House Vadalis
House Vadalis, also known as the House of Handling', is a Human Dragonmarked House bearing the Mark of Handling that operates throughout Khorvaire. With the power to calm and control beasts, the house's most significant trade is in the breeding and training of animals. They also maintain the Handler's Guild, which dominates animal-related industries. Their headquarters are at Foalswood in the Eldeen Reaches, where the Mark of Handling originally appeared about 2,000 years ago.
Dragonmark
House Vadalis possesses the Mark of Handling. This dragonmark grants various magical abilities related to calming and controlling animals and bestows a primal bond to the natural world, allowing them to domesticate even the most exotic and difficult beasts. Vadalis has turned this gift into a booming business in Magebred Animals and become industry leaders in livestock breeding and animal training. While all members of House Vadalis are humans, not all members carry the Mark of Handling, but they may still work within the house.
History
Some 2000 years ago, numbering only a few families at the time, the human ancestors of what would become House Vadalis migrated from the west to the northeastern Eldeen Reaches. They were among the first humans to settle in the region, and despite its dangers, they survived. About 200 years later, the Mark of Handling first appeared upon their descendants, allowing them to tame the wild animals that once threatened them. They saw it as a gift bestowed by the gods of the Sovereign Host, one that helped them endure and even flourish in a harsh land. From them, House Vadalis would grow.
Over time, the family turned their gift into a lucrative and influential business of taming, breeding, and selling all sorts of animals, but remained a family first and a business second. Their heartland would always remain in the Eldeen Reaches.
Although most in House Vadalis dedicated themselves merely to breeding better-quality livestock, those of the Seryan family line had long been intrigued by the darker power to be found in nature and studied the dire wolf and displacer beast.
During the War of the Mark around 1500 years ago, when the fearful dragonmarked houses struggled to eradicate the bearers of mixed and Aberrant Dragonmark, House Vadalis was swift to get involved, for they had always valued bloodlines. But then the Seryans revealed the results of their experiments, unveiling monstrous living weapons to the horror of everyone else, druids and dragonmarked houses alike. At the end of the war, the newly established Council of the Twelve banned the Seryans' practices, destroyed their creations, and suppressed all records of them. All that remains are wild rumors of House Vadalis breeding horrific magical monsters that had to be banned and exterminated.
In the centuries after, House Vadalis refocused their efforts on breeding livestock and mounts and on traveling Eberron. After an attempted assassination of the then Keeper of the Flame, Traelyn Ghelios, in 321 YK, High Cardinal Syketel of the Church of the Silver Flame beseeched House Vadalis for an extraordinary guardian to defend and serve the Keepers. Thus, Vadalis wizards bred, or created, the unique creature known as Skaravojen, which still lives and now serves Jaela Daran. House Vadalis maintains the secret of how it came to be.
In the late 800s YK, Perr Hanton, a gifted but cruel magebreeder and early member of the Feral Heart, made various magical items to help control their monstrous creations, including stern handler's wraps. Eventually, one of his own creatures escaped and slew him, then marauded around the wilderness for some years until regular members of House Vadalis found it and put it down.
The Last War
While it was not a key factor in anyone's war effort, and its overall influence on the conflict was less than that of other dragonmarked houses, the Last War was nevertheless a lucrative time for House Vadalis, with many nations seeking to purchase their animals as mounts and warbeasts. The house remained a neutral party, selling to all sides.
At the start of the war in 894 YK, the Vadalis barons foresaw a need for exotic beasts to meet unusual mission requirements and resolved to be the ones to provide them. Thus, scouts, hunters, and traders set out in search of new creatures and acquired eggs, young, and breed-ready adults in the furthest reaches of Khorvaire. Thereafter, representatives of each side came to the house with their requests, and Vadalis delivered. Breland in particular spent big on Vadalis-supplied magebred warhorses for their cavalry, magebred brown bears for their rangers and special forces such as the Ninth Brigade, and magebred ghost tigers to Brelish druids. They also sold dragonhawks to Aundair and magebred warhorses suited to heavy cavalry and griffons for aerial reconnaissance to many sides in the later phase of the war. More deadly warbeasts were dire wolves trained to hunt humans, bulettes that would tunnel beneath defensive walls, and even the infrequent and expensive dinosaurs. But they also provided sturdy draft animals to the mobile hospitals of House Jorasco's new Medics Guild when it was established around fifty years ago, at the peak of the fighting. Thus they made themselves vital, albeit often overlooked in recollections of the Last War.
In a workshop in the Glass Tower in Sharn, Jasran d'Vadalis had managed to domesticate and enhance blink dogs, developing a breed of friendly blink dogs that could teleport other creatures and objects as well as themselves. However, in 918 YK, the Glass Tower collapsed, destroying the workshop and devastating the Godsgate district. Some of the blink dogs escaped, joining a local Raver tribe in the new Fallen district.
Even when the Eldeen Reaches seceded from Aundair in 958 YK, House Vadalis took no sides and stayed neutral in the subsequent conflict. They also saw no need to depart their ancestral lands, having been there long before the rise of the Kingdom of Galifar and still there after its collapse.
Yet a darkness began to grow inside the family, with the Feral Heart conspiracy taking hold in the house and seeking to revive the practices of the Seryans, and even to create magebred humanoids. Seeking a competitor to House Cannith's successful Warforged, and motivated by the Feral Heart, the Cyre-based branch of House Vadalis under Venarl d'Vadalis conducted illicit experiments on sentient creatures, including humans, at their secret Clifftop laboratory.
Around 978 YK, some members of Balinor's Blessed attempted to steal a whole herd of Valenar horses, causing the elves of Valenar to ban the house from their lands and become their bitterest foes. They would make repeated attempts in following years.
In the last years of the war, following a short internal struggle, House Vadalis started to train its own griffon riders and thus entered the mercenary business. The armies of Khorvaire deployed their Vadalis griffon riders against the griffon riders of other nations.
Recent History
Recently, house patriarch Dalin d'Vadalis has just begun to uncover evidence of a secret organization within House Vadalis, that is, the Feral Heart.
In 998 YK, a Vadalis facility in Fairhaven, Aundair, was raided by elite Aundairian forces led by Captain Allis, acting on a tip-off by the Royal Eyes. They discovered a cult among the Vadalis staff and, most disturbingly, an enormous heart pumping blood through veins embedded in the walls throughout the structure. The cultists claimed they were "creating the heart of Galifar", seeming to believe this could somehow reunite the Kingdom of Galifar. Dalin denied all knowledge and ties to those responsible when speaking to the Korranberg Chronicle, but vowed to investigate.
Business
Of all the dragonmarked houses, Vadalis has the fewest members and the smallest fortune and it has never been particularly prosperous or powerful, nor has it ever sought to be. Its powers, of caring for and controlling beasts, are beneficial but neither world-shaking nor legend-making and do not themselves power economies or win wars. Vadalis has not founded any traditions of the dragonmarked houses and was not vital to any side in the Last War, while its barons have never shown any interest in politics. As a result, House Vadalis has often been the most inconspicuous of the dragonmarked houses, being commonly seen as harmless or even somewhat benevolent.
But it has not been without its controversies, and perhaps more than its fair share. Being banned from Valenar is a recent scandal, while the old rumors remain of House Vadalis breeding such terrifying magical monsters during the War of the Mark that they were forbidden and destroyed. Most of all, though, the way that House Vadalis joins nature with magic can in turns inspire amazement in some people and provoke anger and fear in others. The stories about House Vadalis secretly breeding monsters are not taken seriously by most ordinary people, yet its members are not interested enough to refute them either. Hence, rural Khorvairians who've worked with Vadalis before often have positive views of them, but those who have not tend to be wary. City-dwellers are usually indifferent toward the house they have little contact with, but some may see them as country bumpkins like any farm folk.
Guilds
- Handler's Guild
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