Aelvarion
The business is influence, conducted in rooms at the Forge instead of at Slowriver, and it has been conducted there for a very long time. A paper business supplements Aelvarion's main income.
Aelvarion declines the usual categories. Its elves are *contemporaries* who remember the same centuries, and Slowriver remains one of the few realms where a Wright genuinely negotiates. Its institutions are occult. Authority runs through cults, creditors and people who know things, and the offices at Slowriver are held by whoever the house finds it convenient to seat. An arcane establishment holds the other half of Slowriver. The two keep separate registers, and a petitioner who files with the wrong one begins again.
The holding
Sirenthal — the wharf older than the present channel
Old elven stair and wharf on a silt island at the Pardah mouth, pilot-only approach.
The Pardah drops what it carries at the mouth, so the island is silt and the channel through it has moved twice within living memory. Sirenthal is a stair, a wharf and a walled counting house on ground that grows nothing and holds no fresh water; two registered shares off the seventh surface opening come down in cask with the natron boats. No hull enters the Hoshimura Straits here without a pilot, and the pilots' guild sells what it knows. Amasekan harbour officers rank the wharf on a coast roll Sirenthal has repeatedly sought to amend. Aurelwharf lies two days north, and the Reach mountains close the sky behind.
Connections
Four thousand hundredweight of grain a year go up the Pardah to the Natron Shelves with a pilot aboard each load, at a twelfth, and Ravenscarp has costed a road alternative four times in sixty years without finding one.
Allies takes this house’s side 1
Neutral trades, and no more than that 3
Utagitsu 32 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.
Ravenscarp 41 Every hundredweight of grain that reaches Ravenscarp comes upriver through Aelvarion with one of its pilots aboard, and Aelvarion takes a twelfth for it. Aelvarion has no fresh water of its own and buys two shares from Ravenscarp, re-priced in any year the flood is late. That has been three years in five.
Verrigan 75 Verrigan's wharf lease runs from Aelvarion on a term counted in elven years, and Verrigan's copy carries two different dates, neither of which Aelvarion's office will accept, so the renewal has been stuck since spring and the rent is paid provisionally. Aelvarion also arranged the marriage that brought a Ferrovane cadet into Verrigan's family, took two years of free rent for it, and that settlement is still not carried out.
Enemies has something open against it 2
Sumizuki 35 Sumizuki's beacon still points at a channel that silted up six years ago, and Aelvarion's pilots have lost four ships because of it. Sumizuki's answer is that a beacon is part of its own holding and where it points is its own business.
Farrowgate 59 Aelvarion holds thirty-one debts issued by Farrowgate's mint in 46 AF and presents them at the Forge every ninth year to keep the claim alive. What it actually wants is Farrowgate's market rights, worked by three houses since the destruction without any of them producing a grant.
The full account — 6 houses, 8 arrangements
Four thousand hundredweight of grain a year go up the Pardah to the Natron Shelves with a pilot aboard each load, at a twelfth, and Ravenscarp has costed a road alternative four times in sixty years without finding one. Water comes back in cask, and the records office changes the rate whenever the surface opening runs late, which it has done three years in five. Flour and cider off Thornwater are paid for in audience order at Yatsuhoshi rather than coin, and neither house entered that on the coast roll. The Aurelwharf lease is reckoned in elven years and Verrigan's copy carries two dates, so the renewal has stood in hand since spring with the rent running on account. Thirty-one Oxenhead mint bonds from 46 AF are entered at the Forge every ninth year and remain uncalled.
-
Every hundredweight of grain that reaches the Natron Shelves comes up the Pardah through Aelvarion, 4,000 a year with a pilot aboard for each load, because there is no way past the silt without one. Aelvarion takes a twelfth, and Ravenscarp has costed a road alternative four times in sixty years without finding one.
Aelvarion has no fresh water on the silt island and holds two registered shares off the Pardah's seventh surface opening, carried down in cask by the boats that bring burial salt. The records office revises the rate in any year the surface opening runs late, and it has run late three years in five.
-
Aelvarion holds thirty-one Farrowgate mint bonds, issued in 46 AF and outstanding since, and enters them at the Forge every ninth year to keep the claim alive. What Aelvarion is after is the market franchise at Farrowgate, worked by three Corvantine houses since the plate cracked without any of them producing a grant.
-
Verrigan's lease runs from Aelvarion on a term reckoned in elven years, and Verrigan's copy is dated twice, once by regnal year and once by survey. Aelvarion's records office accepts neither date as the date of entry, so the renewal has been in hand since the spring and the rent is being paid on account.
Aelvarion brokered the match that brought a cadet of Ferrovane into the Verrigan line, on the argument that a house of six names cannot carry a wharf lease without standing behind it. The brokerage was taken in two years of forgiven rent and Ferrovane's settlement is still unexecuted.
-
Sumizuki's beacon still bears on the channel the Pardah silted six years ago, and Aelvarion's pilots have lodged four hull losses against it. Sumizuki's reply is that a beacon is part of a holding and its bearings are the holding's own business.
-
Flour, dried apple and cider come down the Pardah from Erevanth under a standing order older than the water records office. Aelvarion pays by moving Erevanth up the Yatsuhoshi audience list, an accommodation the two houses arranged between themselves and neither entered on the coast roll.
-
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.
Pilots at the free ports say Sirenthal keeps a second reckoning of dates it does not read out, and price its bonds on the chance of it. Said in the Hoshimura Straits
The public record
- Plate
- 54 of 81
- Seat
- Slowriver
- Holding
- Sirenthal
- Region
- the Hoshimura Straits
- Position
- hex 21,19 in r5c6
- Extent
- a holding and its outfields (2 of 10)
- Culture
- Elder Reaches · among strangers here
- Thick on this ground
- Amaseki, Corvantine
- Iron
- Warm
- Living names
- 18
- Roster
- Established
- Ancestry
- Elf
- Kinship
- Contemporary
- Major activity
- Highcourt
- Minor activity
- Coinvault
- Tradition
- Occult, with Arcane in tension
- Alignment
- N
- Stake
- Even
- Band
- Great
- Weights
- 4
Arms
A coronet resting on the surface of a slow river without sinking, its reflection showing a ring of coins where the points should be.
Sable, a coronet and a mullet Argent, borne side by side, equal, and undivided; in base a key Argent; a chief Azure; a bordure of warm iron. (Plate 54; eighteen 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.