House Fathvell

House Fathvell is a Great House with ancestral (and current) roots in the Southern Islands. Their primary financial avenue is the manufacture and sale of wines, though they also import other luxury items from their exotic home such as chocolate, fine lace, and silks. Certain members of the family still resides in their home city of Tavira and in Austrex in order to facilitate the flow of goods from the Islands to Luthadel. They are currently the second youngest Great House.

Financial Avenues
Fathvell has a number of financial pursuits, most of them centered around the unique opportunities offered by their exotic home.

Viticulture and Winemaking
The soil and climate of the Southern Islands is uniquely suited to the cultivation of wine grapes, and House Fathvell takes full advantage of this. Their wine is known across the Empire, with particularly good bottles selling for hundreds of boxings. Fathvell also produces expert sommeliers and wine critics, and other houses can utilize their services or even be trained by these experts - for a suitable fee, of course.

Luxury Imports
From chocolate to spices to laces and silks, the Southern Islands produce a number of expensive luxuries prized across the Empire. Fathvell is only happy to ship these goods into the heart of the Empire to be sold at a steep markup.

Shipmaking
With their rapid expansion of trade routes, Fathvell has found it quite practical - and profitable - to expand their business enterprises a little. Fathvell now produces and repairs their own ships, boats, and canal barges along with selling these services to other houses.

Underground Business Practices
Nobody in the Southern Islands gets very far without acknowledging and adapting to the unique culture of unabashed criminal activity that thrives at the edge of the Empire. Skaa who want to live the good live out from under the Lord Ruler's thumb, criminals who want to retire and enjoy their wealth, and pirates out to pillage and plunder all call the Islands home, and Fathvell has a proud history of ensuring that none of these shady characters disturb their prosperous existence. Their underground dealings with their nefarious neighbors include, but are not limited to, selling them plenty of liquor to keep them drunk and happy, repairing pirates' ships so long as they avoid Fathvell lands and vessels, and hiring various pirate crews to attack any enemy they see fit - other pirate crews, enemies who get too close, and so on. This is, of course, made possible by large amounts of bribes paid to the Steel Ministry - or, as Islanders call it, Paying the Toll.