Arc Family
The Arc Family, formerly known as the House of Arc, is a prominent family in the Kingdom of Vale historically known for producing legendary warriors and womanizers and being unusually fecund. Historically one of the highest ranking Noble Families in Vale, in the aftermath of the Great War and the abolition of the aristocracy the Arcs lost most of their territorial holdings and political influence. Obscured and mostly known to historians, the Arcs remain active as a civilian family, living at the remnants of their traditional country estate outside of Ansel.
History
Primordial Era (Legend)
The House of Arc claims descent from the line of Noah, one of the last figures before the immolation. According to Legend there were once a race of humans who were gifted by the gods with powers earthly men could only dream of. One day, a princess driven mad with ambition would demand the gift of immortality from the Brothers of Light and Darkness. Noah was the maternal cousin of the mad princess who doomed the world and the high sorcerer of the Emerald Empire, and before the final battle he was ordered by Alder, the God of Light to construct a magically reinforced bunker, called the Ark, beneath the surface of the world to avoid the coming immolation. To ensure their survival Alder went so far as to lend him a fragment of his own power. Noah and a handful of his attendants and bodyguards went into the Ark, as no one else would believe him. When the survivors emerged from the Arc, there were too few humans to restart the world population. Alder sent Noah a vision of how to remake man and woman from ash and dust. Noah and his acolytes followed his orders, but their powers paled before that of the brothers and they were unable to replicate the magical gifts they possessed. This, however, played into the arrogance of the survivors, who used their powers to assume dominion over the new chattel race. It is said that for every 1 man they made 12 women, and the harems of the former nobles would beget the various tribes of mankind, with the family magic passed down from eldest son to eldest son. Noah, however, surpassed all his peers- using what remained of the power Alder had granted him, he had blessed all of his descendants. To his daughters and the daughters of his sons he granted great beauty and fertility. But the lions share of his blessing went to his sons- the male descedents of Noah were to be robust, virile and insatiable, gifted physically and spiritually beyond all other men, the undisputed masters of the earth. But the arrogance of the survivors in the Ark would bring about their undoing. The inbreeding within their lines would winnow out their male descendants- the children of the slaves who were allowed to mate prospered, and soon the great magic of old had faded into embers. The line of Noah would face even harsher punishment - his daughters and granddaughters would be the prized broodmares of any warlord or brute who could get their hands on them, and his sons were hunted by the creatures of Grimm above all others. All their strength could not save them from an earth that cried out for their blood, doomed by a man foolish enough to bless them as a god. The story is considered by most modern scholars to be a justification for the various systems of patriarchal warrior rulers that would dominate pre-modern Remnant. Regional variants were ubiquitous- names would change, numbers would change- but always the motif of the leader whose bloodline was purged by the Grimm, and the acolytes, whose power was diluted over the generations remained. The nobles were said to possess the last sparks of the old magic and were thus positioned to rule over the filthy masses, while Noah was a cautionary tale of what could happen to a man or family that sought too much power. Purists interpretations of the myth hold it as an explanation for weaponized aura and semblances, which are themselves not fully understood and seemingly 'magical'. While genetics in Remnant remains a ...controversial topic, given the abnormalities of the Faunus and the complete anomaly of the Grimm, basic population statistics indicate that in a small founder population that continuously breeds with one another everyone will be related to everyone, and thus claiming exclusive descent from Noah's line or any other line is inane. Noah's mantle, however, was claimed by no one- any historical figure alleged to be of Noah's blood left only a brief bloodstain on the historical and archaeological record for the better part of 20,000 years.Historical Emergence
By the mid 300's BGW, another such claimant emerged from the men of arms of the nascent Kingdom of Vale. The man who would become Arc I believed that he was a direct descendant of Noah in an unbroken chain of sons, and his given name ( a misspelling of the legendary Ark) was a reflection of that. The nobility of Vale thought he was delusional; when Arc I singlehandedly rallied the Valean army and routed the Faunus hordes of the Beast King on the fields of Galicia they offered him a knighthood and when he did it again at the Battle of Aurora Creek they had no choice to indulge his delusion. In 322 BGW the Princely Council of Vale admitted House Arc into its ranks as its 13th and final member, and the only member not to predate the Kingdom of Vale. As commoners were forbidden family names at this time, the surname of 'Arc' was christened from the name of its founder, himself named for the myth the family expected itself to live up to. The Northern coast and fields of Vale, which had been near totally depopulated during the final Valean Feral Wars, were awarded to House Arc for its service and reorganized into what would become Arcadia Province. Many of the surviving Faunus from the war were settled within the territory, though humans colonization was encouraged and Faunus areas were placed under heavier restrictions and in less defensible locations. The rents from these serfs and later sharecroppers would form the backbone of the Arc Family's wealth, allowing the family to shift its attention to the military and political realms. While the Arcs would not achieve unbridled domination of Vale and then the world, they would become crucial players in its internal power struggles and leaders of its military efforts. Silver Arc, the house's third Patriarch, would play a decisive role in the Destruction of Ilos, and Claude Arc(the 6th Patriarch), also known as Claude the Lame, would spearhead internal reforms, abolishing slavery and standardizing law codes as well as establishing early centers of education such as Ansel College. While Claude would never sit on the Laurel Throne, he would have enough clout on the Princely Council to elevate his son August to the purple in 174 BGW, shortly before his death. During the era of the Warring Kingdoms after first contact with The Kingdom of Mantle and The Kingdom of Mistral many scions of House Arc and its cadet lines would die young in battle. By 44 BGW the Arcs were able to once again maneuver one of their members to the Kingship of Vale. King Domitian would be a militant leader and a great admirer of Mantle, purchasing the loyalty of the army with pay increases at the expense of the nobility. He was deeply interested in the ideology of Mantle and the repressive policies of the Lord Protector, and began making overtures to join the alliance between Mantle and Mistral. After he began purging the military of all but his most ardent supporters and imprisoning lords and peers who criticized his new policies the Princely Council of Vale arranged for Domitian to be assassinated. His son, Valerian, only 11 at that time, had recently been possessed by the spirit of Ozma and because of the unprecedented nature of assassinating a King and the connections of the young prince led to him being selected as his father's successor, the first direct father-son transfer of power in the monarchy's history. Initially underestimated due to his physical youth, the boy king would harness Ozma's millennia of experience to assert himself politically, though with more subtlety and diplomacy than his father. The Kingdoms of Mantle and Mistral were angered by this slight, and increased competition with Mistral for colonies in the far east of Sanus led to the Great War. Valerian was able to use his considerable home field advantage and tactical advantage to hold out against the two Kingdoms for 7 years before Vacuo expelled its increasingly aggressive foreign occupiers and allied with Vale. At the battle of the Vacuan desert, Valerian would use the power of the Relics of Destruction and Choice to decimate the armies of Mantle and Mistral, ending the war with Vale as the undisputed leader of the world. Rather than creating a formal Valean empire, Valerian called for the Vytal Conference towards the end of 10 GW on the island of the same name, and set in motion a series of constitutional reforms that created democratic governments in each Kingdom, as well as creating the Huntsmen Academies and the Huntsman Association, setting the modern era into motion. With the abolition of the aristocracy the Arc Family lost almost all of its old territorial holdings, and its role in recent history was obscured along with the other surviving noble lines. Even within the family their relation to the last Kings was a closely guarded secret- Mason never told his wife Estelle after 25 years of marriage.Present Day
The Arcs currently reside in the last vestiges of their old holdings, a small chateau outside of Vale, and are primarily a civilian family.Structure
While House Arc was active it was a strictly patrilineal organization. While the daughters of an Arc were considered members, their children were not- membership was restricted to the male line and their nuclear families. Younger brothers and their descendants were considered Cadet Lines, still worthy of some privileges but ultimately subservient to the main line. The Cadet Arcs were often deployed on the battlefield under the Patriarch or Heir Apparent of the family. The bylaws of the Arc Family have never formally been abolished, though the legal framework within which they were based is no obsolete- since the only surviving Arc males are the current Patriarch and his only son the internal hierarchy is largely a moot point, as is the inheritance rights for titles that are no longer in effect. Still, the unbroken main line of succession for the Arcs goes thusly. Noah of the Ark (mythical, c. 20000 BGW) Arc I (1st) (358- 294 BGW) Roland ( 320 - 277 BGW) Silver ( 298 - 269* BGW) Louis (271- 230 BGW) Claude( 252 - 171 BGW) August ( 220 - 166 BGW) (King of Vale from 174-166 BGW) Francois ( 204-187 BGW) Edward (189 -168 BGW) Noah II (173 - 130 BGW) Perseus (150 - 89 BGW) Alexander (129 - 98 BGW) Antione (112 - 54 BGW) Hadrian (84-27 BGW) Domitian (69 BGW- 24 BGW)(King of Vale from 40 BGW to 35 BGW) Valerian(35 BGW- 12 AGW) (King of Vale from 24 BGW to 10 GW) Simon(5 GW-45 AGW) Julian (15 AGW- 40 AGW) Mason (31 AGW-Present) Jaune (63 AGW-Present) *Disappeared, joined Salem’s inner circle after imbibing the essence of Grimm, actual death in 133 BGW
