The Solephin name is associated with exploration and bravado. The wealthiest of the Steward families, the Solephin have long seemed cursed to stay at the cusp of power. The Solephin revere the Sun of Earth and put great stock in exploring the mountains north of Tellus Athera, though the deadliness of the mountains and their inhabitants has kept much of these high reaches a mystery. The Solephin are expert climbers, building specialized rigs for exploration. Additionally, the house's gunsmiths produce Tellus Athera's finest handgun, the haumort, which is the trademark of the Solephin's elite squadrons of rappelling commandos, the Solais.
Service to House Solephin is a gamble, The Solephins play favorites, and can be cruel to those who do not impress them. Moreover, the Solephin will often send their vassals (and, just behind, themselves) into extremely dangerous situations - however, successful Solephin vassals can expect opulence surpassing that offered by any other House.
Some big names in House Solephin:
-Gran Chamberlain Casimier Solephin, 53, a prodigy and the eldest of the "three golden sons", all half-brothers sired by the prodigious, prolific, and very recently deceased, Arcturus Solephin. Casimier made his name as a Burjo financier, renovating undercity manufacturies and capitalizing Geiss expeditions. By the time of the Romaersk Uprising, Casimier was the richest man in Tellus Athera. Upon the retirement of his father from the Gran Chamberlainship due to complications of gout, Casimier was immediately appointed, though righting the ship of state may well be beyond even his powers.
Marshal of the South Bank, Lysander Solephin, 38, born shy and without the talents and charm of his older half-brother, Casimier, or the cerebral genius of his younger half-brother, Nile, Lysander sought a field commission to get him out of Tellus Athera and the weight of expectation. He was given a post in the dangerous South Bank Garrison, the unit that campaigns into tribal territory to ensure Tellus Athera's dominance over its surrounds. However, after surviving a deadly raider ambush that left him with a distinctive facial scar and rallying his men to hold an allied tribal village - Lysander found himself on route for rapid promotion, and a renewed ambition that has turned his sights back on the city of his birth.
Professor Nile Solephin, 29, the youngest of the "three golden sons", and perhaps the most brilliant, Nile found himself most at home in the cult of Li Bai, not enjoying the mundane world of politics, but rather the symbolic orders of academia. The most brilliant mathematician of recent memory, Nile secured himself a professorship at the Baitian college with a proof that was successfully applied to fix a ray shield, before turning to his scandalous current work - questioning the abstract economic value of the types of firms that his brother, and to a lesser extent father before him, controlled to amass great power.
SOLEPHIN