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Kalamar Noble Family Details

Motivation

Nobles come up a lot in the Hackmaster books as devices for moving the plot and bossing the characters around. There are rules for getting an audience with a noble in the GMG but only vague suggestions about what the noble owns and what their duties are. There is treasure belonging to nobles in Nest of the Rat Master, if I recall correctly, but no specifics about what "a noble insignia" would look like or lead to. Lord Flataroy's Guide in the previous edition had some guidelines about social class dynamics as well as castle construction (which was also in the 2E castle guide) but not many specific details.

There are probably a lot of good reasons to keep the details of nobles pretty vague. It is best to customize NPC's for your party, campaign tone, and the sort of dynamics you want in your game. Maybe it's fun to write characters on a noble estate without rolling dice or checking off a list, without anyone else telling you how to do it. Instead though I've written a general system for details about one noble's family living in one estate. It doesn't determine their personality, alignment, or much of their personal history, which either should be picked arbitrarily or refined out of these basic steps.

If player characters are in a city and there's a big house that nobles live in, maybe this guide can help start some campaign ideas or help plan a heist adventure or something.

Basic role

Nobles' primary function is to tax peasants (usually farmers), guilds, and traders. Their duties include responding to emergencies to protect people (their own taxes). Nobles have to follow orders from their suzerain, and give a cut of taxes to them. Their suzerain tries to protect and enrich their subordinate nobles in turn. The taxes paid to nobles are separate from taxes paid to temples.

One of the foremost duties of noble families is to train, support, and rally knights. This is often necessary to protect people from other nobles' knights. Other threats include armies and mercenaries sent by foreign nobles, and sometimes barbarians. Monsters also come around to kill people for various reasons.

Nobles' heralds make decrees and form crews to maintain roads, dams, harbors, and bridges. This can be paid work or corvee. Heralds also give out public health advisories and news.

Procedure Overview

The tables and lists I've compiled are here to ease the process of tediously determining setting details and giving realistic-sounding reasons for the size and capabilities of an estate. I'm hoping to also provide a bare structure that a GM can put problems into to make a story.

Basically, you figure out what jobs are needed to make the estate do what you want it to, you count up how many people are needed to do the jobs, then how much land and farmers are needed to do the jobs, and an estimate of how much of an army is needed to protect them. Details for every step are further down the page.

1. Make one noble. Name them and stick their estate somewhere that matters to your table's campaign. This is the origin noble.
2. Generate their immediate family, aunts, uncles, and cousins, and in-laws, using the Priors & Particulars procedures in the PHB.
3. Figure out the animals and industries on their estate and supporting towns.
4. Figure out how many actual workers are needed for this family's "power level".
5. Use the simplified land requirements formulas to figure out how big their fields / food budget is for the number of people they have.
6. Get the number of rooms and possible surrounding town, based on the count of family and workers in the estate.

Origin noble

• Pick the home region of the noble's main or only estate. (Brandobia, Kalamar, Reanaaria, Svimozhia, Wild Lands, Young-Kingdoms).
• Name your noble.
• Give them an identifying nickname.

• The origin noble's letter of marque decides their wealth and duties. Higher ranks delegate to more subordinates, and are required to organize larger armies.
• • The ranks everywhere in Tellene are basically: baron(ess), earl, count, duke/duchess.
  • Svimozhia has Svizohrs which are barons that may not have a suzerain.
  • I began this NPC writing exercise as a way to flesh out houses of any rich person, so the title isn't really necessary.
• Make your noble "d1000th in line for the throne".

Determine your origin noble's use of slavery:

Determine your noble family's involvement in trade. This influences the number of manors they plan to control.

Creating Family Members

Initial details

1. Roll for the origin noble's parents & siblings as in the PHB, including whether they're surviving or not. Stick names on all of them.
2. Roll for aunts & uncles same way as sisters & brothers.
3. For each surviving aunt, uncle, sister, and brother, roll if they got married.
4. Name the spouse then roll a d6. On a 5 or 6 the origin-noble's relative is a widow(er). 50% chance they've remarried or are trying to.
5. Roll the parents & siblings for each in-law.
6. For each married relative of appropriate age, adapt the number-of-siblings table to get a count of their kids (0-8; each has a 4 in 6 chance of surviving to the present day).
7. Roll to see if the origin noble has a spouse. Name the spouse and get a count of the kids the same way (possibly adopted or from previous relationships).
8. Every 4 children (people under 20) living at the origin noble's estate (direct children, nieces, nephews, in-laws' step-children) adds 1 in-house servant (rounded up).

Illegitimate children

You can give any character as many children born outside marriages as you want to. The specifics of the family's acceptance of illegitimate children, and the authenticity of their claims are up to you. You can use the "relationship" table for family members in the PHB to allow dice to influence it (whether the relationship is "argumentative", "very close", etc).

Family Members' Estates

Most of the origin noble's relatives live on the origin noble's estate. Married relatives or their widows may have their own place. To determine the existence of a manor for each married relative, the GM first has to not be sick of making manors. Second, a d10 roll of 8, 9, or 10 means they have their own estate.

The NPC random race table (9-1 in the GMG) can be adapted to locate the relative's estate.

• "dominant ethnicity" means the relative has an estate in the same region or a neighboring region.
• "foreign ethnicity" means the relative lives in the foreign region indicated.
• A demihuman race means they built a castle with demihumans.

Guards/Army

Split into house-guards, patrols, and town guards. The same people may be placed on rotating duties. Guards should get one or more months off every year (except urgent emergencies) or they'll start getting shitty.

Somehow they will need injury treatment, gear maintenance, and supervised training. Their training has different parts.

• avoiding scams
• gleaning information
• following standard operating procedures
• working in rough weather
• fighting

If you like you can specialize different squads into pursuit and nonlethal arrest, phalanx fighting, mounted fighting, and archery.

They should have guardhouses built to take reports and store armor and jail people.

The army should have plenty of ammunition on hand. I guess a stockpile maintained at 200 arrows per volunteer.

Number of guards

The minimum threat size anywhere in the world is 40 unarmored mundane goblins. If you can't defend yourself from 40 goblins don't build a house. 40 goblins can be walloped in melee by 20 fighters with heavy armor and big weapons. Goblins aren't really statted out to charge all at once into battlefields and fight to the death. A minimum of 20 fighters is a simplification.

Most Tellenians live in places threatened by foreign armies. Some factors that influence the size, intention, and frequency of harassments:

• What the enemy commanders can afford
• If they want to take over your base, raze it, or just kill some of your people
• How well-defended you are
• If you have allies who will really avenge you
• How useful your workers and machines are (your "wealth")

You need acreage to feed all your guards and money to pay all of them (wages information is in GMG table A1.2.) If you have more guards then you need, you could hire them out to defend towns, shops, caravans, other armies, etc.

Your character's honor influences, and is affected by, the treatment and actions of his or her army. Every army will have deserters, bandits, and thieves, but if your honor is low, your army will have a lot more. If a deserter from your army has higher honor than you, expect people to leave your army to join theirs.

Guards can help you resist surrender, enslavement, destruction, and conscription into undead armies. Unfortunately there is no way to 100% defend yourself from all possible aggressions.

• A griffon could fly over stone walls, eat the chef's family, then take off.
• A kobold could pile loads of arsenic and small animal corpses upstream from your water table.
• Ghosts could scare your butler to death.

Sorry for getting grisly but this kind of thing can happen. These events aren't for contradicting or annoying your players, they should just be mixed in like a spice.

Estate's Army's room requirements

• If your carpenters know what they're doing, every 10x10 room (can be combined into large rooms) can fit 10 suits of armor or 50 large weapons. (They would need more room to be maintained in the same armory).
• Every 10x10 square of barracks can fit 4 sleeping humans.
• If guards have complicated orders they need a 30x30 briefing room that can fit 50 guards.
• High-ranking guards need a "war room" to confer intelligence and strategy, and discuss internal issues.

Securing an armory requires at least an honest and competent locksmith, as well as vigilant and literate clerks.

Simplified food math

These are just guesses and oversimplifications. Feel free to double "people fed per acre" in the table below if the farming skills warrant it, or just to make this part of the game easier. A lot of foods have uses besides just calories. Cows walk around with brand new leather on them, walnut shells can be used in dyes, etc.

Nobles can buy victuals and other materials with taxes, but depending on their rank, they may have to do work to keep the trade route secure.

The Hacklopedia of Beasts 2 has a guideline for smoked-meat yields of exotic creatures.

One fun part of detailing PC or NPC farms is that each food source, whether it's plant or animal, is susceptible to a different disease.

Estate Facilities

Depending on the estate's natural resources (the GM confirms or denies any queried existence of natural resources), the estate can develop a complicated facility for making things out of things. The facility could be essential to running the estate, or lucrative, or just done as an experiment. A facility needs people with the ability (time, skill, loyalty) to use it, and people with the ability to maintain its physical structure. Machines have differing micromanagement or upkeep requirements. A loom probably won't break down every week. A helve hammer connected to a water wheel could have a host of recurring issues.

Facilities can be on the estate itself or in one or more towns that support it. They need to be close enough to the estate that the noble's army can defend it.

Sample facilities' costs & benefits

Other facilities are up to your own development. The amount of effort, maintenance, and know-how varies. Some examples are a paper mill, shipyard, coffee roastin factory, whale pit, water pump, martial training area, apothecary, and alarum bells. In a fantasy game you could also have teleporters and sentient mirrors and stuff.

Other assets

More workers to consider; close-by or in-house

Defense and Violence

Guards, armorers, archers, quartermaster

Fabric

Tailors: turns fabric into clothes, fixes clothes

Fullers: washes fibers into wool

Spinners: turns wool into thread with a wheel or distaff

Knitters: turns yarn into textile goods

Weavers: turns thread into fabric on a loom

Feltmakers: presses wool and fur into felt

Dyers: makes dyes, dyes textiles

Nurse & Nursemaids

Take care of kids.

Laborers

Difficult carpentry, masonry, prolonged heavy lifting and digging.

Growing plants and animals.

Attendants

Just people to talk to.

Valets, 'body servants'

Cooking & cleaning

Chefs, butlers, maids.

Animal work

Gamekeeper, herder, poulterer, fowler

Farrier, stable workers, animal trainers

Information

Herald, scribe, chronicler, clerk, engineer

Translator, bookkeeper

Physician

Should contain diseases, prevent health problems, and treat injuries.

Chancellor

Does the hiring & firing.

Chamberlain

Keeps the books, facilitates everyone's job.

Sheriff, meier, reeve

People who maintain a town and recruit crimefighters (crime is defined by the noble family).

Specialists and more

Geologist

Pathologist

Spymaster

Alchemist

Almoner

Entertainers

Wizards

Priests

Number of rooms & town dwellings

Acreage

1. Sum up the people living and working in the estate. Smalls and children under 15 count as .5 for appetite purposes.
2. Decide the split of provisions made by the estate, and provisions that can be reliably shipped to the estate.
3. Every resident and worker is fed according to victual sources chosen by the origin noble.
4. Every 5 acres is tended by an average of 2 farmers.
5. • Get the number of acres needed to feed the estate.
   • Multiply the acres by 2/5. This is how many farmers you need.
   • Determine extra acres needed to feed the farmers.

Golden Snout Manor is an estate with 40 workers and residents. Earl Hulmar the Vigorous is going to feed them with pigs and potatoes.

• 1 acre of pig: feeds 26
• 2 acre of potato: feeds 20
• Total acres of farmland: 3
• People's worth of leftover potatoes: 6
• Farmers needed for acres: 3 * 2/5 = 1.2 -> 2

So the manor is supported by 2 farmers, whose victuals are covered by the leftover potatoes. If the farmers have big families the estate may need to turn a potato acre into a pig acre to support them.

Rooms in the estate

From a minimal room defined as 10'x10' of floor space.

A sum of basic rooms every manor has:

Kennel

1 dog room and 1 personal room for every 4 dog

Every 50 guards (round up)

1 room for weapons

5 rooms for armor

5 rooms for resting and studying

Stable

1 personal room for farrier

1 personal room for animal trainer

1 workshop space for farrier

1 15x15 stall for each horse on estate (work and soldier)

1 10x10 corridor-space for every 2 stalls

Cooking and Eating

1 kitchen

1 larder

1 room each for chef, butler, head maid

1 room for every 4 lower-responsibility servants (attendants, scullions, porters, junior butlers)

1 big room for large parties

1 big room for dining

Family affairs rooms

2 rooms for the origin noble

2 rooms for chamberlain/chancellor

1 room for each family member on premesis + their spouse

1 room for every 2-3 small kids, including kids of staff

1 room for every 4 nursemaids, 1 for head nurse

1 room for small audiences

1 big briefing room

1 war room

1 room for every herald

Character-selected facilities

Any smithies, root cellars, libraries, etc.

The minimum rooms for the smallest manor of a lone noble with zero horses is about 30.

Houses nearby

An average of 2 people per home.

• Homes of assistants, apprentices, and material traders for craftsmen on the estate.
• 1 home for every laborer.
• 1 farmer's home for every 5 acres of farmland locally supplying the estate.
• 1 home for every fisher.
• Optionally homes for soldiers' families.

Dwellings are arranged near trading posts, taverns, peddlers, and religious sites. Other characters and businesses the GM wants to move in will move in.

There will also be orphans and infirm whose fate the noble has a lot of control over.

Horsepower

• Horses can pull carriages, pull cargo, and help build stuff. They can also fight in battles.
• Every horse needs 2 acres of pasture. Any non-grazing horse needs 4 tons of hay per year.
• If the origin noble is interested in growing hay, 1 acre of haygrass will make 2 tons of hay per year.
• The origin noble should have about one horse per adult family member.
• There should be horses for the herald and his or her retinue.
• The noble's army also needs horses.
• Some facilities require horses or mules.
• They should have backup horses, as well.
• For cargo-pulling purposes, each horse can be "swapped" for 2 ponies or 4 donkeys.

Visitors and friends

Supporting nobles

The origin noble might have friends close by. Here are examples of arrangements the noble either has or wants.

Trade partners

One family supplies materials, the other works them.

Both families are in the same industry and cooperate to run a single joint company.

Mutual preferential arrangements to buy-high/sell-low distant commodities.

One family makes the material that the others' shops and caravans are made out of.

Mutual protection

Patrols from both families know each other, cooperate, and follow a unified rank of a joint patrol army.

Cooperative labor

Each noble maintains a stretch of road.

Both families share and maintain a mill.

Unique plants that only grow in each family's territory combine to make medicine.

Feasts

A noble can sponsor a week-long feast at his or her estate or town. Residents and visitors can use this opportunity to get others drunk so they'll swear oaths.

Contention with nearby nobles

Disputed heirship

Each family wants their kid to own an estate, farm, town, or piece of land.

Both sides have a specific heir in mind, prepared them for the job, and have previously secured contracts, marriages, and blessings, and have a rightful claim.

Covetousness

One family wants the other's holdings, so they can be more powerful and move their nephews into the house they conquer with violence.

Religious difference

Both sides are anointed in opposed religions.

Double taxation

One family is taxing people that the origin noble's family is already taxing. Or vice versa.

One side backed out of a deal

One family reneged on a pre-agreed deal.

Could have been a marriage, trade deal, supply or support agreement.

Possible oath-breaking.

Slight

A real or perceived insult which was deliberate or accidental.

Competing suzerains

The lords might not hate each other but will fight because their suzerains hate each other.

One side is evil

The game and setting allow for easy sources of conflict based on alignment.

Two true neutral zealots of The Landlord could fight each other to the death for profit.

Both sides could have good alignments but one is "dishonorable" and doesn't actually act good.

Wages

Typical wages are in the GMG in table A1.2. They are generally 1-10 silver / month per worker, mostly depending on BP investment for their skills whether their skill set depends on literacy. Workers' wages do not have to be in coins but they do need to be paid something their theoretical grandkids could inherit and split fairly, that will be useful when the grandkids are old.

Administrative duties

The administration skill is needed to notice bribery, tax fraud, pay discrepencies, machine disrepair, social skill problems, and false rumors. These problems can happen as the GM wills them; a good guideline is d4 per season. Some can be fixed with just money (replacing problem workers, embezzled funds, easily-replaced supplies), some need special expertise, some need an investment of months of game time.

An administration roll could reveal threats to basic decency, like unburied bodies or an abusive supervisor. The skill represents factors like reporting policies, monitoring systems, and the noble's vetting process.

The following table catogorizes Administration skill results into honor losses faced by the origin noble if the problem is not addressed. An unfavorable d100 roll could represent a genuinely unforeseen problem, major disaster, or conspiracy.

The actual administrative problem has to be improvised for the estate's unique staff, facilities, and situation. I included a couple universal "ol reliable's" to get your list of possible problems started.

• Guards are making up a tax and people are paying it.
• Tax collectors are skimming off the top.
• Tax collectors are absconding with all of the taxes.
• Continuum of building repair problems from roof leaks to sinking foundation.
• Cursed staircase or doorway.
• Collapsing wall, building, or mine.

Suzerain & Appointee

The origin noble's boss can be based on the estate's closest city. Kingdoms of Kalamar has a lot of NPC's that fill bureaucratic roles like this, in the "people of note" sections of the campaign setting book. You can alternatively create another noble with this method and make them the suzerain.

The Family's History

At some point, the origin noble got all the stuff he or she presently has. Either before or after getting a lot of stuff, they were promoted to their current letter of marque by their suzerain and their suzerain's suzerain. (Assuming you're making a good or neutral noble), choose if you want the origin noble to be in low or high honor. If low, they have been greedy, negligent, overbearing, abusive, and stupid. If high, they have always been fair and helpful. The rest of their history can be derived from their possessions and affiliations chosen above.

The origin noble's family may be receiving a lot of help, personnel, and knowledge from their suzerain or allied nobles. The origin noble might be related to the suzerain.

Below are some rough guidelines of what each kingdom in KoK is about, to help determine how the family came to power. Before I list them, I want to note that there are characters that would likely be outside this system. They could be hired by a suzerain as a spy, troublemaker, or mercenary.

Nomads & barbarians

It's possible that barbarians or more humble nomads could luck into land ownership but it would be pretty special. There's a possibility that anyone not familiar with local history and politics could be tricked into running a dangerous estate set up for failure.

Thieves

Thieves, pirates, and bandits might have "pirate lords", but these are just the strongest richest craziest pirates or whatever.

Elves

My working theory of elf towns is that none of them have jobs or money and they all just garden and trade houses on a whim. I don't even know if they would use money or track debts (from other elves within an elf town). Elf behavior in your own campaign world is up to you so maybe they fit in fine with nobility.

History suggestions

Here are suggested duties of nobles in different regions of Tellene, based on my relatively light reading of KoK material. Aptitude for some part of this could explain why the origin noble has the right to own land and levy tax.

Brandobia

Cosolen: Being magical with elves, overland trading.

Eldor: Being racist. This is their explicit and specific purpose in the game; The Emperor of Scorn is the neutral evil god of racism.

Mendarn: Running a continuous slave trade.

Kalamar

Military loyalty to Kalamaran suzerains, going up to the emperor. Goal of annexing the entire world.

Securing sea trade and getting applicable information from around the entire known planet.

Playing a role depending on the specific regional culture. Kalamar, Basir, Tokis, Dodera, Tarisato. (Fighting on ships or horses or in jungle or mountains).

Reanaaria

Colluding to enforce tariffs (trade restrictions), or guild policies (labor restrictions).

Security of global shipping (generally of a specific product).

Svimozhia

A caste system that goes back to the original genocide of Dejy natives.

Military service in Svimozhian warring states (multiple concentric levels of civil war).

Civil engineering, piracy, or both.

Ties to dwarves or hobgoblins.

Fighting jungle critters.

Young Kingdoms

Keeping Kalamar from absorbing them. Acquiring necessities from trade (little natural resources).

West: former Brandobian militocracies, with the duty of fighting hobgoblins, intimidating Brandobians, or starting wars with random Dejy.

East: spying and brokering information, paying pirates to harass Kalamar.

Wild Lands

Advocacy and restraint.

Hunting and friendliness with nomads.

Fighting Grevans and snow monsters.

Not being a wizard.

Dijishy

Theocracy of the Inevitable Order of Time; city council appointed by a high priest

The councilors do not get a salary but do collect taxes. (Dijishy K&C1093; p19 & 28)

There is an orators' guild which is basically defense attorneys.

Pel Brolenon

Theocracy of The Shackler

Slen

Theocracy of The Order of Agony

Square one

I organized this stuff to be a "starting point" for more writing. You can make a chateau then turn it into a zombie attack scenario. You can write monster nobles. You can have players start their adventures as staff at an estate. During a revolt if you want to. You can put a guarded manor in the middle of the NetherDeep as a "secure zone". Your player characters could burgle a mansion. Players might try to war with a corrupt or rude noble. You can make a Gnome Titan's keep. And so on.

Examples

• Hina of Xaarum