Vantrose
The vaults are the point. Vantrose holds obligations in ledgers that survive the loss of a field or a town. Vantrose maintains a second religious foundation.
Asked *whose are you?*, Vantrose 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 Vantrose easy to bargain with and hard to shame. 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
the Milestone Fee — the Corvantine vault inside the Slatehead gate
Leased terrace inside the hold's outer gate above the badlands road, chapel, vault, weigh-house
The Milestone Fee occupies a leased terrace inside Vurrgast's outer gate at Slatehead, at the southern end of the Emberdeep where the spine breaks down into badlands and the Kazenoha heads. Nothing is grown on it; the slate carries a chapel, a vault and a weigh-house, and the pilgrim traffic that keeps the chapel comes up the badlands road in the cart months. Below the gate that road runs south to Kurozaka as the iron road and west along the foot of the spine towards the Aurelmarch. The market floor and its smelters stand above on the benches, and Belgrund's weighbridge is three weeks north up the Emberdeep road.
Connections
Lending is its main income: 800 crowns to Gundvarr each March against the standing oat crop above Bridgefoot, 9,000 silver to Ostwyck on an offering box whose takings have fallen in four of the last six seasons.
Allies takes this house’s side 0
No house on the ring takes this one’s side.
Neutral trades, and no more than that 6
Ostwyck 17 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.
Quorravel 27 Vantrose bought 2,400 crowns of Quorravel's debt at full value in 815 and has been trying to sell it at four-fifths ever since the plate began to crack. It is the largest single item on Vantrose's books.
Belgrund 31 Vantrose has twice lent against Belgrund's toll income, in 813 and 817, which makes a foreign bank the creditor of a dwarf toll gate. Belgrund repaid the second loan in cut metal.
Ravenscarp 41 Vantrose has three times refused to accept a water share as security, because no office can prove a cistern still exists sixty years later, and Ravenscarp has three times filed that refusal as evidence in its own case. Both houses profit if the treaty holds, both say so in writing, and they have been on opposite sides of this for eleven years.
Gundvarr 44 Vantrose lends Gundvarr 800 crowns every March against the standing oat crop. A wet August in those fields is felt in Vantrose's vault before it is felt anywhere else.
Emberlin 52 Vantrose has no land to grow anything on and eats Emberlin's rice and buckwheat, carted up in the months the road is open and stored at the gate. Its pilgrim season falls when the price runs a third higher.
Enemies has something open against it 2
Ashinoha 03 Ashinoha says the road toll died when the road was re-cut in 704 and has told its carters to stop paying. Vantrose still collects at its gate and has impounded eleven carts since spring.
Vurrgast 80 Vantrose rents its ground inside Vurrgast's outer gate on a ninety-nine-year lease at 140 crowns a year, and Vurrgast has tried three times since 816 to have the chapel counted as part of the rented property. Vurrgast wants the vault inside its own holding and Vantrose wants it outside Vurrgast's authority.
The full account — 8 houses, 8 arrangements
Lending is its main income: 800 crowns to Gundvarr each March against the standing oat crop above Bridgefoot, 9,000 silver to Ostwyck on an offering box whose takings have fallen in four of the last six seasons. There are five names to sign with, so every borrower has met the man whose seal is on the instrument. The weigh-house converts each figure to Vurrgast's hundredweight before it is entered, the vault buys its bread off the Inamura terraces at a third over the cart-month price whenever the pilgrims are in, and the chapel keeps a hill rite older than the survey and takes part of its offerings in fleece. Eleven of Ashinoha's carts have been impounded at the gate since spring, and Belgrund's second advance came in as cut metal the book still has no column for.
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Vantrose advances Gundvarr 800 crowns each March against the standing oat crop at a tenth, secured since 815 on the weighing-yard receipts. A wet August above Quellborne is felt in the Milestone Fee vault before it is felt in the fields.
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Vantrose has advanced against Belgrund's takings twice, in 813 and 817, at a tenth on the weighbridge receipts, which makes a Corvantine vault the creditor of a Kazdrunn toll. Belgrund settled the second advance in cut metal, and Vantrose's book still has no column for it.
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Vantrose has three times declined a Reach water share as security, on the ground that no Corvantine records office can produce a cistern sixty years later, and Ravenscarp has three times filed the refusal at the Forge as evidence for the security petition. Both houses profit if the Accords hold, both say so in writing, and they have been on opposite sides of this for eleven years.
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Vantrose took 2,400 crowns of Quorravel paper at full face value in 815 and has been offering it at eighty-one in the hundred since the plate began to open. Nobody on the badlands road will quote a price for it and the vault has stopped asking for one.
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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.
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Vantrose holds the Milestone Fee on a ninety-nine-year lease inside Vurrgast's outer gate at 140 crowns a year, and the hold has tried three times since 816 to have the chapel counted into the demise. Vurrgast wants the vault inside its gate count and Vantrose wants it outside the hold's writ, and the lease is no help to either.
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The Milestone Fee is fed on Emberlin rice and buckwheat carried up the badlands road in the cart months and stored in the weigh-house, since Vantrose has no ground to grow anything on. The chapel's pilgrim season falls in the mule months, when the price runs a third higher and the vault pays it.
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Ashinoha holds that the Milestone Fee was extinguished when the badlands road was re-cut in 704 and has told its carters to stop paying it. Vantrose goes on collecting at the hold's outer gate against the chapel's copy of the grant, and has impounded eleven carts since spring.
Factors on the badlands road say the Milestone Fee lends in more places than five names could visit in a year, and price its paper accordingly. Said in the Emberdeep
The public record
- Plate
- 28 of 81
- Seat
- Steepford
- Holding
- the Milestone Fee
- Region
- the Emberdeep
- Position
- hex 19,16 in r4c5
- Extent
- a holding and its outfields (2 of 10)
- Culture
- Corvantine
- Thick on this ground
- Kazdrunn, Corvantine
- Iron
- Warm
- Living names
- 5
- Roster
- Small
- Ancestry
- Human
- Kinship
- Undivided
- Major activity
- Coinvault
- Minor activity
- Sanctum
- Tradition
- Primal
- Alignment
- LN
- Stake
- Holds
- Band
- Middling
- Weights
- 3
Arms
A pale rose growing directly out of a stack of coins, its stem wound around a small reliquary, a steep river ford below.
Vert, a key Or; in base a flame Or; a bordure of warm iron. (Plate 28; five 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.