NOBLES, NOBLES EVERYWHERE: KNOW THY SEMBIAN NOBLES IN 1499 DR

Sembia Today

Right now, Sembia looks very like the Sembia of old (pre-Spellplague), but the core attitude of its populace has changed. Still gaudy and ostentatious, valuing wealth and the lavish spending of it, still convinced of their central importance in Faerûn, their innate selfishness and superiority has been shattered. Despite their hitherto selfish “me first, my coins foremost” nature, Sembians want to recapture “the greatness that was stolen from us.” (By the Netherese occupation and despoiling that ended abruptly in the destruction of the floating city of Thultanthar in 1487 DR.) Sembians have come to see the benefits of acting together, and it’s tempered the selfishness of their pride; they now see the value of being Sembian, rather than just assuming it.

Yet their very rebuilding success has meant that to the wider world, Sembia remains “the Land of Fat Rich Merchants” (With Delusions of Importance).

To visitors (including spies looking quite closely), Sembia in 1499 DR very closely resembles the Sembia of the mid-1300s DR. The capitol is once more Ordûlin, a city rebuilt with wider streets and taller towers than before; efforts were made to avoid slums, with construction grand everywhere, so even Ord shopkeepers and carters live in magnificent buildings. It is a city that shouts wealth and importance; it’s rare to see a building of less than three storeys. There are even trees in the heart of the city!

On the verges of the realm, Saerb is firmly Sembian, as many bureaucrats from the central government fled there when the mercenaries hired by Thultanthar started marauding, and most have stayed. New grand buildings have arisen there, too.

And Sembia still has its nobles. Some oldcoin families rebounded after the Thultanthan occupation, but many of today’s nobles are classic “new money, nose-in-the-air arrogant big time splashy spenders.”

Nobles of Sembia

The problem (for a sage or chronicler) with Sembian nobility is that they’re self-styled. That is, anyone with wealth or nerve enough can call themselves noble, and MIGHT get away with it; over the years, many have, including a fair number of charlatans who adopt the surname of a currently prominent noble house and pretend to be a part of it, sometimes even accusing the ‘real’ nobles of being impostors.

So there’s never been any clear, agreed-upon roster of Sembian noble houses.

Moreover, most of the wealthier nobles have a “country estate” (hunting lodge or feasting-house or food farm or horse-breeding ranch, or some combination of those) in “upcountry” (northern) Sembia, and houses or rented-out business premises in most of Sembia’s cities, with a luxurious mansion in at least one, so it’s hard to say where any Sembian “noble” family is based—especially when they have internal feuds, and each side claims to either be the only legitimate branch of the family, or the senior branch. And you can find bastard or black sheep sons and daughters and nephews and nieces “cast off” to live alone or with “lower-born companions” just about anywhere in the Dragonreach, Cormyr, and Sembia proper (and for true criminals, Westgate, too).

The result is more than a hundred noble families, some incredibly wealthy and some impoverished, some truly influential and some just pretending to be.

Here are some of the longer-established, “oldcoin” Sembian noble families

** Please find the full script attached in .docx and .txt formats