A chronicle of Breegarra's court, written from a world that was actually played.
Every soul on the roster, as the household knows them. Their names, posts and deeds are recorded from the world itself; the lives around those facts are told.
A Shemite smith who came in already warm from the forge, with a level on him and no one quite sure where he had earned it. Quick hands and a thin frame. He is the kind of craftsman who is excellent at the bench and should never be sent anywhere near a fight.
A Kushite herder who knows every animal in a pen by its temper, and prefers them to most people. She ran the household's first working ranch table and did it well. She waits in reserve, ready for any house that keeps animals.
A Stygian who kept the Relic Hunters' stores of powders and unguents in Sepermeru and knew what every jar was for, including the unlabelled ones. She now travels in the Train with a locked case of reagents and a low opinion of everyone else's measuring.
A Shemite bowman who fell in with the Lemurians of the jungle pagoda and came to the Exiled Lands in a purge column's cage. He commands two Lemurian archers who share his old masters and none of his skill, and he knows it. He keeps the Tower the way a Shemite keeps a caravan: count everything twice and trust the wall.
A dancer of the Children of Jhebbal Sag, who still wears her cult's skull. At Rimehold she dances in the low court where the riders come in, and the frost-bitten find themselves warm and clean of whatever they carried home from the ruins.
A Zingaran dancer with Luba's face, which is nobody's fault and everybody's problem. She covers her hair and wears cold colours, so no one in the household mistakes her twice.
A Relic Hunter baker from Sepermeru who fed the diggers going out to the Unnamed City for years before he followed them. Now the diggers come to him, at the one kitchen on the rim, and nobody leaves for the ruin without a honeyed loaf.
A Darfari who traded the cannibal camps for a leather apron and a set of awls, and will not discuss which he prefers. He fits a buckle faster than most men can find one. Now he waits in reserve and resents it quietly, because an armorer with no bench is only a man with strong opinions about rivets.
Brenna grew up in the barrows west of the ridge, where the Forgotten Tribe dig their dead in deep and the living deeper. She came to Rimehold for the ore under it, and she is the only one there who does not mind the dark of the shaft.
A hill Cimmerian who has turned frozen ground with a bone hoe since he was a boy. He says snow is only water that has not been asked properly, and the planters in Rimehold's yard are where he means to prove it.
A Black Dragon of Aquilonia who came south with a purge column, carrying a bow he was never much use with and a sword he was. He is the one Breegarra sends ahead, alone, into ground nobody has cleared, to stand at the next hall until the rest of the court can find its way there.
A Stygian swordsman who came north in the same purge column as Thutmekri, and would rather not talk about it. The two of them hold Rimehold's gate walk between them, bow and blade, and argue in their own language about the cold.
The second Narcissa out of the cages, with the same face and a different temper, so the household called her the Daughter and she let it stand. She is steadier than her mother and a little tougher, and the two fight side by side as if they had rehearsed it, which, as far as anyone knows, they have not.
A Vanir from the Loysing settlements who can split an oak along the grain with a wedge and three blows. Riving is her trade and her name. She came south grumbling about the heat and stayed because nobody else could keep the Train's bows true.
A northern smith from the Siptah storms, wearing a name that belonged to someone else first and filling it better. Broad-shouldered and patient at the anvil. Gal waits in reserve as the household's first spare smith.
A Kushite quarryman who has been breaking stone since before he could lift a proper hammer. The grit in his name is the grit in his lungs. He works the Tower's camp without hurry and without stopping, which is the whole of mining.
A Vanir furnace-hand from the Siptah storms, soot to the elbows, who holds that the slag heap says more about a smelter than the ingots do. He is steady rather than fast. He waits in reserve as the household's second furnace.
A Lemurian tanner whose name is earned at the vats: nobody who has stood downwind of his work asks why. He is good at it, and faster than almost anyone. He is kept in reserve behind a better tanner, and he knows it.
A Shemite timber man from cedar country, who came south with the caravans and ended up on a raiders' chain. At City Tower he cuts a grove that somebody planted for him in the sand, and he finds that funnier than anyone else does.
A Lemurian who ran the cookfires for a Votaries camp and kept her head by keeping the priests fed. She seals everything she makes in honey, which is how she got the name, and she guards her crocks from Breegarra's housecarls like a dragon on a hoard.
A Zamorian from the city of thieves, who pours an honest measure only when someone is watching. She can reach a sellsword for anyone with the coin, which makes her more useful than her smile suggests. Without a bar she is a woman with a ledger and no counter to keep it on, so she waits in reserve.
A Darfari who learned to coax green out of sand when he had nothing else to eat. At Dragonwatch he keeps the aloe beds by the well, and every draught of extract the riders carry into the City started in his hands.
A Hyrkanian joiner who wandered off the first day and was brought back on foot, which is why the household now names thralls the moment they are caught. He works quietly and well. He waits in reserve for a house that needs its beams cut.
An exile out of Khitai who kept the bow and lost the rest, and came to Breegarra as a prize from the Headhunter contest. She shoots from behind the line, backs away from anything that closes, and has been dragged back from the edge of death once without ever admitting she was in trouble.
A Stygian soldier who asked to be sent back toward the desert, and was. He walks Dragonwatch's wall beside Thalis, who is his countrywoman and does not let him forget that she was posted there first.
She was Lian once, a northern oath-keeper, and she has died enough times now that the name stopped fitting. The Altar gave her back each time a little stranger, and the last time in a desert-born body that simply refuses to fall. Breegarra calls her the Hand because she is the one who holds the line while everyone else does the killing.
A Relic Hunter's dancer who learned more in the temple courts of Sepermeru than any scholar there, and talks as well as she dances. She rides at Breegarra's side, keeps her counsel and her bed, and is Bree's main squeeze by any honest account. She fights when she has to and would rather not; her real work is keeping everyone else alive and in good spirits.
A dancer of the Cultists of Dagon, who learned her art for a sea-god and now performs it for a house in the sand. Salt still dries white on her skin after she dances. The court comes home to the tavern corrupted and tired, and leaves clean.
A tanner who came out of a purge column still smelling of the lime pits, and who answers to Marra now because nobody in the Train could say the old name the same way twice. Tallow for the grease, grain for the side of the hide that shows. She works leather faster than anyone the court has met.
A Hyborian clerk-of-works who once kept the tallies for the Votaries of Skelos and never asked what the labour was for. She runs the Tower's wheel the way she kept those books: exactly, and without raising her voice. When the lord is away, the house answers to her.
A Forgotten Tribe cook who fed the watchers on the barrow hills, and now keeps the one fire in a hall of timber and black ice. She banks it every night herself, and nobody else at Rimehold is allowed to touch the stack.
A Stygian field hand from the flood country, taken off a Dogs of the Desert raid line. He has worked other men's water all his life and works the Tower's now, lifting it bucket by bucket into planters in the sand. He reads as a labourer at a glance, and he would not want to read as anything else.
A Black Hand corsair from the Zingaran coast who came out of a purge cage with a bow over her shoulder and never once used it well. Give her a blade and she is something else: quick, patient, and very hard to get away from. She was once the rarest thing in the household, until a second one arrived who called her mother.
A Hyborian woodworker who held City Tower's first carpenter's bench and handed it over without complaint to a sturdier colleague. Her joints are tight and her temper is even. She waits in reserve for the third house.
A Darfari woman running a civilised tavern, which means she either walked away from the Yog-worshipping cannibals of the south or very much did not. Nobody at City Tower has asked. Her cups are never empty, and the house has come to advertise it.
Xantha's partner on the Tower wall, taken from the same purges. He is patient and slow to draw, and he never hurries anything. He has settled into the long watch as if it were the only post he was ever meant for.
A steppe herdsman whose name means the keeper of the hearth: the son who stays behind with the herds while his brothers ride. He came west with the Relic Hunters' animals and has not ridden anywhere since. He has never worn armour and sees no reason to start.
A Cimmerian who left the hills young and has walked every road the Exiled Lands have, from Sepermeru to the snow. He talks while he walks, never drops anything, and has learned not to ask what is in the sack.
A Hyrkanian stockwoman from the steppe, sold across a tavern counter for less than her bow was worth. She arrived armed and knows how to use it, but she was bought to keep animals, not to shoot them. She waits in reserve for a lodge in the north that has not been built yet.
A dancer of the Dogs of the Desert who has danced at bonfires in worse places than the rim of a cursed city. She stays at Dragonwatch when everyone else rides out, and the riders who come back grey from the ruin find her already dancing.
A Dog of the Desert who was a slaver's prize before she was anyone's guard, and says nothing about either. She stood on City Tower's wall for a week like furniture until someone did the arithmetic. Now she walks at Breegarra's shoulder behind the shield a Stygian prince was too proud to carry, and nothing gets past it twice.
A Zamorian who learned the forge in a Dogs of the Desert war camp, where a blade that broke on the first blow cost its maker a hand. She quenches by ear, not by eye, and will not let anyone else touch the trough.
A Cimmerian of the Forgotten Tribe who walked out of a purge cage and did not ask where she was being taken. At Dragonwatch she is the one northern face among desert people, and she commands the wall from it with a bow and very few words.
A Cimmerian furnace-man from the Accursed, who fed a cursed forge until the curse took a liking to him. He does not feel heat any more, which makes him the fastest smelter in the Exiled Lands, and he is not entirely sure he feels anything else either.
A Shemite tanner named for a goddess of her own people, and for the smell, which is the joke: tanneries were always kept downwind. She ran City Tower's first tannery. She was kept when two named masters arrived because the owner liked her, and she waits in reserve.
A Stygian bowwoman who came north out of the Relic Hunters' trade and stayed on the edge of the thing they all trade in. She keeps the farthest watch the house has, and she was on the wall first, which Khafra is not allowed to forget.
A Stygian bowman taken out of a purge column raised by his own people. He had never seen snow before Rimehold and hates it patiently. He wears the northern furs he was issued over his linen, keeps one Setite choker from home, and watches the west gate as if the desert might still come up the road.
A Darfari who filed their teeth to points and learned to stitch hide tighter than anyone in the cannibal camps. The Scoutwright's gift is making armour weigh nothing. They do not explain where the leather came from, and nobody in the Train has asked twice.
A Zamorian from the Dogs of the Desert who hunts people the way other men hunt game, and has the name to prove he was good at it. He came to Breegarra's service at level nothing and spent his first real outing walking quietly behind the party through Midnight Grove, learning. He has not been quiet since.
A Black Corsairs deckhand who spent his youth hauling cargo up gangplanks, and jumped ship in the Exiled Lands. He has carried Breegarra's potions, loot and spare boots through Midnight Grove and back, and he has never once been asked to fight. He intends to keep it that way.
A Forgotten Tribe hunter who made his name baiting bears out of their dens in the hills west of Rimehold, and came down from the Mounds to see what the purge fires were. He stayed. Brenna knew his people, and nobody at Rimehold has since seen him back away from anything with teeth.
A Lemurian archer taken out of a purge column and set on the Tower wall, where she has stood ever since. She is not much of a shot and has never been asked to prove otherwise. What she does well is stand still and look like the Watch.
A Zamorian kitchen-woman, bought out of a tavern for a hundred gold and glad of it. She salts everything, keeps her jars sealed and counted, and treats the Tower's larder as her own small kingdom. She is the frailest soul in the house and the one nobody would dare cross.
The one who knows where the good grazing is and will not tell the others. Brighella is Harlequin's partner in the troupe and the colder of the two: first to the water, last to be caught.
A neat, sensible bay who does the work and lets the others make the noise. She has carried Liana across more of the Exiled Lands than anyone has counted, and has never once been the one who bolted.
The first good roll out of a pen of ten, and he has behaved ever since as if he knew it. He keeps the Tower door, laughs at whatever comes up the road, and does not go back in the pen.
Patched brown and white like a costume, and about as serious. Harlequin is quick, cheerful and put most of her growth into Strength, which on a horse buys nothing at all; she does not seem to mind.
Pale as the moon she is named for and about as warm. She lets Sol take the attention and goes for whatever is looking at him. The hardest-hitting animal on the server, and she knows it.
Broad, slow, and counting every oat. Pantalone arrived with nothing in his saddlebags and has been making up for it since. He will carry anything, provided it is his.
A grey with a long face who stands a little apart from the others and watches Columbine. He is steady rather than fast, and tougher than he looks: the troupe's armour horse.
A grey with opinions, all of them about himself. He tosses his head at every other horse on the road and then, to everyone's irritation, turns out to be the toughest of them.
A heavy-maned lion who walks at the front and does not hurry. He takes the first blow on purpose and seems to think that is what lions are for. Luna does the killing; Sol makes sure there is time for it.
The smallest of the cats and the only one who never had a proper chance to grow. She went north with the others on her first day with a name, and did not come back.