Who makes the Coolest Evil Noble Family?

[Ryujin]

Well the votes are in (along with some awesome ideas) and we have our winner. I feel I should note I'm not just going along with the most popular choice, but by my own ideas and your descriptions as well. I wish I could use all the unique and crazy ideas posted here. But without further ado!

Dragonborn

3 9.38%
Dwarves

3 9.38%
Elves/Half-Elves/Eladrin

9 28.13%
Gnomes

5 15.63%
Halflings

3 9.38%
Tiefling

2 6.25%
Humans

4 12.50%
Other (please post below)

3 9.38%


The Elf-folk have it! Thanks to all your help, the heroes will now have to face:

The Dawnstar Family.

Headed by Davice Dawnstar, this Eladrin family has been part of kingdom politics for some time. Rumored that they are exiled from the Fey Realm, the Dawnstar family instead has a strong interest in "mortal" affairs. Over the human generations, Davice (now 245) has made several attempts at power-grabs. In one such grab (an attempt to blackmail and magically persuade one of the realm's dukes to nominating Davice as his replacement) Riffen Bregar, father to one of the PC's, revealed his duplicitous nature. Faced with little other choice, The King punished Davice, humiliating him and reducing his family's influence to that lesser lords. Furious, Davice has waiting for years for his revenge.

His opportunity came to him in the form of an alliance with a neighboring kingdom. For reasons unknown to Davice, they wished to plan an assault on Riffen's home castle using an army of orc slaves. Davice used his family connections, a few bribes and a few threats to ensure the orc army was able to pass the border between the two kingdoms undetected. The attack was successful, and Riffen Bregar is missing, presumed dead.

Years have past since the attack, and now Riffen's youngest son, Indos, and his band of companions, seek to avenge Riffen's "death." As they close in on who is responsible for the attack, they will have to cross blades and wits with one of the crueler and more ruthless families in the King's Court; The Dawnstars.


Thanks everyone for the inspiration, discussion, and help creating a fun family of foes!

Trit

I like it

And, of course, there are those families who think that the Dawnstars were ill served, by a duplicitous Bregar family, who were jealous of their success and lied to bring them low. Of course these other families would never speak up in public, because that would be treasonous, but that doesn't stop them from lending a little hidden friendly aid, now and then. What use is it to be a charismatic and devious player, if you don't use that Charisma to turn a few heads

 

[Blue]

When I run I seem to have a disproportionate amount of evil halflings - something about how community minded and innocent they are is wonderful to twist on it's ear. But that's for sole blacksheep. For good non-obvious family (or clan) I'm going dwarf. Loads of evil loyalty, and you don't expect it.

Gnomes are two insane, elves/eladrin are too long lived to have a big family, humans too default, tieflings too stereotypical. Though if you want an evil emo tiefling family that also has a problem with the vs-PCs evil family so the PCs may have to make a choice to get allies by advancing a different evil agenda, they work well.