House K’tenshin, the House of Nine Diamonds, was founded two centuries before the Orichalcum Wars by four t’skrang villages west of Lake Pyros. These villages had acquired great wealth through piracy and, more importantly, they had acquired influence among the Therans through the Theran trading house of Carinci. Eventually the villages decided to build a huge river settlement from which they could absorb weaker communities into their growing network of alliances and propel their burgeoning enterprises to even greater success. They pooled their wealth and, through their contacts in House Carinci, bought the services of a number of skilled Theran Elementalists to aid in the design and construction of the ambitious new settlement: a city-sized kaer now known as the Sixteen Towers of House K’tenshin. The project also cemented an alliance between the t’skrang of House K’tenshin and the Theran Empire that has lasted for almost a thousand years.