House Roshan-Fikran

House Roshan-Fikran has its origins as a vassal House of House Durovera, a bond of loyalty which has remained unsullied through its liege-House’s variable fortunes. Its founder, Nethaniah Roshan-Fikran, was a scholar and academic from a Terran university whose name is lost in the mists of time. Accordingly to legend, Nethaniah was ennobled by an edict of the High Lords, when she successfully computed a safe warp pathway for the Navigators of Durovera’s Crusade to bring the thunder of the Imperium to the Prosperitas Sector.

Nethaniah’s legacy of study and enlightened thinking remains to this day. Following their Founder’s legacy, the scions of House Roshan-Fikran value academic achievement above all other Noble virtues. Children born into the House are ruthlessly assessed and tested for signs of intellectual ability from the day they are conceived, and placed in teaching programmes designed to make the best of their natural talents. House Roshan-Fikran has produced some of the Sector’s finest mathematicians, rhetoricians, artists, astrogation engineers and musicians. Many of these are sent to a career furthering their liege-House’s interests in one way or another, but it is not uncommon for minor Scions of the House to join the Priesthood of Mars, exchanging a life of frivolity and privilege for the chance to use their razor-sharp intellects dissecting the secrets of the Omnissiah. Many also find valuable employment in the Ecclesiarchy, and some of the finest doctrinal minds of the Sector began their lives in Roshan-Fikran womb vats.

The unparalleled wealth that even a vassal House attracts has not sat idle in Roshan-Fikran hands; its hordes of economist-savants and speculator cortices are constantly at work to ensure that the House’s income is put to most fruitful use. Among its investments are a number of works which other, more mercenary Houses sneeringly dub “charity work”. The House endows several thousand academies and Scholae on Imperial worlds across the Sector, taking in clever children from deprived backgrounds, and teaching them Imperial doctrine, rhetoric, mathematics and the theory or warfare. These institutions demand no repayment, and many an Administratum Praefectus began their career as a Roshan-Fikran scholarship child. Very rarely, the best and brightest students are offered a chance to be adopted into the House, raised to a life of unimaginable splendour in return for nothing more than a guarantee that their genetic material will be codified into the gene-vaults.

The House’s traditional seat is at the heart of a hollow moon designated Mazar-63, in orbit around a sterile world in Subsector Primus, among the aged and academic splendour of the chancellor-artisans whose lifelong duty is the crafting of young nobles into finely tuned instruments of the Emperor’s Will. The reputation of Roshan-Fikran House tutors is so great that other Noble Houses, interested in rounded their progeny’s education, will sometimes send them to be fostered at Mazar-63 for a few years, in early childhood.

Notable Nobles of House Roshan-Fikran

Abichael Roshan-Fikran is the head of House Roshan-Fikran. Her kindly and maternal demeanour hides a terrifying intellect. She sponsors many academies and Scholae which take in bright children from poor backgrounds and give them an Imperial education. She has no declared heir and has publicly stated that the House title will pass to any Scion clever enough to defeat her at Regicide two games out of three. None have achieved this so far in forty years of trying. Publicly drawn into the fold alongside Autokrator Durovera in the House conflicts of 593, House Roshan-Fikran have found their fortunes on the rise as Lady-Captain Hermione has favoured the House’s educators over the seminary of St Sebastian’s Redoubt.