4.5 KiB
4.5 KiB
Type:
Criminal/Political Influence Faction (masquerading as an exclusive casino society)
Core Focus:
- Front-facing: high-class entertainment, gambling, masquerade balls, and dueling halls at the Velvet Wheel Casino in Voxiu.
- Hidden goal: debt, blackmail, and influence — using chance, rigged games, and lavish winnings to control politics.
- Quietly backed by the Benton Brothers Banking, who use the House to launder money and bribe through “lucky streaks.”
Regions & Cities of Influence:
- Voxiu (Jessergate): Home to the famed Velvet Wheel Casino, the heart of their operations.
- Haffol: Overlapping via Benton Brothers’ financial empire; money and debts flow between the two cities.
- Weinmark: Whispered racing tracks act as laundering fronts for lesser players.
Structure & Membership:
- The Court of Faces (Leadership): A secretive cabal represented by masks styled after the four card suits.
- The Spade → ruthlessness, enforcing punishment through “unlucky losses.”
- The Heart → social relations, seduction, and masking corruption as benevolence.
- The Diamond → wealth, laundering, and high-stakes manipulation.
- The Club → brute force, govern their pit bosses and underworld ties.
- Croupiers: Dealers, hosts, and charming socialites; information gatherers, rumor merchants, and fixers.
- Pit Bosses: Polished security enforcers, quietly ruthless collectors.
- Patrons: Nobles, guildmasters, politicians — some complicit, others caught in a web of “unlucky hands.”
Philosophy & Goals:
- “Fate plays favorites — but the House decides who those favorites are.”
- Control Voxiu’s political tides by making elections into rigged games of chance.
- Erase or elevate public figures via debts, defaulted loans, or sudden manufactured “luck.”
- Maintain secrecy, always presenting themselves as a harmless and prestigious social club.
Political, Social, and Economic Influence:
- Political: Crown Elect elections are a betting pool — the House rigs odds to push their candidates.
- Social: The masquerade balls & Midnight Spins are the social events of Voxiu’s elite calendar.
- Economic: Profits launder campaign money for Benton Brothers, hiding bribes as winnings and spreading ruin disguised as losses.
Culture & Customs:
- Masks Required: No high-stakes game or Midnight Spin is faced without one. True identities are cloaked in ceremony.
- The Midnight Spin: A spectacle where fortunes are won or shattered in grand rigged games; often aligned with political deadlines.
- Debtor’s Marks: Members carrying crushing debt are issued embossed cards branded with suits — a symbol that the House owns their fate, and a public warning.
- Suit-Rotations: Members whisper that leadership masks shift “hands,” suggesting power doesn’t rest in one person for long… or that the Benton Brothers shuffle faces behind the curtain.
Potential Plot Hooks & Conflicts:
- A Belter Overview agitator owes the House of Suits a catastrophic debt and is about to be eliminated — unless PCs intervene.
- PCs are invited to a rigged Midnight Spin masquerade, where the stakes are literal political careers.
- A Benton Brothers ledger is kept within the House, proving election-funding fraud — but it’s locked behind enchanted vault-games.
- An NPC rival (or ally) turns up masked at a House of Suits table — their secret debts grant the party leverage.
- A high-stakes duel (cards, dice, or swordplay) forces the PCs to choose between playing fair or cheating under the House’s own rules.
Notable NPCs:
- Lady Selvara Deyne – "The Heart" (“The Heart”): Velvet-voiced Half-Elves socialite, mistress of charm, the embodiment of House indulgence and ruthlessness.
- Orvel Blackwater – "The Club" (“The Club”): Brutish, scarred Humans pit boss — enforcer of the House’s debts under a facade of formality.
- Mr. Greenfelt – "The Diamond" (“The Diamond”): Green-masked representative of the Benton Brothers, calm and calculating, never gambling himself, only watching.
- The Spade (Real Identity Unknown): A silent broker of punishment and ruin; whispers say assassinations are simply “unlucky draws” orchestrated by this mask.