Hornish

Welcome to Hornish

Hornish is a busy river and market town of 1,250 people in the rich lands of House Darmen, in the South Province of the Great Kingdom. It lies on the west bank of the Flanmi, the great river that runs north to south past the town, huddled beneath Harrow Hall, the Baron's walled keep on its rocky promontory above the water. The town sits inside its own earth-and-timber wall, which runs from the foot of the promontory around the houses and down to the water; the keep stands apart on its rock above it, with its own stone curtain wall.

Two things make Hornish matter. A great iron chain is strung across the river between two stone towers, one on each bank, held up in the middle by a third tower standing on a rock in midstream, and every boat must stop at it until the Baron's toll is paid. And a long wooden bridge, the only crossing for many miles, carries the coach road straight through the town and over the river: east to the city of Torrich, 55 miles away, and west to the great city of Kalstrand, 200 miles distant. River and road meet here, so boats, coaches, merchants and rumours pass through every day.

Northward the Flanmi is navigable all the way upriver to Rauxes, the capital, and the Overking's barges are a common sight. Southward, below Hornish, the river spreads into a great swamp of reed beds and channels before gathering itself again and flowing on to the south. The main channel through the swamp can be navigated, but most captains hire one of Hornish's swamp pilots rather than risk the shoals and false channels.

You are a ward of Baron Aldric Harrow, the old Rax-blooded lord who holds Hornish and its river toll for Princess Bersheben of House Darmen. Your family sent you here to learn arms, letters and manners, and to make the friendships your house will need. While you are here, your house behaves.

Map of Hornish

Select the map to open it full size.

Hornish at a Glance

A small, crowded town: a five-minute walk from end to end, yet busier than many places twice its size.

Who lives here

About nine in ten people are human: Oeridian townsfolk and gentry, Suel-descended merchant families, and Flan peasants in the villages. Halflings make up about one in twenty. A few half-elves, a dwarven smith family and a gnome clockmaker complete the town. So many travellers pass through that strangers of any kind are noticed, but rarely stared at.

Places You Know

You have walked every street of Hornish a hundred times. Here is the town as you know it, from the keep down to the water.

On the promontory

• Harrow HallYour home: a grey stone keep on the rocky promontory above the river, ringed by its own curtain wall and gatehouse. Inside are the great hall where you serve at table, the solar, the chapel, the stables, the practice yard and the cramped chambers where the wards sleep. From the battlements you can see a day's journey up and down the river.
• The keep gate and the StepsA single gate faces the town. Below it the Steps, a steep stair of worn stone, drop straight down through the houses to the quays; carts take the long way round by the switchback road.
• The town wallAn earth rampart topped with a timber palisade rings the town, from the foot of the promontory round to the river. The land gate opens on the Kalstrand road to the west, the bridge gate on the Long Bridge, and the water gate on the quays. The gates close at dusk, and latecomers pay the watch to be let in.

On the river

• The west towerA round stone tower on the town bank, standing on its own below the promontory, separate from the keep. It holds the great windlass that raises and lowers the chain, and the Baron's crossbowmen keep watch from its roof. The tollmaster's office is at its foot, where captains come ashore to pay.
• The chain and the mid-river towerThe great iron chain runs in two spans: from the west tower to a squat stone tower built on a rock in midstream, and from there to the east tower. Lowered, it rests on the riverbed; raised, it stretches taut across the water, and every boat must heave to and pay. The mid-river tower, reached only by boat, keeps a lantern burning all night, and its small garrison is the first to see trouble coming up or down the river. No captain tries to run the chain twice.
• The east towerA squat, lonely stone tower on the far bank, holding the other end of the chain. It is reached by boat or across the bridge, and the men posted there count the days until they come home.
• The Long BridgeA long wooden bridge on timber piers, the only crossing for many miles, carrying the coach road straight through the town and over the Flanmi toward Torrich. A gatehouse at the town end takes the Baron's bridge toll. Its middle span can be raised to let tall-masted boats through, which happens rarely and draws a crowd when it does.
• The quays and the landingTimber wharves below the keep where barges tie up to pay the toll, unload or wait for a pilot. Always loud, always wet, and always full of people who should be working.
• The boat yards and shedsA long row of sheds, slipways and drying racks downstream of the quays, where Old Ilse Tarrow and her rivals build the light, swift boats Hornish is famous for. A small shrine of Procan stands at the end of the sheds, and no crew sets out without a blessing.
• The Pilots' HallA tarred timber hall by the lower quay where the swamp pilots wait for hire. Each pilot knows a few of the swamp's channels better than any map, and no two of them will ever agree which is safest.
• The fish marketUnder an open shed by the water: eels, pike and swamp crayfish at dawn, gulls and arguments all day.

In the town

• The temple of Zilchus: the Counting HouseThe richest building in Hornish after the keep, standing three storeys tall where the bridge road meets the market. It is a temple, a bank and a marketplace in one. On the ground floor, under a gilded ceiling painted with scales and coins, clerks change money, write letters of credit, lend at interest, insure cargoes, register contracts and sell shares in boats. Its arcaded ground floor opens onto the market as the town's weighing house, where every load bought or sold in Hornish is weighed on the temple's great scales against the temple's brass weights, and a priest records the weight and takes the fee. Behind it are bonded warehouses; below it, vaults. Every contract in Hornish, from a hire of a cart to a cargo of grain, is sworn before the god's golden scales in its contract hall. Whatever you want to buy, sell, borrow, ship, hire or have witnessed, the Counting House will arrange it, for a tithe.
• The market squareStalls and awnings filling the square in front of the Counting House, whose weighing house opens onto it.
• The temple of HextorNewer and grander than the town needs, paid for from Rauxes. Its iron doors face the bridge road so that every traveller sees them.
• The chapel of HeironeousSmall, old and cold, at the quiet end of town under the promontory. Its door is always open.
• The Chain and AnchorMag Dorran's riverside inn on the quays, the haunt of bargemen, boatwrights and pilots, and the best place in Hornish for gossip.
• The Gilded Swan and the coach yardThe coaching inn at the bridgehead, with stabling for forty horses. Coaches for Torrich and Kalstrand leave from its yard, and gentry and merchants take its best rooms.
• Brannoc's smithyThe forge of the dwarven smith Brannoc Ironhand, by the bridge road. He shoes horses, mends chain links and makes fine knives, and says very little.
• The clockmaker's shopA narrow, ticking shop off the market where a gnome mends clocks, locks and anything else with small moving parts.
• The wayside shrine of FharlanghnA weathered stone shrine at the bridge's town end, where travellers leave a coin for a safe road.

The Lands Around Hornish

Beyond the last houses the land opens out. Farmland lies closest to the town, where the keep's watchmen can see it and its people can run for shelter. Beyond the fields rise hills and forest, and to the south the river loses itself in the swamp.

• The home fieldsA patchwork of strip fields, hay meadows, orchards and pasture in a broad ring around the town, densest along the river and the road. Most farm folk live within sight of the keep, and the further out you go, the fewer and poorer the farms become.
• The hillsLow, rolling hills rise west of the river beyond the fields, with sheep runs, stone walls and a few lonely farmsteads. The wooded hills beyond Marrow are where trouble comes from.
• The forestOld oak and beech woods cover the higher ground, cut by charcoal-burners' tracks and the Baron's hunting rides. Foresters guard the deer; outlaws guard themselves.
• The swampBelow Hornish the Flanmi spreads into a vast swamp of reed beds, willow islands, mud banks and shifting channels, before gathering into one river again far to the south. The main channel is navigable, but it moves with every flood, and those who go in without a pilot do not always come out. Fishers, fowlers and stranger things live in the reeds.
• The river northUpstream, the Flanmi runs deep and broad all the way to Rauxes. Barges for the capital pass Hornish every day, and the Overking's boats pay no toll.
• The roadThe coach road crosses the Long Bridge and runs east 55 miles to Torrich; westward, out through the land gate, it runs 200 miles to Kalstrand. Milestones, waystations and the odd gibbet mark its length.
• The villagesTollwick on the road, Fennick's Bend a mile downriver, Lowford half a day downstream at the edge of the swamp, and Marrow under the wooded hills. Each is a farming or fishing hamlet of a few hundred people.

The People of Hornish

The town is divided, like all of Aerdy, by rank. Knowing where someone stands tells you how they will treat you.

Notable people

These are the people every ward in Hornish knows, and what everyone says about them.