So I know there are a number of old noble families in West Crown something like 12 main houses with 2 or 3 cadet branches (or is there some other thing at play here with the subservient houses?).
I'm having trouble, however, figuring exactly how the nobility fit with the society and government of Cheliax. I want to play a scion of a noble house, but I feel I need to understand it better to fit the character in, let alone roleplay it.
Spoiler:
I don't really want to give the GM a huge hassle or risking him leaking spoilers, so I want to understand them as much as possible before I run the loose backstory by him, and to feel like I can even make one I have to feel like I somewhat understand what's going on here. I have checked with him and simply being from one of the houses is kosher, though I've yet to fully discuss whether I'll be able to handwave living expenses as part of that privilege or not.
I'm sort of in a toss-up between a Bard, a Magus with investment into social skills and spending arcana on things like charm person, an Inquisitor(can't find a deity that seems like it'd fit), or a Rogue of some stripe.
Imagine Ezio from the very beginning of Assassin's Creed 2, and that's pretty similar to the current picture I have of him. The only Inquisitor angle I can think of would necessitate getting an Inquisitor of Asmodeus that is basically more or less putting up this character as a facade OK'd. And if I'm going that far I might as well shoot for being part of Her Infernal Magestrix's Secret Service. That is to say, I find the character rather unlikely to be greenlit.
My initial understanding was that it was basically a unified, pseudo-Renaissance/Early Modern Period Italy under the control of an absolute monarch in a similar vein to the Sun King, but if that's all that was going on, the existence of nobles lingering in Westcrown doesn't make much sense.
As, if they were landed nobility that had just migrated there to be in attendance to the Dynasty that predated House Thrune's ascendancy, with no impetus to stay in the town and no desire to be fashionably in line with the diabolists in power, leaving aside, for a moment, just what they were doing during the civil war, shouldn't they have retreated in large part to their ancestral lands and legal powerbase?
And if they're not landed, what is the basis of their noble station in the first place? Are they all just descendants of wealthy notables who were awarded hereditary styles by the "ancien regime," and the Thrunes never bothered to update the law to withdraw the titles from the toothless holdouts?
Or are the nobles who are still there of much lesser station than I was thinking and "noble" is here taken to mean the patrician class that forms, and becomes largely hereditary, and rules the city whether it be via nepotistic appointments to the majority of public offices or by having the money and clout to afford enough education to ensure that they stay at the head of the local imperial bureaucracy. So the main difference between the nouveau riche merchant princes and the nobles is that the nobles have been on the scene longer and have been the de facto ruling class of the city through one means or another.
Because if that's the case then isn't 12 major houses a bit much? Or are the families that make up each house a lot smaller than I'm thinking? Even to the point where each individual house is actually more like a single nuclear family with its two generations of descendants.
Another idea I've started playing with to try to grok this was to compare more with the model of the Roman Senators. By my understanding, basically wealthy landowners who stayed close to the center of culture and acted as absentee landlords with a hierarchy of flunkies and children that checked up on and maintained their holdings. Since, after poking around here on the boards, it seems that Cheliax is supposed to have much more Latin/Roman flavor than Italian, though I haven't seen any inkling of that from scouring the non-Paizo boards internet or from what I've read of the description of Westcrown in the first book of the adventure path and in the player's guide.
But it still doesn't quite seem to fit with the rest of it, but that might be more because the reasons for the 12 families to stay in Westcrown, even if they were the landlords of most of the city's property, are left hazy either for DM reasons or because they'd spoil something in the adventure path.
And if they're titled nobility but basically control one aspect of trade or business or landlording or another, is there any sort of rough listing connecting the families to the aspects of Westcrown's economy they exert their influence overand derive their principle notability/wealth from?
TL;DR, can someone explain to me either the canon on chelaxian nobility or their take on extrapolating from canon tidbits?
Even just a different model to draw on for understanding, either from real life or fiction would be helpful. "Standard Fantasy" and "Court of Louis XIV" don't seem to be working for me.
I would love to find out more information on this sort of thing as well. Anything I can learn about the Chelish nobility is valuable, even guesses, because I'm running a Chelish noble NPC that the PCs are holding captive.
laraqua, are you a player or a GM? Il Fiore's questions are really difficult to answer, for reasons I'll explain to a GM but not a player. I'd be happy to discuss the issue with Il Fiore's GM, but I'm really reluctant to go around him/her and answer these things directly with a player. If you're a player then I recommend you bite the bullet and take up your GM's valuable time and get the answer that way. If, on the other hand, you're a GM then I'd be delighted to go into as detailed a discussion as you might like.
The way things appear to the general population of Westcrown is that the nobility are basically parasitic. The mayor is an imperial appointment who moved to Westcrown from the capital in order to take the position. The aristocracy skims off the top and gives back very little in return, spending their days idly while attending operas and other social events.
Of my five players, three are playing members of the Chelish aristocracy. I've put a bunch of work into this that I'd be happy to share.
Don't worry, I'm a GM. The NPC I'm running is just one of many but he's currently their hostage and thus far more complex. I'd love to absorb any information anyone else has, not just about the systems, but - for more player-friendly information like what are the nobility like? What do Chelish nobles do with their days? Paizo have kept it pretty open, but I'm wondering how other STs have tackled it.
I understand your reticence in answering Il Fiore's question due to some of the complexities of the setting, but I think the crux of Il Fiore's question was about what form of government is it. An absolute monarchy, landed nobility, etc. The official story.
For example, what I've managed to pick is that each House has a patriarch (which suggests a patriarchy further supported by one of the Paizo free short stories talking about noblewomen and chaperones, though that might be less a matter of consistent patriarchy and more about simple protection of reproductive rights); the houses themselves appear to be more like the Venetian 'nobles' who were basically prominent patrician families but who seem to be using the 'titles' perhaps to display their prominence or as an acknowledgment of their prominence by House Thrune.
Perhaps the more titles a house contains, the more influential it is, as the more rights its individual members have (such as perhaps the right to speak with the Queen herself) thus allowing some control over other factors such as wealth distribution, guild control, etc.
Queen Abrogail is an autocrat, an absolute monarch, but the laws are likely complex beneath her with a number of checks and balances and additional rights according to stations awarded by the monarch. These rights could be over lands, tithes, property, as well as legal rights, such as to do with magistrates' etc. It's also a way for her to show favor as a lord needs to be more polite to a duchess and listen to her advice, and thus allow Queen Abrogail to forcefully adapt the social hiearchy to her own needs.
There's also, obviously a local government, with an appointed Mayor that is also a lackey of Queen Abrogail and the main posts in the military seem to come with titles, though this isn't assured.
In other words, from my understanding, Cheliax is uniquely its own sort of government, woefully complex, and difficult for most to understand.
However, I may have gotten it all woefully wrong and so I'd love to know others' interpretations or even the Word of God on what system of government Cheliax truly has.
And is it a patriarchy to any real extent or do they just call them Patriarchs / Matriarchs or simply Patriarchs regardless of gender?
I got the vibe that Cheliax is much like the Centauri 'Republic' from Babylon 5, a decaying empire that is starting to resurge due to an alliance with dark powers (just sub in devils for the Shadows).
Seems like a good place to start from, anyways.
I am planning on running this AP for my gaming group, but the first module hasn't arrived yet.
laraqua, thanks for the clarification. I have a limited geneology for House Dioso (for the last century and a bit), and I'm working on one for House Arvanxi. I can post those, if you like.
I think that your interpretation of the government of Cheliax is spot-on. I think that the default is that each noble House is a patriarchy, but every rule in Cheliax probably has a few exceptions derived from extensive bureaucraticly-derived mutually-contradictory precedents.
A female head-of-House is called a matriarch (PF30 p. 11). I would guess that any male would inherit being head of a House, even if he had older sisters. This is just based on my gut though, not anything I've seen.
