House of Säv / Clan Säv

The Säv were bugbears by blood and one of the great clans of the Mól Empire, and what they were publicly was not what they were.

The Horses

Publicly they were breeders. The Idirian thoroughbreds that are still the finest equine stock in Erôth were their work: Säv raised them to the caliber they are known by and oversaw them for centuries, right up to the fall. Four of the lines are still bred by families around Veren who have kept the method inside the family for something near a thousand years. Who else had a hand in the breeding was never written down. Säv is the only name attached to it.

Access, Not Swords

Privately they were the house that kept the Empire running. They got the information the Emperor wanted, reached the places he needed reached, and settled the things that needed settling. They were not the enforcers and not the guard, and they were not alchemists. The phrase for it never varies: they did not rule with swords, they ruled with access.

One of the seven cursed keeps was theirs, as each clan had one, and their ring is the relic that belongs to it. Which of the keeps it is has not been established.

The Regent

When the Empire fell, the head of Säv held the title of regent of the throne and was the last thing holding the whole of it together. What happened next is told as rumor and has never been told any other way. The regent went mad. Somebody killed them for the good of everyone around them, and with that death the Empire did not decline; it stopped.

Some accounts have it done inside the clan, by the regent’s own kin. Others have it done by someone merely close, a best friend or a bodyguard. The regent is never named in either.

That death is the first working of the Shattered Throne anyone can point to. The curse sends rulers in Idir mad, and it began by taking the last ruler the Empire had.

What Is Left

A ring, and very little else. The Ring of Säv is the clan’s regalia and the ring of its head, a plain electrum band that opens Mól locks and knows when its siblings are near. There is said to be only one of it, which sits oddly beside a ring that senses its own kind. Those who held it before, so the story runs, died in their sleep or disappeared.

Nancáro, whose memory of the Empire is the best source anyone has for it, can offer almost nothing here. The Säv were loyal to the Emperor through and through, he recalls no defectors among them, and defectors are where most of what he knows came from.

Campaign Updates

The ring is in Mikhail’s pocket and has never been on his hand. Torgun Kurvroc gave it to him as a Muharib heirloom, which it is not, though the motto cut into it is Muharib’s own and nobody has explained that either.

Something is looking for it. The Syndicate is named as an organization that hunts the ring and the Säv legacy generally, and that name is the whole of what is known: Mikhail went after more and came back with nothing else. No agent of it has been seen, described, or placed in a room.