Hello All, Looking over the archives, I noticed that a few times the question has been asked "what do we know about the Lesser Houses?" and the answer has generally been "not too much." With your kind indulgence, I will go out on a limb and incorporate what we do know with a sense of history and speculate on the nature of the Chreotha. ---- The Chreotha tribal life was centered around trapping, these humans using tools to craft traps to substitute for the chreotha's natural ability. Kieron saw that the Chreotha ate better than many of the tribes and so asked them to join his army and keep his troops supplied with meat. After a time, he realized their wilderness knowledge and tracking skills could have military application and so they were able to distinguish themselves in the war. When Kieron was distributing land and titles to the Houses, the Chreotha asked for the territories most remote >from the center of the Empire, the lands most teeming with wildlife. As no one else wanted these lands, the transfer took place with little fuss. The centuries that followed found the Chreotha leading a nomadic life through their new territories. Few permanent settlements were established. They made contact with many Seriolli, who found them and their way of life less offensive than most Dragaerans. The two groups established reasonably good relations and to this day many Chreotha carry Seriolli based names. When they discovered that other houses would trade with them for furs, many gave up trapping to become furriers. Others became traders and settlements began to spring up. The push for exploration under the first Tiassa and Hawk reigns, followed by the push to expand and conquer during the first Dzur stretched the borders of the Empire past the Chreotha lands. The conquerors and settlers needed trailblazers and wilderness experts and turned to the Chreotha. Soon game trails were blazed into roads and trade routes from the new lands reached through Chreotha holdings to the center of the empire. Some Chreotha felt they were being taken advantage of and began imposing taxes on the merchants using their roads, building fortresses and strongholds to enforce their will. By the time the first Chreotha reign came around there were landed nobles with an interest in politics. The focus of that reign, as many since, was balancing trade (especially overland trade) with environmental conservation. Today, there are generally three types of Chreotha. The first is the "traditional" trapper and woodsman. Exploratory expeditions may be led by a Hawk or Tiassa, but it is a Chreotha who blazes the trail and keeps the expedition alive. This type rarely makes its money by fur trading anymore, however, as the second type, the nobles maintaining their ancient strongholds, have set up fur farms on their lands to supplement the income >from taxing trade. Of course overland trade is never as profitable as oversea trade, so the Chreotha have never been as prosperous as the Orca. This has led to the third type, the tradesmen and city folk. Generally they or their forebears have been forced from their rural homes by that most basic of economics: too many children, not enough food. This type has turned to the skills of the tradesman: weaving, smithing and other crafts. While not as inventive or original in their work as the Vallista, the fine motor skills which their ancestors used to fashion traps serve them tollerably well. ----------------- That's it for now. Next time, Jhegaala. --Mark