![[Uoknor Seal]](uoknor-seal.gif)
I'll embed references to any logs, as suitable, in more or less proper chronological sequence. People and other information will be linked in where it seems appropriate.
House Uoknor effectively has two histories, with a hiatus where the House was dissolved. However, the similarities between the two aspects are closer than they might at first appear.
Traditionally, the members of the House have always been either artistic or ambitious, or both. The other collective strength they held was in creative biotechnology.
Their ambition tended to get them in over their heads, though their somewhat erratic brilliance almost always served to get them out.
As a young House formed after Patterndraw, Uoknor was stereotypically composed of artists, with the artistic temperament and preoccupations that the stereotype implies. It was stable for a very long time, never growing very much in size, with the members generally busy with their separate or joint projects. Attrition was usually through accident, or some members would just wander off into Shadow and never be heard from again, although they're presumably dead.
Children were not a main focus of the family, so most members had at most one or two. Uoknor was probably most known for any excellence of its art and works, rather than for its people.
As status became more important to ranking members of the House, the structure began to destabilize, and the House begain to assume a reputation as social climbers as well as artists, sometimes with those two attributes combined in the same person.
Thenara is perhaps a classic example of this: although an accomplished dancer, she wished to rise through marriage to a more powerful House, and she set her sights on Iendor Iende, then the son of Lord Iende. The highly status-conscious House Iende turned down her suit, and so her second choice was Funroy Aspnes. Aspnes was then a tiny House, but it had some claim to Royal blood, so although there is some indication that she considered him the lesser choice, he was certainly not a bad one.
However, when her daughter Liebe made a love-match with Iello Iende, the son of Iendor Iende, the very man she had wished to marry, she considered it insufferable that they would accept Liebe for the status Aspnes had given her, when they had rejected her for the status which Uoknor had not had; she forbade the marriage, and Liebe and Iello subsequently eloped. While she was at this point an Aspnes by marriage, at Thenara's behavior was not uncharacteristic among ranking members of Uoknor.
As the House grew characteristically more ambitious, some members started dying in less accidental ways: duels became a more common form of death, and the family started to lose coherency. Alliance through marriage became far more common, with an increased emphasis by ranking members on perpetuating the bloodline.
Finally, Roshven wished his daughter Diony to marry into another House, with the arrangement being that the first two sons would go to that House, and the third to Uoknor, and the first two daughters to Uoknor, and the third to the House, as they had taken a daughter from Uoknor. Unwilling to comply with these plans, Diony left for Shadow, where she stayed until after Patternfall, returning to find her House vanished.
Her sister Silvien they wished to marry for good alliance as well, but she proved to be too unstable, so she found a happy marriage with some a Chaosian of one of the Recognized Families instead. Her older brother Hamati, heir to the House, died without issue in a duel.
Kazuyo, Ghent, and Raniel, the other living blood relatives, had long since vanished into Shadow; they or their descendents were not to resurface until after Patternfall. It is unclear what their motives were, but it might have been to escape the new political emphasis of the family, to gain power of their own, to practice their arts or sciences uninterrupted, or any number of other motives.
Diony returned from Shadow, and discovered that her House had dissolved in her absence. Her nearest kin could be found in Aspnes, through Thenara, so she found employment with Spence, then Lord Aspnes. She later adopted Constantine as her brother, after he had been disowned from Aspnes and his Protectorate Haven had been destroyed in a shadowstorm.
King Jenner I granted her a Baronetcy in the second year of his reign, and later raised it to a County. Diony and Constantine adopted Eldrik as their nephew, and Constantine and Tanith, a member of the then Petty House Lane, were wed. Kazuyo returned from Shadow at about this time, and started her experiments in Chaos.
Diony made her residence in IlannaWays, in the Shadow of Iende Falls, and Constantine and Tanith took up residence in a small cabin in the same Shadow.
Diony loved Arawn Aspnes, and helped to raise Rebekah Aspnes, his adopted daughter (Liebe's youngest child). Arawn was crowned King Arawn I of Chaos, and Rebekah was raised to Duchess Aspnes. Constantine suffered a condition of some sort, so he and Tanith resided apart from Chaos for some time, in the Shadow Portmerion.
After the death of Arawn, Diony abdicated in favor of Tanith, declaring her son Brennan heir to the House when he should reach an appropriate age.
Other sibling adoptions during this period were Shannon, Eldrik's adoptive daughter, and Autumn, who became an acolyte of the Church of the Serpent.
When Cecilia became crowned King Cecilia I of Chaos, she made Constantine her Minister of Shadow. Aziraphale came out of Shadow, and found employment as Seneschal of Rebma. Marith and her daughter Mercy were adopted, and Marith was made Ambassador to the Golden Circle.
Aziraphale was shapeshifted by Funroy Aspnes in the World's End Bar, replacing many of his vital organs with others made of tools, or the actual tools themselves. He collapsed in the House, and Jenner needed to be called in to heal him. Shortly thereafter, House Aspnes was destroyed in a huge nuclear explosion. Diony was for a while presumed to have been in House Aspnes when it exploded, but it was later established that she had been in Shadow raising Brennan.
Ghent returned, minus most of his memories but aware again that he was actually a Uoknor, and Aziraphale became a formal member of the House, and was fired from his position as Seneschal of Rebma. Kazuyo started performing more and more unusual experiments...
Diony proxied for Tanith at the Council of the Lords meeting, where Jenner, Lord Hendrake, was elected Chairman.
Constantine resigned as Foreign Minister, turning the position over to Mirth Sawall. Shortly thereafter, Aramiss, the Green Knight of Chaos, resigned his post and made Constantine Knight-Commander of the Knights of Chaos.
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