Ancarien
The house sells counsel on the Accords themselves — among the most lucrative and most dangerous trades in the world, and Starnfen is full of people who bill by the clause. Ancarien also works metal.
Ancarien declines the usual categories. Its elves are *contemporaries* who remember the same centuries, and Starnfen remains one of the few realms where a Wright genuinely negotiates. Its institutions are primal: thin borders and herding country, with the weakest adherence to the Accords. A wyrm in a trackless waste owes nobody much.
The holding
Morlaneth — the fen forge that drafts both sides
A fen at the Rooken's head, one forge, Kazdrunn workings in the rock beneath.
The Rooken begins in this fen, a spread of peat water in a bowl of the Drusenmark's high ground, and the holding is the fen, one forge and the landing where bog-iron barges tie up for six weeks in spring. Goats browse the flank above; the slope is too steep for ploughing. The cart road climbs from the marshes and is maintained by the assemblies that use it, badly. Whitethorn's shrine stair is a week west along the flank, Rookenfalls a fortnight down the gorge, and the Kazdrunn workings are under the fen rather than on it, which has cost the water a foot and a half of depth.
Connections
The forge pays for itself and the treaty drafting pays for everything else.
Allies takes this house’s side 1
Neutral trades, and no more than that 4
Duskenmoor 06 Ancarien's single forge makes about nine hundredweight of boat nails and iron fittings a year for Duskenmoor's yard. It charges by the piece and will not quote a season price, because its charcoal comes off someone else's woodland.
Steinvald 19 Ancarien wrote the villages' complaint that a tunnel driven under a spring steals the spring, then sold Steinvald the argument against it. It has been selling both sides of that argument for twenty years.
Tessarel 61 Forty quarters of Tessarel's oats a year feed Ancarien's forge and households, hauled over the tundra and paid for in ironwork. It is everything the forge and its people eat.
Kazdrun 79 Forty tons of bog iron come up the river to Ancarien's landing each year, in the six weeks the water is deep enough. Each house bills in its own weights, and they have been arguing about the difference since 803.
Enemies has something open against it 2
Emberkeel 42 Emberkeel's tunnels run under Ancarien's fen, which has sunk a foot and a half since they reached it. Ancarien's complaint is about the water rather than the rock, and Emberkeel answers by posting a copy of its own register.
Naskarre 48 Naskarre burns Ancarien's charcoal, eleven cart loads a year, and has no other customer. Ancarien also holds a charter over those same woods older than the treaty and has asked the Forge what it is owed under it, and Naskarre argues the charter lapsed centuries ago.
The full account — 7 houses, 8 arrangements
The forge pays for itself and the treaty drafting pays for everything else. Raft dogs, cramp irons and boat nails go down the flank to Duskenmoor's yard at Blackwillow by the piece, about nine hundredweight a year, and no season's price is quoted, on the stated ground that the charcoal comes out of somebody else's woodland. Kazdrun bills its bog iron in the Vaskarni measure it buys peat by, the forge books are kept in another, and the difference has been argued since 803. The readers drafted the Drusenmark villages' complaint about a underground passage driven under a spring and then sold Steinvald the reply. The fen's own claim against Emberkeel is entered against the water and not the rock, and the answer each time is a copy of the hold's gate register.
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Ancarien holds the coppice charter for the Rooken gorge woods, granted before the signing and running on the original grant, and has asked the Forge what a charge of nine hundred sacks a year amounts to under it. Naskarre pleads that a charter left unrenewed for eight centuries has been abandoned, which Ancarien's readers regard as their own argument turned round.
Charcoal for Ancarien's forge is burned in the Rooken gorge woods below Naskarre and comes up the cart road in eleven loads a year. Naskarre carries three names on the roster and has no second customer, which both houses understand and only Ancarien mentions.
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Ancarien is retained to plead for Vurrgast at the Forge over smelter water drawn off the Kazenoha head, and files in elven form because Vurrgast's metal-cut instruments carry no weight in a coast court. Ancarien is paid in pig iron at Vurrgast's settlement price less a tenth, sold on at the gulf, since the fen has no road that would carry it home.
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Raft dogs, cramp irons and boat nails for Duskenmoor's yard come off Ancarien's single forge, about nine hundredweight a year carried down the tundra flank. Ancarien charges by the piece and will not quote for a season, on the grounds that its charcoal comes out of somebody else's woodland.
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Ancarien drafted the Drusenmark villages' complaint that a underground passage driven beneath a spring takes the spring, then sold Steinvald the reply that a gate below is not a holding above. Steinvald pays for the second opinion and files it, and has not yet asked who paid for the first.
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The workings under Ancarien's fen were cut from the Sixth Gate's side, and the fen has dropped a foot and a half since they reached it. Ancarien's claim is entered against the water and not the rock, which the hold's records office answers by sending a copy of its gate register and nothing else.
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Ancarien's forge and its households eat Tessarel oats, forty quarters a year hauled over the tundra flank and paid for in ironwork at an agreed exchange. Tessarel would rather have coin, and Ancarien offers none.
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Bog iron out of Kazdrun's pits is barged up the Rooken to Ancarien's fen landing, forty tons a year in the six weeks the water stands high enough. Kazdrun bills in the Vaskarni measure it buys peat by and Ancarien pays in the weight its own forge books are kept in, and the difference has been argued since 803 AF.
Rememberers in the Drusenmark villages say one hand wrote both spring-case papers, though the accounts show a single payment. Said in the Drusenmark
The public record
- Plate
- 5 of 81
- Seat
- Starnfen
- Holding
- Morlaneth
- Region
- the Drusenmark
- Position
- hex 3,7 in r2c1
- Extent
- a single holding (1 of 10)
- Culture
- Elder Reaches · among strangers here
- Thick on this ground
- Vaskarne, Kazdrunn
- Iron
- Warm
- Living names
- 11
- Roster
- Established
- Ancestry
- Elf
- Kinship
- Contemporary
- Major activity
- Ironletter
- Minor activity
- Forgewright
- Tradition
- Primal
- Alignment
- NE
- Stake
- Even
- Band
- Rotten plate
- Weights
- 1
Arms
A blackthorn branch grown straight through the eye of a hanging iron seal-matrix, the wax impression below it cracked across.
Vert, a balance and a mullet Or, borne side by side, equal, and undivided; in base a hammer Or; a bordure of warm iron. (Plate 5; eleven 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.