Editing Lineage:The Houses (section)

=Growing Up in a House=

Growing up in a House means knowing that you are one of the fortunate and gifted elite, destined to rule.  It means knowing that you were born to be a mage and born to receive the best of everything.  House mages will have gone to the finest schools and universities, will be hired by the richest corporations and will land the most strategic jobs in the civil service.  They are at home among the upper echelons of mortal society and often make mortals their tools or toys.

Growing up in a House means being drilled on the importance of family.  It means being told that family comes before everything, and that honor and family are the same thing.  It means knowing that your family always has your back, unless, of course, someone has betrayed you.

Growing up in a House means knowing that anyone from outside the family might be trying to kill you.  It means knowing that business is business and sometimes people get hurt.  It means knowing that the world is a jungle and only the strongest will survive, that diplomacy is just war by other means.

Not everyone in the family after which a magical House is named is a member of that House.  If they lack magery, and most do, then they are a member of the family but not the House.  This means, for instance that most of the people who a genealogist would include as a part of the house of York is not a part of the mage’s House of York.  Mages are aware of the ambiguity and may, for instance, hide references to the House of York behind comments about the mortal house.  Well-known aristocrats are very rarely mages as they attract too much attention.  As non-magical family members might potentially get their mind’s read, they are rarely told a great deal.  Many of them don’t even know that the House exists.