Just imagine what the scions we meet in Gideon the Ninth would look like in a story focused on BoE, where the Houses were much more straightforwardly portrayed as the baddies...
Captain Judith Deuteros, daughter of the ruthless Admiral of the Undying Fleet and a member of the feared and secretive military intelligence Bureau of the Cohort. On the battlefield, she sucks the life from her enemies, who die writhing and screaming at her feet while she feeds their life energy to her minion to make her attacks stronger. Committed above all else to order and the stability of the empire.
Crown Princess Coronabeth Tridentarius and Princess Ianthe Tridentarius, born in defiance of zombie superstitions about twins, are inseparable. They conduct state business, do necromancy, and even sleep at each other's side. There are rumours their closeness is beyond that of sisters... The Crown Princess appears to have used flesh magic to make herself the more beautiful and desirable of the two, possibly at some cost to her sister. Their minion serves them both and is a professional fighter, duelling other wizards' minions for their entertainment. It is said they used their magic to give him an unbeatable fighter's build. But there is another way that he serves them: when doing necromancy, they consume his hair, nails, and even his living flesh to increase the power of their spells.
Baron Isaac Tettares is a child that rules a world of child soldiers bred to die for their Emperor. Grown in vats, or to young mothers who serve their planet in this way, often from the stored DNA of long-dead soldiers, they are trained to turn the human body into a bomb, desecrating the dead on a battlefield to turn the tide for their side. Their bodies are scarred with blood magic wards and their minions wield swords bigger than their own growing frames. Such is their devotion to the Emperor, if cornered they may even turn their abilities on themselves, turning themselves into a weapon with their final breath. But Baron Tettares' agenda may not be his own...
Lady Abigail Pent may seem an unassuming, bespectacled academic, interested only in dusty books and ancient artefacts, but she is a Speaker to the Dead who summons and controlls the spirits of the dead with sacrifices of human blood. Her impeccable aristocratic manners scarcely conceal the uncanny mannerisms of one who has spent too much time with starving, feral ghosts. On ascending to power, she made her husband - already her chief bureaucrat - her minion. She rules the Koniortos Court, the arcane, sprawling bureaucracy that manages the Nine Houses and their empire, and jealously guards the secrets of crafting stele, monoliths whose glyphs, filled with blood, allow the zombies to navigate their spacecraft through liminal death space. Having raised Baron Tettares after his parents' death, the soldiers of the Fourth House owe their loyalty to the imperial paymasters of the Fifth, and many fear they hope to bring other Houses under their power too...
Master Warden Palamedes Sextus oversees the Library, the repository of the Empire's knowledge of necromancy. The grey scholars of the Sixth House live lives entirely controlled by the Library: children are planned by committee, raised in dormitories, and trained in accordance with the wishes of the secretive Oversight Body. Exams and rankings are everything. Palamedes himself was selected as their leader after passing a rigorous series of exams aged only 13. To prevent the genetic extinction of their small House, some without necromantic abilities are raised to become members of their eugenic breeding army, using their skills to acquire fresh genetic materials. The Master Warden's own minion - his cousin, like all his fellows in the Library - is rumoured to have such training, as it is well known that the Librarians are better lovers than they are fighters.
Duchess Dulcinea Septimus is the apogee of the Seventh House's commitment to the ideals of beauty and power, the result of centuries of selectively breeding strains of the ruling family's hereditary blood cancer. Its sufferers die slowly and in great pain, but it is believed that their condition grants them immensely powerful necromantic abilities. On their deaths, the bodies of the Seventh rulers are perfectly preserved by the secretive dark arts of their House, to be feared and admired by generations to come.
Master Templar Silas Octakiseron is the boy priest who rules the Eighth House, fanatical servants of the zombies' false god-king. Guardians of their holy books and inquisitors of heretical deviation from their teachings, the Templars will stop at nothing to preserve the moral purity of the Empire. Wizards of the Eighth House derive their power from banishing the souls of their minions into the mouth of Hell and harvesting the energy that rushes into the empty husks of their bodies. Extraordinary genetic compatibility is required for this, and minions are usually close relatives who have been bred and engineered to serve their wizard masters. These banishments exact a huge toll on the minions' bodies, and few survive unchanged.
Little is known about the secretive Ninth House, only that it is home to a death cult that all but worships the tomb imprisoning the greatest enemy of their false god-king, said to be the only thing that could kill him. A expedition there was lost two decades ago, and it is rumoured that there is a single living human survivor held there and tormented for the entertainment of their reclusive leaders, while the skeletons of those who died on impact are enslaved to work their fields forever.
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