Medissa (Politics)

This remote city is not one faction, but many competing groups. House Aleur is ascendant. The other houses who wish to take their place know that the first to move will fail, but the second is likely to succeed. So they spend their time goading their rivals into acting first. Take the time to learn what plots are in motion, because it is easy for newcomers like yourself to unwittingly get caught up in the moves and counter-moves without earning yourself any advantage.

Agents
There are Medissan operatives up and down the Widlas Coast. It is common for the actual battles between houses to occur outside of the city limits. It is also common for the houses to send their younger members out into other cities to gather intelligence or gain resources to tip the scales of the struggle in their favor.

Capabilities
All of Medissa’s agents are skilled in subterfuge and secrecy. Each house also has it’s own specialty. Aleur makes use of poison and alchemy. Paparni has contacts with thieves and the underworld throughout Myrnia. House Masclo deals in blackmail and extortion. House Thisqui has employed skilled wizards and sorcerers who lean toward the darker implementations of the art. There are other, smaller houses with different specialties, but outside of Medissa it is common for an agent to pretend to be part of one house when they really work for another.

Agenda
Medissa is almost entirely focused inward in its conflict, and that can be explained by the difficulty in travelling to their city by land or sea. A conquering army or commercial operation would be expensive. However, so long as their competition is against one another it is a zero-sum game. Each house wishes to bring outside resources into their fight because this allows them to tilt the odds in surprising ways. This is the main purpose of the many agents and cells the houses deploy around Myrnia: to find an unexpected advantage which will give them an edge against the other houses.