House Chastain

A prestigious family of seafaring adventurers

General Andra Marcus, Commander
New Reformed Army
Fort Reliance, Asheville Territory
June 26^th 972 _PCE

Dear friend and fellow patriot,

We hereby pledge the support of the Norland militias to the Skyland Alliance. By popular vote of the general franchise, we have ratified the Merikan Charter and shall honour our commitment to hold free elections and help establish a new Congress of the Merikas within the current twelve-month. The course we have chosen will be perilous, but we the people of Norland will stand with the other states of Skyland to assert the common creed of death before tyranny.

Yours in the ranks of martyrs,
Erdric Chastain
Lord Baron of Noirlan

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House Chastain is one of the most storied and influential families of the frontier Merikan state of Norland. Scions of the Chastain family have frequently held the chair and gavil of Noirlan's governorship and the Chastain Southern Trading Company dominated sea trade between Merika and the Zone Coast for generations until the closing of the Silent Sea. This shifting nexus of power and wealth established the Chastains among the foremost families of the Norland Commonwealth. Their prestigous reputation was leveraged most directly during the War of Princes in which Governor Erdric Chastain rallied the support of the Commonwealth for an alliance against the Hidden Empire and the foundation of a new federation of Merikan states. Thus the Chastains played a significant role in the founding of the New Merikan Republic and held considerable influence in the early years after the ratification of the Republican Constitution.

Operations

Since its creation in 369 AOP, (the year 795 of the Post-Cataclysmic Era), the Southern Trading Company had been the leading financial interest of the Chastain family. When Pachuco emissaries came to Noirlan seeking new diplomatic and trade relations with the Skyland city-states, the Chastains leveraged their long-standing alliance with the ruling Vidal family to secure rights to an exclusive trade concession based out of the critical Silent Sea transport hub of Farport Outpost, the seaport gateway of the Forbidden Zone.

In the ensuing years the Vidals and Chastains maintained a stranglehold over the Silent Sea trade in exotic Pachuco fruits, spices, and handcrafts. The climate of the Outramar and Pachuco jungles proved suitable for growing more than corn, and the Vidals employed local Pachuco agricultural talent to cultivate acres-upon-acres of plantation cropland. In exchange for the protective services of the Chastain family's formidable merchant navy, the Vidals granted the Southern Trading Company exclusive rights to convey their shipments of coffee, tobacco, and molasses.

Reputation

Past leaders of House Chastain have included prominent members of Noirlan's governing Crescent Chamber as well as respected sea captains who have plied the seas as privateers in times of war and closely guarded Chastain trade interests in times of peace. The seafaring adventurism of the Chastains has often led to accusations of piracy, but the balance of opinion regards the Chastains as a noble house known for a household tradition of bold

deeds, valorous military service, and inspired leadership.

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Recently, however, the esteem of the Chastains has declined. After the deaths of Erdric and Syllyndra Chastain in a perilous sea crossing bound for the Zone Coast, the mantle of the Chastain name fell to their twin children, Oliver and Orphea. While Orphea did her best to sustain the family business and secure new trade routes among the Southern Kingdoms, her brother embarked on a career of vice and criminality.

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Taking the name "Marius," Oliver abandoned military service in the Union Army and began a criminal enterprise bent on theft and extortion. When Oliver returned to Noirlan and unleashed the power of the Deathbringer artifact his true identity was exposed and the Chastain name instantly came to be tarnished with the stain of Oliver's crimes.

Assets

Very little is left of the Chastain fortune. In order to raise funds for the Thorpe Expedition, Orphea Chastain has essentially liquidated the last assets of the Chastain estate. Even the family's Noirlan villa has been sold to the Dupree Holding Company. All was done in order to secure ships and provisions for the expedition's Silent Sea journey. In fact, Orphea had even arranged to mortgage her family's final holdings, their extensive plantations in and around Farport Outpost on the coast of the Pachuco Jungle.

History

Since the Age of Renewal, long before the founding of Noirlan, the Chastains dwelt in the plains and marshes of the southwest wilds. In those days the Chastains were essentially a feudal clan of affiliated tribes. Annals of Skyhome, a Renewal Era manuscript florilegium of gnomic verses and epic narratives, includes a passage that makes reference to a warlord named Syldris "chassis-stained" (Chastain):

The word-keeper, mile-traveller,
Broke his dream-chain, sang his heart song,
And shared wanderings, journeys of the freeways.
Riding upon Miss-the-Sea, ruined coast,
Edge of Middowest, broken by Sky-Fire,
He looked to the south, land of the Crescent Kings,
The highway troop, steel spears and gears,
And their Captain Syldris chassis stained red
Like the desert rose, crimson in the cold light.

— Annals of Skyhome

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After the end of the Road Wars, the descendants of Syldris founded a regional fiefdom under the rule of the old southwest Crescent Kingdom. The Age of Renewal passed and as fuel reserves declined and the last of the black roads crumbled away the Chastains raised sail and turned from the freeways to the seaways. While the Vidals founded Noirlan and came to dominate the emergent culture of the southwest marshes, the Chastains established supremacy on the Middowest coast, from Noirlan to Memphis. Their early maritime enterprises made the Chastains a powerful military force and formed the foundations of what would eventually come to be known as the Southern Shipping Company.

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The formal alliance between the Vidals and Chastains began during the Age of Princes. When the Hidden Empire tried to subjugate Norland in 637 PCE, Chastain seafaring mastery enabled House Vidal to obtain an unprecedented victory over the Steel Legions at the Battle of Noirlan. In subsequent generations, the Vidal dynasty's singular reign over the Crescent Kingdom ended and together the Chastains and Vidals founded a new free Commonwealth based upon the primacy of law and a limited form of democracy.

The Deathbringer

Chronicles of the Age of Renewal speak of technological miracles. Among these tales are legends of a device called the Lifebringer. Ancestors of House Vidal brought the artifact with them from the Forbidden Zone when they migrated to Skyland in 603 PCE. They used it to render the coastal territories of Noirlan suitable for human habitation, but the Lifebringer was corrupted during the Norland invasion and has since borne a terrible malediction: the Doom of the Deathbringer.

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Centuries later when the nascent democratic Republic of Merika was formed to oppose the Hidden Empire, Governor Marcus of the Laradan Free State sought the support of the Norland Commonwealth for her New Reformed Army. When Erdric and Syllyndra Chastain, at that time joint holders of the Crescent Council's ruling barony, voiced assent to the president's war decree, many other free-states followed their leadership and the Skyland Alliance finally coalesced into a truly continental Merikan army. Without the successful formation of the Delphi Pact it is arguable that the Battle of New York would never have been won. Thus the end of the Princes' Tetrarchy may owe in no small part to the honourable legacy of House Chastain.

The subsequent decline and usurpation of the Republic's ideals mirrors the dissolution of the Chastain family. By ending the power of the Deathbringer, Orphea hopes to not only restore her family name but perhaps save all of the Republic from a darkness that has cursed Noirlan for centuries.

House Chastain

"Home is the Hearth Fire."

Type

Family

Subsidiary Organizations

• Thorpe Expedition

Base of Operations
Farport Outpost

House Leader
Orphea Chastain