Ythelas
Ythelas teaches. Arcane colleges and archives at Silverwater, and a standing arrangement to school half the officials of the houses around it. Ythelas also retains plate-readers of its own.
Ythelas declines the usual categories. Its elves are *contemporaries* who remember the same centuries, and Silverwater remains one of the few realms where a Wright genuinely negotiates. Arcane institutions govern here. The house keeps its precedents in order, and its objections at the Forge arrive in writing before they arrive in person.
The holding
the Nine Combes — the library that pays its rent in clerks
Beech terraces on Solmarch gravel under the Aurelmarch ridge, library above a leased Corvantine towpath
Nine combes cut back into the Aurelmarch ridge above the Solmarch, floored in river gravel and terraced in beech that nobody here is permitted to fell. The reading rooms stand on the highest terrace with the archive rooms dug into the gravel beneath them, and a stair goes down to a towpath that belongs to the Solmarch Ward. Barges come up to the second combe in a wet spring and no further. The salt-fish coast lies a week west, the Elderfold's oak four days east along the charter road, and everything eaten here is carried in, since a beech terrace grows no bread.
Connections
The trade is teaching other people's law.
Allies takes this house’s side 3
Erevanth 49 The two keep a shared file at the Forge on charters that were confirmed rather than granted, and argue their cases out of the same set of precedents. Neither has ever appeared in court for the other.
Aldemarch 53 The towpath under Ythelas's library is Aldemarch's ground, leased at a rent last set six hundred years ago and paid in the training of clerks. Ythelas examined thirty-one of Aldemarch's clerks last year and takes its fee in wheat.
Drennhold 64 Ythelas trains Drennhold's cipher clerks eight at a time in foreign record-keeping, and Drennhold pays in cut lead plate that Ythelas sells on. The arrangement has run for about forty years.
Neutral trades, and no more than that 1
Enemies has something open against it 1
The full account — 5 houses, 6 arrangements
The trade is teaching other people's law. Thirty-one of the Ward's assize clerks were examined last year, and Drennhold sends its cipher clerks eight at a time for Corvantine records office practice, paying in cut lead plate that gets sold on at the Solmarch head. Aldemarch's fee arrives as wheat, entered at the Bellmark price of the day it moves, because a house holding no field eats at somebody else's rate. Vaddrek's oats come down the oxen road and are weighed twice, on the hold's hundredweight and on the survey's, since neither house will use the other's figure. Two hundred and forty volumes off the Aurel Wood sit on the shelves with no living name to return them to, and Meldrath's officers have twice been taken off the towpath below.
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The library at Ythelas's trains Drennhold's cipher clerks in Corvantine records office practice, eight at a time, and Drennhold pays in cut lead plate that Ythelas resells at the Solmarch head. A dwarf hold sending clerks to an elven library was remarked on for about forty years and passed out of comment.
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Ythelas's examine and certify the Ward's assize clerks, thirty-one of them last year, and take the fee out of the walled granary in wheat rather than coin. A library on beech terraces grows no bread, and the grain is entered against the fee at Ferrovane's price of the day it moves.
The towpath under the library is Ward ground, leased to Ythelas at a rent last set six hundred years ago and payable in the schooling of clerks. The Ward's auditors have raised a re-valuation twice in ten years and have not pressed it either time.
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Two hundred and forty volumes lent from Meldrath before the last Meldrath name was struck are shelved at Ythelas, which will not deliver them to a house with no living names. Meldrath's remaining officers have twice put men on the leased towpath below the library and Aldemarch's watch has twice taken them off it.
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Erevanth and Ythelas keep a joint file at the Forge on charters confirmed rather than granted, and the Reach arguments are pleaded out of the oak precedents on the Aurelmarch ridge. Neither has ever appeared for the other, on the view that a shared brief is worth more than a shared advocate.
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Oats and winter rye off the Ironfurrow granges come down the oxen road and along the Solmarch to Ythelas, and Vaddrek takes half the price in the schooling of its gnome clerks. Every load is weighed twice, on the hold's hundredweight and on the survey's, and both figures go in the book because neither house will use the other's.
The Forge has it that the joint file Ythelas keeps with Erevanth is consulted more often by houses arguing against elven charters than by houses holding them. Said in the Aurelmarch
The public record
- Plate
- 77 of 81
- Seat
- Silverwater
- Holding
- the Nine Combes
- Region
- the Aurelmarch
- Position
- hex 11,17 in r5c3
- Extent
- a march (4 of 10)
- Culture
- Elder Reaches
- Thick on this ground
- Corvantine, Elder Reaches, Amaseki
- Iron
- Warm
- Living names
- 16
- Roster
- Established
- Ancestry
- Elf
- Kinship
- Contemporary
- Major activity
- Lorehall
- Minor activity
- Ironletter
- Tradition
- Arcane
- Alignment
- CG
- Stake
- Even
- Band
- Minor
- Weights
- 2
Arms
An open book lying beneath clear silver water with its pages still legible through the surface, a balance-beam floating above it.
Azure, a book open and a mullet Or, borne side by side, equal, and undivided; in base a balance Or; a bordure of warm iron. (Plate 77; sixteen 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.