Nine Houses of of Tan Metaire

These Houses once formed the entire aristocratic class of the city-state Tan Metaire.

The allegiances between houses brokered the Convention of Decapitation, a grisly name for the once-a-decade festival to declare a new ruler of the city.

Key to understanding how a nation formed around such a macabre ritual is understanding the houses themselves.

## Nine Houses

Arranged like the spokes of a great wheel, the central myth of the houses is that they united the city entirely. An aerial view of the city would dispel this notion, revealing the true shape of it. The houses could never agree on even not killing each others offspring; what makes historians believe they could agree how to build a road?

House **Calidon**

 Host of the Mistress of Mana, this house uniquely situates itself in the same district as the Castle of Royalty, or The Greatest Office. House Calidon was the house that offered terms to the brokerage of power: the creation of a spell that would wake a sleeping Wyrm, rumored to reside on the continent.

House **Solidor**

Named after **Verus of Solidor**, a military general who once held stewardship inside the city. Verus had designs on using the populace of **Tan Metaire** as magical fuel to awaken the great Wyrm so he may go to war with a rival nation. Verus took the offering of the Calidon's greatly, and used it to establish the law **Domination of Masks**.

House **Neafina**

The house of economics, the house that organized trade. Historically, this house was always the most vital to elected officials, as the high number of Mages in the city meant that law had to be distributed carefully. Especially law that threatened to raid the coffers of the most powerful citizens.

House **Rivic**

Controlled the **Eternal White Flame****,** the only thing proving that the citizens of Tan Metaire once also resided in the Anterior. The Way of the White, The Flame, all of this was located in the district that the Rivic family controlled. While Tan Metaire held no officiated police - much more terrifying was the concept of being found guilty of heresy.

House **Kanem**

So thoroughly destroyed by **The Eternal White Flame** was this house that even its descendants, the few of them that managed to escape have no context or knowledge of what their domain was. House Kanem learned the cost of threatening anyone in the city with heretical powers.

House **Malacante**

After the law of **Domination of Masks** was passed, this once great house that served as a patronage and celebration of the arts become one obsessed with magic. Home to the largest library in Tan Metaire, you will sparsely find historical documents or art of any kind. The mages here toil day and night to understand new truths and sciences, and are just as often found mad and taken away as they do stumble upon any new magical proofs.

It is said that the mages here turned their eye away from history when one of their citizens turned their gaze to interpreting the future. Thus, speculation or prediction of the future is punished harshly.

House **Collenzaro**

Much like the house of mages, here is the house of builders. You would have found nary a nail or a hammer here - the mages in this district built great twisting structures by shaping the terra under their feet. Home to the Twisting Clocktower, named because of the way it bends and contorts with the movements of Celestus.

House **Eryktos**

What was once considered to be a house of medicine and care - the nurses here tended to the sick. It instead became an asylum for those that the other houses deemed unfit or unwell. Occasionally, The Order of the White Flame would force those it deemed heretics to wander this district stripped of their belongings. Gated off from the outside, it is rumored that the Court of the Undying's Lord Magister was found here.

House **Tarus**

Another victim of a great purge. While the people of Kanem were largely unaffected by the butchering of the aristocrats, there was no such lucky fate here. The house patriarch descended into madness and murdered his immediate family and subjects. To this day, the undead he turned loose in the area are only controller by **The Order of the White Flame,** the neighborhood crumbling into decay around the manor.