Editing Lineage:The Houses

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=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.

=Human History in Brief According to The Houses=

History has been an endless struggle between great clans of mages for wealth and power, both temporal and magical.  The history that mortals think they know is a myth, a facade that hides the true causes of great political events.  The Roman Empire rose because the Houses of Rome made it so and fell again because they made war with one another.  The great wars of religion, Christian against Muslim, Catholic against Protestant, Sunni against Shi’ite, had their origins not in the spiritual lives of mundanes but in the ambitions of the magical houses.  The United States of America stands astride the world today not because of manifest destiny, but because that is the way that the rivalry of the great mage Houses played out.

Magery doesn’t just appear among the blooded, of course, and history has had its share of wild loners and mad cults, without the benefit of a House to call their own.  Without the organization and bonds of loyalty that a family provides, they very rarely amount to very much.  The worst and most long-lasting mage cult is that which in the modern west calls itself “The Rebellion”.  In ancient times, The Rebellion declared that Heaven and Hell alike were enemies of mankind who must be fought at every turn.  The Houses have almost always tried to put the mad crusade down, both because it tends to unexpectedly take on political dimensions that can be a direct threat and simply because it is a destabilizing influence in the world.  However, at around the time of the Renaissance, The Houses began to come to the conclusion that an open-ended war on the Rebellion is more trouble than it is worth.  It is a drain on resources to combat a problem that never seems to go away and since The Rebellion is not directly a rebellion against the power of The Houses, it tends to be tolerated unless it is necessary to do otherwise.

=Religion and the Houses=

Most mages raised among The Houses accept that there are two extremely powerful supernatural forces in the world, that the Houses in the western world call “Heaven” and “Hell”.  They are both dangerous and act in ways that to human perception, seems arbitrary, random or cruel.  The Angels of Heaven have never been known to deliberately help humans and have frequently harmed them.  Humanity cannot know why, because they never speak.  The Demons of Hell desire to torture humans endlessly.  Humanity cannot know why, because they lie.  Humans called back from the head have reported no afterlife.

Different mages have drawn their own conclusions from these basic premises.  Most mages accept that there is a God of some kind who is, though mysterious, good.  Most also accept that they will be reincarnated on Earth after they die, though some adopt mortal religions that promise eternal reward.  Mages of The Houses tend to be quiet regarding their religious beliefs, which are usually seen as a private matter.  This does not prevent them from using religion as a tool to gain power over mortals.