Topwarp Houses

Topwarp Houses

Everyone in Top is a member of a House, but membership lasts as long as you want to stay, and as long as others in the House will have you. Houses are known to split over the most trivial of disagreements as a matter of honor and pedantry, only to reform if a unifying synthesis can be found before the new Houses crystallize whole new etymologies around the reasons for their disagreement. Every House not only has its own feast days and punch recipes, but also its own units of weight and measure, time and currency, based on whatever its Founder or organizers thought were most elegant. Aesthetics can vary from the ostentatious, depending on the whim of the founder, the requirements of the beliefs, the time of day, and the interests in inspiring creative violations of the rules for "corrective" purposes. Woe betide the poor sot who doesn't get the memo that Goldsday is marked by a fuschia neckerchief now, instead of amber stockings!

Some houses have been around since just after the Fracturing, and are largely considered "The Main Houses," though nothing stops them from fracturing other than the fact that their founders are still around, and too much disorder would be swept aside by the Order.

Within the territory controlled by a given house, at least some sway over the laws of the universe seems to be extended. The members of Jupiter House have captured etheric force in crystal, which eludes even the brightest of Saturn House's natural philosophers. Meanwhile, Saturn House's talents with precognition, at least within their own demenses, seems to be near-guaranteed, at least as long as the Abbey doesn't intervene. Mercury House can store memory in a story or a song. Mars House can make materials beyond any other, and Venus House has cross-bred all manner of plant and beast. Strangely, no house named either Sun House or Moon House exists, and though records exist of people trying to found them, no record of either surviving more than a few days at most exists. The Abbey has always intervened, and when the Abbey gets involved... well, you don't have to be in Saturn House to know what will happen.

Every House has a chantry somewhere, a central location in which the commonplace of its founder is kept. Many have wondered what might happen, should a commonplace be edited by someone not its founder. Many suspect this is what happened

Major Houses

Mercury House

As near as anyone can tell, the head of Mercury House is its commonplace, a vast sprawling collection of stories, poems, and lists collectively titled The Chronicles of Hermes. The main chantry of Mercury House is home to its Athenæum, which is dominated by the collective works of its founder. Communing with Hermes involves entering the Athenæum, slipping into a trance-like state and either reciting in stream-of-consciousness or recording via automatic writing, one's questions and desired engagement. Hermes' parts in the recitation are to be taken as canonical, even if the responses seem wholly out of character. Hermes has, despite the immaterial nature of their existence, found ways of making their parts of the stories come true and seem consistent.

Members of Mercury House have shown a remarkable gift for storytelling and song, and are well-known for embedding thought and emotion in their creative works. Many regard Johann Sartory as an honorary member.

Venus House

Venus House is ruled by a woman known only as "Mother." Mother's species is, after so many cross-breeding and cross-pollination experiments, wholly indeterminate even as to kingdom, to say nothing of genus or species, and yet her voice remains consistent across all her expressions: warm, cozy, and just the smallest bit good-naturedly nagging, as if always biting her tongue against reminding you to wear your gloves. Mother is pregnant, almost as a matter of course, and lives perpetually in a birthing pool fed by a hot spring on the lowest level of the chantry. There, she spawns her brood, birthing whatever creature comes to mind, man or monster as takes her fancy.

Members of Venus House have a green thumb and a knack for animal husbandry that extends to the truly extraordinary. Elder members could coax a horse and a gryphon to mate, then raise the baby hippogryph on a diet of custom grains.

Mars House

There's an open question outside of Mars House as to who its leader is. Ask any member of Mars House, and they'll tell you that Heron guides the members of Mars House with a literal iron fist in a velvet glove from the top floor of the factory that serves as the House's chantry. However, rumors persist that Heron is simply the spokesperson for Mars House, and that Factory itself is the true heir to the title. Regardless, Heron and the Factory spend their days designing new materials and new machines, and their nights dreaming of what inventions might come of the day's labors.

Mars House produces some of the finest machinists and alchemists in TopWarp. A few drops of their sage's water can dissolve metal without hurting flesh, and the glass of their zeppelins is harder than diamond and stronger than steel.

Jupiter House

Jupiter House's head is, perhaps, the most showy of all the classical houses, because they make no bones about their nature. Kassitë is a self-sustaining spell matrix, an animate and sapient illusion made manifest through the small cloud of ioun stones that flutter around their head. They love performing and will gladly put on a show for any who come by the Chantry, a reclaimed and rebuilt theater, in the depths of which are all manner of arcane experimentation involving the deconstruction of magic itself.

Of all the major houses, Jupiter House's members are the most explicitly magical. They've discovered the secret of "lightning in a bottle," capturing magic in physical form, and as such are artificers non pareil.

Saturn House

Saturn House's head remembers the Fracturing, and holds the distinction of being one of the only beings alive that possibly predates it. She saw it coming, or so she claimed on the first page of her commonplace. Saturn House's leader is also one of the last beings in the Warp that isn't Archived, and so far she hasn't needed it. She lives, if one could call it that, as an anchoress, entombed within the walls of the Saturn House chantry, spinning out in her ever-growing commonplace all the ways that Death has failed to find her. Communing with her happens as a slip of paper passed through the lone hagioscope connecting her to her followers, followed by the sounds of furious scribbling, after which a note is returned in faded silvery ink.

The psychohistorians of Saturn House have proven on multiple occasions to be able to accurately predict the future, though small polite wars have erupted between various sects within Saturn House when the entrails, tea leaves, and clouds fail to agree.

Uranus House

The leader of Uranus House is politely known as "Ve who Speaks," but rarely is it ve who speaks. Rather, Uranus House's leader's body is a sheet-shrouded mannequin, possessed on occasion by the spirit of one trapped within the remains of Topwarp's backup system. Uranus House's chantry sits atop the remains of Topwarp's backup system, restored as best as possible with modern thaumaturgical tools, while the scribes of Uranus House come to listen to the mad rantings of those still trapped within, in hopes of deciphering enough clues to help either restore those souls to physical existence or else help them find final peace in the Beyond.

The members of Uranus House are psychometrists of the highest caliber, and from time to time receive messages from those still within the backup system. Membership in Uranus House is considered a sacred charge to many, helping put to rest the past and restore the present.

Neptune House

Masters of the Depths and Heights, Neptune House is actually ruled by a pair of twins, Irian and Arcus. However, like the poles of magnet, their twinned nature is a broken symmetry. Where one is outgoing, the other is withdrawn. Where one is vibrant, the other is sullen. However, whether Irian is one, or Arcus the other, seems to shift from day to day, even minute to minute, as though their identities were flipping rapidly back and forth between bodies. They themselves always refer to themselves as "we," and treat their identity as a collective.

Members of Neptune House are frighteningly good at knowing, controlling, and occasionally making the weather. Fire dancers, water tamers, and cloud wranglers all come to Neptune House to hone their skills, and rare is the zeppelin pilot who isn't a member, or at least insists one be aboard before debarking.

Minor Houses

Besides the major houses, Topwarp is littered with hundreds — perhaps thousands — of minor houses. These groups arise as points of heterodoxy arise within existing houses, last as long as their differences can't be reconciled, and then either consume or are consumed by others as members make or become converts.

Comets

It's been said that there's nobody in Topwarp who doesn't have a House. The Comets would disagree, but others would argue that the Comets are themselves a "houseless House." This gang of street toughs, hooligans, and layabouts reject the House system, trading territory for freedom, power for immunity. Comets' actions can't be foreseen by Saturn House, their goods can't be read by Uranus House, their minds can't be swayed by Mercury House's stories, and the adamant bars of Mars House's prisons snap like balsa under their fists. The Comets are impermanence, in the truest sense. Membership in the gang is fickle, infrequent, and short-lived, as few others want a Comet around ruining their plans. Most Comets wear some form of mask clearly emblazoned with the symbol of the comet, from the simple domino to the fully-obscuring face plate.

It's considered poor form to admit you recognize somebody who's a Comet, and poorer to identify yourself as a member. Nobody knows who the leader of the Comets is, and every member has at one time or another acted as head of the gang.

The Guest House

Visitors to Topwarp are, for politeness' sake, collected into the Guest House. Members of the Guest House may expect civility and courtesy, if not open arms, from every House, and those who refuse to offer a guest such a kindness may quickly find themselves without a House of their own, for all that entails.