Minor Nobles - Higatomo Northern Provinces
Minor Nobles — The Higatomo Northern Provinces
House Murano governs Higatomo through the weight of three simultaneous commitments: to the lacquerwork whose quality defines the town's reputation, to the compact with the dragon Sorath whose silence has lasted forty years and whose obligations have been maintained anyway, and to the northern trade routes whose access makes both the lacquer commerce and the highland ink supply possible. The minor nobles of the Northern Provinces hold positions that the realm's geography has placed too far from Higatomo for direct administration — each managing a specific function that the Provinces require and that Baron Murano cannot reach from his compound.
Baron Kenji Ishida — Baoshan
Baron Kenji Ishida | Baoshan — northeast Shoing hill valley, Hangyin foothills
Baoshan sits in a northeast Shoing hill valley where the geological formation produces — inconsistently and on the mountain's schedule rather than anyone's commercial preference — deposits of jade, semiprecious stones, and mineral pigments that the craftspeople of eastern Shoing have depended on for centuries. Baron Kenji Ishida has spent eighteen years as Baron understanding the geology at a level that is unusual for a noble: he knows the extraction operations from the inside, which has made him a more credible licensing administrator and a more effective negotiator with the dwarf extraction teams than previous Ishidas who governed at a greater remove.
He is also the person who first recognized that the primary jade claim's deepest seam is thinning. He is deciding what to do with this information, and the decision is complicated by the fact that the answer matters differently to the dwarf extraction teams, to his daughter Riko who manages the commercial relationships, and to the Murano family of Higatomo whose compact with the Ishida line depends on a supply assumption that the thinning seam may not support.
Prefect Jiang of Green Harbor — Chamodo
Prefect Jiang of Green Harbor | Chamodo — northern coast, White Gulf approaches
Chamodo's harbor is green — a jade tone that appears in the sheltered water with no explanation that anyone outside the Ice Water Monks' inner order has fully accounted for — and the Ice Water Monks who meditate at the harbor's edge, submerging in winter conditions as a devotional practice, are the town's most distinctive feature. Prefect Jiang of Green Harbor has spent fifteen years in the role building a working relationship with the monastery and with the Damballa temple that handles the town's mortuary functions, and the three-party arrangement — prefecture, monastery, temple — functions because Jiang has treated the monks as a resource rather than a rival authority and has respected the temple's domain without requiring its subordination.
The Prefecture of Green Harbor considers Chamodo a remote posting of limited political significance, which has given Jiang the practical freedom to govern as he thinks best rather than as the Prefecture's political winds require. He is aware that this freedom is specific to his tenure and to the current Prefecture's relative indifference, and that it is not permanent.