Summary
House Freeheart is an ancient Designer House founded in the first millennium during the Burghership Explosion. Much later, House Freeheart established its Designer House status with the development of a standardized cryptonics communication protocol, Cryptonet, which the house maintains to this day.
House Freeheart presides over the Duchy Myrtola which houses the Winery of the Stars. The Winery, once a Ressort of House Freeheart, was gifted in full to House Freeheart’s vassal, House Quintos, in the extravagant dowry bestowed on Danya Quintos by her husband, the Lord Royal Ambassador Bogart Freeheart. Myrtola was placed by the kindly and loving Mother of all within the Demora Cluster’s heart. Myrtola hosts a Terminus for the Flourishing Road and forms together with the County Mellos and the Duchy Chrissalis a polity known to all as the Flourishing Delta. In this alliance, Myrtola and the House Freeheart have long served the Empire as enforcers of trade customs and fees.
As part of the Delta, Myrtola fought in favor of the Moltess Alliance in the War of Regrets. Myrtola fed the Alliance and wetted their throats with win. This, to House Freeheart’s discontent, led to their moniker, the Drunken House. For over 100 Etes, Freehearts struggled to strip themselves of this frivolous name. When they succeeded, it was their dismay that people instead referred to them as the Brewster’s Club. Cryptonic writings discovered in the bedchambers of the Freeheart estate on Myrtola during an Inquisor’s Visit suggest that this shame formed the motivation for the Royal Ambassador’s most generous gift. The use of both monikers is still common today, despite House Freeheart’s twice-mother-blessed Ressorts.
Myrtola was bequeathed upon Lord Voromir Freeheart’s death upon his son, the Bannerlord Gavin, called Gavin the Internal for his many hours spent personally refining the Cryptonet’s recipes and policies. Lord Gavin rules the duchy to this esteemed mother-blessed day on which this chronicle is authored.
History
Founding
Garfield Noctus, later Garfield Freeheart, founded this house after a Citizenry Dispute turned into the Second Sovereignty Crisis in the Duchy Myrtola on the Flourishing Road. Noctus, who was then the Commander of a company of Imperial Legionnaires, came into the possession of cryptonic records proving the involvement of House Myrtola with the heretical Anapareesa. Lord Manfer Myrtola, then Duke of Myrtola, had been recorded receiving unsanctioned runaway Lectors at his estate and granting them safe harbor.
With this information in hand, Noctus approached the Ur-Kingdom’s Road Czar, Lord Deferon of Vogelvee. He petitioned the Ur-Kingdom to decree an Imperial Cleansing. While records of this time are incomplete, some cryptons have suggested a considerable amount of resistance to this petition among the Czar’s advisors. The Duchy Myrtola was powerful and ancient. It sat in the Ur-Kingdom’s Spear Domain and the Bannerlord Manfer called even the Seneschal by his first name.
Tragic was then the man’s downfall, but righteous, as this chronicler believes. With support garnered from Houses Novint, Herbert and Clincxe, who each provided one part of the Tripartheit Terminal Defense Force that protected the Flourishing terminal from invasion, Lord Deferon saw himself forced to issue the decree, as Majora willed it.
With a company of Legionnaires already present, Garfield Noctus waited not. Cryptons suggest a war as short as seven hours took place, focused almost entirely on the heretical estate itself. After the sixth hour, Noctus employed an orbital lance to destroy the estate entirely. The seventh hour was spent arresting and executing stragglers.
Impressed by this feat, despite earlier reservations, and recognizing a power vacuum that swiftly needed filling, Deferon of Vogelvee petitioned the Seneschal, Lord Trition Kamau, to attend an attestation hearing with him and Garfield Noctus. There, Garfield Noctus was elevated to Burghership and granted the blessing of leading a House of the Burghership. Garfield declared his heart free of heresy and swore his sword and lance to the Empire and the Mother as Bannerlord Garfield Freeheart, henceforth the Duke of Myrtola.