The Great Families

Power in Cerberus is divided among a handful of houses. Each has its field, spells, archives, and pride. Each has spent millions of gold coins and decades acquiring its spells, and none wishes to give them away. Given names recur across generations, making their archives difficult for outsiders to read.

Alois — Transmutation. The family of Gérard Alois, who led the exodus and founded the Council. Their magic includes Alois's Arm, which grasps from afar; Time Stop; and the Sphere of Time, where a mage can seal themselves away for one day per level to study. Gérard calls it his "Sphere of Solitude" and says it is no longer of any use to him.

Leblanc — Divination. Seeing the past through magic, glimpsing the immediate future, and reading a body at a glance. One Christophe Leblanc devised Future Victory. Another wrote popular novels, including Adventures and Reflections of a Young Leblanc, so widely read that a dwarf merchant used it to learn the human language, and died at twenty-five while standing against Vlad Varanov. Gyllyn Leblanc enchants his own sight to read the past. Mathilde Leblanc, daughter of Cosimo Leblanc, created Destruction Bubble. Cosimo shares a far weightier secret with Gérard Alois. The family also created Bond, which binds two mages of comparable power through their life forces, magic, and minds.

Stoneheart — Abjuration and contracts. The Stonehearts call themselves the protectors of Cerberus, and Lucius Stoneheart's doctrine fits into one sentence: Stoneheart magic exists to create order in a chaotic world. Their art is not merely defensive. Stoneheart Contract binds several creatures to an agreement none can betray, and their Barriers can also kill. Lucius personally forges, poorly, the rings he gives away, which protect their bearers and descendants. Charlie Stoneheart, the house's empathic prodigy, used divination to reconstruct the unfinished work of Jason Stoneheart, an unremarkable and unhappy relative who died by suicide and whom no one had cared about. In it, Charlie found a secret that changed his understanding of magic. His sister Lucie married Tristan Softpaper; their son is Bastion. Emblem: a stone heart crossed by a sword and scepter.

Adelbrand — Curses and speed. The undisputed masters of black magic understand that a curse derives its true power from the condition that releases it: the more elegant the clause, the harder the spell is to break. The same doctrine turned toward a goal gives Errand, where the clause that ends the spell is a piece of work the caster wants done. They also created the speed for which the family is known. Émile Adelbrand possessed a considerable treasure, including the teleportation medallion stolen by Tulipe. Emblem: a mask with lightning in its eyes.

Morin — The rising great family, founded by Daviau Morin and propelled to immense wealth by arrangements with the dwarves of Askenon, who pay dearly for its healing potions, enchantments, and transmutations. The Morins have an affinity for water and ice. They summon elementals with secret words of power, preserved on protected scrolls and read aloud by a charismatic voice after silence spells establish an area of absolute quiet. The procedure is painstakingly precise. Daviau sits on the Council and studies the dwarven language in his spare time.

Albion — Not yet a great family, though Perennus Albion is working on it through restaurants, wealth, and the family name. A child bound him to the Leblancs.

Blackwater, Papillon, Totomo, Longuépée — The second-rank houses, rising or falling. The Totomos are experts in polymorphy and summoning. The Papillons claim the status of a great family, though rumor attributes their money to crime. The Longuépées followed the opposite path: old nobility from the Ark that failed to adapt to the hardships of Cerberus and consumed its inheritance through receptions until only a sword remained to pass on.

Luther — Shapeshifting. A noble house known for its natural affinity with the art of transforming bodies.

Loubreton — An old family of knights from the Ark who became wizards in Cerberus. Their specialties reveal their origin: horses and resistance to acid.

Varanov — The vampire clan that rules the city of Vlad and has a tense relationship with the Stonehearts. Its library in Vlad is filled with rare tomes and scrolls, and its emblem is worn on a signet ring.

Rossini — Noble wizards. Alidel — Merchants, wealthy but not noble. Telus — A name from the Ark, once borne by a censor and carried to the island by an exile. Softpaper — A common family whose son, Tristan, shows exceptional potential. Bardlac — Bakers. Canardier — A retired merchant who sold his estate.

Perennus Albion heads no house, which may be why he is so difficult to place: businessman, restaurateur, Academy professor of languages and history, recruiter for the Psychic Project, and master of an entire generation of wizards.