The House Under Three Moons

This is for the Conquest of Albion Orlando Based LARP.

The Last Roman Shifter Manor of Chichester, 1068 AD

Long before the Normans raised castles across Sussex, before Saxon kings ruled the southern coast, and before Londinium grew into the great city of London, three ancient Shifter families held estates in the lands surrounding Chichester. Their history was never written openly in the records of kings or bishops. Among the supernatural peoples of Avalon, however, they were remembered as the House Under Three Moons. Each family traced its rise to the Roman Empire, and each began not among the privileged, but among those who had once been slaves. Through strength, service, fortune, and the hidden power of Shifter blood, all three were eventually elevated into the lesser nobility and granted lands in Roman Britain. By 1068 AD, two of their ancestral manor houses had disappeared into ruin, while only one remained.

The old traditions of these families claimed that their history in Britain began with the first Roman expeditions into the island during the age of Julius Caesar and continued through the true Roman conquest and the building of Londinium generations later. Chichester and the surrounding lands became an important southern gateway for men, supplies, craftsmen, animals, and wealth moving inland from the Channel. In the secret histories of Avalon, the Three Moons families helped guard these roads and estates while concealing their true nature from ordinary Roman society.

The first family was the House of the Black Moon, descended from a Garou gladiator remembered in family legend as Varro Lupus. He had fought as a slave in the Roman arenas and gained freedom and fame through victories said to have begun around 216 BC. Unknown to most Romans, Varro carried the blood of the Garou and belonged to the lineage that would later be associated with the Shadow Lords Tribe. His descendants entered Roman military service and became valued as soldiers, scouts, and enforcers. Generations later, members of his family traveled into Britannia and established a fortified estate near Chichester. Beneath the appearance of a prosperous Roman villa, the Black Moon manor contained hidden chambers, weapons stores, and protected places where members of the family could survive the dangers of their changing nature. Within the alliance of the Three Moons, the Wolf House became the sword and shield.

The second family became the House of the Amber Moon, and its ancestry stretched far to the east, into Mesopotamia and the lands associated with the Edessan peoples. Its most famous ancestor was a woman remembered as Da Jojilla, who was taken into Roman slavery and brought into the household of a wealthy Roman master. Da Jojilla carried the blood of the Bastet, specifically the wandering Pumonca, though few outside her own descendants ever knew this truth. Her master eventually fell deeply in love with her, and through intelligence, patience, and her growing influence within his household, Da Jojilla rose from slavery to freedom and eventually to wealth. Her children and descendants learned Latin and Roman customs while privately preserving fragments of their eastern language and heritage. When members of the family were later granted land in Britannia, they constructed the most elegant of the three estates, filled with orchards, herb gardens, painted walls, and mosaics depicting great hunting cats. To ordinary Roman visitors, these images were decoration. To the family, they were declarations of blood.

The third family was the House of the White Moon, descended from the Kinfolk of the Gurahl and a mysterious ancestor remembered only as Ursus, meaning “the Bear.” Little was preserved concerning his birthplace or true name, but his descendants became known for their great strength, endurance, patience, skill in farming, and unusual connection to the land. They developed large fields, orchards, beehives, wells, and woodland holdings around their manor. While the Black Moon defended and the Amber Moon gathered knowledge, the White Moon preserved food, healing, and the health of the land itself. Family stories claimed that true Gurahl sometimes came from the forests to visit the manor and were never challenged. Servants were taught that if a great bear walked toward the estate beneath the moon, every gate was to be opened.

Together the three families formed an alliance that survived the Roman occupation and became known as the House Under Three Moons. Their emblem showed three moons above a single Roman house: the black moon of the Wolf, the amber moon of the Cat, and the white moon of the Bear. They did not always agree, nor were they of the same people, Tribe, or bloodline, but each understood that their survival depended upon the others. The Wolf defended the families, the Cat watched and remembered, and the Bear sustained them. Through the centuries Rome weakened and finally withdrew from Britain. Saxons came, languages changed, old Roman temples fell, roads crumbled, and the great villas were gradually converted into fortified farms and timber halls. Yet the Three Moons endured.

Their decline came slowly. The descendants of the Black Moon became fewer as Garou wars, tribal conflicts, and mortal battles claimed their warriors. Some left Sussex entirely, while others disappeared into neighboring communities. The White Moon endured longer, but its Gurahl Kinfolk gradually spread among farming and woodland families through marriage and migration. By the ninth century, the three great houses no longer possessed the strength they had known under Roman rule. Then came the fires remembered by the family as the destruction of 865 AD. Whether caused by raiders, local warfare, supernatural enemies, or some combination of all three was never discovered. The old Black Moon manor burned. The White Moon holdings were destroyed. The Amber Moon estate also fell into ruin, and for a time it seemed that the House Under Three Moons had finally ended.

A descendant of Da Jojilla eventually returned to the ruined Amber Moon estate. She is remembered in the surviving family records as Jocelyn of the Amber Moon, although accounts disagree over whether she herself possessed the ability to

Change or was a powerful Pumonca Kinfolk. Jocelyn rebuilt the manor using whatever remained. Fire-blackened Roman stones were cleaned and returned to the walls, old bricks were recovered from the ruins, and a new timber hall was raised over portions of the ancient foundations. Beneath the eastern side of the house, workers uncovered an old mosaic that had survived the destruction. It depicted a great cat standing beneath three moons. Jocelyn ordered that the mosaic never be removed and renamed the rebuilt estate not merely the Amber Moon Manor, but the House Under Three Moons, preserving the memory of all three families.

By 1068 AD, more than two centuries had passed since that rebuilding. William of Normandy claimed England, Norman soldiers traveled the ancient roads of Sussex, new castles were being raised, and land that had belonged to Saxon families for generations was being redistributed. Yet outside Chichester stood a manor whose foundations were older than any Norman claim to Britain. To a traveler it appeared to be a prosperous timber estate surrounded by orchards, barns, workshops, cultivated fields, and remnants of Roman stonework. A weathered column still supported part of one entrance, ancient tiles were built into the hearths, and beneath the manor survived Roman cellars, storage rooms, a forgotten shrine, and the mosaic of the three moons.

The descendants of Da Jojilla still lived there in 1068. More importantly, they continued keeping the genealogies of the other two houses. They believed that neither the Wolf nor the Bear bloodlines had truly vanished. Descendants of the Black Moon had simply disappeared into the villages and warrior families of Sussex, while descendants of Ursus had become farmers, woodsmen, healers, and shepherds who no longer remembered the supernatural blood running through their families. For generations, the Pumonca descendants recorded marriages, births, unusual talents, strange survivals, and every child who displayed signs that the ancient blood might again be awakening.

Thus, by the time of the Conquest of Albion, the House Under Three Moons was more than an old manor. It had become an archive of blood, preserving nearly a thousand years of hidden Shifter ancestry in southern England. As Norman power spread across Sussex and ancient supernatural factions struggled over the future of Avalon, those records could prove more valuable than the manor itself. Somewhere among the villages might still walk descendants of the Black Wolf. Somewhere in the forests might remain the blood of Ursus. And beneath the surviving manor outside Chichester, the descendants of an enslaved Edessan woman still guarded their ancestral mosaic and remembered the promise made by three families long ago: three bloodlines, three moons, but one house.