Category:Dragonblooded Gentes

History

The bloodlines of the Terrestrial Exalted are ancient indeed, their ancestry tracing a history back to the very first of their kind. The term Gentes, officially, refers to the division of the Dragonblooded who survived the Primordial War into three hundred equal groups, each bound in service to a single member of the Solar Exalted. Based on the largest extended families and isolated from each other at first, these three hundred Gentes each had their own leadership and culture, often shaped to minute detail by their Solar master to suit that Celestial Exalt’s designs, and interbred within their Gens rather than between them. To show their unity, the members of each Gens took up an honorary name to connect them to their Gens, these names most often those of the greatest Dragonblooded heroes of the Primordial War.

The contamination of bloodlines with mortal lovers and partners caused the appearance of Dragonblooded outside of the Gentes, the first Terrestrial Exalts considered ‘Outcaste’. Initially these were simply adopted into existing Gens, based on matters of geography and political divisions: any Dragonblood born within the domain of a Solar Exalt was part of that Solar’s Gens, regardless of parentage. As time wore on and more appeared, disputes arose: in one example, a Gens administering a province renowned for its courtesans saw its numbers grow by leaps and bounds, raising objection from the Gens inhabiting the frontier military region that bordered it… arguments were made that lines of biological descent were more important than geographic origin. As the weakening of Dragonblooded blood became increasingly apparent in the Age of Unfurling Horizons, those who had pushed such a view found increasing support, with most Gentes tracking their members to identify offspring and adopt them. Some Gentes (particularly prevalent during the Thousand Struggles Era) focused on maximizing offspring, while others responded to weakening blood with programs designed to purify and strengthen it. The latter placed particular import on tracing lines and family trees. Bloodlines who could prove their strength and purity wielded increasing respect… but, their low numbers meant that they remained far outnumbered by those of weaker blood, who had the manpower to manage increasingly extensive domains and achieve dominance in the bureaucracy of the Solar Deliberative.

One of the most significant events for the Gentes was the Broken Dragons Period during the Thousand Struggles Era, a time when the Dragonblooded had tired of the incessant warring between Celestial Exalts. While some Gens remained fanatically loyal to their Solar masters, others used the chaos of the time to break away from their Celestial benefactors, or to wrest greater powers from them. Though not all were freed at this time, every Gentes thereafter had become a political actor in Creation.

Freedom brought new opportunities and challenges for the Dragonblooded: independent Gens stood beside those devoted to their Solar Exalt, and with lives of their own the Gentes proved to have differing lifespans: Some faded away, and some trod on, while new Gens sprang up as Terrestrials dedicated themselves to the name of an Exalted hero or ancestor. Of the Gentes, one might have tens of thousands of members spread out across Creation with influence in a dozen armies and provinces, another only a single Dragonblood trained and shaped to the perfect majordomo for its Solar overlord.

When the Usurpation came, the Dragonblooded supported it, the vast bulk of the Gentes siding with the Sidereal Exalted against the Sun Kings. A few Dragonblooded stood with their masters, but their numbers were small indeed, for most had fallen to quiet internal purges as planning for the betrayal was set in motion, or been ‘honoured’ with the most distant and dangerous assignments by their superiors.

With the Celestial Exalted gone, the Gentes emerged as the major powers of the Shogunate Era, but with this power came chaos and change: Gens went to war with Gens over territory, or to seize the title of Shogun, alliances were made and broken, new Gens born and others wiped from the face of Creation. A daimyo or chumyo, earning glory and power, might find her soldiers eager to take her name and swear their oaths to her. In this chaos, the Outcaste became an entity in of themselves, rather than a small number awaiting adoption into a Gens, they grew more numerous, and might decline to take a Gens name at all, or barter themselves in exchange for name and power.

The Great Contagion brought an end to the Dragonblooded Gentes. The disease claimed many Dragonblood, the social collapse that followed devastated their numbers and institutions, and when the Fair Folk Invasion struck, the Dragonblooded who survived took up their duty as the Princes of the Earth and sold their lives in battle against the Balorian Crusade. From this, many Gens were entirely wiped out, and others left with only a few survivors no longer bound to institution or each other. Some managed to persist, holding to the old ways, as seen amongst the old and new Gentes of Lookshy. Others, particularly as the Scarlet Empress sought allies for her rule in its early years, allowed themselves to be absorbed by marriage and decree into the Scarlet Dynasty (as seen with Houses such as House Jerah, House Kurosa, and House Ferem), while still others (as seen with Gens Anatae or Gens Raskali) survived in name but took up new institutional forms and traditions.

Structure

The Dragonblooded Gentes never followed a shared system of organisation, each having differing hierarchies and cultures. However, they share a few general points in common.

Leadership and Elders

Each Gens had some form of leadership to direct and administer it. Titles and powers varied, but as a general trend the elder Dragonblooded of a Gens wielded the most influence within it.

Founder Myth and Cult

Each Gens took up the name of a figure, often one of significant renown and accomplishment. This name is adopted by members as a family name, placed before their given name. To the members of a Gens, their founder and his tale are a core part of their shared culture, though for every Gens founded by the Terrestrial whose name the family bore, there was another founded following the death of their hero, in their posthumous honour.

The Dragonblooded of a Gens would often know well their founder’s history, but their retellings were very much myths, embellished here and with added emphasis there, rather than strictly accurate histories (distance of the myth from historical reality commonly grew as the Gens itself aged). While rooted in respect, the nature of relations between Founder and Gens varied, with some developing practices akin to Ancestor Cults, but in most cases the key was not in worship but in emulation, in embracing the example and attempting to reach those same heights of accomplishment. In some cases, Martial Arts Styles or Sorcerous Schools formed part of a Gens’ legacy, handed down to members to provide them with unique powers and knowledge.

In addition to the occasional cult of a founder, the early Gentes also incorporated the cults of their Solar Exalted masters, providing worship to the Solar (and often the Gentes leadership as well). These cults faded amongst more independent Gentes, and their remnants were purged by the fires of the Usurpation. Some Dragonblooded elders attempted to turn their Gens into personal cults, following this earlier mould, but these efforts rarely proved successful.

In addition, Gens would often negotiate with powerful spirits, and might trade cult to a patron for favours. This barter was quite common in the early Shogunate Era, divine assistance a key asset in the wars between the daimyo, though it faded with the rise of the Immaculate Philosophy as that Era wore on.

Bloodline and Adoption

In principle, membership in a Gens comes through adoption… a young Dragonblood is adopted into the Gens by an elder member, taking the Gens name before their own. For much of history this was considered a permanent decision, one that had to be taken and could not be reversed, but this pillar was much shaken by the chaos of the Thousand Struggles Era and then the Usurpation and subsequent Shogunate, which all saw new associations emerge: taking the name of a spouse’s Gens upon marriage, defecting from one Gens to another, even abandoning the Gens entirely and becoming outcaste by choice.

Membership in the original Gens was exclusive to the Dragonblooded, but this was hardly an issue worth consideration: there were after all no children of Dragonblooded who did not themselves become Dragonblooded. When this began to change, the reactions amongst the Gentes were varied. In many cases, the membership of the unExalted in a Gens was dismissed out of hand… the Gentes were families of Exalts, there was no place for mortals in their ranks. However, as increasing numbers of mortals were born from Dragonblooded unions, and perhaps more shocking children Exalted from unions between those mortals, theories emerged on breeding and bloodline, and some Gentes took the view that they were families based on heredity, not Exaltation, even mortals could bear the name of a Gens, born into it. However, the nature of who qualified as a member of the Gens, and of breeding and bloodline programs, were often guarded secrets of individual Gens, handed down internally, and even Gens obsessed with such things often engaged in adoption of new members in addition to those borne by existing ones.

The Houses of the Scarlet Dynasty, with their focus on bloodline and heredity and their (at least under the eye of the Scarlet Empress) limited options in terms of adoption, are institutions far different from the Gentes.