House Alad

Leader: Pastas Alad- A polished, fork-tongued (literally as he is a lizardfolk) politician with a wide grin and a reputation for hosting excessively garnished banquets. His taste for excess hides a calculated, ruthless mind.

Great House: House Dinn

Province: Emburn

Economy: House Alad specializes in food production, preservation, and luxury culinary exports. Their estates are a patchwork of carefully managed groves, spice gardens, vine-yards, and fermenting sheds. They provide rare fruits, herbs, spiced oils, and delicacies to the tables of nobles across the Oligarchy. They also run several of Emburn’s most prestigious kitchens and restaurants with front-facing institutions that allow for laundering coin, exchanging secrets, and smuggling forbidden substances (especially potions and scaled alchemical goods via the Kremlins).

Military: House Alad does not maintain a standing army but funds a large number of "Bad Eggs", formally trained chefs and food couriers turned duelists, many of whom specialize in alchemical poisoning, bladework, and fire based magics. When muscle is needed, they rely on their close ties with Kremlin mercenaries and lizardfolk enforcers, especially among the black-market docks.

Culture: Outwardly flamboyant, House Alad exalts in spectacle. They view politics as performance, favoring metaphors of flavor, ripeness, and rot. Every gathering is a feast, every duel a recipe. However, beneath this ostentation lies a culture of control. Kitchen schedules mirror battle orders, ingredient ledgers double as blackmail ledgers, and every chef knows how to hide the taste of poison three different ways.

Many members are Grung, Lizardfolk, or Tortles, with many Alad estates have a noticeable scaled presence. The family’s cuisine often incorporates spices and rituals specific to scaled folk, allowing them to maintain close ties with Kremlin clans and claim cultural legitimacy.

History: Originally a minor catering house, House Alad gained power during a famine, when their food-preservation methods saved several noble households. This earned them favor with House Dinn, who elevated them to Major House status as a culinary power. Since then, they’ve used their food empire to curry influence and undermine their rivals, especially House Do, whose utilitarian approach to control offends Alad’s performative dominance.

Behind closed kitchen doors, the Alads plot to expand their reach by backing the power of Scalord K. Rool and his kremlins against The Em-Purr-Ess and her Nyakuza