House Varkesh

House Varkesh is the Ember-Blood Line, an old military house that rose by turning frontier raids into permanent occupation. Its children learn maps, blade forms, levy speech, and the useful lie that hesitation is always paid for by someone else's dead. Loyalists praise the house as Drazakar's mailed fist. Rivals mutter that a fist eventually forgets it belongs to a body. Its halls shine with lacquered iron and campaign tablets. Its beauty is discipline inherited without apology. Its dread is ambition trained to sound like duty.