House Pike

Historical Overview

Founding

In the earliest days of the Promenade, the Seaside did not yet exist, and whaling fleets were community-organized affairs, which would leave via the nascent canals of the Landside. This hodgepodge of small ships, each generally crewed by a family, were eventually organized under a prominent local luminary known as the Pike. The Pike was responsible for leading the armada of ships, and eventually this position came to be held continuously by the same family.

"When the procession arrives in First Point, and the Patriarch of House Pike throws the ceremonial harpoon into the Sieve, the people of Seaside are gathering in The Portion and Dogshead for general revelry and drinking." - Sprayspot Festival

This family, who came to acquire the largest group of small whaling vessels at the time, was eventually known as the Pikes, their prior surname, if they had one, being forgotten. Their local dominance was codified by House Prominere, who elevated them to the status of minor house, cementing their importance to the then-formalizing whaling industry.

Rise

Pike & Sons Co.

The early Prominere whaling armadas were not just cobbled together groups of community-run small craft, but social affairs as well. Families naturally grouped up by neighborhoods, and friends sailed to the same hunting grounds together. The Pikes utilized their connections as the most prominent local family to coalesce friends, allies, and sycophants around themselves. This allowed the family a solid base within the industry from which to expand their company. These original recruits into the Pike family business are known as Lances, and while they are not noble families, their names carry great weight in the industry to the present day.

"Early Promineres saw the sea as an enemy. It made the low-lying land into salty marshes useless for farming, it swamped the fishers' small craft, and the waves tore away attempts to expand the city. To kill whales was not only crucial for the city's survival, but a way to strike back at an all-encompassing ocean trying to swallow the town." - Isobard Quickquill, Whale Whale Whale, What Have We Here?

Using these Lances, the Pike's were able to delegate the day-to-day leadership of the whaling armada, and coalesce their connections into the Pike & Sons Company. As it was unseemly for a noble house to lead whaling ships in person, these Lances became the eyes and ears of the family in the Seaside. Given the near-monopolistic nature of the Promenade whaling indsutry, as most family-run ships were gobbled up by the Pikes, the Lances came to be seen as traitors to their class. As the Pikes deferred to their Lances, they removed themselves to the more upper-class area of the Landside. While this was their ancestral home, as they entered the industry long before the Seaside was built, the family had always had a foothold in the poorer half of the city. With the Promenade being strictly divided along class lines, the Pikes gained an otherworldly reputation among the Seaside, as a distant and invisible provider of both employment and oppression.

Pike's Park

As the Pike & Sons Company began their march towards monopoly, the income of the Pike family dramatically increased. To keep up with expectations in the decadent world of the Landside, the Pikes began construction of their ancestral seat, The Harbor, in the neighborhood of Pike's Park.

"Pikes' Park was a welcome change from the squalor I had spent months in while researching the Seaside, yet gangs never escape you in The Promenade, as it seems even within The Harbor's lovely walls, clandestine business takes place" - Isobard Quickquill, Decadence of the Upper Half

The late Age of Rule was a golden age for the Promenade. Wine flowed freely, the docks of the Seaside were booming, there were balls and fêtes and expansive building projects across the city. But, there was also a rapidly expanding wealth disparity between the city's two halves. This golden age was the last gasp of the Promenade, before the Crossing Over brought about the city known today.

Decadence

With the Crossing Over came the beginning of the end for the whaling industry, and the Coastal Whale moved towards extinction. However, the Landside did not yet know it, and their decadence only increased. As incomes fell in the Seaside, and gangs ran wild, the Pike family continued to be known not as the industrious leaders of armadas they were during the Age of Rule, but as distant and sheltered extorters of the Seaside. The final straw came when the family noticed the decline in profits from coastal whales. Attempting to solve the problem, they decided to return to their roots and innovate developments in the whaling industry. Just as they once coalesced a patchwork of families into an organized fleet, they tried to change the nature of whaling through the introduction of motherships. These huge vessels would go far abroad, into the Unknown Tides, and hunt the largest and deepest whales, revitalizing the industry.

"The young Lady Pike was seen at the Forwins' Ball with a lovely whalebone broach of the family crest, which reliable sources say fetched a very pretty price in the Boneyards." - Podspot Herald

At first, this brought a boom of construction to the Seaside. The ships themselves, the equipment needed, and the provisioning for long journeys gave business to a number of specialized neighborhoods. However, the issue came with the construction of tryworks, huge cast pots for boiling blubber aboard the ships. The Longshoremen's Guild, the representative organization for laborers in the Seaside, managed to organize against their construction.

"Devastation in the Landside, as criminal elements of the so-called Guild flood Redwaters with their protestations against the march of progress!" - Podspot Herald

Outraged at the loss of jobs from neighborhoods such as the Tryworks, Gallows, and Butchers' Row, which relied on the physical bodies of whales for their business, the Guild began to resist. Organizing in the Castworks, the Guild stopped the construction of the pots. Forced to import new trypots, these were seized by the Guild, who threw them into the canal outflow, starting minor flooding in the Landside. With this escalation, House Pike backed down. The defeat of House Pike by the Longshoremen's Guild sealed the fate of the Seaside for decades, and destroyed the reputation of the Pikes. In their place rose the Deepquest Whaling company, based out of the Seaside neighborhood of Calettina. Through their use of connections to the Litoric Islands, they established whaling colonies abroad, allowing an escape from the poverty of the Seaside. To combat that innovation, the Pikes began sending their own agents to the growing colonies, with tension increasing dramatically in the largest of them, Owin's Station.

The Crest of House Pike: From "Introduction to Houses Within the Land of Anhara"

Founding Date

382AR

Type

Geopolitical, Great house

Capital

The Harbor

Leader Title

Patriarch

Parent Organization

House Prominere

Subsidiary Organizations

Pike & Sons Co.

Location

The Promenade

Related Professions

Lance

Controlled Territories

The Harbor