Dawnish Noble Houses

Nations Dawn
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Hey all,
Long story short, me and a group of friends were planning on making a banner for our first event so we have an IC purpose for being together. We decided to make our group an actual house, but it feels like I’m missing something about creating noble houses.

My questions are:
Do we need to do anything specific to make our group a noble house?
Is there some sort of unspoken (or maybe very much spoken) rule about first-time players not making noble houses because of lack of experience/prestige/etc?
Is our current name “Myriad” (or probably “House Myriad”) alright for a house or does it need to be more Latin?
Are there any other questions I haven’t asked which I really should have?
(Yes, I have read the wiki)

Sorry this is so disorganized but I really want to make 100% sure we’re setting this house up correctly and not making any sort of social faux pas.

Thanks.

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In order:
Make sure to tell people you are a noble house
Absolutely not
House Myriad sounds good to me
Maybe.

Not Dawnish myself but one thing to note is I understand that the nobles themselves are by tradition not meant to handle money, so it pays to have a seneschal on the strength (that is, the yeoman whose job it is to hold the purse and manage the finances), but if you’ve gotten that all in order I think you’re probably sorted.

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Hi Reef2000, welcome to the forums and indeed, to Dawn.

To make your group a noble house, you will need to designate that you are a group in Dawn, and describe yourselves as members of a noble house. That’s it. In order to be a little more functional and engage with the game on a few more levels, I reccomend that among your number are (1) Someone designated as the Earl of the House, the IC leader, and (2) Someone playing a yeoman, as house Seneschal. The former will get invited along to the Earls Council and be a good representative of the group, the latter can do all the trading for the group in a nationally appropriate way (because Nobles don’t deal with money, they delegate that sort of thing. Normally). I would also strongly suggest that your House has a name, a colour scheme, a symbol, and a place of origin on the map. This last can be as specific as 2 miles west of a known landmark in the northern area of a specific province, or as vague as “somewhere in Astolat”. You can backfill this in later.

There is no problem, and indeed several recent precedents for, new players starting as a noble House. You will be new to Empire LRP, your characters will be new to Anvil (RP question, why?). Your characters may not have met many other nations before, or even many lineaged, so asking questions is normal. I reccomend you read the Dawn brief carefully, introduce yourself to the Egregore(s) ASAP, and make some friends before time-in to ask any silly questions while “off-stage”.

House Myriad is fine, and has the benefit of being distinctive, different, and easy to pronounce. House names cover heraldic French, bad Latin, olde English, and more. Do you have a good story for the unusual name? What comes to mind here…

“And though her foes came but to her knee, they screamed in rage through needle teeth and came at her by the hundred and by the thousand. And Lady Alyson did hold the portal until her comrades relieved her, and found her covered in dark ichor, up to her waist in the bodies of the Swarm. And she was dubbed the Knight of the Myriad, and in memory of this deed of one against a thousand, when she started her own House, it was as House Myriad. And we will stand against our foes though they be beyond counting!”

(You like? You keep, welcome gift).

I suggest you have a quick look through recent history, and watch out for the Winds of War in a couple of months… Dawn should (hopefully) feature heavily and produce much to discuss.

Other questions? Ask them here if you like, we’re a friendly bunch. But please use the search function, many a question has been asked before.

Dawn has, by the way, a facebook page as well:

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If you’ve read the wiki that should cover most advice about how to play Dawn.

It’s worth thinking what your house colour(s) will be. Avoid blue - it’s already very widespread - except combined with something else more distinctive than black or white. Have a think then suggest it, and see if anyone else is already doing that colour scheme. Alternatively have some distinctive heraldry, but again check it actually is distinctive.

5

You might want to talk to the Dawn egregore and they might set a task for you to “blood” your house into the noble ranks it could take a few seasons but it could be a task which makes your house gloriously well known and get yeomen to flock to you.

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Wow, that’s really helpful, thanks. I really like the story of House Myriad too (I may have to alter it a bit though because we’re more medics than fighters).
Thanks again for that, I’ll get to it asap.

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7

You’re welcome :slight_smile:

Bear in mind that the founding story of a house doesn’t have to be immediately relevant to their current style. Many an Earl and Enchanter has decided to take their house a new direction.

If you’re playing medics, note that the skills for that are pretty cheap, and so you can play combat medics (bandages, herbs, potions and combat skills) or healer-magi (healing spells, and maybe some ritual skills or combat spells as well). During character generation, you might want to think about that as a group and co-ordinate your skills (Because if everyone has a point of the right Ritual Lore, you could cast great healing magics) and if you have the right resources, you can be self-sufficient (crystal mana to power rituals, herb gardens for medicinal herbs)…

“and you will succour a thousand heroes from a myriad ills”

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It’s only necessary to get the egregore to do something to legitimise the house if you are an IC new house. As an OOC new house you could have IC existed for hundreds of years, not all Dawnish houses have been to Anvil lately.

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