Creation

"In silence, through blood."Founder: Serethil Noctbriar, a duelist turned weaponsmith.Current Patriarch: Charnel Noctbriar, Ritual Executioner.

House Noctbriar was founded by the enigmatic Serethil Noctbriar--a warrior marked by scars and bound by a vow of silence, wielding a black blade wreathed in thorns. From her came the Thorns: 6 elite disciples trained in the arts of assassination and warfare, who became the heads of her vassal houses. Unlike other noble families who chased magical power, Noctbriar built its reputation on tangible outcomes: espionage, sabotage, and brutal efficiency on the battlefield. Their influence rose to prominence during the Troll Wars with their constant supply of weaponry.House Noctbriar's banner is a deep, velvety black--framed by six blood-red thorns that coil and twist. Each symbolizing a vassal house, the Spiderfangs, the Blackthorns, the Duskwails, the Nightblooms, the Veilspires, and the Velgraves. At it's center is a stylized obsidian blade, it’s edges sharp, slicing downwards through a crimson wreath of briars. The blade's hilt subtly forms the silhouette of a closed mouth, small crimson runes glowing along its length.

The Noctbriar Code

The Core Tenets:

I. Silence Before Glory
Boasting is Betrayal. Let your actions speak, and your success written in shadow.II. Loyalty Without Mercy
Noctbriar loyalty is unconditional. Betrayal is met with execution.III. Pain is Precision
Pain is not weakness. It is information, it is deserved.IV. The First Kill is the Oath
It is a rite of passage. No member is a true Noctbriar without killing with intent, alone.V. Blades Hold Memory
Secrets are etched in steel, not shared by mouth. Each Noctbriar is to have their kills or orders etched into their blades.VI. Even in Death, Serve
Noctbriar dead are to be harvested, preserved, or used to train medics. They are bound by posthumous oaths.VII. Even Roses Must be Pruned
If a member of the Noctbriar House falters in their duty, the nearest individual must execute them, immediately. The House is stronger for it.VIII. Serve the Keeper without Hesitation
The Keeper (currently Charnel Noctbriar) is the living embodiment of the Noctbriar Code. His orders override morality, love, or reason. Always listen to these orders, for to deny them, it to welcome death.

Specialties

Family Tree

Azadrel Noctbriar
Status: Alive
Class: Arcane Duelist
Appearance: Azadrel's ethereal beauty is matched by her lethality. Her long silver hair it tightly braided and looped about a black circlet, her eyes that same haunting brown-crimson. Ringed by dark shadow. Clad in elegant red and black robes with faint thorn embroidery, she carries a slender rapier always at her side.Charnel's mother. Azadrel acts as the political matron of the Noctbriar House, guiding her son and overseeing diplomatic affairs.Currently: Overseeing court politics and maintaining family alliances.

Vaerion Duskglaive
Status: Deceased
Class: Inquisitor
Appearance: He was lean, with flowing black hair often worn loose and golden eyes that burned with ill-concealed contempt for those he considered lesser. His jaw was square, his nose aquiline, and his features severe. His armor was black, red, and gold.Once an Inquisitor for House Noctbriar, Vaerion married into the bloodline after besting another Thorn in ritual combat. A quiet, but volatile man, he raised Charnel with cold expectation. His death was quick, public, and largely suspicious.

Charnel Noctbriar
Status: Alive
Class: Assassin | Master Duelist | Shadowblade
Appearance: Charnel is lean, and tall, midnight-black hair cropped close, streaked with silver at the temples. His face is angular marked by sharp cheekbones and a scar along his jawline. His piercing brown eyes flicker with crimson and burn with cold calculation. He favors tight black leather armor embroidered with subtle dark red thorns.Current Head of House Noctbriar, Charnel is a master strategist and executor of the Noctbriar Code. His ruthless but precise leadership has revitalized the house, balancing diplomacy with deadly force. He maintains (or maintained) the web between the vassal houses with unyielding control.Currently: Consolidating power within Quel'thalas and maneuvering against House Spiderfang's betrayals.

Aladrea Noctbriar
Status: Alive
Class: Spellblade
Appearance: With pale skin and a harsh expression, Aladrea wears her silver hair in a high knot pinned by obsidian thorns. Her golden eyes burn cold. She favors rich black, red, and golden gowns with structured shoulders and laced gloves.Charnel's younger sister. A master of court intrigue and political manipulation.Currently: Managing diplomatic affairs alongside her mother and training the Noctbriar soldiers.

Saen Noctbriar
Status: Deceased
Class: Blood Knight
Appearance: Saen was broad-shouldered and rugged, with long raven-black hair and a deep scar over his left eye. His face held a hardened expression softened only by moments of rare laughter.Charnel's younger brother. Less shadow and more sword, Saen's death during a doomed frontal assault became a lesson in the cost of arrogance. His name is rarely spoken, save in cautionary tales. His grave remains unadorned.

Creation

"Cleverness is no virtue without cruelty. And poison is mercy when spoken sweetly."Founder: Siryla Spiderfang, former Noctbriar Interrogator.Current Matriarch: Xal'irra Spiderfang, war surgeon and field medic. Assisting the Thalassian Accord in their effort for reunification.

House Spiderfang was born of the shadows that House Noctbriar left behind, like a parasite on Noctbriar's roots. Still very much alive--and watching--House Spiderfang weaves its influence through blood, venom, and pointed silence. Once loyal vassals of the ancient House Noctbriar, they betrayed their patrons in a shrouded conflict little know of.Matriarchal in structure, the Spiderfangs have always wielded their strength from the periphery. Experts in poisons, alchemy, and battlefield medicine, they occupy a strange space between healer and executioner. Their members are rarely seen, but their presence is always felt.Though their ancestral estate is veiled in decay and half-abandoned wings, the family, itself, is far from ruined. They operate through shadowed means, maintaining powerful alliances, a vast network of informants and recruits, and a legacy rooted in precision.The banner of House Spiderfang is a rich tapestry of deep purple and blacks, with silver filigree threading through it's edges. At it's center sprawls a black spider, it's elongated limbs arranged in an elegant yet unnatural symmetry, forming a web-like sigil. Interwoven into the spider's abdomen is a fractured version of the Noctbriar rose--wilted and inverted. Shadowed motifs of needles, vials, and coiling serpents stretch outwards from the central emblem.

Specialties

Family Tree

Vyraeth Spiderfang
Status: Alive
Class: Venefica | Master Alchemist | Occultist
Appearance: Vyraeth radiates unsettling calm. Her skin is ashen lined with faint black veins, her long pale blonde hair streaked with silver, always twisted into horn-like braids or bound into a knot with needles or bone. Her silver eyes are near-luminescent in low light--sharp and unblinking. Her robes are layered silks dyed in bruised lilac and ink, with polished vertebrae and subtle spider motifs.A visionary, tactician, and living legend among poison crafters. Cold, brilliant, and quietly cruel, she is the true power behind the Spiderfang name. Rumors accuse her of orchestrating her consort's death.Currently: Pulling strings and maintaining her role as the public face of the Spiderfang's. Turning a blind eye to Xal'irra's machinations.

Thalryss Spiderfang
Status: Deceased
Class: Hexbinder
Appearance: Tall and bone-thin, with black eyes and slick dark hair. His face bore a hollow, almost serene expression at all times. A smile always on his face, rarely raising his voice. His robes were austere and embroidered with silver thread.A master of tonics and medicine, Thalryss's cruelty lied in his apathy. He treated pain as data, and his children as test subjects. His bond with Vyraeth decayed into rivalry, and with the disappearance of Aelrya Spiderfang, his death still raises quiet questions.

Selannis Spiderfang
Status: Alive
Class: Battlemage
Appearance: Powerful and imposing, with pale blonde hair worn in an intricate braid. Black eyes shine cold, a scar stretching across her cheekbone. She wears reinforced robes with layered mail and vambraces.Once considered heir, Selannis left after a bitter conflict with Vyraeth. Though she hides her past, she still carries the Spiderfang precision in her spellwork and speech. Duty drives her--but so does resentment.Currently: Helping the Kirin Tor rebuild. Refuses to wear the family crest. Sends clipped, coded letters to Caelen only.

Maevric Spiderfang
Status: Alive
Class: Former Blood Knight | Mercenary
Appearance: Lean, cruel-faced, and charismatic. With sharp features and ragged black hair tied loosely at his neck. Black eyes burning with paranoia. Adorned in ruined, bloodstained armor, a large greatsword across his back.Once a rising Knight-Champion among the Blood Knights, Maevric was stripped of his rank and sword following a series of "unfortunate" accidents with potential rivals. Since then, he's turned mercenary, selling his skills in the more shadowed corners of Azeroth.Currently: Wandering the Eastern Kingdoms. Occasionally sends alchemical gifts to his siblings. Keeps a fond but almost twisted loyalty to Xal'irra.

Xal'irra Spiderfang
Status: Alive
Class: Sorceress | Combat Medic | Venefica Noctis
Appearance (post-Void): Pale, almost gray-ish skin, with high cheekbones, cat-like eyes, and a hollow smile. Long black hair with a single streak of white. Her eyes glow violet, a testament to the Void transformation. Her arms and legs stained black. Robes of layered silk and corseted gowns, with weapons sewn into every facet. A ruby locket around her neck.Appearance (pre-Void): Pale complexion, with silver eyes flecked with gray. Long pale-blonde hair often braided in intricate crowns, held in place by combs made of silver. She wore corseted gowns in deep blacks and purples.Xal'irra embodies both the cruelty and genius of her lineage. A brilliant field medic and heiress to the House, she took her father's precision and subtle cruelty and her mother's ambition to new depths. Her loyalty to House Spiderfang is absolute. Formerly betrothed to Charnel Noctbriar, her rival and only former lover. Their split reignited tensions between the Houses.Currently: Acting as an informant for Vaeun Highmourne, acting medic for the Thalassian Accord.

Aelrya Spiderfang
Status: Unknown
Appearance: Slender and pale, with raven-like black hair and golden eyes. She rarely spoke, and often wore cloaks too large for her, hands often tucked into her sleeves. Favoring robes of ash-grey and thistle, her fingers always ink-stained or dusted with dirt from her time in the gardens.Aelrya was the gentlest of the Spiderfang children--curious, dreamy, and out of step with the cold demands of the House. She had a talent for nurturing plants, often tending to the estate's greenhouse with strange lullabies on her lips. Her sudden disappearance (for which Thalryss was blamed) left a hollow in the family's core. Xal'irra, who once braided flowers into her younger sister's hair and slept beside her during storms, has never overcome that grief.Currently: Vanished. Some claim she wanders the halls, half-spirit, half-girl. Some claim they can still hear her lullabies in the garden. Only one truth is certain: when Thalryss was found dead with his eyes open and lips stitched shut, Aelrya's childhood shawl lay beside him. Xal'irra keeps it on her bed.

Caelen Spiderfang
Status: Alive
Class: Historian | Apprentice
Appearance: The boy stands hunched, gaunt with ashen skin and dark rings underneath black eyes. His hands perpetually ink-stained. He has a shock of unruly pale-blonde hair, often wears oversized robes that shroud his figure.The most 'scholarly' of the siblings, Caelen documents the family's history. Obsessed with symbols, codes, and their ancestry. He worships Xal'irra and his mother with near-fanatical admiration.Currently: Lives within the estate in Quel'thalas, researching the links between poison and an individual's health. Often sends encrypted scrolls to Xal'irra with updates on the Noctbriar's movements, and secrets.

Xal'irra Spiderfang was never meant to be soft. Born beneath the silken banners of House Spiderfang--vassals of the militant House Noctbriar--she was raised in a manor where the walls whispered secrets and the servants scurried away in fear. Her home was a shrine to precision and control, to poisons brewed as easily as spider's spun their webs, knowledge wielded like a knife. The Spiderfangs were healers by title, but never were they considered kind.She was the middle child of five, a girl with quiet hands and distant eyes, but sharper words. Xal'irra was her mother's daughter in every way that mattered, almost identical. Vyraeth Spiderfang, the iron-willed matron, had little patience for sons and even less for sentiment. She cultivated her daughters like rare, carnivorous orchids: beautiful, dangerous, and obedient. Her mother's coldness, was sharp. But her father's, Thalryss Spiderfang's was clinical and calculating, cruelty for cruelties sake. His silver-tongued cruelty shaped their children--but it was Vyraeth's will that they feared the most.Her eldest sister Selannis, had fleb the Spiderfang's web entirely. A brilliant arcanist, she forsook her noble title for the cold certainty of Dalaran's spires and the freedom it would grant her. Disappearing into the Kirin Tor with nary a backward glance. Xal'irra never blamed her. Selannis had always been to perceptive for her own good.Her older brother Maevric, once stood like statue carved from ambition--disciplined, charming, and devout. A Blood Knight who made his house proud, until he fell. There were whispers of sowing dissent in their ranks, disobedience, or cruelty unbecoming of the order. Xal'irra remembered him not for his disgrace but for the jokes he used to make at her expense, and the small gifts he'd give when she was younger. They've remained in contact.Caelen, her younger brother was eager to please and desperate to belong. Xal'irra protected him fiercely even when he claimed he didn't need it. She tried to teach him the way she was taught. They parted on tense terms before her exile.Then there was Aelrya, the youngest. She was gentle where others were proud. Curious, quiet, and kind in a way that didn't survive long in a family like theirs. Xal'irra saw in her, a softness she had long buried. They spoke in secret, behind locked doors and stolen moments in the gardens. When Aelrya vanished, Xal'irra tore through the manor in a fury. It was said she was last seen with Thalryss. It was also said that Thalryss died soon after, eyes open and lips stitched shut. Xal'irra nor Vyraeth confirmed any of the rumors.

Xal'irra became the heir apparent out of necessity. Wearing her house's sigil proudly. She trained as a field medic, mastering toxins and cures alike, often in the same breadth. In her youth, she was rarely seen without a satchel of tinctures and her hands stained by ink and herbs. Her appearance then was striking--pale blonde hair in tight braids, spider-lashed silver eyes, and pale skin. Beautiful in a clinical, dangerous way.Her betrothal to Charnel Noctbriar had been arranged according to tradition. Their romance was not tender, but it was consuming. They understood each other in ways no one else could: the ambition, the cruelty, the control, and tradition--two predators circling the same prey. It wasn't love but something much more volatile.Then she betrayed him.Not with a blade, or with poison. But with information.During a clandestine operation jointly orchestrated by House Noctbriar and it's vassals--meant to eliminate a dissident noble--Xal'irra diverted the path of one of Charnel's most trusted enforcers. A single, sweet whisper in the right ear and a sultry promise, unraveled the mission entirely. The dissident survived and the Noctbriar's involvement was leaked. And the enforcer, caught alive, revealed just enough to cast suspicion on Charnel's leadership.No concrete proof linked Xal'irra to the betrayal. But Charnel knew. The way she looked at him before the mission--a sharp smile, steady, and inscrutable. Insisting on staying behind to tend to an "illness" that never existed. The subtle shift in how her mother began to consolidate resources, severing old channels between their houses--and the pointed silence that followed. Not from shame or distance, but something planned.The Spiderfangs did not announce their secession from House Noctbriars collection of vassals. Their sigil and history stripped from House Noctbriar's records. Quietly. Cleanly. Ties severed.To the rest of Quel'thalas it was a mere political reorganization. But to Charnel it was war. Xal'irra's betrayal was more than personal, it was surgical and thought out extensively. She didn't just wound him, but destabilized the very structure he had inherited, revealing the rot beneath. The enforcer who survived the mission--one of Charnel's distant relatives--named tactics that mirrored the Noctbriar's too closely. The fallout forced Charnel to cull a third of his inner circle to maintain what remained of order.So, he began to send enforcers--to drag her back in chains, he said. But they were always given kill orders.

But she was no longer in the shadows of the noble courts. Having willingly entered the void alongside Umbric and the rest of his cronies in a bid to escape pursuit, but also as a form of self-imposed exile. She emerged changed--her pale-blonde hair turned the color of ink, her silver eyes swallowed by glowing violet. A twisted echo of what she had been.And around her throat, wrapped about it like a noose, lied a tattooed crown of briars. A symbol she created. She seeded the rumor, herself: that all vassals of House Noctbriar were branded thus to swear loyalty--bound by blood. Her own agents, spread throughout each vassal house and even the Noctbriar house, wearing one.Every assassin, every rival, and every child of the vassal houses believed the mark meant something. Charnel couldn't dispute it, what with individuals having said markings. His lack of knowledge on the subject lead to doubt--even among his most loyal. Whispers bloomed like rot: Had Charnel lost control? Why did he not know of the customs of his own House? It meant nothing, truly, at least, not officially. Xal'irra had designed it to mean everything. Loyalty, Submission, Inheritance, Rebellion. Whatever the wearer needed it to mean. Some claimed it was a pact made in blood, others said it was a punishment for failure. But in truth it was power.Through that mark, she created a shadowed hierarchy out of Charnel's reach, but within his sphere of influence. She made the concept of control feel like an illusion. And for a man like Charnel, whose entire rule balanced on absolute mastery, it was the deepest cut she could give.And all the while, she watches.Not from a high court or shadowed spire, but from the outer edges of Thalassian power--untethered, but not without influence.For Xal'irra knew, that Charnel had a hand in her younger sister's disappearance. In the dismissive way her spoke of her, in that cruel edge in his eyes and that innocent facade. She knew that somehow, or for whatever reason, Thalryss had delivered Aelrya to Charnel. There was no body, no note, nothing. A trail of inconsistences. And when Charnel began sending those enforcers, not for the betrayal, but to silence her. She took it as proof.

Now, for the moment, she serves as a medic for the Thalassian Accord, lending her mastery of toxins, healing, and subterfuge. Mingling among disparate Thalassians, ideologues, and outcasts.She does not lead House Spiderfang in name--her mother does. But the voice in every letter, the plans, the whispered promises? That voice is hers.