Plate 16 · Section II.1

Solmiryn

Yewgate, the Aurelmarch · Cracked iron · no living name

Extinct. What follows is the register's entry, unamended since the iron opened.

The house lives on commissions. Somebody wants something done at one remove, and Solmiryn keeps the register of people who will do it. Solmiryn maintains another channel for private information.

Solmiryn held its elves to be contemporaries, with neither kinship nor subjection defining the relationship. Its institutions were arcane — literate, procedural and obsessive about precedent. The tradition wrote most of the case law the house was finally read under.

The holding

Thornhollow — the weighbridge collected in a dead house's name

hex 10,19 · cell r5c3 · coast Marked: the yew-shaded weighbridge in the ridge gap

Yew scrub on limestone at the ridge gap, Aurelmarch: gate, weighbridge, timber road to Corvantine wharves

A loaded timber wagon crossing the Aurelmarch shoulder has one place to do it, and that is the ridge gap at Thornhollow, where everything cut on the upland goes through on its way down to the Corvantine wharves. Yew scrub and thin turf over limestone hold the gate, the weighbridge and a well; provisions for the bridge crews come up from the plain. Firstwood's oaks stand three days up the charter road, the beech terraces of the Nine Combes open below on Solmarch gravel, and the garrison road comes up to the gate itself from the salt-fish coast.

Connections

Yewgate ran an agency out of the gap and sold passage through it, and the plate cracked in the first century with the charters halfway through division.

Allies takes this house’s side 0

No house on the ring takes this one’s side.

Neutral trades, and no more than that 0

Every arrangement this house holds is warmer or colder than business.

Enemies has something open against it 5

The full account — 5 houses, 6 arrangements

Yewgate ran an agency out of the gap and sold passage through it, and the plate cracked in the first century with the charters halfway through division. Quellborne has worked two of them ever since, under a Bellmark confirmation that still recites Solmiryn as grantor. The weighbridge toll is collected by Maeryvane's agency and has been for four hundred years, the receipts made out to a house with no living name and lodged at the Corvantine survey post without comment. Aldemarch bought the right to march men through the gate in the ninety-first year, garrisons it now, and has never paid anyone for the ground under it. A clerk out of Aurelgate has presented one Thornhollow coupon at the Forge every year for thirty years to keep the claim from going stale.

out 53 Aldemarch licence

Aldemarch bought the right to march men through the ridge-gap gate from Solmiryn in the ninety-first year and still produces the deed on request. The Ward has garrisoned the gate since the plate cracked and pays nothing for the ground under it.
in 66 Quellborne claim

Solmiryn's agency charters were divided in the first century and Quellborne has worked two of them since, under a Ferrovane confirmation that still recites Solmiryn as grantor. Ythelas objects to the reading aloud whenever it is read out and asks for nothing else.
in 43 Cuiveril claim

Cuiveril holds Solmiryn's charter roll, taken in for copying in 91 AF and still in its vault, and every Aurelmarch timber suit turning on the ridge-gap weighbridge is now pleaded from a Cuiveril copy at two silver the sheet. Two Corvantine houses have asked the Forge who owns a cracked house's papers, and the question has been held over since 660.
in 24 Maeryvane claim · grain

Solmiryn's weighbridge toll has been collected by Maeryvane's agency for four hundred years under a charter belonging to a plate that cracked. The receipts are made out to Solmiryn and lodged at the Corvantine survey post, where no magistrate has yet been asked to read one.
Solmiryn's gate crews were victualled on Maeryvane charter beef for the last decades before the plate cracked, and the final two years of it stand unpaid on the tally. Maeryvane produces the tally at every re-survey as evidence that the ridge gap answered to Maeryvane, and the surveyors write the tally down without ruling on it.
in 73 Wraymoor credit

Wraymoor bought a bundle of Solmiryn paper cheap at a free-port sale and presents one coupon at the Forge every year to keep the claim from going stale. The same clerk has made the presentation for thirty years, and he is one of the three names at Wraymoor.

Bellmark clerks say the original Yewgate roll would reopen the weighbridge claim, but no claimant has filed it. Said in the Aurelmarch

The public record

Plate: 16 of 81
Seat: Yewgate
Holding: Thornhollow
Region: the Aurelmarch
Position: hex 10,19 in r5c3
Extent: a holding and its outfields (2 of 10)
Culture: Elder Reaches
Thick on this ground: Corvantine, Elder Reaches, Amaseki
Iron: Cracked
Living names: none
Roster: —
Ancestry: Elf
Kinship: Contemporary
Major activity: Agency
Minor activity: Cipherhouse
Tradition: Arcane
Alignment: LN
Stake: —
Band: Minor
Weights: 2

Arms

A sun in total eclipse behind a gate of yew, the gate's bars broken outward, a severed cord with a licence still attached hanging from the lintel.

Azure, a writ sealed and a mullet Or, borne side by side, equal, and undivided; in base an eye Or; a bordure of cracked iron. (Plate 16; 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.