House Balventia

Old Imperial Great House, holders of the County of Karven — the pilgrimage city. House gift: Divine Channeling.

One of the three Old Imperial families that backed Hakim the Great and kept their lands.

Family

• Lucius Atius Balventius (deceased)
  • His wife, Fadia Orissa
    • His daughter, Lusia Balventia, Countess of Karvena
  • His sister, Camillia Balventia
    • Her husband, Aulus Sabucius Menenius (House Menenia)
    • Her son, Herius Rufius Menenius (ungifted)

Politics

• Lusia Balventia holds one of the most powerful divine gifts in Hazad — reputedly capable of the Ritual of Rebirth — despite not being formally clergy, which makes her unusually influential in the Eastern Church. (GM) The house gift of Divine Channeling is not an abstraction here; it is the house’s actual power base.
• Lusia Balventia personally lands with the Pragmatists; her family are more Restorationists. (S2)
• The Integrationists see an opportunity to marry Baahir to Lusia. (S2)
• Deeply intermarried with House Menenia.

The Church Connection (S6)

The house has been involved with the Church for centuries — which is why Ismad is sending the party here, with a letter of introduction, to research the Order of the Dawn: the monastic order that kept the Monastery of the Dawn over sanctum #1 until it was stormed ~1639. Uncle has been cultivating Lusia Balventia for years.

They are also the recommended channel — Lusia or her scholars — for discreetly researching whether the Order of the Phoenix used divination magic during the war forty years ago, which bears on Estelle.

Limits, per Ismad: the sanctums and the new cosmology may be raised carefully — “not totally off the table” — but Haroun’s temptation is not to be raised with her at all.

(Note the comparison Ismad drew: the Malipiero family of the Holy City is “similar to the Balventias” — a church dynasty of centuries’ standing. See Benedicto Malipiero.)

And the comparison is more than an analogy: House Malipiero and House Balventia intermarried occasionally in the pre-conquest period. (S7)

The Visit and the Library (S7)

The party spent several days at Karven as the house’s guests — expected, luxuriously hosted, dinner with the Countess, the family chapel, and four days in her personal library under Father Clodius’s keys. The library: ~1000 volumes of the Teachings in multiple languages, and a notable Third Crusade focus — likely her grandfather’s. Gnaeus repaired some old, damaged books with his time magic.

What the shelves yielded is written up at The Orders of the Five Courts (the Court-named orders, the anathema), The Faith of the Maker (True Divination), and The Crusades (the Third Crusade material).

Aurelius Balventius was of this house — head of the anathematized order of the moon, per an Interregnum-era book in the house’s own library; definitely the same house, believed a distant (perhaps not direct) ancestor of the current line. (S7, table discussion per Aaron) A house “involved with the church for centuries” carries an anathema in its deep past — and keeps the book that records it. See his page and The Orders of the Five Courts.

Events

• Gnaeus attended a party at the Balventia Estate hosted by Camillia Balventia. (S1)
• Balventia guards and servants joined the party’s defense of the Ulpia estate during the riot, after runners went out to consolidate the neighboring estates. (S6) See The Riot at the Ulpia Estate — the party is about to ask this house for a favour, and has just spent a night bleeding alongside its people.
• The Balventia capital estate needed recovery after the riot; the party carried reports from the person managing it to Karven, and polite messages back. (S7)