House Tarkanan is a criminal guild with growing influence in many of the great cities of Khorvaire. Children of Khyber who join House Tarkanan are trained in the use of their aberrant marks and also encouraged to develop skills that can serve the guild directly. An heir with powers of charm person or suggestion usually becomes a con artist or extortionist, while one with a poison touch may be trained as an assassin. The lords of House Tarkanan believe that a second War of the Mark is inevitable, and this filters through the daily life of house members: Tarkanans learn to see their comrades as fellow soldiers in an army and to consider all non-aberrants as potential enemies.
From Sharn
House Tarkanan is known as a small order of
highly skilled assassins and thieves. When they fi rst
appeared in Sharn six years ago, the Boromar Clan
attempted to assimilate them, and when that didn’t
work, to eliminate them. The members of the socalled
house turned out to have impressive skills and
organization, and the Boromars ultimately backed
down from the confl ict. The Boromar Clan doesn’t
traffi c in assassination in any case, so an agreement
was made: As long as House Tarkanan would agree
to never accept a contract against a Boromar, the
Boromar Clan would allow the house to operate in
Sharn without paying tribute.
Today, House Tarkanan focuses on three services.
The fi rst is theft—both burglary and the work
of the cutpurse. The employer names the target and
provides all necessary information to locate him;
the house does the rest. The price of the job depends
on both the diffi culty of the job and the value of the
object being stolen.
The second service is assassination. The price
varies based on the level of the target and the complexity
of the scenario. Simply killing a man with a
quick death attack in a bar is considerably easier that
infecting him with a fatal disease and making sure
that he dies of “natural” causes.
The final service is manslaughter. Simpler
than assassination, this involves killing the target
quickly and by whatever means are most convenient.
The cost is the same as assassination, but
obviously there is no modifier for the complexity
of the scenario.
House Tarkanan does not target high-ranking
members of any of the major criminal organizations
in Sharn—the Tyrants, Daask, or the Boromar Clan.
The house does not guarantee success; if an assassin
is killed in the course of his mission, the house may
send a second assassin, or they may choose to abandon
the contract, in which case they do refund half of the fee. House Tarkanan also offers one
additional special service: assassination of the soul.
The house possesses a single +1 Keeper’s fang dagger.
For twice the usual fee, a House Tarkanan assassin
will kill her target using the dagger—trapping the
victim’s soul in the domain of the Keeper and thus
preventing her from being raised or resurrected. Of
course, resurrection is rare enough on Eberron that
mutilating the body is often suffi cient to rule out
raise dead.
House Tarkanan’s business is straightforward
enough, and most people who are familiar with the
underworld know of them. However, few people
know the history of the organization. Toward
the end of the Last War, the Brelish King’s Dark
Lanterns assembled a team of spies who all bore
aberrant dragonmarks, hoping to harness their
powers in the work of espionage. The experiment
was a failure, and half the group ended up killed.
The King’s Dark Lanterns tried to silence the
remnants of the group, but its surviving members
f led to Sharn, led by a human woman named
Thora Tavin.
Drawing from her extensive education, Thora
Tavin took up the name of Lord Halas Tarkanan, the
warrior who united the bearers of aberrant dragonmarks
during the War of the Mark, and formed
House Tarkanan as a mockery of the dragonmarked
houses. Thora continues to seek out others who bear
aberrant dragonmarks, as well as other skilled spies
and criminals, to expand the ranks of her organization.
She is driven to learn more about Lord
Tarkanan and the aberrant marks that were exterminated
during the War of the Mark, and spends much
of her organization’s resources funding expeditions
into the ruins of UnderSharn.
Prominent NPCs
Thora Tavin (LE female human rogue 6/assassin
6) is a deadly killer, utterly devoted to her cause,
and if she is evil, it is because she will do absolutely
anything to protect those who bear aberrant
dragon marks—even if it means killing innocents.
She truly sees all who bear aberrant marks as being
part of an extended family, and she will not allow
her family to be exterminated.
The active members of House Tarkanan generally
possess aberrant dragonmarks and 2 or 3 levels
in a player character class. Rogues and sorcerers are
both common, as are barbarians.
Joining House Tarkanan
House Tarkanan generally accepts any character
who has an aberrant dragonmark. The goal of the
house is to train those who have such marks. However,
Thora is a shrewd judge of character, and if
she senses that a new member is working against the
house, she makes a ruthless example of him.
Membership Benefits: House Tarkanan
specializes in theft and assassination. A member
of the house can fence goods at no additional
cost, arrange for burglaries for 15% of the item’s
value, and set up assassinations for a base cost of
250 gp/level of the target—though like all crimes
the cost may be adjusted based on the challenges
involved. In addition, House Tarkanan is the
single greatest source for knowledge about aberrant
dragonmarks and the War of the Mark. A
member of House Tarkanan receives a +3 on any
Knowledge or bardic knowledge check concerning
these subjects, as long as he can consult the
resources of the house.
