Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-9435571-20130909155129/@comment-188432-20130910211744

My first instinct was to go with Revan on this one, but after putting every NA, BNA, MA, EDA, PDA, and TN into the hopper, it appears not to be a FP-only deal. "Great Houses" is definitely a Marc Platt-ism, not a Larry Miles-ism. It appears in Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible. The Time Lord scholar Quartinian gives the history of the whole Pythia thing and concludes by saying, "Thus were founded the Great Houses of Gallifrey that we know today."

Platt's a even a bit more confusing in Lungbarrow, where he at first calls them — wait for it — "Great Chapterhouses". I've not made a typo there. "Chapter" and "house" in one word. But then throughout the book it's often "Houses".

It's also picked up by Terrance Dicks of all people, who wove it into the story of his Great Vampires in Blood Harvest. There, he has Lord Sargon say to Romana, "I am afraid that what you say is all too rue. Many of the Great Houses bore the taint of vampirism.  When the vampires were overthrown many Lords over-reacted.  They tried to pretend that vampires did not exist, had never existed. Naturally enough, they were not believed …  Many Great Houses were as corrupted as the Three themselves … "

But, as far as I can tell, that's it. That is the limit of the term "Great House" in DWU novels. Maybe there's something in the short stories — you'd have to ask Shambala108 about that — but generally Great Houses are indeed more of a Faction Paradox term than a DW one. Problem is, they are a DW term, so we can't just rename the page.

It's my feeling at this point that Great House and Great Chaptehouse and Chapter House are all the same thing. Might be wrong, but it seems like the distinction is between "Chapters" and "Chapterhouses". In other words, you can come from the House of Lungbarrow, but be a Prydonian or a Patrexes or whatever chapter will have you.


 * Incidentally:


 * there's an entirely different kind of Great House in Mission: Impractical — nothing to do with Gallifrey — as if all this weren't fun enough
 * all this stuff is exactly why RTD wisely killed off the Time Lords; DW is so much better without this crap