Vaethril
Vaethril trades in licensed agents — the legal fiction through which dragons fight each other, operated out of Duskenford as an ordinary business with ordinary paperwork. Vaethril also keeps informants.
Vaethril calls its position Contemporary. It treats its relationship with elves as one between contemporaries, a distinction it has defended at the Forge since the signing. Its institutions are arcane — literate, procedural and obsessive about precedent. The tradition wrote most of the case law and treats the treaty as an instrument. A primal establishment works alongside the arcane institutions. Their jurisdictions overlap at Duskenford's gate, river court or marriage table, and neither will yield its place.
The holding
the Quiet underground passage — the chartered company with no principal named
Leased cavern mouth in the badlands, walled compound above, stage rents paid to the water records office
Duskenford is a leased cavern mouth in the Sunjara Upland badlands with a walled compound over it, days of dark road behind, and stage rents paid monthly to a water records office that records the lease as a surface opening. The upland carries barley and lentils where the cisterns reach and goats past that, and the compound buys its bread at the stage price rather than the field price, which is what a tenant in somebody else's country pays. Corpse traffic comes up the cavern road under a surcharge, bound north for the Reach tombs. The Sixth Stage lies five days south across the hardpan.
Connections
Every filing out of the Quiet underground passage names a chartered company at Duskenford and no principal, which is what Nuirendil retains it for: toll cases that house would rather not have heard under its own name, and neither will confirm the retainer to anyone who asks.
Allies takes this house’s side 5
Corvane 38 Corvane's soldiers guard Vaethril's cave mouth and the compound above it, paid four times a year. Vaethril keeps no soldiers of its own, so without them the compound has no defence at all.
Cuiveril 43 Four marriages between the two houses in two hundred years. Cuiveril's archive will find Vaethril a legal precedent inside a week.
Emberlin 52 Emberlin's two mercenary companies serve under papers Vaethril holds, so no court record shows Emberlin sending soldiers onto dwarf ground. It is the only reason Emberlin can take work north of the mountains at all.
Drennhold 64 Vaethril copies its list of who rents its way-stations and sends it to Drennhold every month for sixty marks a year. The payment appears in neither house's books.
Nuirendil 76 Nuirendil pays Vaethril to bring the toll cases it does not want its own name on, and Vaethril's court papers name a shell company instead of a client. Vaethril has run eleven such cases for it since 806.
Neutral trades, and no more than that 1
Enemies has something open against it 3
Wexhollow 15 Both bid in 781 to escort the corpse traffic north, and Vaethril won by charging less for water. Wexhollow has twice taken Vaethril to court over its rents and twice been heard without a decision.
Ashgrave 46 The two have been hired against each other over the same cave rents nine times since 811, and twice found halfway through a hearing that one client was paying both. Ashgrave walked out both times and charged for walking out.
Vorlaine 68 Vorlaine's water office decided in 776 that Vaethril's leased cave counts as a surface building, and put the rent up. Vaethril has withheld the difference ever since, and the unpaid balance now runs to nine years.
The full account — 9 houses, 9 arrangements
Every filing out of the Quiet underground passage names a chartered company at Duskenford and no principal, which is what Nuirendil retains it for: toll cases that house would rather not have heard under its own name, and neither will confirm the retainer to anyone who asks. Four marriages into Ashenvale in two centuries put Cuiveril's archivists within reach when a precedent is wanted at short notice. Wexhollow lost the corpse escort north of the sixth stage in 781 to an undercut on the water charge, and has filed twice since against the stage rents and been heard twice without a ruling. Vorlaine re-assessed those rents in 776; the arrears are formally read at each renewal, the lease stands, and a Drennhold factor still carries a copy of the stage register north each month for sixty marks the year.
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Vaethril holds the company charter under which Emberlin's two field companies serve north of the spine at six per cent of the contract, so that no Amasekan court roll shows a house sending men onto Kazdrunn ground. Vaethril has twice held charters for companies hired against each other in the same season and billed both.
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Vaethril's stage register is copied monthly and carried to Drennhold by one of its factors, sixty marks the year. The payment appears in neither house's accounts, and tenants renting a stage from Vaethril are told the register is not read.
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Nuirendil retains Vaethril to press the toll cases it would rather not have heard in its own name, and Vaethril's filings name a chartered company and no principal. Neither house will confirm the retainer to anyone who asks.
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Four marriages between Vaethril and Cuiveril in two centuries, which is how Vaethril's filings reach a Lorehall willing to find a precedent at short notice. Cuiveril's archivists put the arrangement no higher than kinship.
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Vaethril and Ashgrave's yard have appeared on opposite sides of the same cavern-stage rent nine times since 811, and twice discovered mid-hearing that they were retained by the same principal. Ashgrave withdrew on both occasions and billed for the withdrawal.
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Both houses bid in 781 for the escort of the corpse traffic north of the sixth stage, and Vaethril took it by undercutting on the water charge. Wexhollow has filed twice since against Vaethril's stage rents and been heard twice without a ruling.
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Vaethril buys bread, lentils and fodder by the stage from Umbermere, at the stage price and not the field price. Vaethril's steward has asked for the field price in each of the last six years.
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Corvane's stage patrols cover the leased cavern mouth at Vaethril and the walled compound above it, paid quarterly in coin. Vaethril declines to hand over the names of anyone renting a stage on a false charter, and the patrols go out regardless.
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Vorlaine's office re-assessed Vaethril's stage rents in 776 on the ground that a leased cavern mouth counts as a surface opening. Vaethril withholds the difference, the lease stands, and the arrears are formally read at each renewal and not collected.
Factors on the cavern road price the Quiet underground passage's paper below its face value, while records office clerks omit the principal from their copies. Said in the Sunjara Upland
The public record
- Plate
- 2 of 81
- Seat
- Duskenford
- Holding
- the Quiet underground passage
- Region
- the Sunjara Upland
- Position
- hex 24,5 in r2c6
- Extent
- a small march (3 of 10)
- Culture
- Elder Reaches · among strangers here
- Thick on this ground
- Sekhemri, Kazdrunn
- Iron
- Warm
- Living names
- 22
- Roster
- Policy
- Ancestry
- Elf
- Kinship
- Contemporary
- Major activity
- Agency
- Minor activity
- Cipherhouse
- Tradition
- Arcane, with Primal in tension
- Alignment
- CE
- Stake
- Even
- Band
- Middling
- Weights
- 3
Arms
A hooded lantern held out over a river ford at dusk, a single shutter open, throwing one narrow blade of light across black water.
Azure, a writ sealed and a mullet Or, borne side by side, equal, and undivided; in base an eye Or; a chief Vert; a bordure of warm iron. (Plate 2; twenty-two living names.)
The field colour is the house's tradition and the bound edge is the state of its plate, and neither is the house's to choose.