Utagitsu
Craft is the living — hulls, hinges, blades and rails. Every rival's war runs partly on Utagitsu's output, which is a comfortable position and a conspicuous one. Utagitsu pays for reports it does not enter in the ledger.
The Wright of Utagitsu is a kitsune 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 arcane — literate, procedural and obsessive about precedent. The tradition wrote most of the case law and treats the treaty as an instrument.
The holding
Ginseto — the island refinery trusted by the coast
Basalt shore of the lesser island: one silver refinery, terraced above, pilot-gated strait approach.
The smaller of the two outer Hoshimura islands is made of dark basalt and is terraced almost to its summit. It imports half the rice its people eat. Ginseto stands on the shore. It has furnaces that separate silver from lead, a storehouse for the metal bars, and a water channel from the terraces. Ships may enter the nearby strait only with a licensed pilot. Charcoal and lead arrive at the same wharf where the finished bars leave. Shiohama's beacon rock is a day's sail east. Sirenthal lies to the north-east at the mouth of the Pardah.
Connections
Each year, the Firebrick Kilns send about 35 tons of lead containing silver down the Kazenoha River to Ginseto.
Allies takes this house’s side 2
Yatagaru 33 Yatagaru lent Utagitsu the value of 900 silver bars against future output, takes 1,400 sacks of charcoal a season back as interest, and puts twenty soldiers on Utagitsu's silver boats who ride free because the loan is secured on the silver they are guarding. Utagitsu has one living member left, and every other lender has been writing that loan down since spring while Yatagaru holds it.
Verrigan 75 Verrigan lends against every silver boat before it sails, on the strength of Utagitsu's mark alone. Half of what Utagitsu eats comes off Verrigan's wharf on credit, and that account has not been square in four years.
Neutral trades, and no more than that 3
Sumizuki 35 Utagitsu sends forty casks of water a week to Sumizuki's beacon rock, which has no fresh water of its own and pays three months ahead, and 400 barrels of salted fish come back each year. Sumizuki wants the treaty kept, and Utagitsu says publicly that it should end.
Aelvarion 54 Aelvarion accepts Utagitsu's assay note as proof that a silver bar is what it says it is, and pays one bar in every hundred tested. Utagitsu keeps the only test book.
Vurrgast 80 About thirty-five tons of silver-bearing lead go down the river from Vurrgast to Utagitsu each year. Vurrgast now sends a clerk with every shipment, because the last two arrived lighter than the paperwork said.
Enemies has something open against it 0
Nothing open against another plated house this year.
The full account — 5 houses, 9 arrangements
Each year, the Firebrick Kilns send about 35 tons of lead containing silver down the Kazenoha River to Ginseto. Vurrgast sends a clerk with each shipment because the last two loads were lighter than the bills said when they reached the strait pier. Hanezaki supplies 1,400 sacks of charcoal each season. Instead of paying in cash, Ginseto counts the charcoal against a loan worth 900 silver bars. The refinery therefore owes both fuel and money to Hanezaki. Verrigan sends rice, salt and oil for half of the island's food, and Ginseto has not paid that bill in full for four years. Ginseto sends forty casks of water a week to Shiohama. Shiohama sends back 400 barrels of bonito and accepts payment in refined silver. One clerk keeps the book that records the silver tests, and Utagitsu has refused three requests for a copy.
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Utagitsu sends refined silver bars to Verrigan's counting house. The coast accepts Utagitsu's test mark without weighing the bars again. Verrigan lends money against each boat before it sails, on the strength of the mark and nothing else.
Half of what Utagitsu eats is landed off Verrigan's leased wharf on account, in rice, salt and oil, and the account has not been square in four years. That is how a Corvantine house of six names came to hold a lien on Amasekan silver.
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Utagitsu sends forty casks of water a week to the beacon rock. Sumizuki has no other fresh water nearby, so it pays for the water three months in advance. Sumizuki supports the Accords; Utagitsu's public position favours ending them.
Sumizuki sends 400 barrels of salted bonito from Sumizuki's fishing grounds each year. Utagitsu pays in refined silver. The toll boat records the payment by weight, while the beacon station records its share as food.
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Aelvarion's counting house accepts Utagitsu's test note as proof of the silver's quality and pays one silver bar for every hundred bars tested. Utagitsu keeps the test book and has refused three requests for a copy on the coast.
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Yatagaru lent Utagitsu the value of 900 silver bars against future refinery output. Utagitsu has one living name on its plate, so lenders have been lowering the value of that loan since spring. Yatagaru has not sold it.
Yatagaru sends 1,400 sacks of charcoal down the Kazenoha each season. Utagitsu counts the charcoal against the interest on its loan instead of paying cash. The refinery's fuel supply and its debt are part of the same agreement.
Twenty soldiers from Yatagaru travel on Utagitsu's silver boats as far as the strait pier. They pay no fare because Yatagaru's loan is secured by the silver on those boats.
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Each year, Vurrgast's send about 35 tons of lead containing silver down the Kazenoha River to Utagitsu. Vurrgast sends a clerk with each shipment because the last two loads were lighter than the bills said when they reached the strait pier.
Metal traders on the strait say Ginseto's silver mark is trusted without a second weighing, although the last independent test is not recorded. Said in the Hoshimura Straits
The public record
- Plate
- 32 of 81
- Seat
- Hoshizeki
- Holding
- Ginseto
- Region
- the Hoshimura Straits
- Position
- hex 18,22 in r6c5
- Extent
- a single holding (1 of 10)
- Culture
- Amaseki
- Thick on this ground
- Amaseki
- Iron
- Warm
- Living names
- 1
- Roster
- Hair-trigger
- Ancestry
- Kitsune
- Kinship
- Kinsworn
- Major activity
- Forgewright
- Minor activity
- Cipherhouse
- Tradition
- Arcane
- Alignment
- CN
- Stake
- Breaks
- Band
- Rotten plate
- Weights
- 1
Arms
A nine-tailed fox curled around a cooling anvil, one tail raised to shield a folded letter from view, a single star above.
Azure, party per pale by a line Or, a hammer and a fox's mask Or; in base an eye Or; a bordure of warm iron. (Plate 32; one 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.