doesn't remove the risk and working with these animals is still dangerous.
Magebreeding
House Vadalis covers a wide range of businesses, from animal husbandry to veterinary medicine. These are generally specialised, generational businesses. Redleaf Harriers, based out of Redleaf in the
Eldeen Reaches, breeds hounds, raptors and other hunting beasts. Similarly, Willowhaven Ranch outside of
Varna is the largest dairy farm on Khorvaire. On top of the internal businesses run by the house itself, House Vadalis also licenses countless independent ranchers and breeders, and ensures that the people running those businesses receive Vadalis training and that the animals are care for and raised according to the house's standards.
But when most people think of House Vadalis, they think of
magebreeding. There are a few varieties of magebreeding that are employed by the house.
Incremental Magebreeding
Incremental Magebreeding is much like animal breeding in our world, selectively breeding animals to produce slight variations in the standard animal that is well suited towards a particular role. For example, through incremental magebreeding they might produce hens that lay larger eggs, dogs with thicker coats, or a variety of horse that is larger and stronger. Where this differs from real world animal breeding is the speed at which these changes occur, through magebreeding House Vadalis is able to breed these traits into animals in just a few generations, rather than 50 or 60 years.
Enhanced Magebreeding
Enhanced magebreeding seeks to strengthen a creature, imbuing it with minor supernatural qualities. This isn't just magically modifying an animal so that it exhibits supernatural traits, the goal of magebreeding is to produce new breeds of animals with
hereditary traits, and it's generally slow work that requires generations of animals to produce the intended results. They could just take a horse and use cosmetic magic to give it metallic fur, but this wouldn't produce a breed of horses with metallic fur. Instead, they work to instill a trait gradually over multiple generations until it is naturally passed down. House Vadalis works hard to keep these secrets in-house, and magebred animals are typically sterilized before they are sold to others.
Innovative Magebreeding
Innovative Magrbreeding involves the creation of entirely new species, or imbuing existing creatures with dramatic supernatural characteristics. Urban legends in the
Eldeen Reaches claim that House Vadalis's first act of innovative magebreeding was the creation of the hippogriff. Skeptics claim that the house simply discovered hippogriffs are they emerged from a manifest zone to Kythri.
A more recent, concrete example of innovative magebreeding was the production of the Tressym, first bred in 974 YK in collaboration with
House Medani. The house is always working on innovative projects, but actual successes are rare. The creatures made are often sterile, stillborn, or mentally unstable, and many of them are monstrosities as opposed to beasts.
Exotic Animals
House Vadalis breeds hippogriffs and griffons, and supplies them as mounts to the Five Nations. They also train regional animals, bears in
Breland are what dragonhawks are to
Aundair. So in Breland, House Vadalis magebreeds bears, constantly working to make a better bear, and this was seen with the magebred bear cavalry that Breland employed. Similarly, in Aundair, they breed dragonhawks.
House Vadalis has also been known to work with intelligent animals, such as Pegasi and the Giant Owls of
Sharn. House Vadalis actually views these animals as
members of the house, so while they breed and train them, they do not sell them. Such a thing is akin to slavery. Instead, they are employed by the house, and temporarily placed for specific purposes. The animals are never forced to do this, you can try to hire a pegasus, but if the pegasus says no then you're out of luck.
House Vadalis is not involved with the wyverns in
Thrane, though it does sell hippogriffs there.
Notable Enclaves
Foalswood, located in
Varna, is the headquarters and ancestral home of House Vadalis.
Redleaf Harriers, based out of
Redleaf, breeds hounds, raptors and other hunting animals.
Willowhaven Ranch, located near Varna, is the largest dairy farm on Khorvaire. Magebreeding has led to the production of cows that produce chocolate or strawberry milk.
Wings of Passage, located outside
Passage, breeds and trains griffons for use as mounts.
