Long before factories blackened the skies and aether engines reshaped the continent, Adlanthea was governed through noble blood, inherited land, and carefully negotiated alliances.
The industrial age has weakened none of that as much as the Brass Consortium would like to pretend.
The Great Houses still control enormous estates, political appointments, resource rights, trade agreements, and old magical holdings. Most major cities possess a dominant noble house whose authority exists alongside newer institutions such as the Brass Consortium, Aetheric Collegium, Ironwatch, and Free Skies.
A city may belong to a House on paper while someone else controls what keeps its lights burning.
That distinction has started wars before.
House Valecourt
Seat: Crownspire
Primary Holdings: Government estates, urban land, banking interests, diplomatic offices, luxury property
Influence: Politics, law, court appointments, diplomacy
House Valecourt is traditionally regarded as the foremost political house of Crownspire. Their estates occupy some of the oldest and most prestigious districts of the capital, and generations of Valecourts have served as ministers, magistrates, diplomats, and senior advisers.
They do not control every industry within Crownspire, but they possess something arguably more valuable: access.
Permits, titles, political appointments, development rights, and introductions to the correct people often pass through Valecourt hands.
Their power is old, polished, and rarely displayed openly.
House Craide
Seat: Crownspire
Primary Holdings: Aetherglass deposits, refinement workshops, specialist glassworks, arcane lenses and conduits
Influence: Aether technology, scientific equipment, airship instrumentation, communications, luxury goods
House Craide is one of Crownspire's wealthiest Great Houses and controls a significant portion of Adlanthea's private aetherglass trade.
Aetherglass is produced from rare mineral deposits capable of safely conducting, focusing, or containing magical energy when properly refined. It is used in laboratory vessels, optical instruments, aether conduits, airship navigation equipment, communication devices, enchanted windows, and expensive arcane fixtures.
Craide workshops are famous for producing exceptionally pure material.
Because nearly every major faction requires aetherglass somewhere within its operations, House Craide has influence far beyond the capital.
They may not rule Crownspire.
They have simply arranged things so that many of the people who do require something bearing the Craide mark.
House Calder
Seat: Emberholt
Primary Holdings: Coal, iron, furnace lands, foundries, heavy manufacturing leases
Influence: Metals, weapons production, rail construction, industrial labor
House Calder controlled the mineral-rich lands surrounding Emberholt before the city became Adlanthea's industrial furnace.
Today their relationship with the Brass Consortium is complicated.
The Consortium operates many of Emberholt's largest factories, but House Calder owns enormous portions of the land, mines, mineral rights, and older foundries beneath them.
Neither side can easily remove the other.
Calder iron supplies rail lines, weapons, engines, structural supports, and machinery throughout Adlanthea. The family has embraced industry more aggressively than most Great Houses and is sometimes accused of being nobility wearing a merchant's coat.
They consider this an insult only when the merchant in question is poor.
House Veyne
Seat: Vespera
Primary Holdings: Vineyards, publishing houses, universities, theaters, river trade, rare inks and botanical estates
Influence: Culture, academia, information, fashion, occult scholarship
House Veyne has shaped Vespera for centuries through patronage rather than military strength.
Their wealth comes from fertile estates, river commerce, publishing, luxury agriculture, and ownership stakes in some of the city's oldest theaters and academic institutions.
The Veynes are enthusiastic patrons of scholars, artists, physicians, and researchers, including many associated with the Aetheric Collegium.
This generosity has another benefit.
People tell their patrons things.
House Veyne possesses one of the most extensive private archives in Adlanthea, and rumor claims the family knows considerably more about forbidden magical research than it publicly admits.
House Aurelian
Seat: Aerwyn Reach
Primary Holdings: Skyharbors, cliff estates, aerium deposits, airship timber, docking rights
Influence: Air travel, navigation, shipbuilding, aerial trade
House Aurelian rose to prominence through control of the highlands surrounding Aerwyn Reach.
Their lands contain deposits of lightweight magical minerals used in airship construction, while their forests produce several prized woods favored for hulls and internal frames.
Most importantly, Aurelian charters control numerous docking and construction rights throughout the city.
Their relationship with the Free Skies ranges from profitable cooperation to barely concealed hostility. House Aurelian believes aerial trade requires law and ownership.
The Free Skies generally believe House Aurelian can shove its paperwork somewhere unpleasant.
Nevertheless, almost every legal airship operating from Aerwyn Reach eventually pays an Aurelian fee.
House Morcant
Seat: Mourningvale
Primary Holdings: Medicinal gardens, funerary estates, silver mines, embalming compounds, burial grounds
Influence: Medicine, funerary law, spiritual institutions, occult study
House Morcant governs Mourningvale through an unusual combination of noble authority, religious tradition, and ownership of much of the land surrounding the city's ancient cemeteries.
Their estates cultivate rare medicinal and poisonous plants used throughout Adlanthean medicine and alchemy.
The family also controls several productive silver deposits. Mourningvale silver is particularly valued in ritual work, specialized weaponry, surgical instruments, and protections against certain supernatural creatures.
Morcant scholars have historically funded research into death, spirits, resurrection, and magical contamination.
Consequently, the family has acquired a reputation for being either profoundly educated or profoundly unsettling.
Often both.
House Strake
Seat: Ironveil
Primary Holdings: Mountain mines, steelworks, fortification contracts, quarry rights, military supply estates
Influence: Defense, armor, weapons, military infrastructure
House Strake has guarded Adlanthea's northern territories for generations.
Unlike many Great Houses, Strake prestige comes primarily from military service. Its members routinely enter officer academies, command border forces, or serve within the Ironwatch.
The family's mountain territories contain iron, stone, and several rare metals essential to armor, firearms, reinforced rail, and fortification construction.
Ironveil remains strongly associated with the Ironwatch rather than direct noble rule, but House Strake maintains enormous influence over the city's military economy.
A Strake does not need to command the Ironwatch.
They merely own half the things the Ironwatch requires to keep functioning.
The Balance of Power
None of the Great Houses possesses complete authority over its city.
Modern Adlanthea functions through overlapping power.
The Crowned Houses control land, inheritance, old wealth, and political connections.
The Brass Consortium increasingly controls manufacturing and finance.
The Aetheric Collegium controls knowledge.
The Ironwatch controls organized force.
The Free Skies control routes that governments struggle to regulate.
And families such as House Craide control resources so essential that political boundaries matter very little.
Marriage between Great Houses remains one of the most effective ways to consolidate resources, settle disputes, secure trade agreements, or prevent rival families from gaining too much influence.
Which is why, despite all of Adlanthea's marvelous technological progress, noble children still occasionally discover that their parents have traded their future over dessert.
The engines may be new.
The game is ancient.