House Harst
An old house that has been a part of the Council of Nine since the day it was established. They are slow, traditional, and immensely heavy. They view the recent "Material Revolution" as a temporary fad. They have stayed powerful by being the "Foundation."
Prominent Figures and Affiliations
- Lord Yorash Harst (The Bedrock): The stoic, immobile patriarch who oversees the "Council of Nine" sessions with mountain-like patience, obsessed with the structural stability of the city’s foundations.
- "Low-Lady" Karys Harst (The Surveyor): Yorash’s eldest daughter, she manages the maintenance of the Undercroft tunnels and is the primary authority on the city's "negative space."
- Elder Silas Harst (The Echo-Seer): The oldest living Harst, he resides in a sensory-deprivation tank to monitor the vibrations of the Great Dams and the city’s industrial pulse.
Place among the Nine
They are the oldest of the old, ensuring that while the world above changes and burns, the foundation remains solid, never rising too high or falling too low.
With the MnSobek war cutting off river trade, House Harst is pushing to expand the Great Lift and the tunnels toward the west. They are the primary financiers of the expansion into the Hadeeb territories to find new routes.
Claim to Power
- They own the Undercroft. While other houses own the factories inside it, Harst owns the actual space, the tunnels, and the support pillars. If Harst decides on a "maintenance check", an entire district of the city stops working.
- Mild Leak: Because they live and work so deep underground, House Harst has been the first to notice that the "Shadows" in the Undercroft are no longer behaving like light-deprivation. The darkness is becoming "thick," and Harst surveyors have started wearing bells because sound travels differently in the "New Deep."