Ostwyck
Ostwyck is a temple-state. Divine orders, pilgrim revenue, and a settled published opinion on whether the Accords are a compromise with evil. A bench of treaty lawyers works for Ostwyck.
Asked *whose are you?*, Ostwyck answers that the line runs between dragon and mortal. It wears human shape and recognises the other wyrms as its peers; the people around it are subjects, clients or weather. The distinction makes Ostwyck 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.
The holding
Hrimgard Holm — the cairn field reached only by boat
hard black stone island in the Ostrovek Sound: shingle landing, oath-house, cairn field, wintering shed, boats only
Boats are the only way onto Hrimgard Holm, a hard black stone island in the Ostrovek Sound, its landing on the lee shingle, half a mile of thin turf behind. The oath-house stands above the landing, the cairn field behind that, and a wintering shed for the whaling crews. Nothing is grown: barley meal, malt, bog oak and alder all cross the water, and the fresh water is two wells that go brackish in a dry August. The Sedgemoor causeway head lies north-east across the water and the Ostrovek landings a month up the sound, and the mainland watch-cairns are still lit through the sailing season.
Connections
Six names keep the oath-house and the cairn field, and the court practice that grew out of both.
Allies takes this house’s side 2
Vaskaryn 21 Northern debts only count if somebody recites them aloud at the yearly assembly, so Vaskaryn pays Ostwyck a twentieth of every sum to do the reciting, and Ostwyck keeps the only list of which debts are still alive. Vaskaryn's boats carry the mourners and coffins out to the island, corpses at double fare, and stop at the first hard frost.
Quorravel 27 Quorravel pays Ostwyck's lawyers in cargo to argue that ground under water at high tide cannot be measured the way the treaty measures land. Ostwyck expects the treaty to collapse, and Quorravel has too much anchored offshore to want the question asked at all.
Neutral trades, and no more than that 2
Vantrose 28 Vantrose lent 9,000 silver for a new roof on Ostwyck's oath-house, repayable over twelve years out of pilgrim offerings. The security is a collection box whose takings have fallen in four of the last six seasons.
Skarveth 65 Ostwyck buys its winter bread off Skarveth's surplus, rowed out to the island in open boats. It pays in cured whalebone and salt, because Skarveth's assembly will not hold a northern IOU over a winter.
Enemies has something open against it 1
The full account — 5 houses, 8 arrangements
Six names keep the oath-house and the cairn field, and the court practice that grew out of both. Crews out of the sound and the Cinders swear at the landing and are buried above it, the pilgrim season runs from the thaw to the eleventh month, and the offering box is the security on 9,000 silver borrowed from Vantrose for a new roof. Vaskaryn's loan book depends on the reading aloud, since a term three years unspoken is abandoned in northern practice, so the Holm calls the standing oaths each spring for a twentieth of the sums. Winter bread is bought off Whittleford in baleen and salt fish, no assembly on this shore holding a Falkvald note over a winter. Drusenberg's rememberer says the reading aloud on the six drowned men is closed.
-
Vaskaryn's loan book carries bonds sworn by Falkvald crews, and northern practice treats a term three years unformally read as abandoned. Ostwyck recites them at the oath-house each spring for a twentieth of the sums called, and keeps the only list of which oaths are still standing.
The sound boats out of the landings carry the oath-parties and the coffins to the Holm at the rate posted on the toll shed, corpses at double. They stop with the first hard frost, which is why the cairn season closes in the eleventh month whatever the northern assemblies have been promised.
-
Quorravel retains the Holm's plate-readers for the northern argument that ground under water at high tide cannot be measured by the day's overflight that fixes extent under Clause II, and pays in pilot cargo landed on the shingle. Ostwyck is positioned for a world in which the treaty fails and Quorravel has too much moored at the shoal to want the question opened at all, so the pleading is drafted with neither motive in it.
-
Drusenberg's boats take pilgrims from the causeway head to Ostwyck for two coppers per person. They provide food on the island for four coppers a day; there is no other route to the cairn field. Each spring, Drusenberg lends money against the oath-house offering box. It is the only loan in Drusenberg's book, and the offering box cannot be seized if Ostwyck fails to repay.
Bog oak for the coffin work and alder for the oath-house roof come down the sound from Drusenberg, about thirty rafts a year. Drusenberg will not take Ostwyck's paper at any discount and is paid on the shingle in oil and salt fish.
The year the Rooken flooded, six Falkvald wintering men drowned off the causeway head and Drusenberg's assembly sank them in the marsh under a stone rather than carry them out to the cairn field. Ostwyck has demanded the bodies at every summer sitting since, and Drusenberg's rememberer answers that the reading aloud on those names is closed.
-
The Milestone Fee lent 9,000 silver on the pilgrim offering at Ostwyck for a new oath-house roof, repayable over twelve years. Vantrose holds and Ostwyck breaks, and the security is an offering box whose takings have fallen in four of the last six seasons.
-
Ostwyck buys its winter bread as barley meal and malt off Skarveth's surplus, landed at the landings and rowed out to the island in open boats. Ostwyck pays in cured baleen and salt off the wintering crews, because Skarveth's assembly will not hold a Falkvald note over a winter.
Sound villages say the Holm's plate-readers are retained in more southern suits than six names could brief, and that Quorravel settles in cargo. Said in the Ostrovek Sound
The public record
- Plate
- 17 of 81
- Seat
- Nettlebed
- Holding
- Hrimgard Holm
- Region
- the Ostrovek Sound
- Position
- hex 2,19 in r5c1
- Extent
- a march (4 of 10)
- Culture
- Falkvald
- Thick on this ground
- Vaskarne, Falkvald
- Iron
- Warm
- Living names
- 6
- Roster
- Small
- Ancestry
- Human
- Kinship
- Undivided
- Major activity
- Sanctum
- Minor activity
- Ironletter
- Tradition
- Divine
- Alignment
- LE
- Stake
- Breaks
- Band
- Middling
- Weights
- 3
Arms
A guttering altar candle standing in a bed of nettles, its wax running down over the cover of a closed statute-book.
Or, a flame Gules; in base a balance Gules; a bordure of warm iron. (Plate 17; six 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.