Falkbeard
Falkbeard deals in secrets. Informants, cults, and debts of the non-financial kind make up the trade. Falkbeard keeps land under cultivation.
The Wright of Falkbeard is a dwarf first. It sits at its own people's tables, marries into them where the law allows, and takes an insult to them as an insult. Its institutions are primal. The border is a wide thing rather than a line, the herds move with the season, and the treaty reaches Spurholt at about the strength of a rumour.
The holding
Nethercourse — the grain cellars nobody can sign for
A leased gate above the Sturmhalt Water head, grain cellars under, convict stores dragged past.
The gate is cut into rock above the head of the Sturmhalt Water, where the stream comes off the Cinders and starts north for the inlet. Grain cellars run back under it, deep and dry, holding a stored crop grown days away and further. Convict stores go up the road past the gate to the sulphur benches and the barges come down loaded, which has been most of the traffic for two centuries. Slagbeck's landing is a day north, Kolgast holds the southern pass mouth a fortnight up the loose rock, and no household here could winter on what the surface grows.
Connections
Nothing here has been covered by Clause I since the last name went out, and the cellars are still full.
Allies takes this house’s side 0
No house on the ring takes this one’s side.
Neutral trades, and no more than that 4
Duskenmoor 06 Four hundred lengths of pit timber a year go upriver to hold up Falkbeard's grain cellars, paid for in grain out of those same cellars. The order has run unsigned for eleven years.
Grimhaldr 13 A dozen men on Grimhaldr's payroll still guard Falkbeard's gate, under a deal made between two houses that now have no living members between them. The wages come out of a chest nobody has checked since 799.
Steinvald 19 Steinvald owns the ground Falkbeard's gate stands on and draws its whole winter water supply through it, at a price fixed in 604. The lease runs out in eleven years, nobody from Falkbeard has produced the matching half of the contract since 801, and Steinvald has noted that at the Forge and done nothing else.
Caelithil 74 Sixty quarters of Falkbeard's stored grain go over the pass to Caelithil each autumn. Nobody at Falkbeard has been able to sign a renewal in eleven years, so the shrine deals with an agent who brings a tally sheet and no power to change anything on it.
Enemies has something open against it 2
Emberkeel 42 Falkbeard's cellars are still full of barley and there is nobody left to argue the price, so Emberkeel has taken eight hundred quarters out of them in three years at below the going rate. That is most of what the cellars held.
Verrigan 75 Verrigan bought Falkbeard's debts for about a twentieth of their value and has spent six years looking for anyone with authority to sign them off. It says a dead house's pledges pass to its creditors, two dwarf holds say they pass to the clan, and the cellars are still full.
The full account — 6 houses, 7 arrangements
Nothing here has been covered by Clause I since the last name went out, and the cellars are still full. Grain leaves on standing orders: sixty quarters a season over the pass to Caelithil's shrine, carried by a factor who brings a tally and no authority to alter a figure on it, and eight hundred quarters in three years to Emberkeel's Sixth Gate under the Redgate rate. Duskenmoor sends prop timber up the water against an order unsigned for eleven years and takes payment out of the cellars. A dozen men stand the gate on Grimhaldr's payroll, from a chest nobody has audited since 799. The half-plate that matches Steinvald's lease was last produced in 801, and Verrigan, holding the cellar bonds at eleven coppers for each silver of face value, is still looking for a name that could sign a release.
-
Falkbeard's cellars still hold barley and there is no living name at Falkbeard to argue the price, so the Sixth Gate has taken eight hundred quarters out of them in three years at under the Redgate rate. Emberkeel's factors call it relieving a distressed stock and Steinvald's clerks call it clearing a dead hold.
-
Caelithil's bread grain comes out of Falkbeard's cellars, sixty quarters a season of the stored deep crop carried over the pass in autumn. Falkbeard has produced no living name to sign the renewal for eleven years, so the shrine now deals with a factor who brings a tally and no authority to alter anything on it.
-
The Sturmhalt Water head lies inside Falkbeard's leased gate, and Steinvald draws its whole winter supply through it at a rate cut in lead in 604 AF. Steinvald is the lessor of that gate and has not decided whether to enforce a rent against a house with nobody left to owe it.
Falkbeard's lease runs a hundred and twenty years, falls due in eleven, and the half-plate matching Steinvald's was last produced by a Falkbeard factor in 801 AF. Steinvald has lodged a note of that at the Forge and taken no other step, which is what a house entered as Holds does with a question it does not want opened.
-
Verrigan bought Falkbeard's grain-cellar bonds at eleven coppers for each silver of face value and has spent six years looking for a name that could execute a release. Verrigan's position is that a cold house's pledges pass to its creditors; two Kazdrunn holds hold that they pass to the clan, and the cellars are still full.
-
Prop timber for Falkbeard's grain cellars, about four hundred lengths a year, goes up the Sturmhalt Water from Duskenmoor's yard on the convict barges. Duskenmoor has delivered against an unsigned order for eleven years and takes payment out of the cellars in grain, and the only objections have been spoken.
-
A dozen men on Grimhaldr's Redgate payroll stand Falkbeard's gate, under an arrangement made between two houses that now have no living name between them. The wages come out of a chest at Grimhaldr that nobody has audited since 799 AF, and the men are still there.
Factors at Redgate say the Nethercourse tally has come in the same hand for eleven years, and that the hand belongs to nobody they can name. Said in the Hrimgard March
The public record
- Plate
- 12 of 81
- Seat
- Spurholt
- Holding
- Nethercourse
- Region
- the Hrimgard March
- Position
- hex 7,5 in r2c2
- Extent
- a holding and its outfields (2 of 10)
- Culture
- Kazdrunn
- Thick on this ground
- Falkvald, Kazdrunn, Vaskarne
- Iron
- Cold
- Living names
- none
- Roster
- —
- Ancestry
- Dwarf
- Kinship
- Kinsworn
- Major activity
- Cipherhouse
- Minor activity
- Furrowhold
- Tradition
- Primal
- Alignment
- N
- Stake
- Breaks
- Band
- Rotten plate
- Weights
- 1
Arms
A hooded falcon perched on a thick grey beard-plait coiled like ship's rope, a single ear of rye held in its talons, a mountain behind.
Vert, party per pale by a line Or, an eye and a mount Or; in base a garb Or; a bordure of cold iron. (Plate 12; no living name.)
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.