House Abraxas

A comparatively young house located on the Western coast of Bal-Morath, founded in 90 IC as reward for its founder's services to the crown. It is said that to live within House Abraxas' lands is to live within interesting times; whether this is a curse or a blessing is up for debate.

Identity

House Abraxas are a family of patriotic tiefling sorcerers who try to make the best of a demonic pact none of them wished to be part of but have little choice other than to live with. They take pride in using their powers to better their lands, resenting the implication that tieflings are second class citizens within the empire and seeking to disprove that notion.

Wealth

Most of the family's wealth comes from trade via Port Abraxas, noted for having the calmest waters in the region thanks to a long standing treaty between the house and the local druids.

Notable people

Divide up into sections, relate dire tater and cult of orcus stuff through them

Trivia

Naming:

Nearly all members of the house are named after various mythical sea creatures. This can be attributed to their region of the Western coast being rife with legends of terrible sea monsters; In the distant past it was thought that by taking the names of such beasts one could ward them off, as even monsters won't attack their own. Now it's just a regional peculiarity.

The Bone Orchard:

During the last war, House Abraxas had often made use of the undead as part of their contribution to the Imperial war effort. This wasn't an act they undertook lightly, but shielding the living with the dead was something they considered to be the lesser of two evils. After the cessation of hostilities they elected to keep a small number of the reanimated instead of destroying them, returning with them to Bal Morath.

The Bone Orchard is the farm which grows the Abraxas family's food, on their estate. Much of the unskilled labour is performed by skeletons under the control of a member of the House. It serves several purposes; the first, obviously, is growing food. The second is to give the necromantically inclined mages of the family a safe area to practice their control of the undead. The third is to teach them responsibility; each skeleton tending the fields is the remains of a soldier from the last war reanimated to fight because at that point, it was the best of the available bad options. They were reanimated in a life or death situation, and even now in hindsight it's hard to be sure if it was the right thing to do; now that the deed is done it's the responsibility of their creators to deal with the aftermath, whether by retaining control of them so they don't go on a rampage or by destroying them (the latter of which the family found distasteful, as it implied that it's alright to bring someone back from the dead then dispose of them as soon as their usefulness is at an end). A side effect is that the post-war generations of the family are quite unfazed by the presence of the undead, and are a little bemused upon encountering more conventional farms (see: Scylla). A few have even raised the possibility of expanding the Orchard with additional skeletons for increased productivity, but this is rapidly shot down by older members of the house.