House Belmont

**House Belmont** is a noble family in Valouria.

## History

The Belmont Family became ennobled in Valouria in 980 when Leon Belmont, a Hedgelander, learned of the existence of a vampire lairing in an abandoned monestary in northern Valouria and sailed across the Inner Sea to slay it. As thanks, King Tobias Lasko ennobled him and his descendants, granting him the parcel of land that would become Belguard to found his house.

As he had been a farmer when he lived in the Hedgelands, Leon arranged to have some of his cattle imported to his new home. Bred to have particularly tasty and rich necks, breasts and lower chest cuts, the meat, when braised, made particularly good pot roast dishes. Slowly, Belguard grew as Belmont hired locals from the area as farmhands.

The small village grew exponentially in 1041, when the Ironwood War began. Like most settlements in western Valouria, Belguard straddled the Great Forest. To protect it, and the rest of the Valourian border, King Branden Lasko had large garrisons built to house the Valourian army and appointed local leaders to his war council. Desmond Belmont, family patriarch at the time, was an excellent warrior and even better strategist and received the favor of the king for his efforts.

The Ironwood War ended in 1046 and the Belguardian economy slowed as a result. In order to supplement the economy and save the city from a depression, Desmond began investing more in grapes and wine, and less in the cattle that his ancestors had raised. The move proved fruitful, as the local economy stabilized, and wine turned out to be more of a moneymaker than cattle, as the production and transportation costs were lower.

In 1090, Valouria was gripped by a particularly harsh winter. The Belmonts, whose fortunes were tied to agriculture, were particularly ravaged. They lost their grape crop that year, costing them thousands of gold pieces. The loss of those revenues hurt the Belmonts greatly; though ennobled for a century, they were still seen as outsiders due to their religion and Belguard’s relatively small size and out of the way location. The winter of 1090 almost brought the family to their knees and it was only through the skillful diplomacy of family patriarch Mortimer that the family was able to survive.

Among one of Mortimer’s efforts to preserve the family was to seek out potential marriages for when his toddler son, Richter, grew up. He arranged for Richter to wed a daughter of House Woodcomb of Beaverpoint, who owned and operated a trade consortium. Years later, when the time came, Richter refused, running away rather than marrying the Woodcomb girl and becoming a businessman. This caused major issues for the Belmonts, as it would take years of diplomacy to mend the rift between noble houses that it caused and it forced Richter’s younger sister, Kathryn, to become matriarch of the family when their father died in 1115.

Richter eventually returned from the Hedgelands, a wife and child in tow. His relationship with the rest of his family was frosty initially, but all sides quickly made peace and Kathryn offered her older brother stewardship of the family. In 1133, he answered King Aiden Lasko’s call to arms when Roan’s Rebellion began. While the conflict primarily took place on and in the seas around the Ironforge Islands, Richter led a small militia known as “Richter’s Raiders” that skirmished with forces from Camaro and Matilda, two of the larger Garrison States that were secretly backing the rebellion, in the Great Forest. Using the training he perfected during his adventures while he was away from Valouria, Richter prevented the two nations from poaching Valorua’s greatest natural resource- ironwood trees.

House Belmont’s esteem was raised among Valourian nobility after the conflict ended thanks to the heroics of Richter and the militiamen that were sent to the capital to help put down the uprising. Samson Belmont, serving as his father's emissary, found himself being invited to Sandpiper’s Bluff far more often to give council to King Aiden’s ministers, or occasionally, the king himself. In 1143, Richter gave up stewardship of the family to Samson. Not much after that, to further seal his own burgeoning influence, he arranged to have his eldest daughter, Laylette, married to one of the sons of House Swiftrain, an influential family in Sandpiper’s Bluff, and the marriage took place in 1145.

## Important Members

Leon: 944-1012

Simon: 972-1050

Desmond: 1005-1061

Trevor: 1029-1103

Cyrus: 1034-Unknown

Mortimer: 1060-1115

Richter: 1087-Present

Kathryn: 1091-1145

Samson: 1104-Present

Lester: 1126-Present

Cidolfus: 1127-Present

Laylette: 1128-Present

Aurora: 1130-Present

Joshua: 1134-Present