[Eberron] What is the place of the Dragonmarked Houses in the setting?

[Jürgen Hubert]

More great material to chew on.

I see where you're going here and I'm halfway with you. We see this all the time in the modern world when it comes to U.S. defense or engineering contractors. The Lockheed-Boeing rivalry for Air Force contracts and the Haliburton-Bechtel conflict for Iraqi reconstruction contracts strike me as examples of what you're going for.

The analogy doesn't quite seem to extend to Eberron, though, since the setting really does contain monopolies. There aren't a pair or trio of titans battling it out for the big contracts, like Haliburton-Bechtel. There's just Kundarak for banking or just Lyrander for airships.

Well, today's defense industries and associated government agencies are huge, sprawling affairs that it does indeed not make any sense to try to poach contracts from outside one's area of expertise.

But Eberron functions on a smaller, more personal scale. Ultimately, only a few people in each kingdom decide on the focus of the defense spending for the next few years, instead of the massive bureaucracies in our own world - and it will be worth it to get these people on your side.

Let's assume that Aundair is unhappy with the quality of its armed forces and wants to improve them. The guy in charge of the military (forgot his name) has a Very Large Amount of money to spend over the next three years. Let's say he has the following options:

- Buy lots of advanced magic items (House Cannith).
- Hire expert mercenary advisors who can train Aundair's forces - and possibly give them some insight into how the other armies work (House Deneith).
- Commission several airships to give Aundair aerial superiority (House Lyrandar).
- Improve your local infrastructure so that you can quickly move your troops to whichever border they need to go (House Orien).
- Hire spies so that you know precisely what your neighbors can do and sabotage them (House Phiarlan or Thuranni).
- Invest into cavalry with vastly superior steeds (House Vadalis).

Now you have no less than seven Houses competing for the same resources - the treasuries of Aundair. Yes, the Houses have monopolies - but that doesn't mean they can't compete with each others for resources.

Many people seem to think that in a market economy the demand for a certain product develops first and then producers attempt to meet that demand. But in many, if not most cases, it is actually the other way around - first someone comes up with a product, and then they attempt to sell it by creating the demand. The modern-day advertising industry depends on that, but this has really been a feature of the luxury trade throughout human history. Take gold, or spices, or gems and silk - most of them are quite unneccessary to human existence, and yet they became very valuable indeed. And the people selling these things took care to make them more interesting to their buyers to increase their profits.

The Dragonmark Houses likewise won't wait until they are approached for their latest toys and inventions. No, they go out there and try to sell them. And in doing so, they compete with other sellers of expensive items - and that includes the other Houses.

 

[Wrathamon]

Well, that's not quite accurate. Megacorps frequently compete in the same industries. The Dragonmark Houses don't - they each have their own specialty in which the other houses can't compete easily (while most Dragonmark effects can be dublicated by spells, it takes more effort and training to do so, and thus their quasi-monopoly is secure).

That is not entirely true...

They just compete with different products.

Mercenaries for example during the last war... Deneith, Tharaskh, vadalis, and Cannith all were supplying troops... whether they be human, goblin, monster, beast or warforged. Same industry, different product.

Travel - Lyrandar and Orien compete with each other for travel and transport of goods.

Cannith makes Elemental bound items and so do the Gnomes of Zilargo.

You could say the same about secruity, spies, etc.

They do compete, but not the same as Honda and Toyota with direct products in the same category.

One thing to know is that there is the concept of the Twelve. A place were all the houses gather to exchange and discuss dragonmark bizness.

Conspircy theorists of Khorvair love this place


Edit: also, all of them seem to be after Dragonshards (which is why tharaskh has done so well for such a new house... they can find them easier).

 

[nameless]

I think the biggest problem with Dragonmarked Houses as megacorps is that although, as written, they tend to butt heads, most have no realistic reason to do so. They aren't in the same industries, they aren't competing for the same gp, and most of them require each others services to operate.

Even in the grimmest cyberpunk dystopia, United Airlines is not about to engage in a secret war with AT&T because they don't want people to call instead of traveling, nor is AT&T going to sabotage Ford to make people telecommute. Although the results might improve their bottom lines, they are ultimately peripheral to their businesses. Most of the megacorp-on-megacorp action in cyberpunk stories is between corps in the same business: to use the examples above, it would be, say, United vs. Southwest, AT&T vs. Verizon, Ford vs. Toyota.

I think this is the biggest strength of the dragonmarked houses as far as political motivation. Each house has a fairly limited scope with its official guilds and dragonmark powers. But each house has unlimited ambition, and more resources than most. What does a monarch have that a house Baron does not? Very little. A house's power isn't derived primarily from its craft monopoly, it's derived from the same complex social, political, economic, and philosophical sources as real life power. They all have spies, they all have trackers and artificers and soldiers, because those things are useful to a powerful organization.

Because the houses do have a legitimate public face, they can't just outright have armies and annex territory, but the individuals running the houses have their aspirations, and will work within their limits to achieve them. In a Machiavellian sense, the houses are each aspiring to dominate each other.

From a plot design perspective, you can do a lot with the varied houses. For any given plot, a couple of houses will be the straight shooter. A plot might be well served by having Cannith predictably lose control of a new golem. A different set of houses will still have a peripheral connection, predictable but unlikely. It's not Lyrandar who's altering the weather locally, it's Vadalis who is breeding climate-sensitive animals. And a different set of houses will have a connection that reverses expectations. A magical prison is built in secret, but it's house Orien who built it, with the intention of binding new types of creatures to dragonshards for transportation. You can weave the exact level of complexity you want into your plots to make them sensible enough to create immersion, but obtuse enough that the players have to work to get through them.

 

[Dave Turner]

Interesting points, Jurgen. Definitely worth incorporating into my ideas, but as second-order concerns, which isn't a bad thing.

 

[Aaron L]

Even in the grimmest cyberpunk dystopia, United Airlines is not about to engage in a secret war with AT&T because they don't want people to call instead of traveling, nor is AT&T going to sabotage Ford to make people telecommute.

You just killed the novel I was writing

 

[mhacdebhandia]

The other thing to remember is that many of the dragonmarked houses' guilds aren't just capable of doing a job - they're capable of making you dependent upon their doing that job.

The Raincallers Guild of House Lyrandar, for instance, can control the weather. Here's a quote from Dragonmarked that sums it up for me:

This drought is a terrible affair, your highness. When you decide it's gone on long enough, you know our rates.

Gah!

Other houses have their own questionable monopolies. House Tharashk dominates the dragonshard prospecting trade in Khorvaire and Xen'drik both. House Kundarak guards your treasure, which is bad enough, but safemakers also make great safecrackers. Who knows what hidden commands House Vadalis may have trained your new cavalry to obey? Imagine what kind of leverage House Jorasco could wield if they decided to change their prices or withdraw from a nation?

As much as House Lyrandar and others are seeking to free themselves from the Edicts of Korth and take direct possession of territory, it's almost unnecessary.