In the game: help house rook Also rook rooks
House Rook: the youngest Great House, raised up from the city watch, where nobody cares about your birth until you have served.
Made, Not Born
Rook is the only Great House that came after the Founding. The other Houses were already powerful families and groups from the start. Rook did not exist. It was made a Great House a couple of decades after Deshret began, from the leaders of the citizen militia and the neighbourhood watches that had formed to keep the city safe. Those watches later became the city guard.
The Grey Jumpsuit
Rook turn up to the Council in plain grey cotton jumpsuits while everyone else sits in silk. They carry a chip on their shoulder the size of the city. A Rook child may be noble by birth, but nobody cares until they have served. A Rook who has never worked or stood a post eats at the low end of the family table, at any age.
Rook children and the children of their servants are born and raised in the same quarters, which are very spartan. They grow up together and train together, as equals.
Service
Most Rooks end up as officers of the Lictorate, the everyday city guard, or serve as Dragoons, its elite division. They value honour and earning your worth, and it is not rare for House Rook to formally adopt commoners who live by those values.
Rook's closest thing to an ally among the Houses is Varga. Neither plays the games the rest of them play.
Bastards of House Rook take the surname March.
Read next: help law and help great houses.
On the Agora: https://agora.underspire.net/t/great-houses/40