The Nine Bloodlines
No bloodline is stronger than another — only different. Each rules one battlefield, or bends the fight in its own strange way.
Forged in the century-long Border Wars, the Legion answers to the Shield-Code before any crown. They do not start fights — they end them.
Wardens of the Golden Gate, plated like warships, they have held the strait since before the bridge was built. Lately they have thrown their strength behind the Royals — and it is Warriors who stand guard over whatever the Royals are raising in the fog, dressed as ordinary security and asking no questions.
Heirs of the shattered sky-thrones, exiled when the mountains rose. Every Court dragon is raised to reclaim a crown that no longer exists.
Sky-throned and gold-taloned, the Royals run the human tech empires as a mask. Their founder wears the crown of Emperor Norton — a true title over a throne that no longer exists. They are raising something they call Obsidia, and mean to rule the Nine — what it is, only the Court will say.
Older than the other eight lines, the Deep-Kin slept in root and magma until the wars woke them. They carry the mountain's slow, unforgiving temper.
Older than the war, patient as the mountain. Terrakin remembers the land before the city stood on it. The Primals despise the Warriors for kneeling to the Royals — and would gladly see those factories burn. They kneel to no alliance.
Scholars who learned to read the storm and the star. They trade certainty for power and rarely like what the future shows them.
The seers who read the fog and the sky. They alone keep the prophecy: the door to Vermithrax opens on the night of the total eclipse. They trust no other house with what they know — a circle of one.
Each was burned once — home, clutch, or name taken. They swore an oath in the ashes and grow stronger the closer they come to keeping it.
A short, unbreakable French line — sons of Napoleon and the Count of Monte Cristo, exiled to Alcatraz and always returning. They take no side in the war, until a single drop of their own blood is shed. Then nothing on earth will stop them.
Cast out of every court and legion, the Freeblades built their own code in the greenwood. Loyal to no crown, deadly to anyone who corners them.
Gun-runners loyal to no crown, working for coin or the sheer thrill of it. Two sounds followed their founder through the San Francisco night: the pop of a silver trumpet hitting a high C, and the pop of a snub-nosed .38 when a rival stepped out of line. Ask them, if you dare, about the Santa robbery of 1900 — when a boasting Noble who claimed he could spot a thief for miles was cleaned out under his own nose.
Keepers of the last unbroken light, they walk into the places others flee. Stubborn to the point of martyrdom, warm to the point of foolishness.
The last light where others flee. Bonita has carried the lantern through every disaster in the city’s memory. Hope makes everyone who stands beside him stronger — so every faction courts him, and none dares raise a claw against him.
Hatched half in the spirit realm, the Veilborn never fully arrived. Water and shadow answer them; time and certainty do not.
Descendants of Ao Lie, the White Dragon Horse — 萬物之靈, the spirit of all living things. But some are 妖 (yāo), and a yāo is either deeply selfless or the darkest evil, unknowable until you are already in its grasp. Every other bloodline dreads the Mystic. Their creed is two lines: “This too shall pass” — and when it will not pass, “There is no Plan C.” A Mystic has only ever chosen between two roads.
They carry grief like a second hide, and it seeps into everything near them. Where the Mourncoil pass, even enemies falter.
The Mourncoil — hunted for generations, worked to nothing in factories no one will name. Their inherited grief is a weapon: any enemy who stands near them loses heart and strength. No house has a deeper reason to see the Ascendant fall.