House Highfield

## History

### Rise to Power

Some families ascend to nobility through noble pursuits, like jousting in tournaments or studying in libraries. The stern-faced and simple-minded Highfields, however, made their way by laying hoe to dirt. House Highfield was named for its abundance of tillable land in Westfall and the Grand Hamlet. In the peace years before the orcs came, an ancestor named Aimery Highfield was seated in the Stormwind House of Nobles for his charitable food donations to the Church. The Highfields passed this seat down through many generations of male heirs.

### The Wilting House

The orc wars devastated most of House Highfield's namesake farmland. When the orcs raided the Grand Hamlet and killed the Highfields living there, the rest of the Highfield family in Westfall and the City became among the first refugees to flee north to Lordaeron. Even when the orcs were defeated and the Highfields returned to reclaim what land remained, the harvests were never again as bountiful as they had been in peacetime. As Westfall dried and the Hamlet turned to Darkshire, the once-famed Highfield lands withered. Without a crop surplus the family faced insolvency, and to escape debt Count Wymarc Highfield counted himself among the nobles that helped terminate the Stonemasons' contract without pay. Wymarc was murdered in the ensuing riots, and is as of now the last Highfield to sit on the House of Nobles.

The same stonemasons that the Highfields scorned eventually donned red masks and seized their lands in Westfall. Meanwhile, the Highfields' farms in the newly-named Duskwood became overrun by supernatural monstrosities, both living and dead. Without a seat in the House of Nobles or any land holdings, the Highfields' future looks grim.

## Family members

### Thanasus Highfield

Gentle by nature and prone to inaction, Thanasus is a poet with no interest in becoming a politician. When his father died, Thanasus allowed his rightful responsibilities to pass to his younger sister Phaedra, and he refused to fill his father's seat on the House of Nobles. Thanasus eventually abandoned the estate entirely by moving his family to Theramore, officially naming Phaedra head of house in his absence. Thanasus does not believe the Highfields can reclaim their land, and apprenticed his son and heir Remus to a Kul Tiran hydromancer in an attempt to forge a new future for his family.

### Phaedra Highfield

With no children or husband of her own to look after, Phaedra spends her time managing her family's estate in her older brother's stead. When she gained control of the family's finances, Phaedra acquired significant holdings in the Darnassian-led Everlook Trading Company. Phaedra is not constrained by the same senses of compassion and kindness that bedevil her siblings.

### Cassiopeia Reid

The youngest Highfield child is delicate and soft-spoken like her brother Thanasus. Cassiopeia is a sweet but dull woman, attending to her duties as a wife and mother absentmindedly and without incident. The wizened knight Leowyn Reid courted Cassiopeia when she was young, and her father arranged their marriage without consulting her. Count Highfield's widow, Marjorie, lives out the rest of her years with Cassiopeia, Leowyn and their five children.

### Lissandra Highfield

When Count Highfield still led the house, he fostered Thanasus's oldest child in Northshire Abbey to learn the things that attracted eligible suitors, like scripture and needlework. With her mother, father and brother now living across the sea in Theramore, Lissandra's future is Phaedra's to decide. Lissandra recently came of age for marriage, and Phaedra has wasted little time in courting male suitors for her that might improve the Highfields' dismal prospects.