House Donnelly

House Donnelly is the only faction whose founder is still around—impressive for a faction which recently celebrated its 750th birthday. House Donnelly is one of the most magically skilled of the factions, and might have become one of the most powerful if not for the erratic, often insane, directives that come down from the ancient liches who run it.

Internal Structure

Officially, House Donnelly is run by its founder, James Donnelly. Since James Donnelly is some 800 years old, and no longer as...coherent...as he once was, rule has passed into the hands of his successor. Unfortunately, his successor is more than 300 years old, and not in much better shape. His successor is in the same condition, and so on, leaving the house's seventh lich, Carla Donnelly, in effective command—except when one of her elders chooses to issue an order. This confused command structure makes survival in House Donnelly a tricky business, made more so by the fact that the house creates a new lich roughly every fifty years, having long since learned that liches don't make effective leaders much beyond their ordinary life span. Some aim for the once in a lifetime shot at becoming a lich, walking the delicate line between demonstrating competence and becoming a threat. Others try to become a trusted ally of the next lich, hoping to become one of the undead guardians each lich is given. And others use the house's frayed command structure to their own benefit, playing people off against each other. While the house has a reputation for magic, it only has a few actual practitioners besides the liches themselves. Most of the house is devoted to the same mundane affairs as any other house, and for people far enough from the main line, the family could almost seem normal.

Relationships with Others

House Donnelly has close ties to the other two commoner houses, Enfield and Bergmann. Its relationship with the noble houses is often strained by resentment, as the house has always wanted to be seen as their equal. The house has also never forgiven The Council of Tradesmen for taking the sixth seat on the Chamber of Lords, a seat Donnelly had previously tried to obtain only to be told that it was permanently closed. The house is notoriously erratic, since any alliance is occasionally subject to revision if one of the elder liches takes note of it, making it difficult for the house to forge lasting relationships.

History

House Donnelly was 'founded' in the 1250s in Europe by James Donnelly, who has long since forgotten the exact circumstances of his flight from his home in the European nobility. He fell through the cracks in Europe while fleeing the inquisition and there was able to 'perfect' the ritual magic that forced him to flee in the first place. In essence, he turned himself into a lich. Granted eternal life by the ritual he had devised, he traveled back and forth across the cracks monitoring his descendants and hoping and waiting for one of them to fall across to him. One unfortunate side effect of his transformation was that he became sterile and this forced him to look elsewhere if he wanted his family to rise to power through the cracks. In the 1600s the first of his 'children' finally stumbled across the cracks (at least that he noticed). He quickly became obsessed with his 'son's' rise to power and married him to the daughter of another powerful family. Since then James has directed his family line to expand, even moving to America seeking better prospects. They eventually settled in the Pittsburgh area, but initially refused to join the Peerage as James was too stubborn to make any concessions to them. Subsequently, under military pressure, he was forced to relent, becoming a subject member. After the house rebelled with the other subjects of the Peerage, the house reluctantly bought a seat on the Chamber of Commons.