Who are the Starfield House Varuun? Often mis-referred to as House of Varuun, these religious zealots were revealed for the first time almost two years ago, in a video titled The Settled Systems, featuring design director Emil Pagliarulo. So far, we don’t know a whole lot about this religion, but we can piece together enough information to get a general picture.
Firstly, and most importantly, it doesn’t seem like House Varuun is one of the main Starfield factions, instead acting as a Starfield religion. The important distinction is that you may not be able to actually join House Varuun like you can Starfield Constellation, for example. With that in mind, here’s what you need to know about House Varuun in Starfield.
Who is House Varuun?
House Varuun are religious zealots who worship a deity called the ‘Great Serpent’. The religion claims its initial encounter with the Great Serpent led to time slowing down, and a revelation that unless you follow the Great Serpent, you’ll be devoured by it.
In a Discord Q&A with Pagliarulo and Will Shen, lead quest designer, they revealed that throughout the game, the truth behind House Va’ruun is actually a little ambiguous.
Pagliarulo explains “the gossip among the guards” is that a colony ship sets off for a new world, grav jumping their way there, when one passenger claims he was in communication with a “celestial entity known as the Great Serpent” during a grav jump. Essentially, he claimed time slowed down, so the few seconds everyone else experienced was longer for him, and the one takeaway from his supernatural experience is that everyone must follow the Great Serpent, or be devoured when the Great Serpent encircles the universe.
Is it true? We don’t know, and Pagliarulo refrained from giving any more details, but he did confirm you’ll sometimes face off against House Varuun as enemies, leading us to believe you won’t be able to join them. However, one of the Starfield traits is called Serpent’s Embrace, which means your character grew up worshipping the Great Serpent.
The benefit is that you gain a temporary boost to health and oxygen when grav jumping, but both vitals are lowered if you don’t jump regularly. Picking this trait will allow for some unique House Varuun dialogue, including the option to bypass combat when you encounter other members of the religion in space.
As a bonus, one eagle-eyed Redditor playing Morrowind found what could possibly be the inspiration for House Varuun, and if not, a very interesting coincidence.
Where is House Varuun based?
As far as we know, House Varuun doesn’t have one single base of operations. We know they can be found in Sol, which is our real-world solar system with Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and so on, but beyond that, we don’t know where else they may be. Depending on the size of the religion, they may be all across the galaxy, or solely limited to Sol.
From the clip above during the Starfield Direct, Brian Chapin, lead city designer, encountered a ‘Varuun Hymn’ ship in the Sol system. They are able to escape without getting into combat thanks to a dialogue check only possible due to the Serpent’s Embrace trait.
House Varuun members and quests
While we don’t know of any notable House Varuun members yet, we do know of three enemy types you’ll encounter:
- Varuun Zealot – standard enemy, like a grunt.
- Varuun Robot Model A – humanoid robots.
- Varuun Robot Model S – quadrupedal robots.
We’d imagine there will be some named NPCs, as it is confirmed there will be quests related to House Varuun, but at the time of writing this is all we know.
How to join House Varuun
As explained above, it seems unlikely you’ll be able to join House Varuun in the same manner as the major factions in the game. Reading into what Pagliarulo and Bethesda have disclosed ahead of launch, House Varuun is a hostile faction by default, and while you can pick the Serpent’s Embrace trait to make your character grow up as a House Varuun member, whether this counts as actually joining the religion is another question entirely.
This is because Starfield has two sets of factions – major and minor. Major factions are those who tie into the main story and you can actively join, while minor factions include other religions, spacers (who are your standard hostile bandit), and bounty hunters.
So far, this is all we know about the Starfield House Varuun religion, but if there is any more info to share when the embargo lifts, we will update this guide.
Still looking for more? While a good Starfield wiki can be a handy source of information, our new Starfield Database goes further, offering you daily news, searchable databanks, and even interactive tools.