House Searlin

House Searlin was a family/clan of mages which existed from the mid-to-late Age of Darkness and into the begining of the Mage Wars. The Searlins are known for construction of the first Mage Tower and are widely regaurded as starting the Mage Wars. Nathan Searlin was a part of that line.

Practices

Very little little history is known of the family, but many of it's practices survived in the form of Nathan Searlin's journals.

Though the view during the Golden Age held that the family largely subjugated women, the house included the position of Matriarch. The Matriarch was responsible for the family and the affairs of the physical compound where all members of the Searlin household lived.

The Matriarch, in turn, was second to the Arch, always the most powerful wizard in the family, and responsible for ruling Asysias and the surrounding lands. This is believed to be the origin of the terms Arch Mage and Arch Magus.

Breeding

They practiced selective breeding, where by powerful wizards were married to powerful sorceresses in an attempt to produce stronger offspring. Outsiders were sometimes taken in early on, but through most of the family's history these marriages were usually incestuous. Parents were never married to their own children, nor were first-degree relatives, but cousins were very common.

I found this very unpleasant when I learned about it, and I swore that very instant I would never let it happen to any of my children(of course, at the time, I was still plotting my escape and didn't expect to have any of those), but let me lay it out for you: whenever a new child is born in the house, they are taken immediately to the great hall and laid in the circle.

If the baby is a boy and he lights only a few stars, he is taken away from his parents. He is placed under the care of a family outside of the compound and eventually made a part of the military, where he will be trained in magic and take part in the various wars. His relationship to the family is formally severed - since he can bare them no more powerful offspring.

If the baby is a girl and she lights only a few, she's kept within the compound to be given as a first wife. Sometimes these girls are also married off to the various families that run the outlying settlements, or owners of buisnesses in the city - but only if a suitable husband is not found within the family by the time she is fifteen or so. In many cases, the girl's husband will be decided on the day she is born, or at least limited to the pool of powerful boys born that year.

If the girl lights no stars she is taken outside the walls to be raised and eventually married off to a family loyal to the house. Girls who produce no stars are felt to have very little value, except in the goodwill they can garner through arranged marriages to non-mages. For the boys... for the boy-babies it is unpleasantly dark. They have even less value than the girls, and are taken away and gently put to death. A boy with no power is of no value to the House.

Nathan refers to the process with great repugnance, and eventually ended it. His goal was to end the practice of arranged marriage and polygamy entirely, but only really got as far as stopping the killing of babies.

polygamy

The Searlins also practiced polygamy, specifically among st the more powerful wizards of the clan. Outside of the House, however, polygamy was outlawed in the rest of Asysias.

Nathan's journals speak plainly about his wives and his difficult relationships with them.

Everyone wants love. To love, and to be loved. And this is a fair and reasonable thing for a person to want. But I can't love all of them, and I can't love some of them and not the others. The fairest thing I can offer is to not love any of them. It's not fair to me, but I can at least be fair to them.

Nathan spoke frequently in his journals about his difficulty assimilating into the family and Asysian culture in general, in particular with the family's reguard for women. He was expected to take many wives and to produce many children. His daughters would be married off to other members of the family in order to curry favor, and he would seek out powerful marriages for his sons. The practice of arranged marriage itself was very difficult for him, though it was accepted as completely normal to everyone else, and in order to maintain his position, Nathan was forced to continue the practice.

He was, however, most angered by the problematic child marriages going on.

Every boy, when he turns thirteen, is given a 'first wife'. It's like a right of passage, marking his ascension to manhood. She has to be younger than he is, though, because she needs to be subservient. Mostly they try and make sure these first wives are only a few months younger than him, but sometimes she ends up being eleven or twelve... but she's still expected to, you know. The marriage has to be consummated, because THAT'S the part that makes him into a man. It also makes her beholden to him - see, they don't exactly recognize divorce up here, and once that part of the wedding night happens, they're together forever. Ewww. Oh, and let me just say that yes, it gets even worse than that. See, when a boy is that young, his full potential isn't really fully known. They got a pretty good idea how strong he'll eventually be from the star thing, but there's a lot more to it than that. So, if he turns out to be a dud, they don't wanna waste a good wife on him. The 'first wives' are collected from the girl-babies who weren't very powerful. The one, two, and three-star girls. Yeah, its bad enough that they rate women, but if you're low-rated, you're fate and crowning achievement in life will be turning some dude into a man.

He's going to take other wives, that's basically a given. And if he turns out to be powerful, those wives will be powerful as well. Since they can give him more powerful offpsring, that 'first wife' gets thrown by the wayside. As he grows even older, he'll need younger wives to bare him more children, and for her, for his first wife, it just gets even worse. Try to imagine it, knowing from birth that the most important thing you'll do in life is help some boy become a man, and your reward is to be case aside, to help raise his children by later wives... Suki, I didn't love you the way you deserved, but I feel like I've treated you with more respect than that.