Talionwe
Talionwe reads plates for a living. Treaty jurisprudence, precedent, and a working opinion on all eleven contradictory rulings about indirect killing. A crossing under its charter gives Talionwe another income.
Talionwe is Undivided. Its shape is an instrument, and its loyalty runs to the roughly two hundred beings in the world it considers truly relevant. A petitioner gets further with an offer than with an appeal to local kinship. Its institutions are occult. Authority runs through cults, creditors and people who know things, and the offices at Copperfold are held by whoever the house finds it convenient to seat.
The holding
Vaeloren — the second toll on a single voyage
Granite forest headland over the Sixtongue Roads: elven charter house, portage track, factors' anchorage below.
Granite carries the headland and the soil on top is a few inches of leaf mould under oak and pine, so Vaeloren victuals off other people's ground. The charter house stands on the seaward shoulder in dressed stone older than any wharf in the Sixtongue Roads, and below it the roller track runs across the neck to the factors' anchorage, where deep-sea hulls lie waiting on pilots. Water comes off two headland springs, beef and eels and barley off the Ebbfurrow reed grazing, landed in the anchorage at half tide. Aurelgate's gate is three days' pull west and the outer roads open south of the point.
Connections
Everything dragged over the neck pays, and everything drafted in the charter house is paid for.
Allies takes this house’s side 2
Thalassil 07 Talionwe eats off Thalassil's marshland: beef, eels and a poor barley landed below the headland. It pays by writing Thalassil's court cases in the language the harbour court keeps its records in.
Draveholt 40 Talionwe registers Draveholt's ship sales at the harbour court for a twentieth of the price, which is what it costs to get an Amasekan seller heard there at all. Draveholt's yard builds the rollers, cradles and three hundred fathom of chain that Talionwe's portage runs on.
Neutral trades, and no more than that 4
Isperil 11 In 233 a tunnel was flooded with a dragon inside it, and these two argued opposite sides of the case. The courts accepted both arguments, and two of the eleven rulings on killing a dragon indirectly came out of it.
Quorravel 27 Talionwe supplies Quorravel's lamp oil and rope on six months' credit. That credit is most of how Quorravel fits out its ships each spring.
Belgrund 31 Three coastal houses hired Talionwe to fight Belgrund's charge on hay sold to passing carts, and lost: the court called it a sale and not a toll. The charge has been raised once since and now stands above where it began.
Sumizuki 35 Talionwe wrote the argument that made Sumizuki's fishery count as land it could hold, three hundred years ago. It has refused four times to write the sequel, because the same wording would cost Talionwe its own portage.
Enemies has something open against it 2
Serathorne 63 Cargo that has already paid Serathorne at the river mouth pays again to be dragged over Talionwe's portage. Serathorne has twice asked the court to call that charging twice for one voyage, and the case has not been listed in eleven years.
Wraymoor 73 Wraymoor lent against two seasons of Talionwe's portage income, then took the second season when the first came up short, so Talionwe is suing over being charged twice for one pledge. Wraymoor also runs the record office where Talionwe is obliged to file its contracts.
The full account — 8 houses, 10 arrangements
Everything dragged over the neck pays, and everything drafted in the charter house is paid for. Draveholt's hulls sell at the roads under a title the harbour court will hear only because Vaeloren registers them for a twentieth, that court having refused Amasekan seal seating order in three cases out of four; the same yard supplies the rollers, cradle work and three hundred fathom of chain on a seventh-year order, paid on the harbour court's schedule and revised at first quotation. Quorravel's beacon oil and cordage go out on six-month bonds, priced a quarter higher since the plate began to open and secured in cargo held ashore. The opinion that a fishery is a holding was drafted here for Sumizuki, and the second opinion has been declined four times.
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The fourth and the ninth of the eleven rulings on indirect killing were pleaded by these two houses on opposite sides, both arising from a underground passage flooded above a gate in 233 AF with the hold's Wright inside it. Talionwe argued that water released into one's own workings cannot be a Clause I act; Isperil argued that a hold is a gate and a gate can be shut, and the second court accepted that without disturbing the first.
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Three coast houses retained Talionwe to challenge Belgrund's fodder surcharge on Forge-bound carts and lost, on the pleading that hay sold at the gate is a sale and not a toll. Belgrund raised the surcharge again the following season, and Talionwe declines to take the case a second time on the same facts.
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A hull sold at the Sixtongue Roads needs a title the harbour court will hear, and Talionwe registers Draveholt's sales for a twentieth of the price. That court has refused Amasekan seal seating order in three cases out of four, which is what the twentieth is really buying.
Iron-shod rollers, cradle work and three hundred fathom of chain for Talionwe's portage come out of Draveholt's yard on an order renewed every seventh year. Talionwe pays on time and argues every quotation down.
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The opinion that a fishery is a holding, and that a holding can be overflown, was drafted at Talionwe for Sumizuki in the third century after the signing. Talionwe has declined four times since to write the second opinion, on the ground that the same wording would swallow its own portage.
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Talionwe supplies the beacon oil and the hulks' cordage on six-month bonds, and since Quorravel's plate began to open it has taken the security in cargo held ashore at Talionwe and priced the bond a quarter higher. Quorravel pays the new rate and has not asked for the old one back.
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Cargo that has paid at the Emberrun mouth pays again to be dragged over Talionwe's portage, and Serathorne has twice asked the free-port court to rule the portage a second toll on one voyage. Talionwe answers in the elven charter form the court reserves for its written record, and the matter has not been listed in eleven years.
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Talionwe victuals off Thalassil's reed grazing, taking beef, eels and a poor barley landed at the factors' anchorage below the headland. Talionwe pays by drafting Thalassil's harbour-court pleadings in the written fifth language the court keeps for its record.
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Wraymoor advanced six hundred bars against two seasons of portage receipts, then took the second season's take when the first came in short. Talionwe is suing at the free ports over a pledge collected twice, and all three of Wraymoor's names are on the pleadings.
Talionwe lodges a certified copy of every Sixtongue factoring agreement at Wraymoor, since a Corvantine magistrate will not hear what a records office cannot produce, and Wraymoor keeps the Corvantine records office below the ridge. The fee is small, and that cabinet is most of the reason a house of three names is left alone on that shore.
Clerks at the harbour court say the fifth-language record is copied from drafts that leave Vaeloren, and the drafts are taken on trust. Said in the Sixtongue Roads
The public record
- Plate
- 4 of 81
- Seat
- Copperfold
- Holding
- Vaeloren
- Region
- the Sixtongue Roads
- Position
- hex 13,21 in r6c4
- Extent
- a holding and its outfields (2 of 10)
- Culture
- Elder Reaches · among strangers here
- Thick on this ground
- Mixed, Amaseki, Corvantine
- Iron
- Warm
- Living names
- 9
- Roster
- Small
- Ancestry
- Elf
- Kinship
- Undivided
- Major activity
- Ironletter
- Minor activity
- Tollgate
- Tradition
- Occult
- Alignment
- LN
- Stake
- Holds
- Band
- Middling
- Weights
- 3
Arms
A single copper tooth gripped in a pair of bronze tongs, held above an open book of law whose page has been folded once, deliberately.
Sable, a balance Argent; in base a portcullis Argent; a bordure of warm iron. (Plate 4; nine 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.