Glorious Factions

Lore · the heavens

The Thirteen Heavens

Every heaven owes the world a service. Eight are witnessed, four were struck from the Rolls, and one was never written down.

The pantheon

Thirteen heavens, twelve names.

The old readers counted thirteen heavens where the ring-songs said twelve, and taught that each one owes the world a service, the way a mill owes the river that turns it. Eight were witnessed: given colleges and temples, lamps and bells, and names in the Rolls. Four more were worked by stewards, households, the sovereign's hall and the schoolrooms, people who did the service and got no lamp, and kept the names of the common reckoning until the Broken Oath struck them from the Rolls. The thirteenth was left out of the calendar itself, standing in its doorway, and has no name at all.

Two rites read the same sky by different light. The Lit Rite keeps the day chart, fire and air, and teaches that power must be seen and sworn to, in daylight, with a crowd. The Dark Rite keeps the night chart, earth and water, and teaches that power must be earned in the dark and paid for, which is less cheerful and more often true. Neither is the villain. Every god below has a virtue and a cost, and the colleges teach both, and the folk remember mostly the cost.

  • Lit RitePower must be seen and sworn to.
  • Dark RitePower must be earned in the dark and paid for.
  • The BridgeSomeone must stand in the gap.

A god's favour grows with an alliance's devotion; the game shows each exact effect.

The eight witnessed

Colleges, temples and names in the Rolls.

Open a heaven to read its domain, its virtue and its cost, and the story of the day its debt was paid.

Gemini, the Twins Concordis The Second Hand Lit RiteWitnessed
Sky-debt
Witness: to stand as the second hand at every oath, in every weather.
Domain
Envoys and oaths. An Envoy carries a Patent, a Patent is an oath, and an oath needs a second hand, because a promise made to yourself in an empty room has the weight of the room.
The faithful
An alliance devoted to Concordis finds its Envoys quicker and its claims on a taken city firmer.
Virtue
Honest witness. Nothing binds until somebody who is not a party has seen it and will say so.
Cost
The god who holds both hands can lift neither. A witness who keeps silent for fairness can let a wrong stand, and call the silence fair.

The day the debt was paidThe Two Wells

Two clans shared one spring badly for three generations, and every dry-season oath sworn at it was broken, because an oath sworn before only yourself has no weight. Two foundlings, a boy raised by the upper clan and a girl raised by the lower, met carrying water to opposite ends of the same ditch and learned that a message carried by someone the other side already trusted would be believed. At fifteen they walked out of the crowd at the oath stone, each took the other clan's promise in their hands, and clasped. A clan that broke its word would break the hand that held it. For thirteen years the water ran by turns. In the fourteenth, the upper clan turned the stream for a single night; the boy saw it and said nothing, because he had sworn to be the second hand of both, and when his sister learned what he had seen and not said, she let go. The slab cracked from edge to edge. The colleges teach the rite from the first part and the warning from the last: a witness who will not testify has witnessed nothing. The folk add that the spring still runs, and that nobody drinks from it alone.

Every treaty needs a second hand, and most need a third to pour the wine. Concordis is shown as two youths clasping hands over an altar of oaths, and Envoys are sworn at a Clasp with a witness from each side. The Dark colleges add, in a margin, that a witness who will not speak has witnessed nothing; the Lit hall has never found an answer, and has stopped trying.

Aries, the Ram Martius He Who Goes First Lit RiteWitnessed
Sky-debt
The Charge: to begin the blow, and to keep the vow to stand when the blow comes back.
Domain
The charge. The first blow is a public act: declared, led and seen. Martius is why a war is begun by someone, with their name on it, and not merely suffered.
The faithful
An alliance devoted to Martius sees its chosen troops strike harder when they attack, and no harder when they defend.
Virtue
Courage that keeps its word. He is as much the god of the vow to stand as of the charge, and the old soldiers say the second is the harder service.
Cost
The love of beginning. A cult of the first step can come to prefer the fight to the cause, and a ram will butt a gate that was already open.

The day the debt was paidThe Night at Redcut Ford

Before there were legions there were herd-captains who kept the high pastures for whoever paid in salt. One led thirty on the Redcut border when a harvest-train of nine hundred carts came down the old road with raiders behind it, and the ford was the only crossing for a day's march either way. She made no speech. She said someone would have to be first across and last back, and that she was not asking for volunteers because it was her ford. The company's old lead-ram went into the water ahead of her, and the company followed the ram. They held the ford for the night. It was not a victory; the raiders withdrew at dawn because the carts had crossed and there was nothing left to take. The captain, first into the water, was the last out of it, and sat on the bank counting carts instead of company. She had begun the evening owing the harvest a night, she said, and had paid it in full. The ram, the drovers insist, was given the best of the barley for the rest of its life and never understood why.

The Lit hall reads Redcut Ford as the first blow named and paid for; the Dark hall reads it as the vow to stand in cold water until morning. Both agree he is not the god of winning, which disappoints a certain kind of recruit every single year.

Virgo, the Maiden Viarra Lady of the Knotted Cord Dark RiteWitnessed
Sky-debt
Measure: to lay the road true, by walking it.
Domain
Roads and builders. The Weave itself is her measure; the colleges say her cord was laid along the paths before any Sanctum was fixed, and the ferrymen say she still checks it at night.
The faithful
An alliance devoted to Viarra marches faster over land and builds faster in every city.
Virtue
Truthful measure. A mile she calls a mile is a mile for the shortest walker with the heaviest basket.
Cost
The need to measure everything. Roads have been cut straight through places that should have been walked around, and the cord has no knot for sorrow.

The day the debt was paidThe Cord in the Tallow Fen

Two river towns needed to be one town for a season's trade, and the fen between them could not be crossed in a straight line, because the ground under it was never the same ground twice. A rope-maker's daughter who had never built anything was hired to lay a causeway, because she could make a cord of any length and knot it true. Her stakes sank. On the fourteenth night she walked the fen alone in the dark with the cord tied around her waist, tying a knot at every step the ground would take her weight, and walked back by the knots. The road was never straight. It bent three times around soft ground that had not shown itself by daylight, and nobody who built it complained afterwards, because it drowned no one. The colleges wrote that it was the first road measured by being walked. They do not hide the cost: the builders she taught trusted the cord above the eye, and the cord has no knot for sorrow. The road is still there, and the carters still swear at the three bends, and still use it.

The Dark hall honours the labour of the road; the Lit hall sometimes calls the roads a boast of the throne, from the comfort of a road. Viarra's cult lays every Keep's first stone and every Way's first mark, with a knotted cord that is never quite long enough and always exactly right.

Pisces, the Two Fish Portunar Keeper of the Open Quay Dark RiteWitnessed
Sky-debt
Passage: to open the harbour and keep fair weights, in the rain if need be.
Domain
Harbours and caravans. The Compact's two arms are the road and the quay; Portunar is the quay, and the reason a cart and a ship are one trade and one argument.
The faithful
An alliance devoted to Portunar moves its carts and ships faster and launches hulls sooner.
Virtue
Fair passage. The quay is open to anyone who accepts the weight, and the weight is read aloud.
Cost
He weighs everything, a gift included, and will close the quay rather than weigh false. A principled closure has starved towns, and the town is not consoled by the principle.

The day the debt was paidThe Weighman of the Two Fish

A storm shut the sea-road for nine days, and a convoy of grain ships stood off a hungry harbour with full holds and starving captains. The elders wanted the grain seized; the captains wanted a price the town could not pay; and the young harbour-master held the only key to the quay. He set the great catch-scale on the quay in the rain and hung two bronze fish on it as counterweights: one pan for the town's need, one for the captains' due. The harbour would open when the pans were level, he said, and he would not say which way to tip them. It took three days, every rise of a pan explained aloud with reasons. On the third evening a captain's wife, hungry for a week, walked up the quay and put a loaf on the town's pan. It levelled. The grain was landed that night, the fish hung on the quay-end for ever, and the harbour-master weighed that loaf again every night until he died, and was never once satisfied that he had the figure right.

A quay that weighs fairly is the only reason a stranger's ship is not an enemy's. Portunar's keepers weigh every sale aloud, which makes the quay the noisiest place in any harbour and the most honest; the Lit hall calls him a god of tolls, usually while paying one.

Libra, the Balance Custodia Weigher of the Watch Lit RiteWitnessed
Sky-debt
Guard: to weigh the watch's oath against what the watch is owed.
Domain
Guards and coasts. Watchmen are sworn to the post and do not march; that oath is hers. A garrison is a promise, not a unit, and a promise needs feeding.
The faithful
An alliance devoted to Custodia finds its watchmen, ballistae and coastal hulls stronger, attacking or defending.
Virtue
Reciprocal duty. A watch owes vigilance; the town owes bread and sleep; the pans must balance, and somebody must say so aloud.
Cost
She cannot stop counting, and a debt of rest can never be paid in full. Her keepers grow thin.

The day the debt was paidThe Beacon at Ninth Rock

A beacon on a rock above killing shoals had been fed for nine years by whoever the village sent, which meant by no one for long. A woman came to the rock in the first week of winter and said she would keep the fire if the village kept her. She hung two small scales inside the beacon door: a pebble in one pan for every night she promised, a pebble in the other for every loaf, bundle of wood and hour of relief promised in return. By midwinter her pan was full and the village's was nearly empty. She did not put out the fire, and she did not demand payment; she named what she was owed, aloud, every evening, to whoever came. A ship came in on the right side of the shoals only because her fire was lit, and its captain asked why the keeper was so thin. The pans came level within a day. The colleges call it the first rite of the watch: the debt was named, not punished. The pebbles are still in the door, and nobody in that village has ever been allowed to forget what a loaf weighs.

A guard is owed as much as she owes, and the owing goes both ways or it goes nowhere. The Lit hall honours Custodia with a lamp that is never allowed to go out; the Dark hall says a watch is a debt that never comes due, and leaves the lamp alone.

Sagittarius, the Archer Arcuria The Far Answer Lit RiteWitnessed
Sky-debt
Reach: to answer far threats from the wall, and to answer first with a warning.
Domain
The defenders' bow. The one who answers from a distance, and the reason an answer can be given without touching, which is a mercy to both sides and a courtesy to one.
The faithful
An alliance devoted to Arcuria holds harder behind its walls with archers, hoplites, priors and abbots, and gains nothing on the attack.
Virtue
Restraint at range. A warning is the first answer; a killing is the last, and she would rather not get to the last.
Cost
Distance becomes habit. A cult of the Far Answer can come to prefer not seeing the face, and then deny there was a face.

The day the debt was paidThe Three Arrows of the Pale Wall

A chalk-walled hill town of two hundred was besieged by two thousand, and its best archer was not a citizen but a rider of the high pasture who had come in under truce to trade sheep and had not been let out. On the fortieth day the captain asked her to shoot the besieging commander, whose tent stood four hundred paces off. She said she would loose three arrows and the town could judge afterwards. The first took the peg of his tent's guy-rope, and the tent leaned: it told him she could reach, and had chosen where. The second carried a strip of linen with three words in his own tongue: we will parley. He came to the stream at noon without escort, was shown the well, the granary and the two hundred, and the siege was lifted by dawn. The third arrow stayed in her quiver for the rest of her life, and the colleges call it the arrow that shows the other two were meant. She was paid, the town's ledger says, in sheep, at the price she had come in asking, and not a lamb more.

The first arrow said I can; the second said I will talk; the third said I did not. The Dark hall teaches that a courtesy from far away is still a courtesy, which is why Arcuria is the Lit god most at peace with the other rite and the only one invited to both suppers.

Scorpio, the Sting Vitrenor The Glass-Maker Dark RiteWitnessed
Sky-debt
Breach: to open a wall that must be opened, and to mend it after.
Domain
Sieges. A siege is a rite that closes a gap by making one side's wall the other side's door. Vitrenor is the reason a siege has terms, an end, and a courtesy, and why the better sort of besieger brings a glazier.
The faithful
An alliance devoted to Vitrenor finds its rams, trebuchets and heavy war hulls stronger.
Virtue
The courage to open what must be opened, and the skill to leave it mended, with a red heart in the glass where the light catches.
Cost
Every wall looks like a lie to him. Some walls are shelter, and his cult has opened gaps that needed no opening and called it honesty.

The day the debt was paidThe Window at Orrel

A walled granary town had sworn that its gates would not open until the founding lord's seal was brought to them, and the lord had died on a washed-out road with the seal in a satchel on a mule. The grain was eaten. A relief train of nineteen carts waited eleven days outside the gate, and the wardens sat in the gatehouse with their hands on the bar and wept, because their oath did not say unless. The town's one glass-maker, told to put out his furnace for want of wood, instead took the last of the town's wood and heated it a night and a day until the glass ran white-gold, then carried it in iron buckets to a seam of old lime in the north wall and poured. The stone split from footing to parapet and the glass set in the split: a window a man could climb through, with a red heart where the light caught. The town climbed out to the carts. The wardens said their oath had been about the gate, and the wall had opened, and they had not been consulted. In the autumn the glass-maker closed the window himself and called it a mended gap. The mule, the carters add, turned up in the spring with the seal still in the satchel, having had a pleasant winter.

Everything that is shut wants a window, and every window wants a shutter. The Dark hall teaches that a good breach is one the wall's own people ask for; the Lit hall says a breach must be witnessed, preferably from outside. Dark, powerful, and not evil, which is a harder thing to be than any of the three alone.

Capricorn, the Goat-Fish Muralis Mason of What Is Held Dark RiteWitnessed
Sky-debt
Wall: to hold what is built, through every winter the sea can send.
Domain
Strongholds. A wall is a vow made of stone, and raising a Keep into a Fortress is a college's licence to build one that must be held, by someone, for a long time, whatever the weather.
The faithful
An alliance devoted to Muralis finds its buildings and walls sturdier and its siege trains and fleets quicker on the road.
Virtue
Stewardship. What he has built, he holds, whatever it costs him, and it has cost him towns.
Cost
He cannot unbuild. A wall that has outlived its purpose is still his charge, and his cult has chosen stone over people more than once and been proud of the stone.

The day the debt was paidThe Wall That Bent to the Sea

A cliff harbour had a deep landing, a sheltered pool, and a sea that threw down its seawall every winter. Four straight walls had failed when a quarryman's son was given the fifth and asked for a month to watch the cliff. He spent it on the goat-path to a freshwater seep below the tide-line, which did not run straight but stepped and bent and came back on itself, so that even the worst storm ran down it without cutting it. A goat on a cliff, he told the town, is a mason that does not know it. He built the wall as a stair, wide at the foot and narrow at the top, with terraces for the sea to climb and lose its weight on, and the town laughed at its crookedness until the winter broke one tooth off the top terrace and nothing else. His journeymen carved the first stone with a goat whose hind half was a fish. Sixty years later the harbour silted and the town moved up the coast; he would not let them take down a stone, and the wall still stands around an empty pool, unbroken, with goats on it.

A wall stands by yielding at the right place, which is a thing walls know and kings rarely do. The Footing Oath names what a wall holds and for how long, and is carved on the first stone where the damp will find it. The Dark hall reveres him; the Lit hall teaches that a wall must know when to open, and sends the Glass-Maker round to remind it.

The veiled five

Four names of the common reckoning, and one without a name.

Worked but never consecrated, these heavens were struck from the Rolls at the Broken Oath. No temple stands to them. The thirteenth was never in the calendar at all.

Taurus, the Ox Arvenor The Patient Ox Dark RiteStruck from the Rolls
Sky-debt
Grain: to carry the world through a bad year, one pass at a time.
Domain
Supply and the stores. Every army, wall and temple stands on the person who carried the stuff there, in the rain, uphill; a convoy is a rite, and the ox knows it even if the general does not.
The faithful
A veiled heaven: no temple stands to it. The colleges did not consecrate Arvenor; the drovers and the granary tallies kept his name, at the bottom of every page.
Virtue
Endurance, thrift, carrying the load. The heaven that does not complain, and is therefore the one most taken advantage of.
Cost
Carrying what should be put down. A debt carried forward stays alive, and patience never rewarded can curdle into something with horns.

The day the debt was paidThe Ox Who Carried the Year

In a high valley behind the mountains the rain failed for two summers, and in the second winter there was grain for a month and mouths for four. A freedwoman who drove one ox, and whose whole wealth was that ox, took a load of lowland grain no beast should have carried over the pass in the lean month, and agreed with the factor that the valley would pay. Each night she and the ox ate the same handful, and when the ox flagged she walked in front with the yoke's strap in her own hand. They crossed in eleven days, the ox white about the muzzle. The first thing she said was that the grain was owed back in a good year, and a valley clerk who liked order wrote on the first page of a new book that every sack was carried forward. The next autumn the valley sent twice the grain back down the pass. By the fifth bad year the stewards had made the tally a tax, grain in the ox's name from every farm whether a bad year came or not. The ox had never asked it, and the folk say that is why no beast will carry a load through that pass to this day.

The sovereign's stewards taxed the granaries in his name, and the colleges struck the sign from their Rolls with the Broken Oath, which the drovers regard as the colleges' loss. He is still named at every drover's tally, where the last line of every page reads carried forward, and the first line of the next reads it again.

Cancer, the Crab Foveris Keeper of the Banked Fire Dark RiteStruck from the Rolls
Sky-debt
Hearth: to keep a home standing, and a coal alive in a cracked pot.
Domain
The home bastion. The Keep is the seat of the Patent and the place a founder's people live; Foveris is why a seat is a home first, and a fortress second, and why the kitchen is warmer than the hall.
The faithful
A veiled heaven: no temple stands to it. The colleges did not consecrate Foveris; households kept her name over their banked fires, and still say it when the fire catches.
Virtue
Shelter, welcome, refuge. No one is asked their name until they are warm, and the hour is the keeper's to end.
Cost
The shut door. When the hearth is full she closes it, and a refuge becomes a wall with a fire on the wrong side.

The day the debt was paidThe Coal in the Tidepool

On the night of a great spring tide a fishing hamlet was taken by the sea, and twenty-two people found each other on the headland rock, soaked and counting heads, with no fire. One was a widow whose trade for thirty years had been carrying a banked coal from house to house in a clay pot when a fire went out. The pot was cracked, but the coal was alive. She set it in a cup of dry sand that an older sea had left in a rock hollow, fed it driftwood and dried weed, and by morning there was a fire the size of a bowl. She let the others come to it one at a time and asked nothing but that they put out a hand. A twenty-third crawled up the headland that night, the one survivor of a wrecked raiders' boat; her neighbours moved their spears, and she said no one was to ask his name until he had been warm for an hour, and the hour was hers to end. The hamlet was rebuilt on the headland with that coal at its centre, and the fire has not gone out since, and the pot, cracked, is still on the shelf above it.

A home is not walls but a fire kept for anyone who comes in cold, with a stool near it. The sovereign's stewards booked the hearth-tithe as a line in the Ledger, and her sign was struck from the Rolls at the Broken Oath. Hearths still bank their fires in her name, and grandmothers still carry coals in pots, and do not explain.

Leo, the Lion Ductaris Lady of the Long Table Lit RiteStruck from the Rolls
Sky-debt
Rule: to be obeyed without being feared, and to drink last.
Domain
Command. The Envoy bears the Patent and the War Hall raises a host, and both run on a leader who is followed. Ductaris is why a rally holds together when the water is short.
The faithful
A veiled heaven: no temple stands to it. The colleges did not consecrate Ductaris; the sovereign's own hall kept her name, and the Great Houses still claim her sign, loudly.
Virtue
Authority by service. She leads by walking last and serving first, and counts the caravan on the far bank.
Cost
The habit of being obeyed becomes a need, and a sign claimed by one house is claimed against every other, which is how thrones start.

The day the debt was paidThe Water at the White Pan

A caravan of sixty people and forty beasts was driven onto a salt flat three days across by a road closed behind them. They elected a mother for the journey on the first night, not the oldest or best born but the only one who had counted the water. There was enough for two days and a half divided by need, she said, and a day and a half divided by rank. She set the order: children and the sick first, then the beasts that pulled, then those who walked, and herself last, and she walked at the back and drank after the last of her people. By the third day they were doing what she asked before she asked it: not from fear, for she had nothing to punish with, and not from kindness, though she was kind, but because it was plain she was spending herself on them in the order of their need. On the far bank the first thing she did was count the caravan. She had lost no one. The Lit halls keep a table too long to see across, and the head of it is served last, and the servers have never once got that wrong.

A ruler is one who will walk last and drink after the mules. The first rulers of the joined realm claimed her sign as their own, and the colleges struck it from the Rolls at the Broken Oath, which settled nothing. A figure wearing a circlet in her art is a claimant, not the god; the god is the one at the back with the water-skin.

Aquarius, the Water-Bearer Fluvenor The Open Jar Lit RiteStruck from the Rolls
Sky-debt
Learning: to let knowledge flow, and to ask where it will run.
Domain
Research and the schoolrooms. The disciplines a founder studies are the old curriculum, and the Seer's Tower keeps the Weaving's surviving rite. Knowledge is a current, not a vault, and a current goes where the ground lets it.
The faithful
A veiled heaven: no temple stands to it. The colleges did not consecrate Fluvenor; the schoolrooms kept his name at their doors, next to the jar.
Virtue
Generosity of knowledge. What he knows, he pours for anyone who holds out a cup, and does not check the cup.
Cost
Carelessness of consequence. To pour without asking where it will run is to flood a field, and the field was somebody's.

The day the debt was paidThe Jar That Poured Both Ways

In a city of dry terraces, water was bought: a guild held the wells and the price rose in drought. A water-carrier's daughter found a spring in the cirque above the city that nobody owned because nobody had known it was a spring, and noticed that rain on the cirque's rim ran east on one face and west on the other, and that at one place a pebble could be made to go either way. She spent a summer scratching the plan of the channels on her father's shed wall with a nail, and taught it to anyone who asked: the hill farmers, the furious guild, and the people on the far side of the ridge. I am only telling you where the water goes, she said. For six years the city drank free water from channels made by a hundred hands. In the seventh a pupil of a pupil cut a channel at the pebble's place and sent the whole run-off east, the right plan for his fields and the wrong one for the valley below, and a season's harvest was lost to a flood nobody had meant. She was heard afterwards to say that she had told it as if it were a gift, and it had been a power. The shed wall, with the nail-scratches, is a schoolroom now, and the pebble is kept in a box and not shown to children.

What is known can be made known, and then it is loose. The schoolrooms' habit of publishing the Weaving's working to any who paid was given as the reason his sign was struck. He is still invoked at the door of every school, where a jar of clean water stands for anyone with a question, and the schoolmaster keeps a cloth for the floor.

Ophiuchus, the Serpent-Bearer the one without a name in the Rolls The Excluded Thirteenth The BridgeLeft out of the calendar
Sky-debt
Mending: to stand between, and to bind what is torn with a knot the other side cannot untie.
Domain
The gap between inside and outside the Rolls. The colleges' own bodyguard clergy and the seers of the hill peoples, who answer to no college, can march together under it, and do not discuss why.
The faithful
No college has a cult for it. Where the Rolls do not reach, a custom is kept: a hand held open at a ford, a chair set for a guest who is not expected, a lantern at the stern facing the water.
Virtue
Standing in the gap. Someone must, and it is never anyone who was asked.
Cost
To belong to neither is to be loved by neither and used by both, and to mend what ought to stay broken.

The day the debt was paidThe Ferry That Carried Both

The colleges teach this as the only myth with nobody at its centre who could be named, and do not agree whether the one at its centre was a person, a custom, or a debt walking in a person's shape. In the hour after a night fight of the old war, when both shores of the strait lay in the dark with their wounded, a ferry crossed with a lantern at its bow and a figure with a long staff at its stern, facing the water and not the shore. It carried no flag, because a flag was a side. It laid the wounded of both thrones in the same hold and bound their wounds with two knots each: a knot a man of the Dark colleges could not untie in the dark, and one a man of the Lit could not read by day, so that each side's surgeons learned the other's. Nobody asked its name. By dawn the soldiers on both banks had laid down their spears for the length of the crossing. When the truce table later drafted the calendar, the Lit hall wrote one name for the thirteenth heaven and the Dark hall wrote another, and neither would sign the other's; a tired clerk drew a line through the entry, and the line was the only mark both halls could initial. The ferryman, the folk add, was paid that night, and never said by whom.

The colleges count thirteen heavens and work twelve, and will tell you the difference is a calendar. The thirteenth was left out of the calendar at the Great Eclipse; it belongs to neither rite, and the Rolls give it no name. Its art is left deliberately unfinished, and its inscription panel stays blank by rule, and is dusted more often than the others.