The High Table
The High Table is the highest power in the land made up of the chosen representatives from the Quintarchy, granted the title of Prince, second only to the forever-absent King. In the year 1405 of the Fifth Age, the Quintarchy is made up of the Houses Viret, Guissac, Holyward, Durnovo, and Obelensky, the last of which recently replaced the disgraced House Khilkov. The chosen princes live within Castle Ledeford within the center of Honrich, and as a result, Chemin Square is heavily guarded to ensure the safety of these most important people. The High Table's five seats are currently held by the following individuals:
Crown Prince Bastian Thomas Viret
Bastian Viret is one of the most recent additions to the High Table after having the position thrust upon him at the young age of 17. His grandmother, Crown Princess Elyse Viret, held the position until her passing as a result of the Khilkov attack on Castle Ledeford during the Night of Smoke, named after the plumes of black smoke that choked the city for days afterwards. The chosen heir, Bastian's elder brother Prince Killian, also died in the collapsing rubble of the castle, leaving the line of succession in question. Though his father Fabien Viret should have taken the seat, he was slain by the occultist Princess Aleksandra Khilkov during her final stand in the square of Perelglen. As a result, Bastian was the last living member of the main Viret line, and was thrust into the position without much warning. He has done his best to prove himself worthy of the seat, despite lacking the training from birth that Killian was undergoing, as well as the rest of his new peers. Despite this, he has proven to be a dependable leader for his house and has done much to bring peace and celebration back to his kingdom after a decade of bloodshed and civil war. As a result, the Church of Hope has rallied around the young prince, proclaiming publicly that he should ascend the throne as his Grandmother was meant to before him. As the common folk of Honrich listened to the stories of how Bastian was uniting the kingdom once more, the High Table managed to vote in favor of going forward with the coronation, with the only dissenting votes coming from Durnovo and Holyward.
Prince Nadia Guissac
Nadia is the third daughter of a second son, and in any other house would not have made it to the High Table without much of her family dying in the process. Her older brothers were far more suited to the role in the eyes of her grandfather Lionel, and likely to the public as well. As far as the patriarch knew, Nadia was a quiet, reserved young woman with little mind for politics. She was not clever, nor did she have the skills for the family business of banking like her other siblings. This was all a trick, however, that Nadia's mother Ivanna devised when her daughter was still young. She was the second wife to Lionel's son, and not the biological mother to his first two sons, and could feel her comfortable life slipping further and further away thanks to the distaste the patriarch had towards her. A fight between Lionel and Nadia's oldest brother Albert, however, led to a chance for her to claw her way back into relevance. Ivanna suggested to Albert that he make clear to Lionel that he was not a puppet, but his own man with his own decisions. When Albert took this advice, it sewed the seeds for Nadia's future rise to power. Ivanna coached Nadia from a young age to appear submissive, docile, and easy to control, which pleased Lionel greatly. The young lady was not entirely manipulated in this instance, as she understood the plan as she became older and smarter. Tragedy struck when Ivanna passed from a sudden illness, but Lionel only saw this as a way to get his hooks into Nadia even deeper. When the time came for his son to pass along his seat at the High Table, Lionel made sure it was Nadia that took it, rather than Albert. Once the power was hers, she revealed her true nature to her grandfather, using her political weight to prevent him from retaliating and making sure that her entire house knew that Nadia, not Lionel, was the once to come to for favors. This feud became public thanks to a cunning bard in the employ of House Durnovo, and has since ruined Lionel's reputation at court. He has largely fallen in line to the new order of things, and Prince Nadia has established herself as a force to be reckoned with to her peers.
Isilde was born as the bridge between two families of two nations, the Holywards of Tysha and the
Eberhardts of Voletaria. While she inherited her dark skin from her Voletarian mother, she lacked the distinguishing white hair and bright blue eyes of most Voletarians, instead growing the same dark brown hair as her Veritian father. She has walked the line between her two lineages, in one hand carrying her father's scepter, and in the other her mother's swordspear. Every movement she makes is thought out, every action planned for weeks. She cannot afford to fail, as the Holywards are truly only one bad move away from receiving the same treatment as the Khilkovs. Isilde wears a merging of Veritian and Voletarian style; her dress is simple and white, with scaled gold adornments providing a regal, armored visage to show her peers that she is meeting their standards, while also reminding them that she can unleash the Storm Apostles upon their homes if pressed. Though her parents live separately, she does make annual public visits to Voletaria where she shares meals with many of the most influential families and companies across the continents, forcing many in Tysha to choose which is worse: being seen dealing with the Holywards, or missing out on some of the most appealing connections in the kingdom. Isilde herself has let go of much of her predecessors boot-licking, and has openly decried the practice of Purging Day and the invoking of the Exalted March following the Night of Smoke. Many lesser houses have sent their own bards to eliminate this outspoken prince, and each one is dragged behind her into the Council Chambers the next morning, showing her enemies their failure at the end of her swordspear. When the Stormlord's Champion arrived in Tysha to visit the Sister Tree in the Witewood, Isilde allowed only a few select dignitaries to meet the famous Welby Tealeaf, showing once more that House Holyward was moving past its days of cowering, and instead felt strong enough to insult Lord Fabian Viret by "forgetting" to send him an invitation.
Most of the Tyshan Court assumed Lord Datrik was playing an elaborate ruse on them when the invitations went out for his wedding. "The Lord Datrik Durnovo and Arnhilda of the Platinum Forgehouse will be wed within the Durnovo Hold." The marriages between nobles were typically heavily aranged as ways to secure power, and only within Veritian and Rushalan bloodlines. Marriages between the two were rare enough as it was, and were seen as the most scandalous marriage possible within the Tyshan Court. And yet, it seemed that Datrik chose not the play The Great Game, and instead married for love, with a young dwarven inventor from Mol Boldor. Their eldest child was named Masha, and she would have a choice very few Tyshan children of noble blood were offered: her future. She grew up with her father's words of the sick game the Tyshan Court amused itself with, and her mother's stories of the Mol Boldor society of merit and community. When she came of age, just like all her dwarven ancestors, she developed her own invention, and forged the missing piece that could improve Tyshan society for the better- a united underworld. With her house guard and a sack of gold, she brought two of the closest rival enterprises under her control, reformating their power structure and business model to work within the light of the legal system. She became integral to the movement of goods across southern Tysha, she became involved in the interactions between the Guissac Bank and the common folk, she trained lawmen to represent those who couldn't afford their own during Church of Hope Tribunals. She ignored the expectations and decorum of her noble peers like her father, but made sure they could never rid themselves of her without hurting their own pockets. As House Lovets collapsed in on itself after their debts were called, Masha snatched up their assets and put forward a bid to claim their spot at the High Table. House Viret did not want the headache that removing such a person from Tyshan Society would cause, and House Khilkov had long supported her ambitions, and so the rest of the High table agreed on her appointment.
With the fall of House Khilkov, a gaping hole was left in the power structure of Tysha. Though House Viret intended on filling most of it, they understood well enough that only civil war would follow a High Table with but one Rushalan house sitting at it. With this in mind, when the Durnovos suggested the Van Der Bellens and the Guissacs suggested the Obelenskys, they chose the weaker of the two for the spot. Khilkov had kept House Viret in check for centuries, and had regularly arranged marriages with House Van Der Bellen, and thus they could not be trusted like the Obelenskys could. This was, of course, not something Kazimir himself suggested. He instead found out when Prince Bastian and his house guard arrived in Perelglen in the days following Purging Day, after the last funeral pyres had been lit in the city square. He recognized that the house who exterminated the Khilkovs was not one to be trifled with, and chose not to argue with his sudden elevation in power. Like House Holyward, however, he has seen his popularity with his kinsmen wane over the decade since, as he has not been the staunch opponent to the Veritian powerhouses like the Khilkovs were. Instead he has worked closely with Bastian to bring the bloodlines closer together, fostering unity and even marrying a Veritian man from a lesser line. While he could not prevent the Arcane ban from being passed, he has done what he can to stall its movement northward to Rushalan territory, and has managed to prevent the Khilkov name from being stricken from monuments and educational texts. He even erected a statue to the fallen Princess Aleksandra Khilkov on the same spot she battled the Spellbreakers for hours while her house fled into the forests, despite protests from the Veritian nobility. Kazamir has the difficult job of stopping two oceans of anger from slamming into each other, and has somehow managed to achieve this task for close to a decade, while only gaining a few grey hairs in the process.
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