Tygo Edsbryder

Tygo heeded the Lord Commander's orders and sent a short range burst to the Bekenden, a number of whom rapid repelled from their perches to further encircle the trench line. With calm precision the prince and his Haulanz pressed along the enemy emplacement, coldly dispatching the remaining opposition. Resistance wilted as they swept through the fortifications and tunnels, ever tightening the noose. The Bekenden were trained as urban hunters, and the trenches and bunkers translated easily to the narrow alleyways and enclosed spaces that they were used to fighting in. The Bekenden were soldiers of grim aspect, monsters that outlived the tyranny of their masters, but they were now sworn to the light all the same as Edsbryder itself. They were living proof of a way back from the darkness, which made the situation on Falleen all the more irksome. The soldiers they were fighting were victims of Sith indoctrination, who until the arrival of the Sith had led normal lives. When treating the Sith blight upon the galaxy, sometimes amputation was necessary, but Tygo had never fallen in love with the image of blindly destructive hero. This was why he was so dedicated to the destruction of cults, every false prophet and dark priestess that he slew would preserve the light for countless lives. They would save as many as they could, but for these poor fools, there was nothing left for them but the firm cut of justice's blade.

House Zhuāngyán: The binding medium of the galactic noble society is a shared system of expectations and contracts, of a universal sense of propriety and order. House Zhuāngyán has garnered a reputation for skillfully arbitrating disputes regarding that order, and for legitimizing and rescinding claims of nobility. They mark the rise and passing of houses with sage objectivity, their decisions stamped with their signature nano machine encoded red ink. House Zhuāngyán is as adept in litigation in the galactic courts as it is in the political ones, and much of its sizable wealth comes from representing distinguished clientele and navigating the obscene red tape of interplanetary laws and regulations. This has garnered them a reputation as keyholders to expansionist eras for rising houses, opening doors and avoiding pitfalls in multi planet bureaucratic entanglements. Since the creation of the Sovereign Alliance, the house has also begun overseeing the unified and standardized production of arms and armor for the Alliance. Unlike some of the more elitist martial houses, the haulanz of Zhuāngyán are recruited from the general populace, to which many of them return after their term of service. In conjunction with their involvement with kit production, this allows them to field larger armies of trained and well equipped, if not elite, soldiers. The house takes great pride in tactical and strategic acumen, and many of its scions that have not been touched by the Force attain status and recognition as officers. The house is currently involved in a massive expansionist phase, colonizing outer rim worlds and creating stockpile buffers of foodstuff, raw materials, and sapient populations. These colonies are establishing redundancies in supplies and taking steps to bring the galaxy away from a state of extreme scarcity. Jedi participation is often courted to help cultivate these hubs of agriculture and blossoming civilization. House Zhuāngyán’s heraldry consists of a matte gold lion’s head on a field of burgundy. Their armor is similarly colored in reds and distressed gold. The house words are “Zhēnxiàng zài wǒmen de mòshuǐ zhōng bèi míngjì” or “The truth is remembered in our ink”. The calligraphy of House Zhuāngyán is used both to channel the Force and to teach concepts of mastery in sword fighting. Executors of the house can use ink to make temporary nexuses of light side energy. Paladins can use calligraphy like temporary heraldic symbols to channel energy through.

House Kilnshire: The lords and ladies of House Kilnshire are from the land, live by the land, and are bound to the land. One of the houses that came into the Sovereign Alliance with a native Force tradition, Kilnshire scions have received a measure of validation after centuries of being disparaged as the muckborn nobles with delusions of power over the land, their inherent Force powers are finally being properly acknowledged. Kilnshire’s wealth comes from providing highly resilient and ultralight ceramics used in the construction of starships and advanced power armor. Kilnshire society is a martial meritocracy, but it has not fallen into the trappings of brutality or an obsession with might as the final arbiter. Tournaments of martial prowess are common, but they are honorable affairs where competitors are expected to strive together towards greatness, and pettiness is looked down upon. All participants swear oaths of fellowship and honor, and the lists are open to any that can pass a rudimentary test of skill. Commonors can attain boons and minor titles normally beyond their station by performing well at tourneys. Rival lords are encouraged to settle their disputes on field of honor rather than on the field of battle, engaging in ceremonial but mostly nonlethal mass combats. Kilnshire’s religious traditions have kept their throneworld and outer holdings considerably intact, environmentally speaking, with their people enjoying a more rural and uncomplicated life than citybound vassals of other houses. Kilnshire culture boasts many multi day festivals that celebrate life and community, and villagers are generally pleased with their day to day routine. The Kilnkith that oversee the mixing and forming of ceramics serve as keepers of wisdom for both nobles and commoners alike, and are the original Force tradition of this House’s culture, honoring the land and the pact between it and the people. The connection to the land is further expressed in ritual feasts where meads, ciders, wines, and ales are imbibed according to availability along with hallucinogenic herbs to invoke a psychedelic communion with nature. At first glance, the people of Kilnshire might seem unprepared for a reality of mechanized warfare and galactic conflict, but looks can be deceiving. Kilnsihire Haulanz intentionally focus on honing their melee skills with the intent to be underestimated by their enemies. It is often only once the soldiers reach the enemy line that their foes realize that the Kilnshire forces have shrugged off most of their blaster fire thanks to their composite plate and weave armor, and that they are now free to press the advantage of the old ways, or melt enemy machines with incendiary and acidic concoctions. This sentiment of weaving old and new is pervasive in Kilnshire methodology and aesthetic, and lends to the perception of them being a people out of time. The preservation of nature and tradition have also resulted in many Kilnshire Paladins becoming skilled mounted combatants, mastering a number of different fauna found locally or otherwise. Kilnshire Falcons are just as likely to be cunning hunters that seek out and capture particularly suitable potential mounts as they are to be savvy court lurking rogues. Executors of this house often enjoy documenting and studying rare or unknown fauna, and breeding prize mounts by which they might gain status and recognition. House Kilnshire is in fact one of a plethora of noble houses, consolidated under a single banner to ensure unity and endurance. When these other houses interact with the galaxy at large, they do so by referring to their house as a hyphenated extension of Kilnshire, such as Kilnshire-Rothe or Kilnshire-Brashe. “Putting your name before the house” is a common saying about acting beyond your means or reputation. House Kilnshire’s heraldry is composed of a number of interchangeable elements as an amalgamation of many houses, including fruit trees, chalices, hedgehogs, and squirrels. In spite of their martial nature, the usage of predatory animals as heraldic devices is exceptionally rare. Their colors are dark burgundy reds and earthen browns. Their house words are “In wisdom we endure, in honor we thrive.” Kilnshire power armor is exceptionally resilient to thermal energy, and Kilnshire paladins can draw upon natural soil between combats to restore their armor’s integrity. All Kilnshire Knights have access to the appropriate forms of Jedi naturalism.

House Sangaigre: A noble family nearly destroyed by a genetic condition, and then by the desperate measures that they took to overcome it, House Sangaigre’s footing is precarious but bolstered by what they have to offer the Sovereign Alliance. It is through the cloning laboratories of this house that the Sovereign Knights are able to sustain their otherwise comparatively limited numbers, but those same labs have raised a number of questions about the ethics of cloning and what boundaries might be required going forward. How much is too heavy a hand on the future of an heir, and what rights do clones created for purposes outside of resurrection have? When a genetic condition threatened to destroy her family’s future, the matriarch desperately searched for a solution to save them from destruction. Her efforts would eventually lead her to a former imperial science team in hiding that had participated in the Genesis project on Kamino. While her original intent was to simply sidestep a biological time bomb, it wasn’t long before the possibilities of genetic editing took things in a different, more ambitious direction. The matriarch realized that she had the power to cultivate perfect heirs that could be designed to excel in areas useful to the goals and agendas of her house. So she worked with the scientists to ensure the future of her house. It would be inaccurate to simply say that the next generation was bred for success, they were cultivated like a careful gardener skillfully arranging a floral display. In fact, the matriarch would begin to refer to these lab grown heirs as her flowers. (“Natural” births did still occur during this time frame, but even they were subjected to heavy genetic manipulation in the womb and the resulting children were marginalized in their later placements and appointments). The Flowers of Sangaigre would indeed blossom in time, becoming the consummate political agents that the matriarch desired them to be. They carried out their duties with grace and skill, but chafed against the lack of agency they felt in their lives. They were too perfect a fit for their roles, and it separated them from their peers who wore the masks that they embodied, for there was nothing under the mask. This otherness brought to light a hollowness that came from living according to somebody else’s dreams and expectations. The situation worsened when the matriarch started ordering any scion that began to act erratically or against her wishes be recovered and “fixed”. A confrontation was inevitable, and while the intent of the scions that confronted her may not have been violence, the outcome was nonetheless matricide. House Sangaigre is now a garden without a gardener, and its members are faced with many difficult questions on how to move forward. Some believe that genetic editing is fine as long as it doesn’t remove agency or create inflexible expectations. Others want to put the past behind them, and to dispense with gene editing outside of addressing medical concerns entirely. Many would argue that it’s a genie that’s already out of the bottle, and the house’s financial stability is tied to selling cloning and gene editing services. It is House Sangaigre that provides the cloning for Sovereign Knights to be able to enjoy virtual immortality in spite of the war. The heraldry of House Sangaigre is a pink blossom on a gray field. Their armor is similarly styled with a mixture of gray and pink, with the exception of scions involved in killing the matriarch and their direct heirs, they wear dark red rose themed armor. The house words are “Même dans la pierre nous fleurissons” or in galactic common “Even in stone we bloom”. The house has a number of relic weapons, both of its own making and gifted by potential suitors during the reign of the matriarch, and the house refers to them as les épines, or the thorns. Sangaigre scions prefer weapons of finesse and grace, although their paladins can wield weapons like longswords and arming swords with mercurial fluidity. The house is particularly known for using rapiers and estoc swords. As masters of genetic editing, House Sangaigre has the ability to alter clones while retaining the sense of self that allows a smooth continuity of experience. Sovereign Knights are already trained to treat death as a setback, not a conclusion, but Sangaigre scions and their favored allies get to treat death as an opportunity to reimagine themselves through an altered genetic blueprint. Sangaigre scions also possess a genetically advanced physiology that allows them to move with an inhuman fluidity and grace, with many of their Paladins using this in conjunction with specially modified Inheritor class armor to make the most of their chimeric double jointed dance and access to relic weapons.

House Menseki: The bearers of an ancient vow and costly duty, the House Menseki scions are living proof that hope can endure in spite of terrible pain and hardship. Afflicted with a rare condition that causes their bodies to crystalize over time in an agonizing process, the house turned to spirituality and pursuit of inner harmony to face their agonizing fate, and found that those among their number who made peace with themselves produced crystals that could ward off or even cleanse the dark. It has become the fate of House Menseki scions to live in sacred reflection of matters of the spirit until their bodies can no longer bear the affliction and they are placed in a comatose state for the remainder of the crystallization process, referred to as the amethyst dreaming. Force sensitive members of the noble family produce superior crystals and are cloned upon entry to the amethyst dreaming. Since their original body is still alive, this creates a decentralized self that gives them a dreamlike and distant countenance. House Menseki nobles are treated by their people as living saints, and the Force sensitive among them as demigod avatars of the Force who are fated to live hundreds of lives of self sacrifice . The commitment of these nobles to sacrifice in the stead of their people inspires a zealous faith and loyalty often sought by other houses but rarely found so readily throughout their people. Their holdings are generally built to live in harmony with the natural order and cultivate light and joy, and their populations are highly communitarian, prizing self sacrifice and inner growth over personal ambition and selfish gain. Most of the actual administrative work of running House Menseki’s holdings is handled by advisors, appointed government officials, and clerks, with the nobles instead serving as the spiritual leaders of their people. Despite their best intentions, the chronic pain of the nobles is too great a distraction, and medicating the pain away leaves their minds too dulled. Furthermore, Paladins and Falcons are extremely rare in this house, due to their physical condition. The house has gained a reputation for being a place of spiritual healing, and this has drawn a multitude of people who hit ethical rock bottom before making the difficult decision to try and become better. While the inner work is arduous and rarely ever truly finished, the broken and cruel can find some measure of peace and return to harmony. While the amethyst lords and ladies are often sheltered and innocent, their safety and care is often in the hands of ashen former devils. Menseki crystals can offer a degree of mental protection to even those that cannot touch or sense the Force, making them invaluable for soldiers operating in places of extreme dark side corruption. Their warding is by no means absolute, but it gives people a fighting chance that they otherwise wouldn’t have. Conmen and others of low integrity have been known to sell fake Menseki crystals that have led to the deaths or darker fates of countless would-be heroes and adventurers. House Menseki colors for battle are purple, black, and silver, with most of their house defining afflictions manifesting as purple crystals (Exceptions do occur, but are extremely rare). Their heraldry is three purple triangles on a white field, encircled by two streaking lines, one silver and one black, representing the cycle of life and death. House Menseki doesn’t have traditional house words, but the triangles of their heraldry and the negative space between are associated with kanji that are often used interchangeably for house words. These kanji can be translated as duty, clarity, courage, spirit, and harmony. For obvious reasons, House Menseki favors lightsabers and crystal adorned weapons, which often carry echoes of the ancestors that their crystals were harvested from. House Menseki scions have bodies seeded with purifying crystals that sap away the more insidious energies of the Dark Side, blunting (but not stopping) mental and emotional dark side attacks. Furthermore, as victims of an extremely painful and slowly debilitating condition, members of this house are extremely resilient to pain that would normally be concentration shattering. Finally, the crystalline growths in their body store and cleanse dark side energy that passes through them. If the knight is hit by a dark side attack, it damages as normal, but the energy becomes pacified and available for them to use in their following actions. Close allies to House Menseki are often gifted weapons and armor adorned with Menseki crystals, these weapons sap the dark energies and emotions of those that they strike, and possess the ability to block dark side attacks that would normally flow around the weapon’s blade, such as gouts of dark side flame(Physical attacks are unaffected). Menseki scions often choose champions from the lower houses for this honor, so that they might find the chance to rise to a higher peerage. It’s worth noting that there are other houses that share Menseki’s sacrificial devotion to the light in other forms. The philosopher kings and queens of House Marcire willingly contract leprosy as part of an ancient pact with their peoples to abandon selfish bodily desires to more freely pursue enlightened understanding, and their bones are used as holy relics infused with the wisdom of philosophy. House Marcire’s libraries are awe inspiring places of illuminated thought, over which the plague lords serve as stewards and keepers. For obvious reasons, Marcire produces few Falcons and Paladins, instead producing Executors almost exclusively. House Maudiresang’s scions can use the Force to transfer afflictions upon themselves, sparing others. This selfless act of benevolence is rewarded by the noble slowly transubstantiating the disease into an iridescent orb attuned to the light. House Lán Zhǎo has some sequestered minor houses that were victims of a mad noblewoman’s desire to co-opt the power of dragons through genetic hybridization of humans and duinuogwuin. These crippled hybrids face significant physical and medical complications, but their bodies produce highly Force resonant vestigial scales and dragon pearls, the latter of which can be used in lieu of crystals in a lightsaber.

House Tanwir: An oligarchy of rulers that control access to a golden medium used in the creation of extremely powerful artificial neural networks. House Tanwir leverages its access to the materia, called lianihayiyi, to produce top of the line AIs for droids and data systems, along with logic processors for simulations and procedurally generated architecture for digital experiences. The semiliquid substance is believed to be a persistent remnant of a long forgotten machine race. House Tanwir uses its control over access to the reservoirs to direct the use of lianihayiyi towards peaceful and productive applications, and heavily regulates the use of it for military projects. Lianihayiyi droid brains are capable of so much complexity and nuance that the house is pushing for legal protections as sapient beings for droids that surpass certain intellectual markers. House Tanwir represents an optimism and responsibility regarding advancing technology that often gets lost amidst all of our cautionary tales and fears. Their throne system is primarily made up of irradiated planets and moons sharing vast expanses of black sand, and the noble house has no interest in repeating the mistakes of the prior occupants. In spite of settling on atomic crypt worlds, its citizenry enjoys the benefits of living in one of the more technologically advanced societies, and the architecture of its cities is as much digital as it is physical, if not more so. House Tanwir amasses wealth on a galactic scale by advocating for, consulting on, and installing the infrastructure for advanced data technologies on developing worlds. In terms of its military contributions, House Tanwir is primarily focused on system hardening and data analysis, protecting networks from Sith hackers, thwarting cyber attacks on key infrastructure, and processing raw data into usable intelligence. Tanwir falcons will often track down talented coders and recruit them as white hats since working for the government is often not a career path most hackers consider without persuasion. Nobles of this family are taught network security and coding with the same fervor that martial houses train in dueling and strategy, and AI assistants are just as common as living ones. As one of the few planets that openly embrace computer intelligences of a certain complexity as being free and independent beings, there are droids that willingly serve militarily under Talwir’s banner, but no mass production of battle droids exists. Beyond what Talwir refers to as direct cyber warfare, it also conducts and mitigates indirect cyber warfare, fact checking news and exposing false reports and manipulated data. The holonet is a vast place where personalities can amass massive followings if left unchecked, something that bad actors are keen to abuse. Recruiting fact checkers is easier, but the house has found that it requires more vetting. House Talwir nobles themselves tend towards optimism and intellectual pursuits, seeking both knowledge and wisdom for the purpose of making the galaxy a better place. When not on their throneworld, they are often touring universities and research institutions to better grasp the directions that technology is progressing, and possibly offer their patronage to promising programs and projects. Soft spoken, considerate, and polite, these nobles prefer strategy to achieve the best outcomes over the bluster of passionate speeches and rallying cries. House Talwir’s heraldry is a golden five petaled kudu flower on a black field. Their armor is black with gold trim and filigree, and often has numerous dataports, cable jacks, and for the user, a number of AR overlays. Their words are “Alaizdihar min khilal aliabtikar”, or translated into common, “Blossoming through innovation”. Sovereign Knights of House Talwir make use of integrated support AIs that they call Jinn, that assist in suit operation, daily life tasks and organization, and processing information. Jinn can catch things that their operator misses, manage power suit functionality, and provide data on demand. They can also use AR displays and predictive algorithms to guide a user on the optimal positioning and composition of Force barriers.

House Ahalya: A house of artisan nobles from Ishvara that specializes in the creation of Force attuned armor and weapons. Given the Sith’s hold on Ishvara, the family is working on slowly smuggling its most capable artisans off system to fully aid the Sovereign Knights and establish a new throneworld. Unlike most of the Sovereign Alliance noble houses who secured Force sensitive bloodlines through the Jedi, House Ahalya’s gifts come from the pursuits and conquests of Krath seeking to follow in Dagon’s legacy. The peculiar proclivities of that Dark Lord led to a number of recusant students seeking to find their own path instead of accepting total surrender to the Dark Side. Many failed, driven mad by spirits too weak to walk the path they sought, or succumbing to their dark impulses in unspeakable ways. A golden few, however, found their way back to the light on their own terms, or at least enough so that the next generation might finish the healing that they began. These former Krath have no interest in the stoic and austere life of a Jedi, so when the noble houses began moving to form the Sovereign Alliance, they fashioned crowns of gold for their children and forged a noble house of their own making. Not only does House Ahalya have the power and funding to function as a noble house, but it also has the receipts to know which nobles were more in bed with the Sith than others. This has resulted in a subtle and intricate dance between the house and the Sovereign Alliance’s intelligence officers, with the former looking to get the most out of trading this information, and the latter both needing the info and questioning its veracity. House Ahalya is as much an artisan guild and mystic society as it is a noble house, with its descendants learning occult formulas and esoteric principles while also training to work metal and precious materials. These additional focuses come at the cost of spending less time learning decorum and charm, a situation that is exacerbated by many of them being autistic. For their part, members of the house tend to be cheerful if rather eccentric, often not aware of which topics and lines of inquiry are appropriate for conversation and which ones are not. Despite having left the dark side behind them, the terminology and methods of their Krath origins remain plain, referring to the light side as light sorcery, Force powers as spells, and compulsively crafting charms and talismans infused with the Force. While this impedes their instinctive understanding of the Force, it can play to their advantage when planning and executing larger scale powers and crafting Force attuned objects. It also makes them more likely to experiment with trying to discover new powers, useful or otherwise. Even with the Sith having faded out of the public eye, certain former Sith strongholds like Ishvara remain dangerous places to express anti-Sith or pro Alliance sentiments. As such, the house is discreetly moving its members and holdings off world while evading zealots devoted to the Sith. At current, this has kept members of the house in a mindset of subtlety and keeping a low profile, but once free of those prying eyes it is expected that House Ahalya will be rather bombastic with its Force use. House Ahalya’s heraldry is three golden stylized eyes over crossed keys on a field of purple. Their armor is ornately crafted yellow and gold that often courses with attuned energies. Their words are “Hamane apane khud ke taaj banae”, translated as “We fashioned our own crowns”. The scions of Ahalya use their occult knowledge to weave light sorcery and occult sigils into their clothes and armor, making light bend and dance around them in peculiar ways. Passively, when the Knight doesn’t wish to be noticed, they appear constantly shrouded in shadow or silhouetted by light a little more dazzling than it should be, making it difficult to ascertain details about them and hard for them to stand out in a group. The metaphysics of heraldry is of particular interest to the house and each scion adopts their own personal heraldic sigil after a journey of self discovery, often crafting talismans and charms to allow them to tap into the mythos of their heraldic icon. Some claim to see their chosen sigil through the Force and treat it like a familiar or tutelary spirit, but Force scholars believe that this is more likely the Force communicating with them in a form they trust, similar to Force ghosts.

House Didandigi: A political powerhouse that excels at diplomacy, the nobles of House Didandigi are the alliance builders and policy makers of the Sovereign Alliance. Bringing together so many disparate voices and getting them to speak in unison is no simple task, but it is one that this house is stalwartly committed to. Delegates of House Didandigi work tirelessly with the people of hundreds of worlds to weave a combined bulwark against the Sith. This house has always put their diplomatic duties first, even for their Sovereign Knights, and highly values peaceful and mutually beneficial resolutions over violence. Furthermore, the house is reluctant to let its members become overly dependent on the Force, and disciplines any scion that is seen taking too many shortcuts. Didandigi knights are more likely to commune with the Force for guidance than to use it casually in their daily routine. As a house of ambassadors and political power brokers, family members are expected to learn the languages and customs of a variety of cultures and species, and have advisors on hand should consultation be necessary. The house is known for a diplomatic style of actively listening to others, investing time and effort in shared interests and causes, and addressing issues beyond the performative level. If they are unable to help for some reason, they are candid but kind in their explanation of why. House Didandigi is especially keen to work with the other noble houses, both to solidify their role as keen negotiators and to build bonds with people that can provide solutions that they can’t. They will happily break bread with unpopular houses like Ahalya, Edsbryder, Cua’Cipactli, and Shrike, because if despite their best efforts negotiations fail, it’s handy to know people that can execute other options. With the respect of the houses in good standing, and the gratitude of the houses in bad standing, Sovereign Knights of this house are often called upon as impartial arbiters to resolve disputes between feuding houses. Executors of the house are often called upon to be ancestral guides, seeking the wisdom of the Force while it wears the faces of those long past. Like Jedi consulting Force ghosts of past masters, the ancestral guides find comfort and direction in the teachings of the Force. These Executors are also uniquely qualified for combating and dispersing Sith spirits through their comprehensive knowledge of spirit metaphysics. House Didandigi heraldry is a silver buffalo head over a quartered field of black and white. Their armor is white and gray, and often designed to look stately and ceremonial. Their house words are “A ranti gbogbo eniyan” which translates to “We remember everyone”, in reference to both their friends and their enemies. As stated before, the metaphysical teachings of House Didandigi make them especially suited for combating spiritual threats, and their weapons are specifically crafted to reveal and banish dark side spirits. Channeling the Force through them reveals dark spirits and makes them able to temporarily disperse wraiths with a touch. Furthermore, scions can consult Force ghosts to further their training during times of calm and focus, giving them access to advice and instruction as needed.

House Cua’Cipactli: There are many houses that proudly proclaim their contributions to the galaxy, deriving in part their noble pedigree from their place in the stars. House Cua’Cipactli does not have that option, although the role they play is nonetheless vital, as they oversee the waste and sewage management of many key cities and ecumenopolises. The wealth of the house is substantial and consistent, but the stigmas that surround the house given the source of that wealth leave its political potency somewhat muted when interacting with other nobles. Sewage and refuse aren’t the only unseemly things that the house controls, however, as the systems they construct and manage offer hidden routes into and out of places for those that would prefer to not be seen. As such, the house has controlling interests in several smuggling networks, building contacts with many of the less reputable allies of the former rebellion, who found their services under scrutiny after the empire was defeated. For those that wish to navigate the treacherous waters of illegal goods and services without getting tangled up with Black Sun, Cua’Cipactli may be willing to hear you out. They are particular about their clientele, but they have their choice of nobles that seek things outside the reach of legal means of acquisition. And if a noble needs to make someone disappear discreetly, the house can handle that too. It has been a difficult road for the Sovereign Knights of the house to reconcile their light side nature with the more sinister aspects of their house. Many throw themselves into their work and seek to distance themselves from the realities of their origins, while others learn to rationalize a less storybook approach to morality. Some keep in mind that while the Sovereign Alliance’s star is rising currently, should fortunes change those smugglers and hidden temples will become invaluable. All of them are keenly aware that their unique insight into hidden paths may become the key to decisive victories… or losses. House Cua’Cipactli had its own traditions of spiritualism before they joined the other noble houses in creating the Sovereign Knights, influenced heavily by naturalism and understanding the body. Macayac Ixaci requires understanding of Force healing, making the house one of the only ones to actively train its scions in the art, which most houses regard as inferior to protective powers. Family members do exhibit a quirk regarding healing through the Force, becoming notoriously hungry upon performing any notable amount of healing. The origin of the house lies on a swamp planet where their family’s microbiologists discovered the biological processes and enzymes that allow for the processing of waste into stabilized forms or energy sources. Survival on the world was grueling, with the colonists suffering from both disease and a plethora of toxic and venomous animals. Eventually, the colonists resorted to biological manipulation to better adapt to the world, narrowly avoiding being wiped out and being the only colony of the original seeding to survive, after a brutal protracted struggle between the colonies for the dwindling supplies needed to persevere. Their descendants continue to receive those modifications as a matter of tradition. The heraldry of Cua’Cipactli is a stylized bronze reptilian swamp beast on a split field of black and olive green. Their armor is olive green and often doubles as a sealed diving suit. Their house words are “In ie tlecujlixquac, in ie tlamamatlac, nextlahualiztli” or in galactic common “Already at the edge of fire, already at the stairway, the payment/sacrifice is made”. The heirs of this family are undoubtedly survivors, and this is made readily apparent to the modifications they underwent to be adaptable enough to survive on their world. Additional organs for filtering toxins and poisons out of the bloodstream, along with specially cultivated bacterial colonies and immuno-boosters allow for them to shrug off most poisons and diseases. They are also able to consume and process most organic material with little more than a stomach ache, even raw. Furthermore, they possess a greater familiarity with healing than most Sovereign Knights, especially when it comes to neutralizing poisons and curing disease, although they must eat a great deal to persistently heal others.

It seemed that the fledgling was not as dispossessed of mettle as his first encounter had originally suggested. The squire was confused and scared, but that was the appropriate response to being in proper battle for the first time. Drawing a bead as he advanced confidently, he sent lancing bolts of crimson into the heads of enemy soldiers, flicking his blade to deflect any fire that was on course to hit him. Even as the edges of the enemy formation began to fray, desperation slowed the advance as they began to fire more often and more erratically. Tygo could hold his own against the onslaught, but many of the line soldiers and the squire would be overwhelmed without intervention. The inquisitor holstered his pistol and clutched at the threads of light that fluttered unseen beneath the veil of reality, raveling them around his hand in a circular motion before manifesting them as a blinding light in the palm of his hand, bright enough to cause those that looked upon it to flinch and recoil. Under the blinding aegis of the light, Tygo and his allies advanced to close with the enemy line in melee combat. Tygo made sure to position himself between the squire and any massed enemy fire so that the boy would not get gunned down.

Tygo let out a practiced exhalation, as if expelling air to make room for an influx of the Force, followed by a measured deep breath that tasted of roses and spring water. There was a purifying sense of relief whenever the prince stood against the darkness, a painful pressure drained away like drawing pus from an old wound and freshly bandaging it. Confronting and banishing the dark wasn't just an internal conflict, it called upon people to look beyond themselves to the greater needs of life around them, and to support each other when the burden of evil became a crushing threat. "Bekenden, Kraaienbladen, rise above!" The forces of House Edsryder specialized in urban mobility, and their preferred strategy was to leverage advantage from taking elevated positions. Maannacht produced a number of Sithspawn and dark side infused wildlife, and hunting those monsters cultivated skills that translated well into hunting armor in military engagements. The Edsbryder Haulanz ascended the city buildings, with the kraaienbladen identifying and calling out targets, and the Bekenden readying heavy weapons and longarms for providing strategic elimination of major threats. The land tanks were the first priority, and the Bekenden trained their coil guns on exposed vulnerabilities from their perches and opened fire. As long as Gaijin wasn't doing the armor mapping of the vehicles, their opening salvo would be crippling, and Tygo readied himself for the advance once the enemy armor was neutralized, rapier and blaster in hand.

Tygo disembarked the landing craft with the troops, having left his X-wing in the hangar. It was a lot of things, but easy to disembark for an assault was not one of them. Haulanz of House Constipex flowed out of the craft alongside him, along with the grim masked Bekenden of his homeworld and a handful of Kraaienbladen. Constipex's soldiers were a disciplined and professional sort, conventional fighters trained to fight in grand armies, but his people were urban combat specialists, hardened killers who would find lofty perches and dismantle choke points from on high. Falleen would be liberated soon enough. Intel for the op suggested some sort of berserker pirate cult, an odd choice for the notably stoic and emotionless cold blooded Falleen. It was unlikely that there were many true believers here, the Sith's presence had been brief, too brief to raise children in indoctrinating cults, or for people to forget their old traditions and ways. It was peculiar that the cult hadn't fled to more remote regions to subsist on piracy now that the Sith had largely fled the galactic stage, now they were exposed and largely unsupported, easy prey for the triumphant rebellion. It was unusual for Tygo to be going into an operation with anything more than a squad, but he enjoyed the feeling of a larger force by his side. His work was often distasteful, even if it was necessary and for the good of all, so to be included in a nobler endeavor filled his heart with joy. Though the lion's share of the glory would go to Contispex today, Edsbryder would conduct itself with valor and determination.

It seemed the boy needed training in personal space and reading context clues as well. Tygo suppressed the urge to roll his eyes and levitated a napkin between the squire and the semi-entwined pair, creating a makeshift privacy curtain. "With the Sith going quiet, the vacuum is filling with with paranoia, suspicion, and the barbs of hidden agendas, and that makes sorting through all of the data to verify truth a slow and frustrating process. Every fool with a grudge is suddenly and conveniently remembering that they saw their enemy at a Sith dinner party. Compassion and skepticism are just as important in inquisitorial work as commitment and tenacity, lest the galaxy burn for fear and hidden grudges. For the moment, we are mostly stamping out cult activity and rooting out the enemy's ability to lay any groundwork for future plans. At least, this is the case for my section. You would probably be more privy to intel on major Sith movements than I would, being my better. Each inquisitor only gains access to part of the big picture in order to contain leaks and better identify their sources. As befits your station you would have more access to the grand scheme of things than I would."

At the Lord Commander's request, Tygo stopped immediately, backing away from the boy with a gesture that let him know that he would be watching him. A far more interesting conversation had presented itself anyway. Kyrie was well known to House Edsbryder as a constant hunter of darkness who had overcome her own demons, and it took a great deal of Tygo's practiced composure to not turn into a swooning teenager meeting a celebrity idol. Her soft features belied her experience and grit, and it was evidence of the cruelty of the galaxy that she had faced so many dark horrors so early in life. She was a legendary champion, and here she was smiling at him. He gently placed his fingers on her chin to tilt her head and put her ear close to his lips, that subtle dance of intimacy and flirtation playing out and putting a broad smile her face. Her openness was a sweet relief compared to the guarded and mercurial wants and whimsies of courtly ladies. "The Sith have a tendency to burn out and fade away after hitting some nadir of ability, at least when it comes to the more powerful ones. Psychologically I don't think that former Dark Lords can handle serving under a new master after having once been the apex predator. Of the old major players, Sheog is the only likely piece still on the board. The Spider kept his cards close to his chest, but his successor was abnormal in terms of the usual patterns. Challengers to the throne tend to wait until all of the pieces of whatever plans they have are in place, but this last one seemed reactionary, out of sorts. Obviously this could be bait for a trap, but it seems like the Sith are reacting to an unorthodox regime change. But this era will have its own arch-devils in time, the names change but the wickedness takes root in wounded hearts all of the same. Most of the post Nar Shadaa Sith activity has been mopping up dark side cults, pale imitations of masters that have long since departed. But the hope is that if we hit enough cults and temples a Sith will fly to its aid. Most of the time Sith do not care for their slaves, but they are creatures of passion, and passion is caution's demise. Be it pride, or wrath, or lust, if there are any Sith remaining, they will be stirred to rise by our provocations, and then cut down."

Tygo picked up a steak knife from his place setting with the flourish typical of a Falcon. "This here is the sharp end, you put this in the Sith until they stop moving." The prince moved with liquid grace from his chair, extending two fingers into a sweeping gesture that slid Piotr's chair out from the table and put the lad facing him. With another flourish the knife came down between in the space between Piotr's thighs, Tygo's face now inches away from the manchild's. "There, you now have a weapon and the instruction to use it. I suggest that you rapidly come to terms with the reality that combat is unavoidable, and should you survive Falleen, seek to remedy your reluctance to learn any means of self defense. You are a Malczewski, things are expected of you, and if you fail to respect the gravity of the situation, you have siblings to replace you. Survival is nobody's birthright, especially in times of war, we all must wrest it from the talons of an uncaring galaxy."

"It is strange to me that a house nested on Carida would not offer its youth to the Redcloaks as part and parcel of proving maturity and responsibility. A term of service is a mandatory for us as part of earning full title and privilege. Given that this is a military operation I am sure that your needs for equipment will be seen to. Or you could renounce your station and titles, and remit your obligations to live in quietude as a farmer or factory worker. The wealth and privilege afforded to you comes from the obligation of our esteemed peerage to step up when the common people need a steady and qualified hand to guide and protect them. If you desire training, let this be the first lesson, everything you have carries with it a debt that must be repaid in surety, self sacrifice, and noble character." For any major house to produce an heir that so openly balked at the thought of partaking in that most ancient of necessities, vexed Tygo. Power was entrusted to the nobility to deliver the people from darkness and peril, and idle nobility wasted that trust on self serving pursuits and whimsies. It was in the absence of obeisance to a higher purpose that evil thrived, the heirs of his house knew that intimately well on account of their own dark history. If the might of lords was not brought to bear against the Sith and others that served them, the galaxy would remain consumed in chaos.

Their esteemed company was joined by another, the legendary hunter of Sith Kyrie. Tygo had never met the woman until now, but her prowess was often spoken of in hushed and reverent tones amongst the Redcloaks. She wasn't highborn, but her talents in slaying Sith spoke on their own, and it would be an honor to draw steel by her side. A lesser noble whose dress suggested Caridan nobility spoke out of turn, but the Lord Commander dismissed the poorly crafted jeer offhandedly. Acting out as such was a great way to end up on the vanguard in times when lives needed to be spent for the good of the galaxy. "The Falleen are an aristocratic and rational people, they will be both well suited allies and an example that we are not beholden to any xenophobic beliefs of the old empire. We'd best move with haste though, the purity and virginal innocence of the Jedi is at risk, and if we let dust gather they are in great danger of actually having fun."

It felt good, after what felt like an eternity, to be in the cockpit of an X-wing again. Sure, the luxury of the Viper’s Rest had its appeal, but there was something truly freeing about piloting a ship without crew or guests. At any moment, the vagabond spirit could exert its influence and he could be in another system with none the wiser, another mote of cosmic dust blown by the winds of whimsy and libertine pursuits. Today, however, was not a day for idle deviancy and carousing. Traversato cut through idyllic clouds just as they were beginning to adopt tinges of sunset colors, with the sky’s dominant blue yielding ever so slightly to a restful golden orange. Beneath him stretched pastoral fields that spoke of Chandrila’s continued preservation of the balance between civilization and nature. It was a far cry from what Tygo was used to, and on some levels disconcerting. What sort of devil’s bargain did it take to have such preserved innocence in a galaxy so consumed by war? Would the masters of such a place flinch in the midnight hours of what was to come when the bravado faded and the costs became all too real? Tygo’s family knew all about costs, both from sin and more recently virtue, though many only commented on the former. When he was hunting crazed cultists and lunatic sorcerers, the dark stains of his family’s past had their uses, but in the eyes of lords and ladies who lived safely in pristine towers and manses overlooking verdant greenery, it was a vulnerability to be needled at and leveraged for their idle sadism. The sneers and comments weren’t even particularly biting anymore, instead the banality of every single noble and courtier thinking that their particular jab was nuanced and original turned many events into trudging through a slurry of tired comments and tepid insults. He landed at the estate’s private hangar, cycling the ship through the shutdown process before hauling himself over the rim of the opened cockpit. He was extremely nimble, but several hours in a tight enclosed space would make anyone stiff until they could stretch out. Of course, he could have called upon the Force, but the prince had found that keeping an awareness of the physical allowed him to be better connected to the spiritual, while also avoiding over reliance. He paused his stride for a moment to limber up as an attache moved from the edge of the hangar to greet him. The usual formalities cascaded forward in rote performance, a necessary but boring dance. It wasn’t long before he was being presented to another room of his peers and their assorted hangers on, and while the faces were largely unknown to him, the reactions were all too familiar. Primarily disdain, even from those who were largely beneath him in standing, a few curious glances from the sorts of people who wanted to upset mommy and daddy, and knowing nods from the veterans who knew what the scarlet scarf he wore meant. One of those veterans was the venerable Lord Commander Constipex, a man whose eyes seemed to have wandered far from his home, iron and haunted in contrast to the peaceful elegance of the estate. He moved with mercurial grace towards Raphanel, sidestepping a would be heckler and producing a datapad directly for the Lord Commander’s eyes. It showed the butchers’ work that had concluded his last assignment, an outer rim cult that had a penchant for sacrificing youths to some deranged fairy tale demon. It was the conclusion of several months of investigative work, looking into the disappearances, staking out the cult’s procurer’s, and verifying the information before launching a surgical strike. The cult leader had tried to scream his idea of an esoteric ill omen at him, they always try to project this aura of occult fatalism, just before going limp as their cries die into gurgling silence. “Apologies for my tardiness, Lord Commander. The Wardens always like to be thorough after anything cult related to make sure that we don’t get any dark ritual on our boots and go spreading it everywhere.”

TYGO EDSBRYDER'S CHARACTER SHEET Identity Real Name: Tygo Edsbryder A.K.A: Prince Errant Edsbryder, His royal highness Homeworld: Noctural Species: Human Physical Description Age: 28 Height: 5'11 Weight: 165 Hair: Dark blue, almost black Eyes: Luminescent violet Sex: Male Equipment Clothing or Armor: A vast wardrobe of formal wear, medium dueling armor in House Edsbryder colors with anti-grav rigging, lightsaber resistant dueling glove. Weapons: Purple bladed dueling saber with crossguard, artisan crafted fencing blade, precision blaster, knives, occasionally an ornate quarterstaff. Common Inventory: Commlink, PDA, credits, signet ring, records of nobility Faction Information Force User, Force Sensitive or Non-Force User: Force User Archetype: Falcon, Oath of Consequences Alignment: Good, shifts between lawful and chaotic based on the needs of the situation. Current Faction Affiliation: Imperial Knights Current Faction Rank: Knight History Force Side: Light Trained by: House Edsbryder Provost Scholars, Redcloak Inquisitors Trained who: None Known Skills: Dedicated fencing technique, staff fighting, lightsaber dueling, and statecraft. Competent understanding of Falcon gambits, principles, and obligations. Background: The thirteenth son of the rakish Prince Errant Stijn Edsbryder and the apostate Jedi Vysinia Korso, Tygo came into the Vow of Consequences honestly, learning fencing to defend the honor of his sisters from the barbed words of failed suitors. His father is well meaning, but was often too busy managing his holdings and affairs to have been a constant presence, and his mother believed attachment was against the Jedi code, so he was more raised by his older siblings and the forlorn specters that haunt the ancestral halls of the Edsbryder estates. Like all Edsbryder nobles, Tygo served with the Redcloaks as an inquisitor, and while he didn't see any combat against the Sith, his team was involved in several operations against outer rim dark side cults. Ship Registration Name: Viper's Rest Class: Space yacht Model: Luxury 5,000 Manufacturer: SoroSuub Length: 65 meters Armaments: 2 heavy laser cannons Armor: Civilian Anti-Personnel Defenses: Biometric locks, monofilament wire webs, security staff Modifications: Upgraded shields Appearance: A luxurious space yacht that caters to Tygo's taste for finery and often houses courtesans and associates willing to provide alibis for him. Tygo generally treats it more as a mobile residence than an asset for missions. Name: Traversato Class: Starfighter Model: XJ5 X-Wing (ChaseX) Manufacturer: Incom Length: 12 meters Armaments: 4 heavy laser cannons, 3 proton torpedo launchers Armor: Military grade Anti-Personnel Defenses: Biometric locks, a stab capable pilot Modifications: None Appearance: Painted in House Edsbryder colors.

House Gah’Hidloh: Originating from a cluster of hundreds of moons orbiting a gas giant that share atmosphere, House Gah’Hidloh rules over a luxurious procession of environmentally engineered paradise moons. The unique atmospheric qualities and drifting bioluminescent organisms of the cluster cause the moons to appear in eternal sunset, giving them the sobriquet of the golden strands. House Gah’Hidloh plays the role of host to a large number of the galactic elite who lease mega estates or even entire moons, paying exorbitant amounts to live in decadence and beauty. The proper name for the Golden Strands has both verbal and hand signed components, but the bastardized misrecorded version that became standard on the star charts is Tsiku. Having easy access to the galaxy’s ultra elite gives House Gah’Hidloh greater political reach than the size of their holdings would indicate, although they have begun using their wealth to migrate key flora and fauna and terraform other gas giants that meet their parameters for establishing new holdings. They have used their political power to shelter their people from the war, currying influence and favor with major political and economic players on both sides as a means to sideline themselves in the conflict. This has put them in a complicated situation with their choosing to align themselves with the Imperial Knights, as they are now opening themselves to retaliatory strikes if they press any guests aligned with the wrong side too hard. As masters of soft power, House Gah’Hidloh members often style themselves as gracious hosts who greatly value the virtue of hospitality. They will often suggest a mutually beneficial path, but rarely command it be done. Those who wrong the house will often face tragedy soon after, with no real understanding of who engineered their demise. Initially, the house’s only interaction with outsiders was with galactic high society, but a business move to gain tax incentives on their expansion initiatives led to them gaining a greater sense of empathy to refugees they housed in their newly established colonies. It didn’t hurt that the Tinde were themselves once a group of nomadic refugees, spiritual sky warriors who settled in the strands after their leaders received visions. This call to action brought the house into the Imperial Knights, along with their teachings about diyí', their name for the Force. House Gah’Hidloh is the house responsible for the Zephyr class armor, and due to the unique terrain of its homeworld, contributes a large number of Zephyrs and Chevaliers on flying mounts. The house also has a long tradition of knife fighting, especially with concealed blades, as some of the more entitled and insistent guests have discovered upon crossing too many lines. The Tinde(The People), the populace over which the house directly rules, enjoys idyllic lives of active leisure, flying, sport hunting, and exploring the ever changing landscape in sections of the Golden Strands cordoned off from the guests without explicit invitation. House Gah’Hidloh palaces feel more like community centers than private homes, providing medical care, education, and food to any of their people that need it. Tinde culture is heavily expressed through masks that are often gendered, but the wearer’s gender does not restrict them on what mask they can wear, it just informs others of the wearer’s intended role in society. Some masks are multi gender or agender, and ceremonies for changing masks are common and don’t carry any stigma as long as the person changing masks isn’t abandoning an obligation or need of the people. Some masks can only be worn with the permission of the community, and shameful behavior can result in a person losing the privilege to wear any mask tied to responsibility(Some communities have paths to redemption and reintegration, others do not). Interactions without masks generally only occur during private family occasions, consultations with spiritual advisors, and intimate moments with romantic partners. Families are matriarchal, but positions of power are entrusted on consensus rather than gender. Another aspect of Tinde culture that manifests as a physical object is a journey ribbon, a ribbon or ribbons marked with locations that represent the wearer’s personal and spiritual path. Falsely adorning a journey ribbon can be a criminal offense, and variations of calling someone’s ribbon too long are common ways to call someone a liar or suspicious. Youths are also regularly cautioned not to trip trying to sprint their way down their own path. Academic Tinde often use the ribbons as markers of their educational path, and it’s not uncommon to see ribbons denoting attendance at prestigious galactic universities. Despite largely being considered an idyllic paradise, the Golden Strands are not without their dangers. Swarms of shrieker locusts can emulate electromagnetic storms if they accrue in numbers great enough. Cloud stalker dragons hunt livestock and the occasional sapient being, liquifying their insides by injecting the prey with microorganisms from a barbed tail, returning to feed on them later with a serpentine piercing tongue that houses a feeding canal. Perhaps most insidious were the Naagloshii, sapient cannibal serial killers that were either shapeshifting aliens or Force adepts that used the Force to alter their biology. After extended diplomatic efforts and outreach, House Gah’Hidloh has been able to entreat the Naagloshii into largely joining under their banner, although a few holdouts remain (Naagloshii that remain cannibals are undoubtedly evil, but find the Sith too bound to “Silly traditions and ancient hatreds”, and have no interest in becoming part of that eternal war, preferring instead to pursue their own sadistic games). The house colors of Gah’Hidloh are orange, gold, and white, and their heraldry is a white cloud stalker dragon with gold claws and teeth on an orange field. House Gal’Hidloh’s words are actually non verbal, and expressed in a secondary language built entirely around hand signs, but it can be translated into “We keep the paths”. For gatherings without spiritual or traditional significance, scions wear orange and white, accented with gold, but many ceremonial and sacred gatherings have outfits associated with them outside of the identity of the house. House Gah’Hidloh scions are well versed in both flight and acrobatics, often spending much of their youth bounding through floating rock fields and learning acrobatic dance rituals to honor their traditions and spirits. For the Force sensitive, this translates into a natural intuition for acrobatic and weightless movement, allowing Paladins to perform mind boggling flips(excluding when they are wearing Rook class suits, they’re good but there are limits.) Falcons can move like liquid mercury, performing Force enhanced stunts more efficiently than their peers. House Gah’Hidloh weapons feel lighter than their size would indicate, and return readily and easily when called upon through the Force, making many knights of this house favor throwing weapons. Executors of House Gah’Hidloh practice a sacred form of ceremonial shamanism that outsiders refer to as Cloudweaving. These truthkeepers can conjure the orange clouds of their homeworld to conceal themselves and their allies, form the clouds into shapes to animate stories, and meditate on the nature of their homeworld to drift weightlessly over the ground, gracefully suspended in mid air. This is not flight in the sense of a rocket or jet pack, but a languid motion that moves at a rate somewhere between a walking and jogging pace. Alternatively, players can choose to play a reformed Naagloshii, or the descendant of one. In lieu of the Gah’Hidloh boons for throwing weapons and Cloudweaving, these penitent predators can shapeshift, altering their appearance at will. They can’t change the underlying frame of their body or precisely imitate someone’s appearance(or DNA, no shapeshifting past biometric scanners), but they can shift their form to create natural weapons, change their apparent age and features, and precisely mimic voices. Not all Naagloshii that have reformed join the Imperial Knights, some join the Jedi to pursue the naturalist path and build a healthier relationship with the natural world that they mimic. (Imperial Knights from other houses that receive this boon confound others on how its shared, and theories abound from secret rites to some form of infection process that progresses over time with heavy exposure).

House Edsbryder: A noble house that owes its original wealth and power to dark sorceries that marked their bloodlines with ghastly pallor, unnatural hair colors such as white or blue so dark that it’s almost black, and strangely brilliant eyes that weep black or crimson ichor rather than normal tears, but has since undergone a transformative journey to becoming champions of the light. They often conceal their ghoulish visages behind helmets and masks, and their knights are eager to prove their devotion to fight against the darkness. In spite of their return to virtue, their blighted blood continues to haunt them, even afflicting outsiders who come into the family and spend enough time in their ancestral homes. Some spouses intentionally distance themselves from the Edsbryder throne world, while others accept the inevitable either out of duty or solidarity with their spouses. Parts of the look can be concealed of course with cosmetic alterations. The original places of power for this house are evocative of gothic horror, equal parts overt majesty and lingering dread. They are haunted places, often both in a literal and metaphorical sense, which contributes to the house’s nonchalant familiarity with the dark and gallows humor. Edsbryder scions tend to shrug off encounters with the supernatural, while evading social interaction with outsiders who often treat them as untrustworthy or malevolent. More recent structures are more in line with the house’s new direction, and are considerably brighter and more modern, although their walls are high to keep the outside world at bay when the nobles need respite. In spite of their unsettling appearance, or perhaps more accurately because of it, house members hold a great deal of empathy behind their courtly demeanor and sardonic quips. For those unaccustomed to their ways, Edsbryder nobles can come across as abrasive, overly direct, and casually cruel, but those that weather the initial storm find them to be intensely loyal to their allies, in a discreet fashion. They are also protective of the outcast and abnormal when often their peers would turn up their noses or look the other way. Edsbryder’s heraldry was originally a black serpent coiled and ready to strike over a purple field, but since its rebirth the serpent is now gold and coiled protectively around a pale maiden on a blue field. The House words “Natten hvisker gift” (“The night whispers poison” in galactic standard) has transformed from a threat to enemies into a warning to those that would follow the same dark path they once did. For those among the house that use lightsabers, orange, yellow, blue, and white blades are favored, although some scions have inherited purple bladed lightsabers of discreet origin. Their armor and ceremonial garb is dark purple and black with gold trim. Edsbryder scions that have served their military obligation in the Redcloaks are honored with a red silk signifier of some sort, such as a cape or sash. Oathbreaker, the blade that shattered the night that the house rebelled against the dark, had its shards melted down to forge heirloom blades, with the largest shard becoming the dagger Slangebid, known for finding its way into the hearts of corrupt nobles when they least expect it. For all of its efforts to reimagine itself, Edsbryder nobles don’t hesitate to go for the throat when the moment calls for it, and will readily run an enemy through while they lie asleep in their bed. This has led to them developing a reputation in the Imperial inquisition as prime operatives, although they apply the same determination and drive regardless of where they are assigned. House Edsbryder demands that its scions commit to mandatory military service with the Redcloaks, both to show commitment to the light and to keep its heirs from falling into total isolation. The Edsbryder look is more than just a physical disfigurement, it’s a sign of deeper scars left by the darkness of past sins. Scions with this condition benefit from a strange alchemy between that darkness and their own inner light, with the two canceling each other out for anyone trying to detect disturbances in the Force. Edsbryder Knights are also known for their sinister guile, and practice a unique form of telekinetic fighting with knives called Nachtschim, a short range TK application that holds a single knife for close in fighting. The knife is limited in range, capped at a meter for any form of finesse and two meters at the absolute extreme, and attacks with the same strength and speed as the (unaugmented) wielder, but the power requires little energy and is instinctive to the Knight. Nachtschim can be taught to others, but Edsbryder Knights tend to only share it with their closest confidantes and partners.

House Blutwulfin: House Blutwulfin believes in martial exceptionalism, but has been disillusioned by the fascist and authoritarian regimes that so often attach themselves to the pageantry of warrior cults. In the past, the house considered service in the grand army of the Republic, and then the Imperial army, as mandatory for any son or daughter that wished to inherit. Military service was lionized and the principles of command were idealized. No matter what the ruling government called itself, House Blutwulfin endeavored to be amongst its most stoic and capable defenders. But Palpatine’s empire brought with it an annihilation of all traditions not born of the empire, and identity beyond the sterilized bureaucracy of the new order became the new enemy. The empire was not the head of a body of many cultures and ideas, but rather a cancer that consumed all and starved anything not of itself. The replacement of the Imperial Army with the stormtrooper legions would shatter the house’s faith in the Empire, as their history of service was tossed away for mass produced shock troops that won wars through attrition and brutality. Blutwulfin never truly saw eye to eye with the leadership of the rebellion, they considered too many of them to be idealistic fools devoted to unattainable visions of anarcho pacifism, but they did use what remained of their military influence to erode the loyalties of exceptional imperial officers and lead them to question Palpatine’s agenda, often causing them to defect to the alliance. Even as a great house, Blutwulfin could not openly defy the Emperor’s hold on the galaxy, and so they did what they could to undermine the effectiveness of the war machine that held the empire together. When the Empire finally did fall, Blutwulfin did not join the New Republic, instead choosing militant isolationism over compromising their ideals. While they could have made a bid for galactic control with the Empire splintering into warlord factions and the New Republic struggling as a fledgling galactic superpower, it was never Blutwulfin’s ambition to rule the galaxy, so they simply bided their time waiting for a government worthy of their fealty. It wouldn’t be until Empress Raven’s Imperial Remnant that the noble house would find what it was looking for. While Blutwulfin has no love for the remnant’s darker tendencies towards authoritarianism and facism, they value its pragmatism and willingness to focus on results over politics. It is the hope of the great house that it will be able to guide this new empire from within so that it does not become another victim of the temptations of absolute power. To this end, it has willingly tithed great numbers of its own, both heirs and oathbound alike, to the Imperial Remnant’s war machine. Should an officer or bureaucrat show signs of corruption or parasitic tendencies… well, accidents happen, and casualties are a part of war. With the advent of the Imperial Knights, Blutwulfin readily embraced the opportunity to build a martial tradition around their own ideology and values, one of service, duty, and vigilance. Blutwulfin knights embody the Imperial Remnant at its best, a stoic shield against the horrors of the darkness and its many agents, pragmatic but fighting for a better galaxy. They are the great house with the most Paladin lodges and the most sponsored knights from lesser houses, and the highest number of former and current redcloaks. Their militaristic ideology carries with it unyielding expectations for their scions, active military service and at least one tour with the Redcloaks is considered mandatory, with any unable or unwilling to serve called halfblooded and denied the holding of any position of power within the house, and their heirs placed at the end of any lines of succession unless the heir reclaims their proper place through service. Even access to their full finances and holdings is limited until a Blutwulfin noble has produced at least three heirs (family members unable to have children or with medical factors that make childbirth risky can still fulfill this obligation through taking in orphaned Blutwulfin children, of which there is rarely a shortage of). Widows and widowers can request similar arrangements, but if all heirs are spoken for or the leaders of the house believe that their numbers must be replenished, the request can be denied and a new marriage arranged. Almost all Blutwulfin marriages are arranged, and treated more like political contracts than relationships, as Blutwulfin nobles are taught to expect that one or both spouses will be deployed to different theaters at any given time (The vast majority of arranged marriages are to nobles of proven martial worth, which is to say ones with their own military obligations). Companionship and romance isn’t looked down upon by House Blutwulfin, it’s just considered something separate from marriage, which the house views as an arrangement for producing and raising legitimate heirs. Extramarital affairs are common, and any children conceived outside of wedlock are still openly claimed and provided for by the Blutwulfin parent, although the line of succession favors wedlock born heirs. Not all spouses are comfortable with this arrangement, especially not ones raised in cultures with more traditional relationship expectations, but child rearing is considerably more communal amongst the Blutwulfin than other noble families, and the other adults ensure that any anger is directed at the spouse and not the bastard child. Because of the emphasis that House Blutwulfin puts on preparing the next generation for war, neglecting or abusing children is considered tantamount to desertion, and disgruntled partners are expected to solve their marital issues in the practice ring, not by taking it out on innocent kids. Alternatively, some nobles who have socially improper partners seek out these marriages so that they can fulfill their political obligations while being free to pursue a relationship with whomever they please. All Blutwulfin children must go through a rite of passage to adulthood trial called the Gestaltung, a month of intense physical hardship and mental harrowing, where their dedication to the family and to their oaths is tested through violence and temptation. While physical ability is tested, the Gestaltung is not meant to evaluate it, and passing out from blood loss or overexertion is not grounds for failure. Only by quitting, asking their tormentors to stop, or accepting any form of mercy or under the table help, does one fail the Gestaltung. If the child fails the Gestaltung three times, they are disowned, and the best that they can hope for is to be married into another family willing to take pity on them. At the end of a successful Gestaltung, blood that has been collected throughout the ordeal is used in the creation of oathstones, crystalline spheres similar to a dark red ruby in appearance. While oathstones were originally used in jewelry, a not insignificant number of Imperial Knights have begun using them in lightsabers. The crystals produce crimson blades with golden cores, and while telling an oathstone blade apart from a sith lightsaber is rather easy due to the golden core, the stigma around red lightsaber blades does sometimes cause friction. While contact with stormtroopers during their term of service is largely unavoidable, Blutwulfin Imperial Knights significantly prefer the armsmen of their own house to the iconic soldiers of the empire. In their eyes, stormtroopers are a cheap copy of an already mass produced soldier, and the epitome of everything that they despised about Palpatine’s empire. While it’s not impossible for these biases to be overcome, to call it an uphill struggle is an understatement. Stormtrooper units unfortunate enough to be in the general area of a Blutwulfin Knight can expect to find themselves in constant drills as the Knight tries to march the subpar training out of them. (Stormtroopers in the imperial remnant actually receive a complete and well rounded training regimen, Blutwulfin nobles are just elitist members of what is essentially a war cult and have unreasonably high and sometimes eccentric standards.) House Blutwulfin’s heraldry is flexible, with the consistent elements being a red wolf and at least part of the field being golden yellow. A Blutwulfin noble chooses their heraldry upon the arrangement of their marriage, and common influences are the heraldry of their spouse, the insignia of a military unit that they served with or are awaiting assignment to, additional wolves to represent a spouse and children, or the insignia of their lodge if they are a Paladin. Blutwulfin armor is red with gold trim. “In allen dingen, unerschrocken” or “In all things, unflinching” are the house words. Blutwulfin Imperial Knights have access to oathstones from their Gestaltung (as do their spouses, oathstones are common wedding gifts) that are often used to focus lightsaber blades or serve as resonant symbols of the house’s extreme sense of duty. Oathstone lightsabers possess a phantasmal mass and heft to them that other lightsabers lack. While this makes them less effortless to handle than normal lightsabers, their impacts hold considerably greater consequence in terms of inertial force. Blutwulfin lightsabers tend to have longer grips than traditional lightsabers to allow for more flexibility in holding and leveraging the weapon. Oathstones can also be worked into jewelry, creating heirlooms that allow the wearer to channel the Force to counter attempts to make them lose their footing or throw them at a much more efficient rate of power. Oathstones only respond to the light side of the Force.

House Abryct: Once one of the most esteemed and politically powerful houses, House Abryct has fallen into ruin after its initial attempts to secure Force sensitive heirs prior to the united undertaking of the noble houses managed to incite the wrath of a little known cabal of Force adepts whose revenge nearly wiped out the house and afflicted its scions with curses of madness and paranoia. To be a knight of House Abryct is to fight both the enemy without and the darkness within, while your comrades mock and jeer at you for your vigilance. All scions of the house live with some measure of mental illness, often schizophrenia, extreme paranoia, obsessive compulsive disorder, or synesthesia. While some branches of the family have maintained the wherewithal to utilize stewards to manage house affairs, most Abryct holdings are falling into ruin and decay as accounts are neglected and upkeep is abandoned. It’s not uncommon to find Abryct palaces on the verge of abandonment, their lights flickering and entire rooms flooded by failing plumbing. Even the lowest houses now balk at the thought of accepting a marriage arrangement with House Abryct. The remaining members of the house have become obsessed with hunting down the witches that cursed them, many believing that wiping out the cabal will lift the curse from their bloodlines. Given the ignominy of the cabal, most other houses question even the existence of these witches, and often chalk up House Abryct’s rants about them as another symptom of their insanity, or the work of Sith masquerading as a cult. It is not uncommon for Imperial knights and Jedi to insist that Abryct knights not be left unattended to ensure that they don’t go off mission tilting at windmills or innocent bystanders. Much of House Abryct’s once substantial armory is now on the black market or in the hands of private collectors, either repossessed to settle overdue accounts or stolen by former servants who felt abandoned by their masters after weeks without pay. The once silvery metal of their armor and weapons has wept black ichor for so long that it coats them completely, and trying to keep the metal clean and gleaming has driven many a lord into a compulsion that drove them to scrub until their hands bled. The banner of House Abryct is a golden lion’s head on a white field with a black line dissecting the field diagonally, but few banners remain in a presentable state. Many Abryct knights develop a spiritual divergence that they call Witchsight, where detecting the dark side through the Force manifests as unusual sensory cues, such as bad smells, colors, unlucky numbers, visual hallucinations, whispering voices, or seemingly random but severe fixations. They are usually the first to detect darkness, but tragically their mental issues can often lead to them failing to express what they’re sensing as a real threat, and a Witchsight event can look just like a bad mental health moment. Furthermore, their minds often struggle with gating responses to stimuli, so they are more likely to notice and see through illusions and other mind altering effects, although again they often struggle to effectively snap others out of it as they are often dismissed as having an episode. While few would refer to it as a gift, others can be afflicted by Witchsight due to the supernatural nature of their bloodline’s madness. House Abryct uses a unique tool called a Witchbrand, that looks either like a brand or a torch (some paladins work them into the pommel of their weapons) that when in use burns with smokeless white incandescence. Witchbrands hold the light of House Abryct knights, for in spite of all of their struggles they are still champions of the light, and can be used to ignite the dark with enduring fire. Dark side conjurations are burned away in blazing radiance, and dark siders themselves, along with their tools can temporarily be set alight. A target that has been ignited has a choice, either cut off fuel to the fire or feed it at their own peril, with any consistently channeled dark side energy acting as fuel for the flames (a sword simply being a sith sword does not count as channeling, but using the Force to empower it or activate any of its special traits does isolated short power uses cause brief but severe flare ups, however the fire will not persist the following round, channeled powers act like pouring rocket fuel on the flames, and attempts to bypass this by stuttering the connection result in the same outcome as broken concentration). Even a mostly good person suffers minor burns from a Witchbrand, because everyone carries some measure of darkness inside, so it’s a constant struggle of the other knights to keep Abryct knights from burning everyone to test their virtue.

House Lán Zhǎo: A house that almost faded away into obscurity when its lords and ladies neglected their duties in favor of the idle pursuits of nobility, Lán Zhǎo’s standing was preserved by a timely marriage to a wealthy Yunhua Medical Technologies executive. The house’s course has since stabilized, and a number of its nobles have since found matches within the corporation’s hierarchy. This can sometimes lend itself to a confusing and obscured power hierarchy, but overall both the house and the corporation have benefitted from this alliance. Lán Zhǎo scions are caught between the obligations of court and the ambitions of business, often making a definitive choice between the two worlds, although some straddle the two by pursuing medical research and patronage. While courtly Lán Zhǎo knights easily fit the mold of the stereotypes, corporate Lán Zhǎo can be something of an oddity, trading noblesse oblige for professionalism, fairness, and other business virtues that are often spoken of but rarely practiced. The house also operates several off the books vigilante research labs that secretly test medical products and anonymously tip off regulators regarding harmful or deceitfully marketed pharmaceuticals. The skies of Lán Zhǎo holdings are often graced with flights of Fènghuáng, massive raptors with feathers whose structural coloration often gives them a fiery red and orange iridescence. Training and riding these megafauna has been a longstanding tradition of the house, but the Force sensitive Imperial Knights have taken the bond between mount and rider to a whole new level, and the house maintains many rookeries of carefully bred prize avians. The creatures are as powerful as they are majestic, with enough physical strength to carry off large livestock in their talons. Even family members that don’t partake in the practice almost always own some form of pet, with caring for an animal being a central part of establishing an heir’s ability to take on responsibilities as they get older. The Fènghuáng is house Lán Zhǎo’s heraldic beast, often rendered in gold, bronze, or brass, on a field of iron or silver(The house’s standards are rendered in metal rather than cloth). Modern standards often depict the raptor accompanied by a fox, the mascot animal of YMT. Traditional house armor is a blending of warm and cold metallic colors, often adorned with Fènghuáng feathers, while scions working in YMT security forces wear white and green armor. Their house words are “Wǒmen chéngfēngpòlàng” or “We ride the winds to glory” in galactic common. YMT’s medical facilities and biology research has given the house access to unique medical and biological assets, which have been used both for fulfilling obligations and for leisure. Lán Zhǎo scions wear custom fitted organic body gloves that help maintain the body in a peak functional state, controlling temperature, tempering negative emotional reactions, filtering toxins, and providing stabilizing regenerative medicines in the case of physical injury. The undersuit’s regeneration is not a miracle worker, and is better viewed as keeping wounds from worsening and mitigating their negative effects rather than restoring the body to full functionality. A threat mode can be activated turning the undersuit into a full body protective membrane with an organic rebreather, protecting the wearer from aerial toxins and diseases while also allowing them to breathe underwater, however the suit does not protect the wearer from vacuum or generate its own oxygen supply. Lán Zhǎo Paladins have access to bio armor and genetic modification that imitate the benefits of its technological cousins, while also being capable of self repair in the form of regenerative functions. This comes at the cost of the armor being less damage resistant, but many happily accept the trade off for consistently functional armor.

House Synyakvitka: As an industrial mining house that has made its fortunes harvesting on extreme hazard worlds, House Synyakvitka now largely uses remote drones and droids to work the mines while its people enjoy leisurely existence in luxury hab domes and enviro sealed towers. Force sensitivity appeared within the house’s descendants naturally, and while it is rumored that the nobles used the Force to ensure their initial prosperity, they avoided the traps of using it to monopolize power or crush their workers while hoarding wealth. When the nobles began their plan to create their own Force tradition, Synyakvitka readily joined and offered the designs of its heavy mining suits that would eventually inspire the rook class armors, and later the practice of Paladins using power armor as a whole. Synyakvitka territories are exceptionally prosperous, and its people are well paid to compensate for living in extreme ecologies. There is a heavy emphasis on valuing technical and programming skills, and most manufacturing jobs are for skilled technicians that oversee and maintain the droid workforce. Communities are tight knit and crime is largely associated with juvenile attention seeking and outsiders as the work of smugglers, pirates, and bandits. Synyakvitka’s armed forces straddle the roles of territorial protection and peacekeeping, but there is a clear distinction in how crime is handled inside the dome versus outside of it, with internal offenders enjoying reformative justice systems and outsiders being shot and becoming a footnote in an incident report. Newcomers are treated with a mix of wariness and zealous hospitality, until the locals get a feel for them and whether or not they will fit as part of the community. Synyakvitka colors are red with blue viewplating and power reservoirs, inspired by their hazard suits and droids. Standards and banners were never a part of Synyakvitka culture, so the house does not have a singular design, with knights that have heraldic focused traits choosing symbols of their hab dome or of personal meaning to themselves. Choosing the wellbeing of its populace over trinkets and extravagances means that the house has few heirloom weapons, but given its preference for rook class suits and tech based weaponry for lighter classes, they aren’t particularly bothered by it. Lightsabers almost always have the distinctive sapphire blue hue that is so heavily associated with the house. The house words are “My troshymo hory”, or “We Crush Mountains” in galactic standard. Every citizen in Synyakvitka holdings is trained for a hab breach, and wearing an enviro suit is second nature to them. Even the most thinly armored Executor from this house will always have integrated sealed suit functions, mag gloves and boots, and an emergency air supply. Generally speaking, knights of this house will have uprated armor, not enough to get them into the next class, but enough to be worth mentioning, and their clothing will always incorporate a sealed enviro suit with an attached oxygen supply. Robotics and technical skills are a cultural pastime in Synyakvitka, and scions have an inherent knack towards repairing their own armor and damaged tech and droids with what materials are available(Treat like Force healing but for armor and droids that can only be used outside of combat).