Noble

Nobles constitute a very small minority of a land's population. Yet by breeding, or at least by birth, and certainly by education, they are the superiors and "natural" rulers of the rest.

The distance that seperates the nobles from the rest varies from land to land. But generally they live by different laws, answer to a diffent morality, and act with very near perfect impunity in respect to their lessers.

Although most nobles have one or more levels in the class aristocrat, this is by no means an obligation. Nobles as diverse as Count Strahd von Zarovich and the Weathermay-Foxgrove Twins have no such levels. A passion, a calling, force of circumstance may all entail a different path. And that different path may, however legitimate, prove to be a disadvantage in the struggle between aristocrats themselves.