IMPERIAL CITY NOBLE
Refer to the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide page 154 for more information.
You are a scion of one of the great noble families of the Imperial City. Human families who jealously guard their privilege and place in the City of Splendors, Imperial City nobles have a reputation across Tamriel for being eccentric, spoiled, venal, and, above all else, rich.
Whether you are a shining example of the reason for this reputation or one who proves the rule by being an exception, people expect things of you when they know your surname and what it means. Your reasons for taking up adventuring likely involve your family in some way: Are you the family rebel, who prefers delving in filthy dungeons to sipping zzar at a ball? Or have you taken up sword or spell on your family's behalf, ensuring that they have someone of renown to see to their legacy?
Work with your DM to come up with the family you are part of, with its own financial interests, specialties, and schemes. You might be part of the main line of your family, possibly in line to become its leader one day. Or you might be one of any number of cousins, with less prestige but also less responsibility.
Skill Proficiencies: History, Persuasion
Tool Proficiencies: One type of gaming set or one musical operation
Languages: One of your choice
Equipment: A set of fine clothes, a signet ring or brooch, a scroll of pedigree, a skin of fine brandy or wine, and a purse containing 80 septims
FEATURE: KEPT IN STYLE
While you are in the Imperial City or elsewhere in Cyrodiil your house sees to your everyday needs. Your name and signet are sufficient to cover most of your expenses; the inns, taverns, and feast halls you frequent are glad to record your debt and send an accounting to your family's estate in the Imperial City to settle what you owe.
This advantage enables you to live a comfortable lifestyle without having to pay 2 gp a day for it, or reduces the cost of a wealthy or aristocratic lifestyle by that amount. You may not maintain a less affluent lifestyle and use the difference as income-the benefit is a line of credit, not an actual monetary reward.
SUGGESTED CHARACTERISTICS
Use the tables for the noble background in the Player's Handbook as the basis for your traits and motivations, modifying the entries when appropriate to suit your identity as a member of an Imperial City family.
Like other nobles, you were born and raised in a different world from the one that most folk know – one that grants you privilege but also calls you to fulfill a duty befitting your station, or it could be concerned with another noble house that sides with or opposes your own. Your ideal depends to some extent on how you view your role in the family, and how you intend to conduct yourself in the world at large as a representative of your house.