House Telvanni
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The Great House Telvanni was one of the Six Great Houses of Morrowind.
Background
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Traditionally isolationists, most House Telvanni Wizard-lords pursued wisdom and mastery in solitude, but some ambitious Telvanni members were actively involved in the colonization of Vvardenfell in the Third Era. They did so by building towers and bases all along the eastern coast of the island. The Telvanni believed that wisdom confers power and power confers right.
The House Telvanni had two capitals: Sadrith Mora on Vvardenfell and Port Telvannis, situated in the northeastern reach of continental Morrowind, on a small island.
Telvanni had little respect for anyone other than themselves, including other members of House Telvanni. They prefered to build their towers without stairs, forcing visitors to bring some sort of levitation magic. This not only granted them more seclusion, but acted as a sort of test to see if their visitors were worthy.
They worked with the other Houses on some rare occasions, such as the breaking of the monopoly of the Mages Guild that House Hlaalu had the initiative to stand against. Many Telvanni were known to be necromancers, some of which drove themselves mad with the practice, and their retainers were often involved in illegal activities that made House Telvanni unpopular amongst other Houses. Given their distrustful and xenophobic nature, this is likely the way they prefered it to be. House Telvanni was the main source of business for the Morrowind slave trade, a fact which likely led to their brutal annihilation by Argonian invaders in the Fourth Era. Many, if not most, of the oldest Telvanni wizards living on the furthest eastern coasts of Morrowind were thought to be either Vampires or Liches.
As a rule, House Telvanni was obscenely wealthy. Some accounts claim that as a whole, in the later years of the Third Era, the House had a net worth rivalling the riches of the Imperial Treasury. Much of this financial leverage was greatly mitigated by the fact that many Telvanni exhausted their resources with ceaseless bickering and infighting. Entire cities had been known to change hands repeatedly between two or more Telvanni Wizard-lords over petty grievances and minor disputes that had, over the centuries, grown into major blood-wars. Often, the citizens of Telvanni controlled regions did not care much for or even especially notice the internal politics of the Great House, as abstract magickal vendettas between lofty, never-seen plutocrats and their legions of paid pawns rarely interrupted the lives of the common Dunmeri serf. A few notable exceptions to this did occur in instances of Telvanni lords massacring each others logistical assets, but the House had various ways of making such occurrences "disappear" when the public outcry became too great. Additionally, a great deal of Telvanni wealth was spent on purely hedonistic extravagance and many luxuries for which most Telvanni had no real use.
Unlike other organizations in Tamriel, Telvanni did not bond themselves to each other. They valued their personal independence and privacy above anything else. Belonging to House Telvanni did not mean much for its members. They had just one rule: there are no rules. Telvanni described it with the following words: "If you steal from another Telvanni, but still live, then clearly you deserve whatever you stole. Murdering your opponents by magic or treachery is the traditional way of settling disputes. If you win, then clearly your argument has more merit. You may be expelled as in any other Great House, but most Telvanni will not care or even know about it." Telvanni had only a formal administrative system, and their House served only to discuss common interests and share resources amongst the truly magickally gifted. Most Telvanni wizard-lords loathed the Mages' Guild, considering it a pedestrian organisation filled with no-talent hacks, impotent old blowhards, has-beens, and other assorted conjurors of cheap parlour tricks.
In the Third Era, House Telvanni had a plan to peacefully occupy all uninhabited parts of Vvardenfell in their own distinctive way. Any major construction projects in Vvardenfell required the consent of the Duke of Ebonheart, which was patently hard to obtain, and all other organizations who were not particularly friendly to the Empire struggled to gain terrirory in that system. The Telvanni, however, had no fear or respect towards Imperial law, and younger House Telvanni retainers awere frequently sent, occasionally with a contingent of slaves, to build their towers across the remote regions of Vvardenfell, never asking or informing anyone. According to the House's plan, as the towers grew to towns, most of Vvardenfell would de facto become theirs. Almost all Telvanni were powerful, wealthy wizards, and could protect themselves against the law, but such expansion was a danger for all other Great Houses. As a result, the other Houses sometimes attacked less-protected Telvanni outposts.
All of these efforts were ultimately for naught, however, as the eruption of Red Mountain in the Fourth Era likely destroyed much of the Telvanni holdings on Vvardenfell and some on the continent. The end came for House Telvanni shortly after the end of the Red Year, when the Argonians invaded Morrowind to take revenge on the Dunmer that had enslaved their people for hundreds of years. Being the greatest practioners of slavery in Morrowind, the Telvanni recieved a great deal of the Argonians' fury, some of which is described in the journal of Lymdrenn Telvanni. According to his description, the Argonian forces murdered the Telvanni without impunity. Their genocide was so great that as of 4E 201, Brand-Shei, the son of Lymdrenn, is the only known surviving member of House Telvanni. However, Brelyna Maryon is also a decendent of Great House Telvanni mages, so it is possible that the House is not completly extinct just the main family.
ReferencesEdit
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