House Ruttyer

The Rat House

House Ruttyer does not come from Noble stock. Created in 430.M41, it is one of the youngest Houses of the Prosperitas Sector, a position it clawed its way into literally from amongst the muck of the Sector. House Ruttyer are Pickers and Dustfolk waste salvagers and recyclers who, united under the current head of the family, Gaedrun Ruttyer, found wealth in the waste of others. Sometimes called the King of the ‘Rat House’, Gaedren Ruttyer, built his empire on the back of other people’s garbage, and is a self-made man of considerable power and social standing with a wide-reaching hand across the sector despite his filthy origins.

Because it represents a powerful alliance of Corpseguilds, Recyc Guilds and others who have signed to Ruttyer's Charters of waste management, the House has managed to secure a valuable exclusive charter. The House charter grants it dominion over the interstellar trade and transport of specifically fissionable materials and waste — making it both considerably wealthy and incredibly essential to running the Hive and Imperial Worlds. How the House secured such a monopoly and a Noble Charter to go with it is something of a mystery, but many suspect that some of the debts owed by House Durovera not claimed by House Globex were an extensive line of credit offered by House Ruttyer who then used them to strongarm their current Charter.

In addition to its monopoly, the House's ability to cease to tend to the waste of a world as a threat gives it a powerful bargaining tool. Ruttyer can, and has in the past threatened to, paralyse waste recycling and disposal facilities across the Sector — a not insignificant threat, given how much waste the average Imperial world produces in a day.

Though the House is powerful it is not socially liked and its scions are considered to be rough-cast ‘new money’ by the other Nobles of the Prosperitas Sector. Their love of gaudy, tasteless expressions of wealth compared to the more refined look of the Nobility of the other Houses drives a wedge between them and other Nobles. Worse still, there are persistent rumours that the House has numerous illegal and semi-legal operations that are hidden beneath the guise of what is otherwise presented as a legal haulage business. Some would cast Gaedrun Ruttyer as a Crime Baron who has carved out legitimacy with a Noble title - but those that insult him do not last long, for the Rat King of House Ruttyer suffers no slight lightly.

The House has always publicly disavowed any of its Chartist Captains accused of or even caught involved in such operations. Investigations into the activities of the House are almost-always ongoing and almost-always never resolved. This is never helped by many Planetary Governors being unwilling to threaten their relationship with the House by aiding Arbites investigations of its assets, otherwise risking being left with their cities drowning in overflowing waste.

The House stayed studiously neutral though the House Conflicts that ended in 595.M41, choosing not to get involved in the bickering. Rumours began to circulate from mid 594.M41 that the Rat House had made an alliance of sorts with House Vilas-Lobo, backed up with the House of Jackals' choice to grant House Ruttyer a potentially right to execute its claim to the Sector's charter for movement of human and abhuman cargo once held by house Monforte.

The center of the House's power is its fleet, but it also controls the planetary rulership of the toxic Hive World of Letifer Secundus, an arrangement achieved by a marriage-alliance with the now-gone minor house of House Bratix and the absorption of the family into the Ruttyer bloodline. Ruttyer has made a great deal out of its dominion of Letifer; the planet's toxic chemicals are mined for a number of uses in waste disposal and the vast wastelands between the hives make more than adequate landfill for waste deposits.

Notable Nobles of House Ruttyer

Lord Gaedren Ruttyer is Head of House Ruttyer. Known throughout the Sector as ‘The Rat King’, he has thoroughly co-opted the term, initially intended as an insult. At nearly three hundred years of age Gaedren has quite literally built an Empire out of trash and salvage, ruthlessly bringing most of the Waste Collection Guilds in the Prosperitas Sector under the influence of his House and ensuring the successful installment of his son, Axelus, as the Governor of the poison-world Letifer Secundus. It is constantly rumored that Gaedren is well aware of the suspicions of criminal activity and smuggling carried out by the ships of the family fleet and that the ‘Rat King’ sits at the center of a verminous criminal empire hidden behind a charter of Nobility. Those who openly make such accusations often fall afoul of bad luck, and no Arbites investigation into Gaedren has ever successfully led to a prosecution.

It is said that the ‘Rat King’ has no friends amongst the nobility, and that is largely true; the deformed, pale, figure of the voidborn Master of House Ruttyer is shamelessly unkempt in public and notoriously miserly towards his extensive family. His ship is the Trancier-class hyperhauler waste barge Diamond of Prosperitas.

Lord Gaedren has remained aloof from the conflicts between the various Houses, publicly declaring the Rat House unwilling to accept the authority of the Di Firro, Durovera or Vilas-Lobo “Petty Regents” and choosing instead to play all three to continue to gain power.

Governor Axelus Ruttyer is the Governor of Letifer Secundus and the son of Gaedren Ruttyer. The most favoured of Gaedren’s sixteen children, he was selected to be his father’s right hand on Letifer when the House won rulership of the planet via Axelus’ marriage to a lady of a lesser Noble House. Considered much like his father in temperament, Axelus is nonetheless better presented then his father and carries with him an air of nobility that the Rat King lacks, the product of several years of Collegia education. As a result, Axelus is often viewed as the ‘face’ of House Ruttyer, and represents his father where intimidation will not suffice in the place of more civilized nobility.

Though he has many siblings, Axelus is the current heir to the House and possesses three daughters and three sons educated in the manner of the House and the Praefectus Imperialis. He is, however, the only non-fleetbound Ruttyer, as the job of retaining order on Letifer Secundus takes his full attention.