
THE POWERS · THE VALE
House Vandahl
The failing minor Great House clinging to Valenfeld's silver rights, all banners and no coin.
A minor house of old Imperium blood holding the vale's silver by inheritance and stubbornness. The garrison is loyal, underpaid, and one bad winter from desertion.
KIND
house
HEADQUARTERS
Vandahl Keep
LEADER
Lord-Holder Dravas Vandahl
JOINABLE
yes
Connected
Lord-Holder Dravas VandahlCHARACTER · Dravas Vandahl holds the house, barely.Vandahl KeepPLACE · The house seats at the keep.ValenfeldPLACE · Vandahl claims the town and its silver rights.The Bonesung-of-the-ValeFACTION · House and tribe contest the hills.The Silt HandsFACTION · Open war over the coast trade.The Ashen TempleFACTION · An uneasy peace over who gets the relic.
Appears In
Type Fields
kindhouse
headquartersplace.vandahl-keep
leadercharacter.lord-vandahl
joinableyes
ranksHireling, Retainer, Oathblade, Housecarl, Vandahl's Voice
goalsHold the silver rights, Be named a true Great House, Keep the relic from Asheni and Temple hands
valueshonor, lineage, control
axis_profile{"law":0.4,"tradition":-0.6,"fortune":0.3,"ambition":-0.3}
disputes{"name":"Banners or Bread","summary":"The house spends like a Great House and eats like a poor one. The old retainers want the banners kept up whatever it costs — a house that stops looking great stops being obeyed; the young steward's party wants the ceremony sold off and the silver put into the mine and the garrison's back pay.","sides":["the old retainers (the appearance IS the power)","the steward's party (pay the garrison; a fed sword beats a gilded one)"]}
All Relationships (68)
leads
- ←Lord-Holder Dravas Vandahl — Dravas Vandahl holds the house, barely.
located_in
- →Vandahl Keep — The house seats at the keep.
- ←The Last Waystone — The Last Waystone is the farthest Vandahl marker — their administrative presence ends at this stone.
owns
- →Valenfeld — Vandahl claims the town and its silver rights.
- →Highbridge — House Vandahl keeps the chain and takes the toll at Highbridge.
- →Castle Sered — The ancestral castle the house can no longer afford to keep open.
- →Karth Bridge — House Vandahl's last garrisoned post on the northern road.
- →Caer Vallen — House Vandahl claims the shattered seat by blood, though none will sleep in it.
- →The Sered Catacombs — House Vandahl owns the crypts where it ranks its ancestral dead — though it can no longer afford to tend the lower halls.
- →The Weeping Adit — The Weeping Adit is House Vandahl's lowest working silver gallery.
- →Castle Sered — House Vandahl's old seat is Castle Sered in the Sered Spur, even as its working power has shifted to the Vale at Highbridge and Vandahl Keep — a divided house holding land across two regions, its eastern castle a half-emptied ancestral hall.
- →The Sered Spur — House Vandahl controls the Sered Spur by ancestral claim, garrison, and silver rights — though the control is thinning as the silver runs out.
rival_of
- →The Bonesung-of-the-Vale — House and tribe contest the hills.
- →The Ashen Temple — An uneasy peace over who gets the relic.
- ←Ash-Father Kavesh — He would drive the diggers from the hills.
- →The Bonesung-of-the-Vale — Past Karth Bridge the road remembers the tribes, not the banners.
- ←Draneth the Thin — He dropped the banner in shame; the house considers him a deserter.
- ←The Greycloaks — The Greycloaks bleed House Vandahl's silver shipments on the drover-roads; the House's thin watch can never quite saddle in time.
- →House Ashwake — The four Great Houses court the same standing on the Vale's political stage — no two of them can both be seen to rise.
- →House Deepvein — The four Great Houses court the same standing on the Vale's political stage — no two of them can both be seen to rise.
- →House Farroad — The four Great Houses court the same standing on the Vale's political stage — no two of them can both be seen to rise.
- ←The Ashen Moot — House Vandahl resents that even a Lord-Holder must bring a forge-right or inheritance dispute before the Moot's elders; the Moot guards its right to judge the old blood apart from the keep.
- ←Spear-Second Yera — Yera has already turned Vandahl prospectors back at spearpoint; she holds the water-rights dispute as a blade not yet swung.
- ←The Bonesung-of-the-Vale — The Ash Famine made the Asheni-Vandahl rivalry personal; the silver-diggers at the Weeping Tooth spring are the current edge of that grudge.
enemy_of
- →The Silt Hands — Open war over the coast trade.
- →Sresh-Dar — The city's wall is built to keep House Vandahl out.
- →Rime Stalker — Vandahl's Karth garrison pays for pelts it seldom collects.
- →Silver Rat — Vandahl's men cull the shafts in arrears and without enthusiasm.
- ←The Rime-Skinners — Their winter raids on the Karth road are half the reason Vandahl keeps a watch on the ford at all.
member_of
- ←Veller Soran — A guard under the banner.
- ←Hrolf — Vandahl coin bought his sword.
- ←Marn the Breaker — He breaks guards for the house.
- ←Indryn Vandahl — Indryn manages the accounts and the men, and carries the house while his brother carries the title.
- ←Pelane Voth — A householder by widowhood, owed nothing except courtesy and a peg for his shirt.
- →The Hollow Writ — House Vandahl is the Writ's local noble arm — the banner that still flies, barely.
- ←The Lower Wardens — House-born servants, never family — sworn to a duty the house pays for in silence and won't admit exists.
- ←Sergeant Tholer — Line sergeant of the House's Highbridge chain-house.
- ←Durgal Quarn — Durgal is House Vandahl's mine foreman.
- ←Outrider Corvel — Corvel is a Vandahl outrider, unpaid and stranded at the Last Waystone.
- ←Sergeant Veld of the Cold Ford — Veld is House Vandahl's last commissioned sergeant in the Northern Reach — loyal, unpaid, and forgotten.
- ←Orvan Seld — Orvan Seld is a House Vandahl hireling — loyal to his contract and his pay, both of which are running thin.
- ←The Spanstone — The Spanstone toll-post is House Vandahl's northernmost maintained presence — a garrison of four and a leaning booth.
- ←The Lower Wardens — The Lower Wardens are a cell sworn to House Vandahl — house-born, never family, paid in silence.
- ←Hollowfold — Hollowfold pays tithe-silver to House Vandahl and is the only living community on the Spur still doing so.
references
- ←Vandahl Seal Ring — The ring carries the house mark and opens Vandahl doors.
- ←Voth's Mail Shirt — Standard Vandahl oathblade mail; the house issued it to the man who wore it.
- ←The Ash Famine — The house emptied its surplus and never refilled it.
- ←The Silver Collapse — The collapse halved the house's income and began its visible decline.
- ←The Vandahl Succession Charter — The charter governs Vandahl succession and has not been invoked in living memory.
- ←Gravecount, the Heir's Blade — The blade of a Vandahl heir; the house would pay well for its return and admit nothing.
- ←quest.the-uncounted-dead (unresolved) — The house shut three-quarters of its crypt and will not say why; resting or robbing the heir touches them.
- →The Asheni — House Vandahl is an Asheni great House, its grudges and ancestor-crypts as old as its grey blood.
- ←quest.the-false-seals (unresolved) — The House's face is on the false wax; Tholer presses the trace on its behalf.
- ←quest.the-drowned-courier (unresolved) — "The Drowned Courier" involves house vandahl.
- ←quest.vf-the-weeping-adit (unresolved) — The flooding gallery is a secret Durgal hasn't told Lord Vandahl yet.
- ←Hewngate Keep — Hewngate was House Vandahl's toll-keep; coin-short Vandahl hired the Lances to man it, and lost it.
- ←Veld's Letter — The letter is addressed to House Vandahl's post commander; delivering it resolves the carry-word branch of the quest.
- ←The Karth Crossing — House Vandahl's claim on the North depends on the crossing — without the ford, the Reach is unreachable and the claim is a title without ground.
- ←quest.the-unrelieved-post (unresolved) — The carry-word branch of the Unrelieved Post requires the player to bring Veld's letter to House Vandahl — directly engaging the ruling house.
- ←quest.the-watchers-toll (unresolved) — The garrison's fate is House Vandahl's northern presence — the quest's outcome affects how much the road north forgets their banners.
- ←The Vandahl Ranked Burial — The ranked burial custom is the house's own law — it defines how power is understood and performed by House Vandahl even in death.
- ←The Last Banner Stone — The Last Banner Stone marks the founding gesture of House Vandahl's first lord on the Spur — the socket where his banner stood still rusts there.
- ←The Crookbridge — The Crookbridge is the chokepoint of House Vandahl's supply line — cut the bridge and you starve the garrison in three weeks.
- ←Hollowfold Tallow Candle — The tallow candles represent Hollowfold's contribution to the tithe economy — a mundane symbol of what the Spur's failure costs the people who stay.
guards
- →The Vale Rim — House Vandahl holds the three passes of the rim — the only doors to their Vale — and little of the wall between them.
worships
- →Vallen, the Wright — House Vandahl still swears its oaths by the Wright, tending his shrines though he cannot hear them.
- →Vallen, the Wright — House Vandahl keeps the lapsed forms of the Forge-Singer's oath — a frontier house still swearing by a god the rest of the world has quietly stopped expecting to answer.
ally_of
- ←Corvin Thresh, the Beaconward — The customs-cutter that watches the narrows is House Vandahl's enforcement; Thresh also sells his fire-times to the customs office, which is technically Vandahl's law.
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