The Stonewright Moot

The masons-and-smiths hall of the deep galleries under the Northern Rampart — the craft-institution above the Stoneborn clans that holds the bridges, forges and quarry-rights, sets clan-law and the price of stone and iron, and keeps the great works standing through the collapse.

Where the Stoneborn clans would each cut and forge and feud alone, the Stonewright Moot is the table they all sit at — a chartered company of master masons and smiths convening in the deep galleries the Karth swallowed. It does not own the quarries; it adjudicates them. The Moot registers a clan's quarry-right, fixes the price of dressed stone and forged iron so no clan starves the others, weighs the old grudges into ledgered debts that can actually be paid, and — above all — keeps the great works standing while the empire that left them is four hundred years gone: it maintains Karth Bridge's chain-works and bridge-stones, the forge-galleries, and the cut roads the north still moves on. A Wright's word on a stone's price or a clan's claim is law from the foothills to the pass; break a Moot ruling and no gallery will sell you so much as a nail.