Lets start talking about noble families, big named people, movers and shakers in the world.
What kind of personalities would we like to see, what kind of people from different factions?
I'll start with an example of what I mean, and by no means does this have to conform to a template.
Tobias Gint House Hathor, Merchants Guild.
Owning the controlling stake in some of the worlds greatest ports, Tobias has managed to elevate himself much higher than his predecessors in House Hathor. Of a minor branch from the Julit line of fame and fortune, House Hathor fell on considerably difficult times during the gray plague that felled many cities, resulting in the loss of trade assets and shipping concerns that had been shot out of the sky by military's the world over during a brutal attempt to suppress the plagues spread during its earliest stages.
From humble beginnings as a clerk at James and Sons shipping, Tobias began collecting a network of informants from the city's youth, using his natural good wit and easy charm to cajole, sell, bribe and even blackmail opponents and allies alike till he had amassed a staggering fortune for a man of only 24 years of age.
His first order of business was to secure proper investments for his considerable income, that was quickly wearing a hole in his pocket due to the nature of high class societies trappings and needs. Again relying on his network of now expansive informants he discovered a rather little known fact of a warm spring in the Yeshan west. With further knowledge he soon discovered that on such a spring nine years past a large swarm of locust had nearly wiped out the grain industry of the entire southern side of the nation, leaving the Arashi city states in desperate need of food.
With new contacts in the Chaladonian Order Tobias began buying up ships as quickly as he could, sending letters and contracts while negotiating prices with Chaladonian merchants on the prospective yield of crops that hadn't even matured yet.
He gambled it all on this venture, reasoning that even if Yeshan crops didn't fail that year, he wouldn't lose every penny.
The resulting summer brought one of the most devastating locust swarms that the Yeshan Empire had ever seen. Tobias's purchase of huge swathes of grain based on prospective yields had encouraged Chaladonian farmers to plant extra rows, yielding a surplus that was sold at an extreme mark up as the west starved for a need of food that Tobias was more than willing to provide under a new business charter called the "Eastern Grain Trade Alliance". With Chaladon farmers being handsomely paid for their grain, and merchant ships collecting a substantial revenue in taxes the addition of several prominent Guild families monetary might was added to the alliance, allowing them to buy out the native Yeshan grain sellers, cementing the name Tobias and the Eastern Grain Trade Alliance as the premiere seller of dependable food stuffs across the continental south.
