House Shem

## Aspects

* Aspect: The House That Lives In Dreams
* Aspect: The Warped Bones Of This City
* Aspect: A Hundred Streams But No River

## Overview

House Shem has carved their name into the obelisk, and so they stand. They were not the first and they will not be the last, but until the dreaming sea washes their name from its surface they will be Constant.

The obelisk does not exist. You can find it in your dreams, if you are particularly unlucky, and once you do it will anchor your dreams and they will never change. Night after night, dream after dream, you will return to the obelisk and its surrounding waters.

There's a community there, dreamers like you trapped and whiling away the hours until dawn. You can chat, if you're so inclined. Trade gossip, make deals, even touch and take and bleed. With the right arts, things can be carried back into the waking world though the price is steep and they will never truly leave. House Shem oversees this gathering of storm-tossed souls, and it is their House more than any physical building could ever be. It is where they meet. It is where they recruit. It is where they are still whole.

## History

House Shem is an old, old House, having existed in one form or another since Sundevalda was a paradise unspoilt and Yosthaven a nameless fishing village. It was House Shem who laid the first stones of Pirika's Wall, who *were* the first stones of Pirika's Wall. Their blood is the blood of Yosthaven, their bones its stones. Their craftwork has broken battalions, there are still quiet places where reality weeps from the pain of their mantle. You'd never guess it just from looking at them, that band of masons and misers in motley clothes. The semi-random nature of their recruitment efforts and the vagaries of war and politics have only ever allowed them to climb so high before the spinning coin sees their ambitions crumbling around them. Their elders, at times the city's most vicious and feared craftworkers, find the reward for talent to be a life cut short and denied any of the excesses that usually accompany rank. Those skilled and selfless enough to try and raise the whole House on their shoulders die early, the mediocre fester at the House's heart.

And yet, House Shem stands.

## Domain

The Eldest House maintains most of its presence in the Northern Harbour Ward, though they have enclaves scattered across Sundevalda. These serve a dual purpose: they are safe, quiet places for the incompetent to be tucked away and they are the initial contacts and consulates for when a new member joins the Constant Dream.

House Shem controls no single industry, as its members come from all walks of life. Generations of House scholars have utterly failed to determine what makes a dreamer more or less likely to stumble onto the Constant Dream, but all those who do - no matter their birth, age, talent, or ambition - are offered membership in the House along with their families. The useful are put to work, the useless are locked away, and the unfortunate fates of those who refuse is best not dwelled on. As a result, the House is as eclectic as any street market or bazaar and about as well organized. None can be said to be truly underclass - they are all still members of a Great House - but more than a few remember what it was to ration the last remaining dregs of your soul into ever smaller pieces; in this way, House Shem is likely the single House that best represents Sundevalda as a whole.

It would be a lie to say they do anything noble with this.

Their most notable industry is the making of animated sculptures and prosthetics, as control of stone is something every housebound is well-advised to learn. In those fields, they have no equal.

## Housebound

### Everen Shem

House Shem is not led by a single leader but rather by a Council of Elders, who take it in turns to speak for the House as a whole when a single voice is required. Most are unrepentant robber-barons or corpulent bureaucrats, immobile statues carried through the streets in gilded palanquins alight with craftwork, but Everen Shem is not like the others. Born an orphan in the slums of the Camp - it's common for those without to take the House name as their own - the half-Kryask was already a well-established gang leader when she found the Constant Dream and has lost none of her ambition and drive. She seeks to restore House Shem to past glories and make of them an organized foundation for the city, but confuses herself and the House - or, more accurately, confuses her own ambitions for what is good for the House. The end result for those who oppose her is... messy, and tension in the House has slowly been ratcheting up as she seizes more and more power.

### Bergen Isiderai

Perhaps the most respected man in the entirety of House Shem is not an elder at all. Bergen Isiderai is on a first-name basis with every Oathbound in House Shem, is a mentor, a confidant, and a friend, and is barely in his fifties. A mason and stonecarver in a past life who was born with a vicious limp, it is his responsibility and joy to teach new House members how to adapt to their changing bodies. He sees many of them at their absolute lowest, unable to muster the energy to even crawl their way out of bed or collapsed at the bottom of a set of stairs, and has never once offered a word of judgement. Most of the younger generation would gladly give their lives for him, but as best anyone can tell he has no political ambitions of any kind.

### Lena Wagner

The closest thing House Shem has to a Lorekeeper, in her youth Lena Wagner was Academy trained at the House of Melifloran. Whatever it was the the House was looking for, they did not find it in Lena. Odd, too, considering they invested a great deal in curing her of what would have surely been a fatally aggressive tumor that devoured her from the inside. Save her they did, but when she was finished with her studies the House chose not to add her as Dependent nor Bound. Half wasted away and still recovering from her trials, she somehow found a home within Shem. A savvy woman, yet still physically weak from what she survived, she has served as the closest thing the House has to a Lorekeeper for some 40 years. Somewhere in her 60s, she moves as if even older, rarely leaving the Wards of the House.

## Deeper Mysteries (Spoilers)

**The Dreaming War**

- Some two generations ago, House Dricaal launched an ultimately failed invasion of the Constant House using a combination of dream-craft and Shem traitors. Statues still mark the lingering border between dream and nightmare, corpses of House Shem's best who fed themselves to their own mantle to safeguard the Obelisk. Since then, the dreaming ways have been... inconsistent. Unsafe. It's a rare oathbound of House Shem who doesn't sleep with a weapon, or who sleeps alone.