House Luthe
House Luthe holds the county of Broken Hills. It is ruled by Countess Elsa Luthe. It is a vassal of House Gabel.
History
House Luthe came to rule Broken Hills in 537 and is well established in the area. The county's abundant iron mines and the access to the rest of the Empire provided by the River Reuss, which flows through the hills, has historically granted House Luthe prosperity beyond what might be expected of a place with a meagre population and generally poor farmland. This state of affairs continued in a generally satisfactory way until 628, when Broken Hills found itself dealing with a series of mine collapses. The first one was chalked up as a tragedy, the second as an unfortunate coincidence, but the third in the course of a year started to cause panic. The tempo eased, but two further collapses in 629, and another two after that in 630, each claiming the lives of a number of miners, have left House Luthe and its smaller vassal houses hard-pressed indeed to find labourers. Wages soared and worker numbers decreased. House Luthe's income has plummeted and it struggles to maintain its domain.
Countess Elsa Luthe took on the rule of Broken Hills in early 631. Her mother, Liselotte, the previous countess, had been infirm for some years and the stress of dealing with the mines exacerbated her ill health. Abdication is rare in the empire but not unheard of and, in the circumstances, the imperial court had no difficulty with Liselotte ceding her seat to her heir, Elsa.
Until 631, House Luthe also ruled over the Bounding Levels, a vast region of moorland and swamp to the east of Broken Hills, between it and the sea. The Levels required ongoing efforts to patrol and offer virtually nothing in return. As the Broken Hills mine collapses worsened, House Luthe, lacking the funds to sustain withdrew its soldiers from the Levels to the hills. Over time, this allowed brigands to establish themselves in the Levels, using them as a hideout from which to raid surrounding land. In 631, under the oversight of the new countess, House Luthe ceded rule of the levels to House Ehrhart, much to the general relief of its members.
Holdings
House Luthe's seat of power is in Pitwall, a small town built up around a castle on a hill overlooking the Reuss. The town is used as a hub for receiving mined material from elsewhere in the county and loading it onto vessels to be sent farther downriver, where it is typically loaded onto seagoing ships in the port town of Oldan, now held by House Ehrhart. The castle at Pitwall is modest in size but has strong, high walls.
Current Events
House Luthe's coffers are stretched thin indeed with the problems posed by the mine collapses. While the last collapse was in 630, the shadow cast by them looms large. The collapsed mines have yet to be reopened, despite that some have particularly rich seams of iron ore. Miners are often superstitious at the best of times and simply will not venture into the collapsed tunnels. Members of House Luthe have increased their presence at the imperial court lately, in part to assert the continued relevance of their house and in part to seek novel solutions.