Kolkorn
Sovereign of World and Wealth.
Lore pending
This page carries Kolkorn’s strictures and little else. The wider lore of his faith — his guilds, his market-shrines, his clergy, his place among the Sovereigns — has not been written yet. What is here is complete and canon; it is simply not the whole page.
Kolkorn is served on the road and settled in the ledger.
His traditions divide along the work their peoples do. Among humans and gnomes he makes merchants: they keep a buyer or a fence in every market they have ever walked into, they run their goods along routes worn smooth by years of use, and they borrow from the guild on nothing but a name. Among the dwarves he makes miners: they read ore in a hillside from a day’s walking, find silver through a hand’s breadth of rock with a forked stick, and know what a seam is worth before it is opened.
His spells are a caravan’s spells — Allure to strike the bargain, Magic Lock to secure the goods, and Winged Flight, Protection from Temperature, Safe Travels, and Level Water to carry them across a world that would rather they did not arrive.
Wealth, to Kolkorn, is not a hoard. It is a thing that moves — dug out, carried across, sold on — and every stage of that passage is a promise that the next man will be paid. A follower who breaks that promise will see Kolkorn’s path close off before her. Markets her name once opened will be closed to her, and the guilds that once lent to her at premium rates will be sending hired men to collect.
Traditions that teach him: the Archaist and the Dwarven Forgepriest alike, and — asking more — the Gnomish Iconologist.
His worship day is Zol, market day, when the week’s accounts fall due and every ledger is squared. He shares Zol with Vulkoor, and among the dwarves and gnomes with Dolazur — for the day debts come due is often the day men are betrayed over them.
Strictures
Kolkorn’s traditions ask different measures of their followers. Find your own tradition below; it tells you what it adds to those above it.
Archaist and Dwarven Forgepriest
- A follower of Kolkorn must always display a holy symbol of Kolkorn (a nine-sided coin stamped with an octagram) somewhere on her person when in public.
- A follower of Kolkorn must reckon her debts in the eyes of Kolkorn, reciting from her ledger all that is owed to her and from her, praying that they be settled in good faith at good pace. Reckoning requires one hour (6 turns).
- A follower of Kolkorn must acknowledge every debt she incurs and carry it honestly in her ledger. On every second Zol that a debt stands unsettled, it accrues interest, at a fair rate.
- A follower of Kolkorn must never give false weight, false measure, or false coin, nor take what she has not paid for.
- A follower of Kolkorn must not use her divine magic for unlawful purposes, nor to cheat her way out of an honest debt.
Gnomish Iconologist
An iconologist of Kolkorn abides every stricture listed for the Archaist and Dwarven Forgepriest above, and further:
- A follower of Kolkorn must abide the judgment of the merchant guild in any dispute of account, and where no guild sits, the judgment of the highest-ranking of her tradition.
- A follower of Kolkorn must count as a debt everything given her that she did not pay for — a favor done, a passage granted, a gift offered, a kindness she never asked for.
The reckoning
Kolkorn does not forbid profit; he forbids a false price. His follower may drive as hard a bargain as her counterpart will meet.
Kolkorn deals in the open. A debt is discharged by meeting its terms, or by any service the creditor accepts as full settlement. A debt that cannot be paid must be carried before the merchant guild — or, where no guild sits, before the highest-ranking of her tradition — and any ruling abided and recorded. A debt hidden, denied, or left out of the ledger is a form of theft.
Spoil is not theft. What is taken from an enemy in open battle, or won from the dead who left no heir to claim it, is the fortune of the field and no debt at all. Kolkorn’s law binds the deal between dealers.