Ashinoha
Ashinoha works the Forge itself — embassies, votes, marriage brokerage, and the arrangement of other people's successions. Ashinoha also collects tolls.
Asked *whose are you?*, Ashinoha answers that the line runs between dragon and mortal. It wears tengu shape and recognises the other wyrms as its peers; the people around it are subjects, clients or weather. The distinction makes Ashinoha easy to bargain with and hard to shame. Its institutions are divine. They hold both moral extremes and regard the middle as a failure of nerve; the tradition signed last and grudgingly. An arcane establishment stands beside the divine one. They share Karagane and dispute the order of precedence at every ceremony that has one.
The holding
Kurozaka — the weighbridge where the iron road ends
Badlands rim where the iron road drops off the spine; roost towers, gate, weighbridge.
The mule road off Slatehead drops six hundred feet on the way down and becomes the iron road, and Kurozaka stands at the foot of the drop: a gate across the road, a weighbridge and weigh-house beside it, roost towers cut into the rim above. This is the northern edge of the Yatsuhoshi Coast, where the spine breaks into badlands. Nothing on the rim grows food and nothing on it holds water, so both are carted up. The Kazenoha swamp begins at the foot of the rim to the south, Hanezaki's loan house lies three days down the road, and flat boats take the iron off to the coast inlets below the gate.
Connections
Eleven hundred tons of Vurrgast pig and firebrick crossed the bridge last year, four thousand hundredweight of it bound for the coast yards at one hundredweight in forty.
Allies takes this house’s side 1
Neutral trades, and no more than that 3
Corvane 38 Ashinoha pays Corvane 1,100 silver a year to keep the southern cave routes open to its iron carts. The price has been raised twice in ten years.
Gundvarr 44 Four hundred hundredweight of oats and horse fodder come down from Gundvarr each year for the iron road. The two houses use different weights and different coin, and have split the difference every year for sixty.
Vurrgast 80 Vurrgast sends 1,100 tons of iron and firebrick a year down the mule road to Ashinoha's weighbridge, and separately sells Ashinoha the spring water its towers and cistern run on. If Vurrgast stopped either, Ashinoha would be dry inside a month.
Enemies has something open against it 2
Vantrose 28 Ashinoha says the road toll died when the road was re-cut in 704 and has told its carters to stop paying. Vantrose still collects at its gate and has impounded eleven carts since spring.
Serathorne 63 Iron crossing Ashinoha's weighbridge pays Ashinoha instead of Serathorne, which has twice asked a court to reclassify the traffic as river cargo so it can charge for it. Ashinoha's lawyers answer with the dates: the road was cut before Serathorne's pier was built.
The full account — 6 houses, 7 arrangements
Eleven hundred tons of Vurrgast pig and firebrick crossed the bridge last year, four thousand hundredweight of it bound for the coast yards at one hundredweight in forty. Buyers argue the spring price for four days and pay on the day agreed. Water arrives by the share from the hold whose iron the bridge weighs, on a ten-year agreement neither house mentions in the same letter as the toll. Gundvarr's fodder is weighed on a Kazdrunn hundredweight and paid in koku, the difference split every year for sixty. Serathorne has twice asked the coast court to call the road's cargo river traffic and been answered with the date the road was cut. Vantrose collects the Milestone Fee at the outer gate against a grant Ashinoha says died in 704, and has impounded eleven carts since spring.
-
Ashinoha pays the Sixth Stage 1,100 silver a year to keep the southern cavern stages open to Amasekan iron carters, which the Sekhemrite records office books as stage rent and the roost towers book as tribute. Corvane raised it twice in the last decade, and each time Ashinoha paid and entered the raise on the seating order roll as a discourtesy.
-
Ashinoha holds that the Milestone Fee was extinguished when the badlands road was re-cut in 704 and has told its carters to stop paying it. Vantrose goes on collecting at the hold's outer gate against the chapel's copy of the grant, and has impounded eleven carts since spring.
-
The mule road south off Vurrgast is the iron road, and Ashinoha's weighbridge takes 1,100 tons of Vurrgast pig and firebrick off it a year. Ashinoha's buyers argue the spring price for four days and pay on the day agreed, which the hold's factors say is more than the plain does.
Ashinoha's roost towers and cistern are filled by cart from a spring registered against the Kazenoha head, sold by the share on a ten-year agreement. The hold that sells Ashinoha its water is the hold whose iron Ashinoha weighs, and the two matters go in separate correspondence.
-
Iron that crosses Ashinoha's weighbridge and leaves through a coast inlet pays Ashinoha and not Serathorne, which has twice petitioned the Yatsuhoshi court to have the iron road's cargo declared river traffic. Ashinoha's proctors reply that the road was cut before the toll pier was piled, and produce the dates.
-
Oats and cart-horse fodder for the iron road come down from Gundvarr, four hundred hundredweight a year. It is weighed on a Kazdrunn hundredweight and paid for in koku, and since neither house will concede whose measure governs, the difference has been split every year for sixty.
The Forge has it that Kurozaka is read less for what the weighbridge takes than for whose iron it can be persuaded to weigh last. Said in the Yatsuhoshi Coast
The public record
- Plate
- 3 of 81
- Seat
- Karagane
- Holding
- Kurozaka
- Region
- the Yatsuhoshi Coast
- Position
- hex 17,17 in r5c5
- Extent
- a broad march (5 of 10)
- Culture
- Amaseki
- Thick on this ground
- Amaseki
- Iron
- Warm
- Living names
- 13
- Roster
- Established
- Ancestry
- Tengu
- Kinship
- Undivided
- Major activity
- Highcourt
- Minor activity
- Tollgate
- Tradition
- Divine, with Arcane in tension
- Alignment
- CG
- Stake
- Even
- Band
- Paramount
- Weights
- 6
Arms
A long-nosed tengu mask, a folded paper fan opened behind it like a halo, one crow feather threaded through the fan's ribs.
Or, a coronet Gules; in base a portcullis Gules; a chief Azure; a bordure of warm iron. (Plate 3; thirteen 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.