House Varian
Part of the Taldor Campaign
House Varian
Overall House Alignment: Neutral
Common Classes: Aristocrat, Expert, Noble Scion
Rarer, but not unheard of: Rogue
Rare: Bard
Extremely uncommon: All others
Favoured Deity: Abadar (...more or less. In truth, given the family’s chief vocation, the Abadarian banks, while a useful place to squirrel away emergency and backup funds, are something of a competitor to them. They invoke Abadar’s patronage while veering between supportive to standoffish to his church depending on the situation. A previous attempt by the Prophets of Kallistrade at evangelizing to them ended in a contemptuous derision for ‘laughable ideas about the purpose and enjoyment of wealth’. The family periodically intrigues against the merchants of the nation of Druma to this day from a sense of sheer conceptual pique. Their stern and abiding rejection of the diabolical corruption of Mammonism by contrast is almost ironically perverse and based off their one iron conviction to always be the owners, not the owned.)
House Blazon: Four golden roses on a green field
House Motto: Forever Above
Overview: House Varian’s personal legendry traces their descent to the Azlanti refugees that settled Taldor, though of course this is not an unpopular thing to do amongst especially ancient royal caste families. There are some strikes against that claim, amongst them that the Varian have not managed, in thousands of years of royal family horse trading for the throne, to produce a single emperor, or carve out a particularly distinct place in Taldor’s legends of great deeds. On the other hand, this might instead be for that the Varian managed to realize early on the power that best suited them was the sort of power that owns other power. In a less developed society, they were money lenders. As Taldor grew more sophisticated, they became bankers. While thereby they might not be able to say their names were prominent in this or that great enterprise, they could almost always say they found some way to bankroll and profit off of it. Some argue thus that the Varian did not descend or earn their way into the royal lines, rather in a time distant enough to obscure it, they bought their way in. This is of course generally not spoken to their faces.
Taldor has been very good to the Varian over the years, even (some might argue especially) in its fallen eras. There are always senators desperate to make displays as ostentatious as what they regard as far wealthier royal caste rivals, royal caste nobles whose decadence and arrogance cause them to come into financial misadventure, caravans in need of seed money. Waiting for them all are the Varian, willing to provide loans at what even manage to seem like favourable terms (though for the truly desperate, far less favourable). In that way, without having to especially engage in the “lesser affairs” of merchantry, warfare or politics, they all the same manage to leverage influence all such things.
In that sense, they do not truly seem to care about Taldor’s transitions. One ruler is as good as another, as long as they can still do business, as long as their influence is intact and both things remain true. Some point to this as a sign of their fundamental weakness. The Varian do not inspire loyalty or even great emotion, they can only create obligation. Where a house like the Branas has earned such admiration from the Taldan armed forces, and from their own house armies could rally a crack force of fervent thousands in extremis, the Varian must look to mercenaries. On the other hand, the Varian would argue, there are always desperate greedy men, so there are always more mercenaries to throw in wave after wave at an enemy until the problem finally sorts.
Which is a response characteristic of the house. Money as an end and power unto itself, as the very cornerstone of civilization. Greed, thereby, as a good. Smug, secure, aloof, decadent just enough to reward themselves for their achievements while still being cursed as ‘bloodless bankers’, the Varian endure and profit.
Notable Historical Varian
Angrim Varian (fighter? Ranger? Rogue? Barbarian?)
While the house likes to affect to ancient Aztlanti heritage, the first historically viable member of the house is the Varian himself. Certainly at least he allows them to make claim to being ancient, as records of him pop up in the founding ages of Taldor. However, the only thing marking out his claim to Azlanti descent, are his own claims to it. Of course, one does not dispute the claims of a bandit lord, lest they find the rebuttal especially biting. In the sense that Angrim personally bit out the throats of those who displeased him. At least in the versions of the story other houses tell (amongst the Varian, he is of course an ancient noble warlord who learned how to properly invest his gains and build a life from doing so).
Angrim was, if nothing else, at least a wildly successful bandit lord, but in the uncivilized times after the fall of Azlant, survival and thriving on that path could lead to a dead end. Which is to say, once you had more gold than you could ever need, there was not a lot you could do with it. Lacking motivation, Angrim it was said began to fear growing soft and listless, becoming even more savage to compensate on the path to some epic self destruction. This running jag of brutality was only stopped by a priestess of Abadar who managed to reach him through calm counsel that the most vicious tortures imagined could not disrupt. She spoke of how to use his many ill gotten gains to build systems and societal workings that would last well beyond himself and into a prosperous family that could carry his name into eternity. She then followed that up by revealing a cynical ruthlessness that truly won the bandit over in response to his rejoinder that the world was too barbaric for anyone to buy into such sophistication. For surely if forced and beaten to live a certain way long enough, it would become second nature. And so bandit lord became robber baron, and as society developed and spread, loan shark. When Taldor itself grew enough to have reached his territories, he simply bought into them.
Needless to say, both the Varian and the church of Abadar are not fond of this version of the story, even remotely, and noting that there are various documents entirely supporting it (even a few remaining tattered “serfdom scrip” that Varian “paid” his dominated minions in), is the surest way to provoke a grudge.
Notable Members of House Varian
Duke-Archon Harkas Varian, The Bank of Taldor (Aristocrat 13//Rogue 5/Noble Scion 8)
Harkas Varian has become so synonymous with his house, that their nickname has become his own (with such choice variants as “the bloody bank of Taldor” “the bastard bank of Taldor” and “the soul sucking vampire son of a bitch bastard bank of Taldor”). A near unnaturally perceptive and quick witted financial prodigy from his youth, Harkas came into his own at age 20, rescuing the family finances from what might have been a disastrous series of investments otherwise. In numb shock at the achievement, those now shamed and otherwise ahead of him in succession simply stepped aside. Some would argue that Harkas may have used his genius to in fact engineer those investments in the first place to create a calamity to save his family from, but who can remember what happened fifty years ago anyway? And really who cares what one Varian does to another Varian.
The 50 years since have been one of a steady hand over the Varian fortunes, expanding them at the measured rate that characterizes the house, securing them against vicious Taldan politics and succession crises alike.
The increasingly elderly man is peculiar in that sense, given the sinister rumours around his rise. No great horrors, no truly outstanding cruelties or vendettas. Oh, he lives lavishly enough to his station, and has ruthlessly ruined some rivals and long in default debtors alike, but he lacks for anything like the purchase of a sun orchid elixir, for instance, even as his years advance. It speaks to something potentially far more disturbing. Harkas Varian perhaps truly believes in his house, its ethos (such as you could call them), its legacy, and everything he does is in the name of being able to provide it to his successor in the next generation, for all his kin to continue to work in and expand in the oppressive Taldan atmosphere that makes it possible.
Lady Melindrea Varian, Seeker of a Throne of Gold (Bard 12//Rogue 5/Noble Scion 7)
In spite of her gender, many quietly acknowledge Melindrea as somehow still one of the current front runners in the incredibly vicious (yet somehow incredibly subtle) social and financial knife fight to be named Harkas’ successor (worse comes to worse, she’ll marry some idiot cousin and rule through him). The favour Melindrea holds bears a certain irony given a youth spent engaged in the activity the Varian hold in a near uniform disdain- actual work in the field. Melindrea took an active hand in personal oversight of a myriad of the family’s investments, travelling with caravans, securing the success of festivals, witnessing the efficiency of wars waged and colonial imperialism attempted. She was far too keenly interested in the family’s business to have accepted some lesser role, and it was only by travelling into the field that she could make a place for herself in Varian finance, family disdain or no. But nauseated chagrin at her lifestyle faded over the fifteen years of it as the money started rolling in from wildly successful endeavours, at loans recouped even at the most punishing rates of interest. Oh, not enough to change the family’s perspective on the whole, but certainly enough to accept her activities specifically.
Some might even mistake such pursuits as marking the lady out as one of the more beneficent of her house, encouraging success instead of default, of freedom from financial obligation to the house, of truly using money to let others flourish, but they would be fools to do so. Tales swirl in the wake of Melindrea’s oversight of an aggressively dominating personality usurping management where she saw fit, of hectoring and intimidating those under her eye towards success, no matter what ruthless measure was needed to make it so. This is not to say that Melindrea doesn’t perhaps rationalize her behaviours in the name of efficiency and return in the name of such noble principles, only that it would make a mockery out of them.
Still a beautiful and vibrantly energetic woman at 40, Melindrea has spent the past five years in Taldor proper, called home by her uncle Harkas to offer the house her benefits from experiences abroad, and to be something of a face to the imperial court. As worthies from afar come to peer in their usual curiosity at Taldan splendor, Melindrea’s diverse life allows the Varian to better position themselves to take advantage of new markets.
The seismic shift at the top similarly allows Melindrea to take advantage of a chance to come to a power and station as chaos potentially looms, and it is likely she will apply the same level of stone hearted relentlessness she has to finance to what would be the culmination of embodying her family.
Phocas, Collector of Debts (barbarian 13/fighter 13)
Phocas is not actually a member of the house. A half elf at that, Phocas would be an ill fit anyway amongst royal family bloodline haughtiness. And yet, the degree of authority that Phocas holds in the house has sent lesser family members scurrying from him in dread. Harkas likes to call him, endearingly, “my little investment” despite his 6”9, heavily muscled build and deeply scarred face covered in tribal tattoos. Debt collection is critical for a house like Varian and not everyone always wants to pay. At which point it becomes time to send in the mercenaries, legbreakers and bounty hunters. The Collector of Debts is, for the Varian, a title of high honour, given to the best of the best of these agents, to the leader of their mercenary hosts, to the one that manages, of all rarities, to actually be loyal. Phocas was outright trained and shaped for the position since near birth.
A half Kellid slave child bought almost on a whim for the raw, screaming fury he responded with to a slavemaster’s attempt to keep him in line, Harkas exposed the child to deprivation and luxury in equal measure. He was honed through extreme hardship from one hand, and indoctrinated by the opulence that came from the other. It was a jarring life of being thrown from one extreme to the next that might have broken a lesser man for its confusions, but Phocas’ will was a sheer steel force that came from within, yet beyond. His ferocity and rage were channeled into becoming his weapons, reinforced to him always that he was the man that Harkas was building him to be. What has emerged is a devastating force in humanoid shape, a hunter of men, a leader of enforcers in groups small or large, a hand of punishment without hesitation, atrocity without question. Phocas is his “father’s” tool, bought and paid for. It can be a disturbing thing to see the Collector move from one moment of utter indulgence in the depths of debauchery, to unstoppable, unpitying brutality and skill in the next.
Truthfully Harkas might have had too good a return on his investment, for Phocas seems to find much of the house unworthy of the old man’s example. Not so much that the warrior would countenance some incredibly doomed effort to take power for himself, but certainly enough for some Varian to wonder if they’ll have to work to find a new Collector when Harkas finally dies. In quieter, more fearful whispers, some instead wonder if Phocas instead intends to apply a fanatic loyalty and the lessons learned in his life to /make/ a successor of Harkas be truly worthy of the name.
Strengths of House Varian
(Almost) More Money than God - In a country that has as its chief remaining strength wealth beyond all imagining, the Varian still stand out for their moneyed heritage. Only the Imperial Treasury and the Abadarian Bank exceed them. With that money comes sweeping influence over ever strata of society and the ability to support everything from wasteful monuments to excessive galas. The house as a whole continues to work to ensure that their money, makes money. Some would sneeringly point out that the house has few other strengths. The house would coldly rejoinder that they could just buy whatever they lack whenever they need it. Giving pause to their foes is that they are quite possibly right.
Mercenaries. Mercenaries! MERCENARIES! - The Varian, as noted, need a fairly extensive debt collection force, along with the sort of bodyguards and security that come with the sheer amount of wealth they possess. Fortunately, talent is always for hire. House Varian are Taldor’s greatest employer of mercenary bands, with several companies at this point on almost semi permanent retainer. With the ability to outbid, well, almost anyone, the Varian have an almost singular capacity besides to keep their hired forces loyal (well mostly, see below). There is a certain intimidation value to this, as any other Taldan army will have ties of nation, family and faith weighing on them. Toughs for hire will do whatever they are paid to do, against whoever they are paid to do it to.
Weaknesses of House Varian
Lack of diversity - Need arcane expertise? Hire a mage. Need a warrior? Hire some mercenaries. Need divine favour? Donate to the Abadarian church. Money has replaced a need to pursue any skills beyond that of making more money and managing the wealth they have.
Lack of loyalty - If the going gets too tough, any number of mercenaries may simply proclaim “fuck the contract!” and run. If someone manages to find leverage to blackmail a spy with, devotion to House Varian is not likely to encourage them to stay true in the face of coercion. Certainly against outsiders the House can muster up an icily brutal unified front worthy of their bandit (er- noble warlord that is) progenitor, but even within the house, the bottom line is all.
Lack of Love - There are exceptions of course (House Sclerina for instance), but on the whole, the best Taldans at large and the upper class in specific can manage towards House Varian is cold indifference as far as any real feeling. The worst is best not spoken of.
Foreign Relations Worth Noting
Kyonin - Perhaps the most bizarre relationship House Varian has ever forged rests with the elves (who are otherwise terrible for bankers, as races that seem to barely even believe in money go). Kyonin hates Druma’s efforts to insinuate themselves into their nation with a cold burning fury. The Varian just hate the merchants of Druma for existing. And the line between hate and love is of course quite thin. Just not love for the merchants of Druma. The Varian eagerly and enthusiastically support elvish effors to keep Druma’s influence out of their land, offering favourable alternatives in Kyonin’s trading city, facilitating contact between mercenaries and worthies of Kyonin inclined to skullduggery and sabotage of the merchant nation. Ties are pragmatically friendly enough that the occasional wandering elf archer can be found amongst the collection forces of the Varian.
Druma - It’s not just that they’ve turned wealth into some creepy religion instead of enjoying the meaning of it for its own sake. It’s not just that they compete with the Varian when they work to expand outside of Taldor. It’s that they wear on their faces the smug certainty that they are so better than the Varian at the craft the house has honed for thousands of years, that it is the Varian who must join /them/. Druma can die in a fire. Druma /will/ die in a fire.
Andoran - The Varian tend to find the Andoran banks, and the regulations they labour under adorable, and an object lesson in the dire perils of democracy. Given Varian banking practices, they don’t find themselves competing much otherwise as far as preferred customers in the Inner Sea at large.
