House Vey

House Vey rose during the Salt-Crown Interregnum, a period when the Marrow Sea's old centralized monarchy collapsed into competing port kingdoms, pirate leagues, and merchant councils. Veyra Vey's early movement gained legitimacy by redistributing seized grain and protecting isolated settlements from raiders. Her first major triumph came at the Battle of Nine Lanterns, where she defeated a coalition of three harbor lords by luring their fleet into a fog bank and attacking their supply ships rather than their warships. Afterward, twelve ports accepted her letters of protection. The dynasty's watershed moment came during the Black Net Campaign, thirty-one years after its founding. Veyra's grandson, King-Marshal Orlan Vey, attempted to unite the entire sea through negotiation. When the northern captains rejected his terms, he launched a campaign of total blockade. House Vey stretched chains of iron netting between fortified islands, starving rebel ports into submission. The campaign succeeded militarily, but the dynasty used mass executions, forced conscription, and collective punishment to secure the victory. The Black Net became the foundation of House Vey's modern power and its deepest moral stain. The following century saw alternating expansion and retreat. House Vey built shipyards, standardized maritime law, and created safe trade corridors, making the central sea safer for ordinary merchants. It also imposed harsh tribute, took hostages from important families, and used royal marriages to absorb rival houses. Two sea-queens were assassinated by their own councils, one was poisoned by a rebel admiral, and another disappeared during a pilgrimage to the Drowned Steps. Twenty years ago, Sea-Queen Maerith Vey retook the Crown's Teeth after the Ashen Fleet rebellion. She restored the royal court, punished the rebel captains, and declared that the next generation would complete the reunification of the Marrow Sea. Today, House Vey controls the central shipping lanes and several fortified islands, but its authority is contested by republican merchants, independent pirates, religious dissidents, and coastal rulers who fear that restored unity will become permanent tyranny.