Lore · the powers

The Four Powers

The Great Houses, the Legion remnants, the Temple colleges and the Compact. None rules; each says it should.

The four powers

Who says they should rule.

No one rules the Interregnum, and the chair has been empty long enough for the dust on it to have a name. Four powers say they should, and each has a belief it sings, a compromise it does not sing, and a blind spot it would be rude to mention at table. None of them is the villain, and none is the saint. To a founder they are neighbours with long memories and short tempers who did not issue your Patent, and have to decide what to do about it, and are slow.

Three answers to one question, legitimacy, and none confirmed: blood, Patent, or witness. Underneath run older quarrels, the kind that outlive the people who started them: who commands the sword, who owns the empire's debt, and whether the five struck names will ever be said aloud again in a room with a lamp in it.

The Great Houses

“We are the succession.”

A heraldic beast on a house-colour field, over terracotta.

The empire needed people who would stay: governors and legion-lords who could hold a Province through a bad decade without waiting for orders that were not coming. The Chancery confirmed their lines by Patent, the Patents passed to heirs, and the heirs had the walls repointed and the banners re-dyed. They rose with the empire and believe, sincerely and at length, that they are what is left of it.

What it holds: The oldest Province-seats, held by blood, banners and the hereditary office. Each House keeps a household, a watch, a chaplain from the nearest college, a banner, a Roll of descent, and a cook who has outlasted three lords. Their Patents are heirlooms in doubt since the contradictory decrees, and are kept in boxes that are opened only at funerals.
Belief: Legitimacy is inheritance. A Patent is a trust handed down with the silver, and the capital's silence is a family matter that the family will settle in its own time.
Compromise: They accept that the Chancery's seal was a confirmation, not a gift: the line was already there, they say, and the seal merely admitted it, the way a clerk admits the weather.
Blind spot: Inheritance mistaken for right. A House that cannot show its Patent argues from its banner; a House that can forgets the Patent only held while its seat answered, and seats do not answer to a banner.
Virtue: Continuity. A House remembers, and a Province with a House in it is rarely forgotten, or forgiven, or left without a bridge.
The gods: Lit by habit: public oath, banner, long table. Their marriages are Clasps in Concordis's name, their watch-offices are Custodia's, their war-leaders call on Martius before a charge and on their mothers during it. They claim Ductaris's sign as their own, which the colleges call theft and the Houses call precedent.
Fault line: Blood against Patent. The Legitimists say blood is the whole of it and the Patent merely wrote it down. The Patent-Housers say they hold by the Chancery's law and blood is a tradition, like the cook. Both are right about one thing: neither can answer a capital that no longer speaks.
What others say: The colleges say they confuse a name with a right, and have the genealogies to prove it. The Legion says they gift Patents when it suits and take them back when they are afraid. The Compact says good customers, bad debtors, excellent dinners.

Wants: A confirmed succession, their Patents re-sealed, and the seating at the witnessing settled in their favour.
Fears: An heir with a better Patent, and the Compact calling the debt on a feast day.
On a founder: A paper throne, until it is a banner. To a founder who treats them with courtesy they send formal letters on heavy paper and, at the best, a Clasp: a marriage of Patents, with a long table and a longer speech.
On a Sealing: A seal without blood. They will say it is not legitimate, in writing, and they will ask to be seated at its witnessing, near the front.
On the silent capital: A family matter.

The Great Houses hold the oldest seats by inheritance and the oldest grudges by the same means. The Rolls name four confirmed lines and one that holds without a Patent in sight and has never once been asked to leave. They hold that blood is the Patent. The colleges answer that blood is a rumour until it is witnessed, and the Houses answer that the colleges have never had to feed a Province through a winter.

The Legion remnants

“We hold what still stands.”

A plain bronze bird of prey on an umber staff, a single bell hung beneath it.

The Legions garrisoned the borders and the Ways under a rule short enough to carve on a lintel, the Rota: a post is held by being relieved. When the treasury failed and the Compact would not extend credit, they broke into remnants the way a wall breaks, in pieces that still stand where they fell. Those who stayed on the walls are the Wardens; those who rose from the roads are the Marshals; and both still write the muster in the old column hand.

What it holds: Wall-posts, gate-posts, road-posts and the Fortresses of the old line, under a Warrant of Arms rather than a Warrant of Settlement. A remnant's company is a mixed muster of the old provincial kinds: coast levies, border irregulars, eastern heavy horse, steppe archers, and watchmen who by charter never leave the wall and have opinions about those who do.
Belief: Order is a continuous watch. The post matters more than the person, and a post unrelieved is a post still held, by someone, in the rain, until further notice.
Compromise: They can fight, but they rule only by defaults. A remnant that finds itself the only authority in a valley keeps the peace, posts the notices, mends the bridge, and sends to a Chancery that is not there for permission, and files the reply it does not get.
Blind spot: Order mistaken for law. They hold the road, and so assume what lies on it is theirs to keep, including the travellers.
Virtue: Steadfastness. Where a remnant stands, the road is usually passable and the bell is usually rung, and someone has usually counted the loaves.
The gods: Both rites by practice: Lit for the muster and the watch, Dark for the road and the wall. Martius and Muralis are their patrons, Custodia keeps the beacon at the post, and a place at the fire is left for the one without a name, with a bowl that nobody fills and nobody takes away.
Fault line: Hold against hire. The Wallholders hold the post whatever it costs and call a Grey Company a deserter. The Grey Companies sell the sword and keep the roll honest, and reply that a hungry post is a deserted post with better posture. A small devout cohort carries a sealed order and cannot agree whether to open it, and has not agreed for a very long time.
What others say: The Houses say they obey no one who does not pay. The colleges say they guard the Sanctums as if they were posts, and they are. The Compact says honest, and the worst negotiators in the world, and keeps lending to them anyway.

Wants: The post relieved, or an order to stand down, in a hand they recognise.
Fears: An order that ends the watch, and being forgotten before it comes.
On a founder: The holder of the ground. They offer a bell and a post to a founder who keeps the watch, and short courteous notes; a Grey Company will take a contract for a season, paid in advance, in grain.
On a Sealing: The watch ends. They will not oppose a Sealing, and a Warden may offer the Seal-bearer a bell, which is the most a Warden has ever offered anyone.
On the silent capital: A post unrelieved.

The remnants kept the Rota when the pay stopped, which is either the noblest thing in the Interregnum or the most stubborn, and they do not care which. A Warden's oath is to the wall, not the war. They honour a charter of the watch that no living officer signed and ring a bell that no living officer ordered. They are the people who stayed.

The Temple colleges

“We witness every true patent.”

Ritual instruments: scales, rods, a harbour flame, a bell, a loom-shuttle. White and tyrian purple on warm ground.

Older than the empire, and they will tell you so before you have sat down. The Weaving set eight heavens in Sanctums and gave each a college with a lamp and a bell. At the Broken Oath the halls could not agree to witness together, and temple parted from throne in a single night with the minutes still wet. After the Shattering the colleges held the Sanctums through the long outage, and in the Middle Dawn they were re-chartered to witness Patents, which they regard as a return to their proper work after a regrettable interval of being important.

What it holds: The Sanctums, the temples, the Rolls and the Ledger. Two halls and six colleges, with a technical house between them that keeps the Seer's rite and the only working loom. The colleges hold no titles; they witness them. Their bodyguard clergy, the priors and abbots, stand on the same walls as the Legion's wardens under different orders, and have learned to share a kettle.
Belief: An oath made at a Sanctum binds. Witness is the foundation of law, and a thing that has not been witnessed has not, in the strict sense, happened, whatever the bruises say.
Compromise: They take no side and sell no certificate on credit. They will certify a Patent after the fact, never a promise before it, and they will explain the difference at length to anyone who has the afternoon.
Blind spot: Witness mistaken for truth. A thing no one witnessed is a thing the colleges cannot say, and they have confused cannot say with did not happen. The nameless thirteenth, the four of the common Rolls and the silence of the capital are the same blind spot three times, and they have a very good page on each.
Virtue: Honesty. In a college, I do not know is a respectable entry in the Roll, and is entered in a fair hand.
The gods: All eight witnessed gods, each college tending one or two: the Lit hall keeps Concordis, Martius, Arcuria and Custodia; the Dark hall keeps Viarra, Portunar, Vitrenor and Muralis. The four struck names they know and do not say in public rite, and say rather often in private. The thirteenth they refuse to name at all, because to name it is to assign it a side, and both halls have tried.
Fault line: Public against private payment, the old quarrel of the two halls, now crossed with a second line: whether to reopen the Rolls. The Rollkeepers want to; the hall-chairs want a vote; the Schismatics want the old law, and cannot be expelled because they are quoting it, accurately, from the colleges' own book.
What others say: The Houses say they sell certainty by the page. The Legion says they count what they have not carried. The Compact says they take no side but sell no certificate on credit, which is why it likes them and cannot do business with them, and sends them a ham at midwinter anyway.

Wants: The Rolls kept true, the Sanctums witnessed, and the lamp oil paid for.
Fears: A witness no one will honour, and the vote that is not written down.
On a founder: A petitioner for a Sanctum. They offer a witnessed seat to an alliance that brings a wall and a friend, and a protest on the record to one that holds all eight; the protest is beautifully written.
On a Sealing: We must count it. An alliance that holds all eight is an invitation of every hall at once, which their own articles forbid. They witness it anyway, and record under protest, and keep the pen.
On the silent capital: A silence we must witness.

The colleges do not rule and will not be said to. They keep the Rolls and witness the Sanctum rites, by lamplight, in a hand that does not change from one century to the next. They are the only power that cannot be bought and cannot be commanded, and it costs them dearly: they are poor, and the roof of the Lit hall has leaked in the same place since the Joining.

The Compact

“We feed the thrones you fight for.”

Scales, sealed bales, sails. Bronze and ochre, with teal only for the water.

The Debt Ledger made a class of people who could read it: treasurers, scribes, factors, people with ink on the right hand and salt on the left. After the Shattering the harbour cities kept grain and coin moving while the thrones were busy being broken, and their guilds of salt, grain, couriers and assayers found they shared a language of credit that was the only law still crossing borders when the capital stopped paying. It is a plain language, and it rhymes with bread.

What it holds: Grain, salt, credit, couriers, the quays, and the papers of the empire's debt, in a strongroom whose key is a committee. The Compact struck the first Sidereal mark, the celestial scrip that crosses every charter, under one rule: worth what the next factor will take. A witness, it says, is the one thing it cannot price, and it has a drawer where it keeps the attempts.
Belief: Trade is a form of law. A contract is a small oath, a toll is the price of a road kept open, and a sealed bale is an argument nobody has to make twice.
Compromise: It backs whichever Patent pays, and says plainly that it does, which is more than the others manage. A factor will lend to a House and its rival on the same day and call it neutrality, and sleep well.
Blind spot: Price mistaken for worth. Everything is weighed, including what should not be: a hearth, a name, a witness, a grandmother's coal.
Virtue: Mercy of the road. Where its ledgers reach, grain gets through, and no one is turned away at a quay without a reason given in writing and a copy for the file.
The gods: Dark by trade: the hidden labour, the unseen debt, the signed ledger. Portunar is its patron and its conscience; Viarra its uneasy partner, the road side of the same table. The grain-leagues keep Arvenor's name in their tallies, and a private account is kept for the one without a name, with no balance and no explanation, audited yearly by someone who does not ask.
Fault line: Tolls against credit, and under it the oldest quarrel of its two arms: a toll on a road and a toll on a quay are the same argument in two stones. The road-factors and the quay-wardens sit at opposite ends of one table and pass the salt with great ceremony.
What others say: The Houses say good customers, bad creditors. The Legion says they pay late and bill early. The colleges say they will buy a witness if we let them, and we do not, and they keep asking the price.

Wants: Open roads, open quays, debts honoured, and the weather to hold.
Fears: A Sealing that closes the charter, and the trade with it, before the books are balanced.
On a founder: A customer, and a good one if you read the terms. It offers a loan at honest rates, with strings, and finances both sides of nearly every contest, and sends polite and witty letters about it.
On a Sealing: It cannot buy a Sealing, so it will lend for one. It calls a Seal the cheapest end of a charter, and means it kindly.
On the silent capital: A debtor who has stopped answering.

The Compact runs the grain-leagues, the salt-leagues, the courier road and the Assay, and knows to the sack what every one of them is worth this morning. It writes the only paper anyone still trusts, because it has never refused to honour it, only to extend it, and it has a very long memory for the difference.

Between the powers

Neighbours, the nameless one, and an empty table.

The UnboundNot a power, and offended to be asked. Peoples who never took a Charter of Passage, and those who took one and left it on a stone. To some they are raiders; to others, the only people who know where the roads actually go. The bands that still refuse the Charter are the camps at the edge of every Province, with their doors of antler, barrow, cave and lantern. Of a Sealing they say: it closes the door behind us, and we were not inside.
The one without a nameNot a power either. The Houses say no Patent, no claim. The Legion leaves a place at the fire. The colleges give it no name. The Compact keeps a private account. The Unbound keep its customs where the Rolls do not reach: a hand held open at a ford, a chair set for the guest nobody expects.
The RoundThe Chancery's six-seat chamber, long empty, whose table survives as a form: any hall of founders that sits in conference may call its table a Round Table, and most do, and argue about who sits where at a table with no head. The six seats are the voices of a founder's officers, and none of them may command, which is why they talk so much.

Six quarrels

What each pair cannot settle.

Pair	The quarrel	The cost
Houses and colleges	Who certifies: the Patent made the line, or a witness did.	A House's chaplain is its witness and its spy by the same office, and is paid once.
Houses and Legion	Who rules the sword: the garrison serves the seat, or the seat is a post.	A frontier with two chains of command and one bell.
Houses and Compact	Debt. The Houses say the succession does not owe. The Compact says it does, and has the paper.	A House that cannot pay becomes a client, and is invited to fewer dinners.
Legion and colleges	Who guards the Sanctum: the post or the temple.	A prior and a warden on one wall with two orders and one kettle.
Legion and Compact	Hire and price. A road costs men; a man costs coin; coin costs a road.	The Grey Companies fight for the Compact, and keep the roll honest.
Colleges and Compact	Commerce against faith. A witness cannot be bought; the Compact has tried, politely.	The colleges cannot afford their own Rolls, and the roof leaks.

Your alliance

A league, a company or a sworn house.

A founder's alliance is a league, a company or a sworn house of its charter, never one of the four, however good its dinners. It may take a power's posture as a flavour for its crest and the letters it receives. A posture changes nothing in play, and the game never certifies a claim of lineage; the Houses would like it known that they do not either.

HousebornEchoes the Great Houses: a beast on a field, a Latin motto, formal letters on heavy paper.
LegionEchoes the Legion remnants: a bell and a bird, a post-name, short courteous notes.
CompactEchoes the Compact: scales or a sail, polite and witty letters with terms attached.
CollegeEchoes the Temple colleges: scales, a bell or a shuttle, the colleges' careful voice and a margin note.