House Vrammyr
Culture
It is said when discussing with a Drow of House Vrammyr, if you ask them a question they will give you 3 answers. Each one more confusing and terrifying then the last, and none being the clear answer. House Vrammyr is highly shadowy and secretive in its business, for its business is to be unseen. No assassin is more skilled then a daughter of House Vrammyr, however its sons have in limited number been allowed to undertake the duty of an assassin. Assassination is almost seen as a religious event, with murder being a ritual of divine tribute and salvation for these skilled killers. They master infiltration by never being seen, and it is said entire armies could walk past them without a single solider seeing them.
However, these assassins' serve a double purpose, to spy on the house's that hire them. In this way, they have been able to learn many secrets that the other houses would rather want buried and forgotten. It is said that currently they store it in some magically sealed box, in a great dungeon somewhere. However, more secrets from before the Cataclysm are said to be locked in the so called Dark Towers, where the assassins used to train. Finding these relics and lost scrolls is a mission House Vrammyr constantly strives to find the answer too.
It is said no scheme is grander and more complex then those of House Vrammyr. Due to assassination being a religious act, it is all the more fitting that the more grand and complicated the act, the more it shows their worship to Lolth and Zinzerena, the Drow goddess of assassins', illusions, and lies. Due to this sometimes their plans can spectacularly fail when but a single string is plucked from their clever web of tricks and traps. Though finding their web is easier said then done, as typically those who start to pick up on their trail, don't realize that they are already dead, for a blade is inching closer and closer to their throat from behind.
History
House Vrammyr's history is one entirely steeped in shadow. Not even House Vrammyr itself is entirely sure of where its origins began, so secretive is this house and their natural affinity for hiding away secrets that all records of their origin have been lost. What is known is House Vrammyr would begin in the middle of a Drow court of a now destroyed Great House Ilaluin. At the height of their golden age, a grand feast was held, where the Matron Mother Talice Ilaluin held a feast of most horrifying decadence. As she sipped from only the finest of wines, and walked forward to give a grand speech. That was when the poison, hidden from even the best magical sensors, kicked in. Suddenly, she began to violently weep and vomit blood mixed with pus and other vile fluids. Then it is said hooded assassins' of an unknown house came from the crowd and plunged a score of knives into her back, as the crowd looked on with both a mixture of shock, fear, and twisted glee as Talice was butchered alive in front of them. The ball ended shortly after, and suddenly, House Ilaluin dissolved, and House Vrammyr took its place, with what was left of Ilaluin to fade into obscurity.
House Vrammyr's transition into power was smooth, and relatively bloodless save for a few families of dissenters suddenly being found murdered wholesale. From there, the house would train tis daughters and eventually its sons in the art of misdirection, stealth, assassination, and poison craft. They cornered the market on both poison crafting and of assassination contracts. No kill order was above them, no taks too difficult as soon many houses would have to worry about hiring their own shadowy assassins' to defend them from the dozens of blades that danced in the shadows of the hallways and rooms of their fortresses.
The Underdark Cataclysm affected all Drow society, but Vrammyr most of all as many of their secrets were lost to them. However, opportunity was to be found at their lowest point. It is said their shadowy citadels that helped train their assassins', somehow remain unscathed by the great floods, and locked deep within their many vaults and secret passageways is said to lie secrets that could either doom the Drow race, or be its salvation. So it has been that while House Vrammyr busies itself on the surface with assassination contracts from Drow houses and even missions issued by surface dwellers, a pattern can be observed to a few very keen eyed scholars in their shadowy movements. They are looking for something, a way into their dark citadels, to either save the Drow race, or drown it in fire along with all of its enemies.
